Sutekh wrote...
Mmm, yeah. You're talking about the animations, which I didn't count in the art-style, and yes, they were over the top. First time I ever played (the demo, before the game was out) and backstabbed a spawn, the first thing that came to me was "It slices, it dices! Buy the Wonderful Backstabbing Blades and you'll always make perfect Hurlock Salads!". And don't get me started on the Blood Magic ones. Painful (and how can someone survive stabbing themselves through several vital organs with a staff is kinda... miraculous). But not cartoonish.
Some anims were pretty cool too. I prefer the mage twirling staff (even if it gets old after the 100th time) to the pew pew point and shoot of DAO by a long mile, for instance, and some archery moves were way better, more graceful and elegant.
Sebastian's and Tallis's entrances fall in the drama category, as does Fenris's (you can add that one too, on the house). Overacted? Yes. Cartoonish? Nope. Elves are 50/50 when it comes to faces and terrible when it comes to proportions, stance and body, but cartoonish =/= ugliness. I happen to like the statues (it was very Dwemer like), and the Arishok looks just fine to me, as does Isabela. As for barefeet elves, didn't like it much, but how is it cartoonish? Cartoonish feet? They only had four toes?
See? I'm not saying all was well, because clearly, it wasn't. It very often felt like hit and miss, tbh. But "cartoonish" is a very specific term for very specific features. It's often used here as a blanket term for "everything I don't like with the visuals" and I don't think it applies to DA2, especially in the light of true cartoonish art-styles such as Kingdom of Amalur.
I think our tastes might be fairly close, but I'm putting basically anything visual under (what seems to me to be the very broad heading of) "art style." And I'm just using the definition of "
cartoonish" - those things I listed seem to me to be very cartoon-like, especially one-dimensional or exaggerated. I'd understand someone not categorizing everything visual as art style, and I can respect someone not finding things exaggerated that I found exaggerated, but it's not clear to me what definition you're using if you can look at the combat animations and not think they're cartoonish (the specific term you're implying seems to be different than mine?). Sure, it's not a tightly delineated word, so there might be some wiggle room for you - but then there is for me as well.
As for those specifics you discuss, I mean, the elves had such exaggerated inhumanness this time they actually looked extra-terrestrial, and except for the handful of more human-looking ones there was nothing to their looks that seems particularly nuanced or multidimensional. And their foot thing is just an exaggerated desire to scream "connection to nature!!" Isabela had very exaggerated features and clothing, and throw in the smoothness to the graphics and she seemed really cartoonish to me.
As for those characters' entrances, I thought it was an art issue and not one so much of drama. I'm fine with them killing tons of people to make their entrances, so it's not a plot issue per se for me, but the really stylized, superhuman way Tallis in particular pulled it off seemed to me more a visual issue than anything. ymmv, I guess.
And there are several of those elements I actually liked (or at least, could have liked), just to be clear. I think a cartoonish element or two can work if handled well - and in other games I think an all-out cartoon look can be great. I haven't played KoA, but I googled the visuals and I'd agree it's more cartoonish, but it seems less problematic if that's the tone they want (I'm guessing it's not a dark fantasy). DA2 had way too much of this stuff for me to swallow, though.
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But yeah, if you want to talk seriously about child-appropriateness, sure it's not for kids.
