435 réponses à ce sujet

[Maria Caliban]

Zzulu2 wrote...
Note the part where I say DA2 had bad environmental design, which is not the same thing as art style.

coles4971 wrote...
Errr... environmental design =/= art style.

Yes, that's what he said.

[ImperatorMortis]

They need to go back to DA:O's style. That's all there is for me to say on the matter.

[LPPrince]

ImperatorMortis wrote...

They need to go back to DA:O's style. That's all there is for me to say on the matter.

Your sentiment is shared by many, believe me.

[kingtigernz]

I hope the next Dragon Age has this level of detail,but I'm dreaming.There is also a thing called a console.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRq_4GAWogE

Modifié par kingtigernz, 28 mars 2012 - 04:00 .

[staindgrey]

LPPrince wrote...

ImperatorMortis wrote...

They need to go back to DA:O's style. That's all there is for me to say on the matter.

Your sentiment is shared by many, believe me.

But not by all. 

[Complistic]

DA2 had one of the laziest art styles I've ever seen in a game created by a AAA dev.

[LPPrince]

staindgrey wrote...

LPPrince wrote...

ImperatorMortis wrote...

They need to go back to DA:O's style. That's all there is for me to say on the matter.

Your sentiment is shared by many, believe me.

But not by all. 

Very true.

[LPPrince]

Complistic wrote...

DA2 had one of the laziest art styles I've ever seen in a game created by a AAA dev.

The comparison I'm about to make isn't really fair, but both are games I played the same year.

Skyrim's world blew my mind. That and it blew DA2's "world" out of the water.

If I could get a game with the detail and scope of The Elder Scrolls' world with the story and interesting characters of Dragon Age, God I'd be happy as hell.

[Das Tentakel]

Zzulu2 wrote...

What I am saying is that DA2's art style, which is the general aesthethic of the game, was great. The city looked great but lacked greatly in detail.

The new characters like the Qunari looked fantastic too and I liked the item design and new enemy design. Overall, I thought the artstyle was a great improvement over the previous game. I think the only thing that looked worse was the Ogre in DA2

DA:O just looked like a washed out turd from the get go and never had a single setpiece that looked even remotely interesting and all the people looked like pasty clay golems. Of course this is entirely subjective!

I don’t know what you have been having, but I want some of that.

DA2 did not have ‘an art style’. What it had, was many of the designs from DA:O (some badly degraded, at least on PC), which were artistically pretty inconsistent already, combined with some tweaks (lighting), a slightly different colour palette (mostly red and dirty white and light brownish yellow, yay), improved facial animations for the main characters, some nice equipment and lots of ridiculous stuff (spiky bits, silly swords). Oh, and weird-looking designs for aravels and ships that looked like stage extras. These ‘enhancements’ make for a very weird, and to many people immersion- breaking contrast with the supposed grim and semi-realistic tone of the setting, as well as the more or less ‘realistic’ look of the characters (ah well, at least the human ones anyway).

In short, it did not create a uniform and cohesive art style, but further mixed up what was already a bit of an unsatisfactory mess. And ugly, though some people liked it. Then again, some people probably like salty chocolate balls ( www.youtube.com/watch )

And yes, DA:O was ugly much of the time as well. But still a better fit for the setting because it tried to fit that what it was supposed to represent.

Journey has an art style. Shadow of the Colossus has an art style. Trine has an art style. The Witcher has an art style. So do Age of Conan, Assasin's Creed, Fable, Skyrim, Darksiders, etc.
DA? I really don't know, man. I sometimes wonder if even Bioware knows, all the bull that Goldman et al spouted about Bruegel and Kurosawa notwithstanding.



DA2 Influenced by Bruegel? Yeah, right....



Kurosawa? Hmmm...what did they take from it? Yes, the colour red! Yay!

Modifié par Das Tentakel, 28 mars 2012 - 09:42 .

[Shevy]

Definitly Origins. That realistic approach may looked generic but I don't care if it fits so great within the darker story attempt. Everything I encountered in Origins had this "realistic" background, even the magic. The whole setting looked all of a piece.

DA II tried to deliver a realistic and harsh story, too. Beginning with the escape, but when I saw those Darkspawn I was like "why do we run away from these cuddly clowns?". They don't look like a horde of frightening abominations that spread the taint. In comparison, just watch the Ostagar cinematic. Thats what they supposed to look like. I don't mind if you can identify them with orcs, goblins if you want to. They fitted.

With that art style I can't take DA II serious, it all looks goofy and out of the place in order to try to look "cool".
Some member brought up a comparison a while ago which fits perfectly I think. While a film about Origins would be a film with living actors a DA II movie would be animated. And for me, thats not Dragon Age.

(Sorry, I'm German and can't describe it better)

[Morroian]

Shevy_001 wrote...

