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[ObserverStatus]

Personally I liked DAII's art style better. All the textures in DA:O looked like they were painted onto coffee filters with water colors.

Modifié par bobobo878, 24 mars 2012 - 06:51 .

[Das Tentakel]

LPPrince wrote...



Don't know who made this comic, but I thank them. lawl

Damn, my latte macchiato went down the wrong hatch 
Spot-on:)

[Maria Caliban]

sjpelkessjpeler wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

To me, a 'cartoonish' art style is one that draws from, or is similar to, American animation. Exaggerated or deformed bodies and simplified, expressive gestures, for example, are a staple of classic American animation. Video games and cartoons both tend toward cartoonish for the same reasons. A highly detailed, realistic cartoon character would be a pain to hand animate. Likewise, highly detailed and realistic environments and characters in games require more work for the artist and makes greater demands of the hardware.

Blizzard doesn’t use ‘cartoonish’ designs in World of Warcarft, Starcraft, and Diablo because they think their audience is younger, but because they want their games to run on a wide range of computers.

This is not the case here. I think you are refering to a cartoon. In that case you would be right. But cartoonish is something inbetween.

Yes, it is the case here.

And I suspect you mean something other than you said, but I'm not sure what it might be.

[AkiKishi]

DA2 is not really anime style it's an uncomfortable mixture ,that just ends up looking wrong.

[twincast]

LPPrince wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

DA2 had an art style?

A horrible one, in my opinion.

Its only saving graces being Flemeth and the qunari, everything else being below what I thought was acceptable.

I'd head back in DAO's direction as far as art style is concerned.

Flemeth!? I may agree with everything else, but in that respect my mileage varies. A lot.

Tom12 wrote...

i certainly hope so,.. the art style was imo a huge step backwards from dao, especially the elves.
Besides that didnt they said that they looked at skyrims art style?

I'm not so sure they include overall art style in their reportedly taking a page from Skyrim; not that any of it would actually be neccessary if they could be bothered to draw heavily from their best-selling game to date (DA:O). I shudder to think of what a (male) hybrid of TES5 elves and DA2 elves may look like.

[bEVEsthda]

 
People, "cartoonish" is just a word. Personally, I think it might be bordering on deriding and insulting fine cartoon styles and art, to call DA2 "cartoonish". But that sort of thoughts and ideas are completely beside the point. DA2 art direction is horribly bad. Thankfully, many are bright enough to recognize that. In an attempt to characterize what is so bad, many use the word "cartoonish" to bring across what they mean. I think it works. I understand what they mean. I might even have used the word myself (don't remember). The word is thus somewhat appropriate in a description of DA2's art direction. (And I don't think that is entirely accidental,.. more later)

But whatever you think you prove or disprove, in any argument over the word "cartoonish", this doesn't change anything about DA2's art direction. This remains just as disgusting as before.


I like the art style of DA:O. It is in “realistic” style, yes, but it's not entirely realistic, not in the ME- or Crysis sense, To me, on hi-end PC, it looks like lovingly painted Fantasy illustrations. Goache on cardboard, maybe. There is something warm, sensitive and imagination-stirring about the images.






That doesn't mean that DA3 necessarily has to have that special character. I would suppose many kids would like to have more realism. But to me, DA:O already achieved exactly what Bioware claimed they wanted with DA2, something unique and immediately recognizable. There was also this additional benefit of DA:O being alone in/of, and owning what is widely recognizable as classic Fantasy. (Why Bioware just threw away all this, is incomprehensible. To such a degree that I am tempted to suspect that there were also personal issues involved)


DA2 is grotesquely vulgar by comparison. It's soo hard to accept that it was done just to economize. I mean they threw away most of the assets they already had, and had to redo a lot from the start. What sense does that make? When you're on limited zots?


It's possible to imagine that the new rendering was more economical. It's possible to imagine that the new, contemptible models have less vertices and are more conductive to a better frame-rate on the consoles. But the new “style” is so different, so uglified, that there has to be more behind it.


