187 réponses à ce sujet

[Crazy_Cat_Lady]

JoePinasi1989 wrote...

I really don't think it's too early to say "the ART direction SUCKS" since we can make a pretty acceptable comparison between one of the most important elements of Dragon Age - darkspawn!

I apologize for the rather sad quality, you should brighten your monitor to see the comparison more clearly.



Please click right mouse button and "View Image" for the next one.



What say you, hmm? Darkspawn or zombie?

In DA:O, the darkspawn looked scary and intimidating.  Now, in DA2 they look silly and ridiculous.  The blocky artstyle also makes the game look worse graphically.  Changing the look of the darkspawn is by far the most disappointing thing about DA2 since it was announced.

[tez19]

Crazy_Cat_Lady wrote...

JoePinasi1989 wrote...

I really don't think it's too early to say "the ART direction SUCKS" since we can make a pretty acceptable comparison between one of the most important elements of Dragon Age - darkspawn!

I apologize for the rather sad quality, you should brighten your monitor to see the comparison more clearly.



Please click right mouse button and "View Image" for the next one.



What say you, hmm? Darkspawn or zombie?

In DA:O, the darkspawn looked scary and intimidating.  Now, in DA2 they look silly and ridiculous.  The blocky artstyle also makes the game look worse graphically.  Changing the look of the darkspawn is by far the most disappointing thing about DA2 since it was announced.

100% agree, that is the worst part of DA2 in my opinion, the art direction.

[CiaoBella]

tez19 wrote...


100% agree, that is the worst part of DA2 in my opinion, the art direction.

Agreed. As Tim Gunn would say "That's a lotta look."

[ARC-421]

Since screen shots were first posted I've been trying to warm to the new art direction, but it is causing me to lose excitement for the sequel. Will I still play DA2? Most likely, because I enjoyed the story in Origins, Awakenings, and the DLC, and I bet the strong focus on story carries forth into DA2. I especially enjoyed the changes to the storytelling style adopted in Lelianna's Song, and am hoping to seeing more of that style.

[meschert]

I like the new art style, I just couldn't help noticing the Darkspawn resemblance to...

Modifié par meschert, 26 juillet 2010 - 04:21 .

[tez19]

meschert wrote...

I like the new art style, I just couldn't help noticing the Darkspawn resemblance to...

http://www.nam-tar.c...s/skeletor8.jpg

yeh everyone has been saying that.
i hate the new art style personally, origins had the look nailed.

[exoproto]

Am I the only one who actually sees the resemblance between the darkspawn then and now? No?  They look identical to me. The shape of the nose, the lack of lips, the eyes. The only difference I see so far is that you can actually tell what they're faces look like in detail now. Sure, they're missing textures on the skin to properly accentuate the taint that they are, but when they're on limited time, I doubt the graphics are the primary concern, no? I wouldn't want a game with awesome graphics and a terrible story. I understand the point of the "bad blocky armor" that everyone seems to be criticizing. What I don't understand is why people keep assuming it has something to do with samurais and the like. Tsk tsk.

Try looking at it from a different.. perspective rather than saying something along the lines of "omg, this art direction is so terrible, it looks like a game from 2001". Have you seen those graphics?

Tell me.. If you were, essentially, a mindless beast, would you take the proper time to delicately forge your armor so that it is rounded , even, and polished? .. Really? I think the design makes more sense now than the design in DA:O. In the deeproads, we saw that they had forgemasters. Would they really have the same armor as everyone else? I doubt it. Whenever I saw darkspawn, they seemed to just have the plain ol' default armor you saw every now and then. I'm just glad they actually look unique now.

I doubt they plan on leaving them as chalky white as they are now, but we will have to wait the months it takes them to render the graphics to see the improvements. Just wait and see instead of going insane over the screenshots they released 7 months prior to release. Did anyone see the first screenshots of Mass Effect (and I'm just using this as an example of BioWare's graphic ability)? They were.. not so great.

Modifié par exoproto, 26 juillet 2010 - 06:22 .

[tmp7704]

exoproto wrote...

Tell me.. If you were, essentially, a mindless beast, would you take the proper time to delicately forge your armor so that it is rounded , even, and polished? .. Really? I think the design makes more sense now than the design in DA:O.

Considering the darkspawn actually has smarts to operate weapons and use armour in the first place, they aren't exactly mindless. Especially seeing how they can be fully articulate and appear fairly intelligent in the Awakening once they're free from their archdemon song influence which normally drives their actions.

Plus, it's not like they can't get well crafted armour off the dwarves and other victims unfortunate enough to become their prey. Sure, some of them may be forced to rely on scraps, but i'd argue claiming this new design fits them... that's selling them pretty short and makes the darkspawn look less threatening than before, if anything. Intelligent, cunning and well armed enemies tend to be more fearsome than mindless beasts after all.

