Hello Triangle Man

So last night I was playing Assassin's Creed 2 and I took a moment to stop and think about how far games have actually come in terms of visual technology. The game takes place in 15th century Italy in Florence, Tuscany, and Venice. And... in expected nerd fashion I had just finished what was essentially a dungeon and emerged at the top of a building in Florence. The game's camera was intentionally tilted upward toward the sky and my view was blinded by the setting sun. I walked forward and tilted the camera down and realized that I could see the entire city of Florence from this point. That's not all that impressive, however the fact that all that I could see were places that I could actually go is impressive. Every home, church, tent... all the way to the city walls are places that my character could go and interact with.

This is where I really began to think about how far games have come and I organize the evolution in a simple way. In the NES days, you had the simplest form of visual graphics. Little colored squares were organized on screen to make what was suppose to be your character and environment. If you were playing a superman game, your mom was likely to walk in and say, "Who's that blue and red blob on the screen?" Well duh mom... it's superman. However, that didn't last long because once the SNES and Genesis came along, gamers were finally able to identify the characters and things they were using... for the most part. Then came the N64. We've finally made it to the third dimension. However, in order to achieve this the graphics had to take a bit of a hit. That often meant that your characters looked like they were made out of triangles.

Mom: Why is that triangle man fighting that triangle man?
Me: Sigh... isn't it obvious... the triangle kingdom is experiencing a triangular coup and....

Okay... so it wasn't that bad... but still... most of those games looked awful (However at the time I as well as many others probably would have praised how good these games looked). As new systems have come out, games have progressively gotten better in a linear fashion up until where we are now. Mario 64 also had some moments where you could look from a high point and see an entire level that you were free to play in just like Assassin's Creed 2... which is cool if you're cool with a world made out of triangles.