How Much Has Art Affected Video Games?

Now,  I am in no way good at art. I have tried many times to draw something, from dragons to unicorns and failed at all of the in between. I have recently realized how much art within video games should be commended and have been studying them more while I play them. Most recently I have been playing the Final Fantasy series (Well 7, 10 and 15), which you can really tell the difference in art between all three games.

Despite being released in 1997, the art of Final Fantasy 7 is pretty amazing. It has a large amount of detail. For example in the picture above of Midgar, you can see how much detail has been put in to this concept drawing of it. It's something I think gamers can appreciate. Final Fantasy 7 was massively successful when it was released and is currently in the process of being remade by Square Enix which I can't wait for as some of the art coming out to tease the remake looks graphically stunning.

Of course art comes in many forms. Music is an integral part of gaming and all of the soundtracks to any Final Fantasy game I have played has been truly brilliant. Me or Dr Mango will be covering soundtracks in a lot more detail very soon.

Then the PlayStation 2 came out. Better console generally means the capacity to have better graphics in a game due to the technological changes in the console. Now I will be slightly biased towards Final Fantasy 10 due to it being my favourite game released on any console. I think that the Final Fantasy 10 art is amazing considering it came only 7 years after Final Fantasy 7. No longer were there the block characters of Final Fantasy 7 (I know that changed in Final Fantasy 8, but I didn't play enough of it to really comment on it), instead we had well made, graphically beautiful 3-D models as characters. Now, in the art above, you can see the amount of detail put in to every inch of the scenery the characters are standing in.

Once again, the music in this game is amazing. By far my favourite soundtrack ever to exist (Although I do have to commend Final Fantasy 15 for having every Final Fantasy soundtrack in the same game). Be sure to read the soundtrack articles coming soon to read about me sucking up to Square Enix.

Final Fantasy 15 will be looked at in much more detail by Dr Mango but I will say that it is one of the most graphically advanced games I have ever played. Games like Skyrim have amazing art and graphics, but Final Fantasy 15 is the only game ever to make me get a little bit of a chill by entering a place from how amazing it looked.

I feel that as the art improves in video games, the community grows. Artists will see games for what they are: beautiful pieces of art, meaning more talented artists will want to be involved in making more attractive games. Of course I love playing a retro game every now and then and I'm sure there are a lot of gamers that would agree with me. I remember not too long ago I played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Of course it isn't Pac-Man retro, but it was released almost 20 years ago now. (In fact Final Fantasy 7 was released 20 years ago, so happy birthday to that!)

Art in terms of gaming has come a long way, mostly due to the fact that consoles and PCs can now handle better art and better graphics with the graphics cards and processors being produced. The fact we now have Blu-ray discs that can hold more information instead of needing 3 or 4 to hold all of the information wanted in a game (Like Final Fantasy 7, 8 and 9. Each multi-disc games).

I genuinely cannot wait to see how much amazing art can be put in to games in the future if right now the art is already at this level. Comment what you guys think.