Modifié par tmp7704, 26 juillet 2010 - 06:41 .

[Cipher266]

JoePinasi1989 wrote...

I really don't think it's too early to say "the ART direction SUCKS" since we can make a pretty acceptable comparison between one of the most important elements of Dragon Age - darkspawn!

I apologize for the rather sad quality, you should brighten your monitor to see the comparison more clearly.



Please click right mouse button and "View Image" for the next one.



What say you, hmm? Darkspawn or zombie?

 
graphics when WAY DOWN, and everything looks pink.....PLEASE tell us that these are not final pics  pl...please!!!!!

[Cipher266]

tmp7704 wrote...

exoproto wrote...

Tell me.. If you were, essentially, a mindless beast, would you take the proper time to delicately forge your armor so that it is rounded , even, and polished? .. Really? I think the design makes more sense now than the design in DA:O.

Considering the darkspawn actually has smarts to operate weapons and use armour in the first place, they aren't exactly mindless. Especially seeing how they can be fully articulate and appear fairly intelligent in the Awakening once they're free from their archdemon song influence which normally drives their actions.

Plus, it's not like they can't get well crafted armour off the dwarves and other victims unfortunate enough to become their prey. Sure, some of them may be forced to rely on scraps, but i'd argue claiming this new design fits them... that's selling them pretty short and makes the darkspawn look less threatening than before, if anything. Intelligent, cunning and well armed enemies tend to be more fearsome than mindless beasts after all.

Yeah but would they go to the dentist for those perfect shiny teeth

[exoproto]

tmp7704 wrote...

Considering the darkspawn actually has smarts to operate weapons and use armour in the first place, they aren't exactly mindless. Especially seeing how they can be fully articulate and appear fairly intelligent in the Awakening once they're free from their archdemon song influence which normally drives their actions.

Plus, it's not like they can't get well crafted armour off the dwarves and other victims unfortunate enough to become their prey. Sure, some of them may be forced to rely on scraps, but i'd argue claiming this new design fits them... that's selling them pretty short and makes the darkspawn look less threatening than before, if anything. Intelligent, cunning and well armed enemies tend to be more fearsome than mindless beasts after all.

True, but that's considering if the events going on in or around Amaranthine actually manage to have their effects reach the rest of Thedas. It seems to have, but we can't know for sure until the game actually comes out, however. Even if that's true, the "new" darkspawn after the events in Awakening would be docile, unless, something went horrendously wrong and they are back to being bloodthirsty creatures.. which would explain why the few screenshots we've seen include Hawke fighting darkspawn. Iunno. I'm not claiming you're wrong, but it's still something worth pondering.

While I agree that they don't have the same intimidation factor as before (maybe it's because we can actually tell what they really look like now? or maybe it's the fact they aren't done yet), it's been mentioned elsewhere that one of the main things that led up to the intimidation wasn't just the way they looked, but the way they acted. Assuming that these are, once again, the non-intelligent breed of darkspawn (purely assuming here since we don't know yet), I still think the angular armor makes sense. Plus, angular armor just seems to fit the "dark fantasy" genre more in my opinion. That's just me and my opinion, though.

Cipher266 wrote...

Yeah but would they go to the dentist for those perfect shiny teeth ../../../images/forum/emoticons/wondering.png

I wouldn't call the darkspawn anywhere near done when it comes to the way they look. Judging by the one concept art (media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/featured/electronic-arts/bioware/dragonage2/conceptart/hurlock.jpg) I've seen, their faces should definitely be more creepy and.. their teeth not so pearly white.



They wouldn't even let our characters have white teeth (LOL). Don't expect it to stay for much longer.

Modifié par exoproto, 26 juillet 2010 - 07:32 .

[twincast]

The art style is the major source of concern for me as well. Seeing as I'm actually not all that concerned to begin with that actually makes it almost the sole source of merely a relatively small amount of concern.

silly spikes are silly. devs used to agree.

DA:O Darkspawn look mad and rotten (and thus contagious)
DA2 Darskspawn just look mad (and kinda silly)

What bothers me most is that I don't agree one bit with the new art director's statements/opinions, so I pretty much expect much worse to come stylistically.

Not quite a deal-breaker for me, but still such a shame. The city concepts look positively awesome after all.

Modifié par twincast, 26 juillet 2010 - 08:22 .

[morreski]

Well, little to add here to what's already been said. It's hard to be sure from what i presume are all still early-stage graphics, but i'm not eager to see simplified, console-style characters, or big spiky armour and oversize swords - if that's what's intended. Senior artist Matt Goldman's evident dislike of "baroque" levels of detail is not encouraging. I'm a fan of the Frank Frazetta school of rich textures. And i don't understand why that interferes with a large world. Demand on the graphic processor? Artist development time.