DA II tried to deliver a realistic and harsh story, too. Beginning with the escape, but when I saw those Darkspawn I was like "why do we run away from these cuddly clowns?". They don't look like a horde of frightening abominations that spread the taint. In comparison, just watch the Ostagar cinematic. Thats what they supposed to look like. I don't mind if you can identify them with orcs, goblins if you want to. They fitted.

Oh come on, cuddly clowns? The hurlocks may have looked ridiculous to you but they were hardly figures of fun they weer still menacing in a way.

[Shevy]

Morroian wrote...

Shevy_001 wrote...

DA II tried to deliver a realistic and harsh story, too. Beginning with the escape, but when I saw those Darkspawn I was like "why do we run away from these cuddly clowns?". They don't look like a horde of frightening abominations that spread the taint. In comparison, just watch the Ostagar cinematic. Thats what they supposed to look like. I don't mind if you can identify them with orcs, goblins if you want to. They fitted.

Oh come on, cuddly clowns? The hurlocks may have looked ridiculous to you but they were hardly figures of fun they weer still menacing in a way.

Believe it or not, but their outcry looked hilarious to me. I nearly had pity on them when they exploded in a blood fountain. They had zero resemblance to the Origins' ones. Can't say how much I "didnt like" them. Only the Hurloc alpha and Genlock alpha in Legacy were acceptable.

[Complistic]

LPPrince wrote...

Complistic wrote...

DA2 had one of the laziest art styles I've ever seen in a game created by a AAA dev.

The comparison I'm about to make isn't really fair, but both are games I played the same year.

Skyrim's world blew my mind. That and it blew DA2's "world" out of the water.

If I could get a game with the detail and scope of The Elder Scrolls' world with the story and interesting characters of Dragon Age, God I'd be happy as hell.

It seems fair to me. You'd expect DA2, which is comparatively a tiny game to have a ton of attention to detail and it went with an art style where it could basically ignore all details.

[Cutlasskiwi]

I think DA2 had some beautiful environments (Kirkwall in particular). Like this for example:


But I had to stop and tilt the camera up to actually see it. Even when zoomed out the camera would tilt right back down again once I started moving. So it became a habit to stop whenever I entered a new area to just look around at the buildings.

Just a small gripe I had with the game.

[Das Tentakel]

Morroian wrote...

Shevy_001 wrote...

DA II tried to deliver a realistic and harsh story, too. Beginning with the escape, but when I saw those Darkspawn I was like "why do we run away from these cuddly clowns?". They don't look like a horde of frightening abominations that spread the taint. In comparison, just watch the Ostagar cinematic. Thats what they supposed to look like. I don't mind if you can identify them with orcs, goblins if you want to. They fitted.

Oh come on, cuddly clowns? The hurlocks may have looked ridiculous to you but they were hardly figures of fun they weer still menacing in a way.

Have you taken a good look at how they WALK in the beginning cutscenes? They looked like a bunch of mutant bald apes with a severe case of constipation as well as a skin disease.

And the emissaries looked like they were ripped out of Olivier Ledroit's work:blink:



(bottom row...not that Ledroit is a bad illustrator to draw inspiration from; but it's not exactly realism 1:1)

[Complistic]

Cutlasskiwi wrote...

I think DA2 had some beautiful environments (Kirkwall in particular). Like this for example:


But I had to stop and tilt the camera up to actually see it. Even when zoomed out the camera would tilt right back down again once I started moving. So it became a habit to stop whenever I entered a new area to just look around at the buildings.

Just a small gripe I had with the game.

I suppose when the rest of the game looks as awful as it does, that screen does stand out slightly, but this is the competition.





And this is skyrim, which has both an art style that blows DA's out of the water and massive environments. 

[Pzykozis]

Photo/Psuedo-Realism aren't really art styles or well they are art styles but they're generic art styles, they both however have brilliant art direction, but thats not the same thing.

Nowt wrong with the art style DA2 uses, whats bad with DA2 is the way its implemented or.. the direction behind the art style.

Also to be fair you can't really use Skyrim and TW2 as direct competition in this the games use resources in different ways. Would still love to see a DA game with the fidelity of TW2 though, then again I'd love a DA game that played like TW2 but thats my bit of heresy aside.

[the_one_54321]

If you're going to talk about going back or forth between the style of DA:O and DAII, can anyone even give a list of what was specifically changed between the two? Because, as far as modeling and environment, I can only think of maybe two things that were significantly different.

[Complistic]

Pzykozis wrote...

Photo/Psuedo-Realism aren't really art styles or well they are art styles but they're generic art styles, they both however have brilliant art direction, but thats not the same thing.

Nowt wrong with the art style DA2 uses, whats bad with DA2 is the way its implemented or.. the direction behind the art style.

