Film Grain

[Typhoid]

So I'm playing through Mass Effect 2 - and started wondering "What exactly is the benefit to film grain being on"?

I started looking around the interwebs, and it seems 90% of gamers hate film grain in a game (Not just ME2), and think it lessens the HD quality.

Personally, I can't make up my mind. I figure there HAS to be some type of pro for film grain in a video game, I just can't figure it out. At what point does film grain stop benefiting visual quality, and start impeding it, and making it look staticy.

[Ginkasa]

The idea, I believe, was to give it an old school sci-fi movie effect. I turn it off, but otherwise don't really have any strong opinions about it.

[Vampyr]

I hate motion blur in games as well. It's so immersion breaking...things that move don't really blur like that in real life.

[Combine 017]

I dont like film grain. I dont why, it just bugs my eyeballs.

[Blix]

The only two games that I remember having film grain are Silent Hill 2 and House of the Dead: Overkill. It didn't bother me with either game. In HOTD: Overkill it was really cool because it was supposed to be based on the 70s or so. The game poked fun of this fact by making sure that you knew it was "in color." I like it overall. In Silent Hill it was ok because part of what made Silent Hill's atmosphere was how unclean everything looked in the game. Specially Silent Hill 2 had graphics that were slightly better than PS1's graphics. I remember thinking the polygon models and stuff weren't that great back when the game first came out and that's saying much. Silent Hill 3 had the same effect and it was still ok. I guess it depends mostly on the atmosphere of the game and what they're aiming for.

[gekko]

Is this something always on, or is it just an effect or certain parts of the game?

[Typhoid]

Originally Posted by gekko

Is this something always on, or is it just an effect or certain parts of the game?

In Mass Effect 2 the film grain effect is defaulted to on, but you can turn it off at any time. (I was more asking "What the fuck is the deal with film grain in video games" as a whole, I had just never thought about it until this game)

Clearly it's not a game-breaking thing, I just started to wonder (while playing it) what bonuses film grain gives to a game, in the age of HDMI cables and people wanting the sharpest quality image.


But after playing ME2 last night and needlessly switching the grain on and off, I discovered 2 things that it does (in this game, anyways)

1: The gameplay looks worse. Grainier. It sort of makes it seem like your cable has some little static-y bits all over it.
2: It makes the cutscenes look a lot better, despite not having as sharp of images (Not being able to see leaf detail on a tree behind you with film grain on, where you'd be able to see leaf detail on that tree without film grain)
But I noticed it makes the alien races look a lot more "real". The film grain isn't so good for effects, buildings, and scenery, but more for making the aliens look more natural.

But I'm still up in the air on the whole thing. So many people online hate film grain so much that I keep thinking that I must be missing something major that it takes away from the game, or everyone is missing the great advantage that film grain gives, and is putting too much stock into background clarity and sharpness.

[gekko]

You're not missing anything, it's just for visual effect. The art department has the responsibility for how the game looks, and for whatever reason they wanted a film grain effect. The designers could fight against it, but it doesn't hinder the gameplay in any way. The programmers could fight it, but film grain is a really cheap effect and trust me, there would be bigger fish to fry. So the artists get what they want. But obviously not everyone liked it, since they added it to the options menu.