It certainly sounds like story depth and character development will be in the DA:O style, and i'll certainly buy the game for that. I hope the graphic style doesn't interfere. Expansive vistas sounds good.

[Nightrain50]

The new art style is horrible. The only reasoning I can think of for this travesty is they are preparing us for Dragon Age Online. Just take a look at Star Wars: TOR and you'll see what I mean. MMO's favor this style for it's smaller impact on hardware and lag. I want no part of an MMO or Dragon Age 2 now with this art style. Bioware's lost a fan.

[Sylvius the Mad]

1. Why is the armour so spiky? That's terribly impractical.

2. Sweeping vistas only count if we can wander through them? Is DA2 offering a bunch of extra exploration, or is this just useless eye candy?

3. I really object to the spell-effects disappearing for cutscenes. That's yet another example of the narrative fiddling with the rules of the setting.

[MikeLloy]

Elton John is dead wrote...

Lots of games change art style. Look at Halo 3. Just because they change the art style doesn't mean you can't enjoy the game. It will still have the feel of DA with the choices having consequences. However, you are right in a way, they didn't have to change the art style to improve graphics but I thought that some of the character faces in DA could have looked better. Compare it to Mass Effect and Mass Effect has more realistic faces.

In Halo3 the brutes actually looked better than Halo2.

In DA2, well. The darkspawn don't.

[BruceEdwards]

I'm not terribly impressed by the art that I've seen thus far. But concept art has a history of being more exaggerated than the final product, so I'll only start to worry closer to the release date.

[guru7892]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

1. Why is the armour so spiky? That's terribly impractical.

It's to make them look more harsh and evil; but it's shear impracticality breaks my suspension of disbelief, so I dislike it.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
2. Sweeping vistas only count if we can wander through them? Is DA2 offering a bunch of extra exploration, or is this just useless eye candy?

Well it could be used to imply a long journey or create a sense of diminished importance in the grander scheme of things or a feeling of less power. (in contrast to that 300 vibe one comic-con viewer got?)

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
3. I really object to the spell-effects disappearing for cutscenes. That's yet another example of the narrative fiddling with the rules of the setting.

no, no, no, your wrong here. You see spell effects have the colors and such to inform players they are active. I think it's a visual way of conveying gameplay information to the player and has nothing to do with narrative.I can not believe that people get a funny orange glow when they adopt a defensive posture. (you see Bioware doesn't seem to have really good character animators; and animations are hard to read when you pause the game so for the sake of game play they need to color things and list them).

I'm saying the lore doesn't say you glow colors, that is just the game aspect of DAO (I mean how does the lore explain all the game menus and character sheets? the glowing colors are a part of the UI)

[Lord_Saulot]

Hmmm... I think Gamer Informer said they would put out something more today, but I didn't see anything new on the site. This Art Style article seems to be the newest thing.

[guru7892]

oh and I made a poll;

social.bioware.com/22975/polls/8550/

Modifié par guru7892, 27 juillet 2010 - 12:11 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

guru7892 wrote...

no, no, no, your wrong here. You see spell effects have the colors and such to inform players they are active. I think it's a visual way of conveying gameplay information to the player and has nothing to do with narrative.I can not believe that people get a funny orange glow when they adopt a defensive posture. (you see Bioware doesn't seem to have really good character animators; and animations are hard to read when you pause the game so for the sake of game play they need to color things and list them).

I'm saying the lore doesn't say you glow colors, that is just the game aspect of DAO (I mean how does the lore explain all the game menus and character sheets? the glowing colors are a part of the UI)

If it's just a UI element, then they should have used icons next to the character portraits.  Having those visual effects was silly.

[RainadoYagamiItsHere]

i think dragon age 2 enemy its trool just like LOTR (lord of the ring)

[langelog]

JoePinasi1989 wrote...

I really don't think it's too early to say "the ART direction SUCKS" since we can make a pretty acceptable comparison between one of the most important elements of Dragon Age - darkspawn!

I apologize for the rather sad quality, you should brighten your monitor to see the comparison more clearly.



Please click right mouse button and "View Image" for the next one.



What say you, hmm? Darkspawn or zombie?

My advice, dock those noses, sharpen those teeth and darken that skin, then I will be satisfied. Darkspawn do look more humanized, so much so that they are called zombies and not darkspawn. Some have said they resemble the orcs of other fantasy epics, but darkspawn are simply darkspawn as the devs say. I hope they go back and touch up the darkspawn to make them look more formidable and terrifying rather than angry and ugly. I have faith in the devs, so if this base design stays, I'm hoping I'll fall in love with it  come March.