Also to be fair you can't really use Skyrim and TW2 as direct competition in this the games use resources in different ways. Would still love to see a DA game with the fidelity of TW2 though, then again I'd love a DA game that played like TW2 but thats my bit of heresy aside.

fair points but I wouldn't say TW2 was going for realism.  It's very stylized.

[bEVEsthda]

And this is DA:O.   captures from Gameplay mode,  (no movies here)  on a hi-end PC.

[Complistic]

so much better than whatever they tried to do in 2

[Das Tentakel]

bEVEsthda wrote...

And this is DA:O.   captures from Gameplay mode,  (no movies here)  on a hi-end PC.

This picture, by the way, illustrates clearly that the DA artists, or at least some of them, sometimes don't have the foggiest idea what or why they are depicting some things wrongly.

I am not sure, but I think you pointed out in some other thread that they clearly used textures taken from industrially processed steel for some of the DA2 armours? 

The shield with its piece of leather: Historically, wooden shields were often covered with one or more layers of cloth and/or leather (for instance, rawhide leather, which is more or less the stuff 'dogchewies' are made of). This partly protects the wood from the elements and provides a surface to paint emblems on, but above all it greatly enhances the shield's strength and ability to absorb blows.
Just a piece of skin stretched across it is silly. I wonder who came up with that idea:?
And man, does it look ugly.

And that's a big difference, especially with CDProjekt's artists, who know their stuff - both in terms of architecture as well as arms, armour and clothing - very well. The more you know, the better you are at keeping things look and feel consistent. I got that impression from, say, Skyrim's or Age of Conan's artists as well, though they also integrated elements of classic sword & sorcery illustrations (Frank Frazetta et al).

Modifié par Das Tentakel, 28 mars 2012 - 07:30 .

[Mr Fixit]

Das Tentakel wrote...

And that's a big difference, especially with CDProjekt's artists, who know their stuff - both in terms of architecture as well as arms, armour and clothing - very well. The more you know, the better you are at keeping things look and feel consistent. I got that impression from, say, Skyrim's or Age of Conan's artists as well, though they also integrated elements of classic sword & sorcery illustrations (Frank Frazetta et al).

Also, Brom for the win.

I love that old sword&sorcery stuff. Corny as hell at times, but incredibly moody and evocative. It does in a second what one thousand lines of dialogue can't hope to achieve.

[bEVEsthda]

Das Tentakel wrote...
I am not sure, but I think you pointed out in some other thread that they clearly used textures taken from industrially processed steel for some of the DA2 armours? 

The shield with its piece of leather: Historically, wooden shields were often covered with one or more layers of cloth and/or leather (for instance, rawhide leather, which is more or less the stuff 'dogchewies' are made of). This partly protects the wood from the elements and provides a surface to paint emblems on, but above all it greatly enhances the shield's strength and ability to absorb blows.
Just a piece of skin stretched across it is silly. I wonder who came up with that idea:?
And man, does it look ugly.

And that's a big difference, especially with CDProjekt's artists, who know their stuff - both in terms of architecture as well as arms, armour and clothing - very well. The more you know, the better you are at keeping things look and feel consistent. I got that impression from, say, Skyrim's or Age of Conan's artists as well, though they also integrated elements of classic sword & sorcery illustrations (Frank Frazetta et al).

I linked to that thread in an early post in this thread. One of the first pages.

And: Not exactly. Some armors do have textures depicting typical marks on steel worked in an industrial infrastructure, yes. But that wasn't my main complaint. I complained about the design of new DA2 armors.
What essentially is wrong about them is that they're crazy. I searched the web and Youtube a long time to try to find any game that had as mindless armor design. I couldn't find it. Poor armour, yes, but then there's always still some kind of logic to it. Like WoW, Warhammer, Heavy Metal, Soulcalibur, all those have silly armors that still have a basing in the games' character and culture. No, DA2 has the record.
What is crazy? Well, they weigh in at 300-500lbs, and they don't protect ****. They're not designed by, or made by, anyone who can make armour. They're not made by a smith and they're not made by a mage. But imagine a garage hack, in out world, having access to the spoils of an industrial infrastructure, rolled plate, acetylene torch, powergrinder and arc welder. Those armor suits have been made by that garage hack, with access to those things but no other skills.

How did the artist come up with those designs? My guess is that somewhere in the chain. someone have watched post-apocalyptic movies like Road Warrior, or Transformer anime. I don't believe the artist knew what it was. Just looked cool.

I don't see myself as nitpicking. I see myself as tolerant, lenient and accepting. I can live with a lot. That shield for example. Not terribly much wrong with it, in a fantasy world which has a very wide distribution of quality in combat gear. There has to be some reason the top gear is so much better. And a world that is a fantasy world and isn't supposed to correspond exactly to historic medieval times. But that armour is like driving a diesel train engine straight through Kirkwall.

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 28 mars 2012 - 09:20 .