That would be one example. Dishonored and Bioshock Infinite would be others.

That's because to be totally honest, GTA (and the similar Saints Row) glorifies the Bad Guy protagonists.

I want it to "run down the uncanny valley" though. This is Fallout, it would be perfect for it lol

That is only a part of it. Look at how many realistic ways you can kill someone in Fallout 4. You can kill someone with a pistol, rifle, sniper rifle, grenades, mines, brass knuckles, walking cane, minigun, flamethrower, baseball bat, chainsaw, sword, and I am probably missing a few. With the level of graphics that Fallout 4 has it is still cartoon violence so it is somewhat acceptable, but have realistic graphics and the violence reaches the point that is found is gory horror films. It is one thing to watch someone commit gruesome acts in a horror film, it is something completely different when you are a controlling a character that is in a horror film.

Whichever takes up less resources so they can focus more on the roleplaying aspect as well as side quests >.< I could definitely go for some realistic mouth movements and lip syncing though. Sometimes it was so bad it dove headfirst into my (extremely narrow) uncanny valley.

realism is terrible, i'v never like the idea that games should be realistic. realism ages poorly and stylized simply looks better

Stylized. The more realistic a game looks, the less they can get away with and the more work they actually have to put into .."realism." Fallout has always had over the top gore, guns and fun. .. We already see people complaining about things that aren't realistic and there's no need to add to that. Too many people who play more ultra realistic shooters come in expecting something from Fallout that the game is not. It needs to be separated from those games by a wide margin. .. A more stylized art form easily does that. I mean, if it was set in an obvious fantasy world then we wouldn't have this problem.. it's the simple fact that it has an fps shooter mechanic that creates this idealized expectation.

I think the current balance in Fallout 4 is perfect

Very valid point. But as so many argue when anyone suggests "realism" in games, "It's just a game!" (One of my least favorite rationalizations for why a game is the way it is.) But as was mentioned, the game is rated M for Mature. If gore is what someone wants, they will get it somewhere regardless. (There's always the Dark Web for the truly depraved.) Make level of gory realism a toggle or slider. And for good measure, include parental controls for parents that feel particularly paternalistic.

Until computer graphics and models can emulate real life fidelity 100%, then stylized will always win in my opinion. The games aiming for "realism" always fall short due to technical limitations, and end up either showing you the horrors of the uncanny valley or have the all-too familiar awkward/creepy animations. Case in point "trying to sit in video games": http://kotaku.com/trying-to-sit-in-video-games-for-the-first-time-1743716327

I think that with the current story behind, stylized like Borderlands wouldn't fit. It would really destroy this franchise. On the other hand it depends what the next Fallout will be about. But if they will go that direction, pleasing players who play Minecraft and that sort of games, then atleast it wouldn't matter to me anymore...

they should be realistic in my opinion keep stylized to things like dishonored

When someone says stylized, I think of crap like all those new games trying to copy TF2 to excuse their bad graphics. So no to that. Stay with FO4's art direction, it's some of the very best that I have ever seen.

I lean more towards stylised, tho realistic aspects are a good spice, but like any other spice, to much realism ruins the flavour of a good game.

Well if you went with realistic then people wouldn't blow apart into little giblets when you shoot them with a pistol. What fun is that? But I much prefer realistic as most of the 'over the top' physics just bothers my immersion.

For me the graphic is perfect and i find it better than in Destiny.

The mix of both they have now works great.

I like the style they went with in F4 - a nice mix. While a more stylized approach works for some games, I can't get lost in the world the way I want to in a sandbox like FO4 if it feels like I'm in a cartoon. Or hell, even an over-processed movie. In Skyrim I made my own ENB for nicer shadows and ambient occlusion and such, but I could never stand the ones with lens dirt and vignetting and lens flare and all that. As I said, F4 gets it right. The prologue is bright and cartoony but we don't spend too much time there, and it contrasts well with the wasteland - which is gritty and detailed enough to feel 'real' but not so far as to where they can't pull off weirdness like robots and over-the-top-explosions and glowing monsters. Plus, as someone mentioned earlier in this thread, by going for photo-realism you run the risk of looking bland.

That said, I do use a SweetFX preset for FO4 which ups the contrast and sharpens things a bit - not sure what they were going for with the washed out haze that seems to cover everything, but it was easy enough to get rid of.

Stylized, all the way. Fallout 4 isn't meant to look photorealistic - it's meant more to look like the Iron Giant, or a Pixar film... except with campy amounts of gore. And that's how it ought to be, IMO.

Yeah I think the path they're on now is pretty much spot on.

There's such a wide range of what falls under M, though. Just because a game is M (or a movie is R) doesn't mean it needs to fulfill the furthest extent of what's allowed. The dev's vision & design counts for something (i.e, if they have no interest in creating Uber Gorefest 3000?, then there's no reason for them to, even if some forum dudes say "I wish this was super gory!)

(Also, creating a decent variable-gore system - as opposed to a simple BloodFest! vs. Nothing toggle - would take more dev time & effort. It's an issue with all of the "why don't they just make it an option?" comments that pop up everywhere. If they actually did that for everything people asked for, there'd be a 60-question menu at the start of the game, and there's be little time left for programming anything else. )

...for the record, I'm a 45 year old man who has little interest in ultra-gore. I don't watch splatter movies, I actually tend to avoid the bloodier action flicks (huge fan of Watchmen comic, had be really curious how that would turn out as a movie. And didn't see the movie when I heard how bloody it was.) I didn't even watch the trailers & highlights for Mortal Kombat X or Sniper Elite. Dead Island was about the limit of where I'll go in a game (so yeah, the higher "realism"/grossness is one of the reasons I'm not bothering with Dying Light.)

Of course, this is moderately separate from Realistic vs Stylized graphics. You can make photo-realistic graphics without overloading on gore. And you can make spectacularly nasty stuff in a stylized game. Art Style and Content aren't 100% connected.

No. It works on Borderlands but I can't see a Fallout in that style. What I guess I mean is it's okay with me if the graphics aren't photo-realistic, but not cartoony.

I say the graphics in future fallouts should look like the cinematics in the wanderer trailer. I think video games will look like that in the near future.

I thought it was?

Personally, I avoid "splatter" films which I feel are just gore-for-the-sake-of-gore. However, on a visceral level it bothers me when cinematics show death or maiming (e.g. arm lopped off with no blood spray) with no apparent visual clue as to what caused the death or incapacitation. I'd like to at least see some blood coming from the point of entry to suggest "This is what killed him." I don't mind Bethesda's decapitation shots, but it would bother me if the headless torso spent a moment spewing blood like a fire hose at full blast.