There were many things Bioware said on the release and changes of DA2, which strongly hints at a big, underlying marketing plan for DA. DA:O was for most of it's development life not part of that. It was an earlier concept. “The spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate”. But before DA:O even was published, that concept seems to have been trashed for something much less enlightened and more formulaic. It's hard to disregard that EA stepped into the picture thereabout. Sorry for this “evil EA” input, but it cannot be avoided. Some people seem to have been able to convince a lot of others that DA needed a comprehensive marketing plan, rather than just a very good idea (spiritual successor to BG).


So that is what I am saying: All the bad things that befell DA and DA2, came from this over-reaching marketing plan. And that marketing plan maybe also include comics and anime movies. So that could be why we have these ruinous influences in the art direction.


And I'm not only speaking about images and models. The disgusting combat animations are also part of the art direction, as are the ridiculously childish 'Dynasty Warriors 6'- overpowered combat effects. This gives us enough hints to sort of identify the platform that this new marketing plan operates from. This is a calculated plan to appeal to a certain kind of, group of, gamers. A group that is more interested in getting high on feeling powerful, than being caught up in, and involved in something deep and interesting going on. That has to be just a story-movie served on the side. Else it's too “hard-core” RPG.


There's one big difference in the designs of the models in DA:O and DA2. DA2 doesn't ever consider the history of, basis for, or functions of anything. It's just arbitrarily styling supposed to look “cool”. The design impulses seem also to, a lot, come from Japanese media.


Many of the new armours in DA2, for instance, is just utter drivel. I know some of you “like” the designs. Well, the artist maybe did too. ”A spike there looks cool”. But it's drivel just the same. And once you're able to see that it's drivel, it doesn't look cool anymore. I made a thread about it once:

http://social.biowar...index/7525450/1

I'm not saying that every design has to be so terribly realistic. I'm quite happy to give the designers a lot of lenience on that part. I'm not impossible. For instance, the champion's armour could have been almost acceptable. What ruins it are the small, ignorant details. Like the thick plates. And if one likes the game, even a very spiked suit of armour could be cool, if it's unique enough. An overall good game increases tolerance levels.


But DA2 is not a good game and there are limits. Too much in DA2 is just too insultingly stupid. It can only be justified as “cartoon”. But I don't want DA to be a cartoon game. I want the atmosphere of the game to be something that takes itself seriously.


I wouldn't be fully able to put my full dislike of DA2 art direction in words, without becoming perma-banned. But I have commented a lot on it, previously, in the thread 'Hilarious Images'.
I have used images to make my comments.


I make 4 direct comparative comments (8 pics) on this page:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/7126490/31

I make 3 sequences, totalling 29 pics, commenting on lost Dragon Age:Origin qualities, on this page:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/7126490/35

And Bio-Age reposted my original “Awesome” sequence 7 pics, comment on DA2 combat animation, on this page:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/7126490/28

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 24 mars 2012 - 03:36 .

[cJohnOne]

I thought the Humans looked pretty good in DA2 but were a little doll like in comparison to DAO. The monsters were terrible in DA2 with respect to detail and overall look. I really don't remember what they looked like.


Oh yeah and thought male humans are  too wide and bulky.

Modifié par cJohnOne, 24 mars 2012 - 03:21 .

[RVallant]

Haven't they said they won't 180 on the art design again? They should go back to DA:O's art, it was gritty and real. Why they ruined it with the childish DA2 I have no idea.

[Wulfram]

Armour wise, the gratuitous spikiness on some can be annoying. But I'll take it over huge shoulders on massive armour and there only be two types of light armour, both of which left areas exposed on female characters.

And some DA2 armour looked spectacularly good, like the Fereldan field plate you start out in.

Face wise, I'm not really sure how much was deliberate stylistic choices and how much is just the result of bad face gen. Was it really their intent to make all the minor characters have fat, doughy faces? The fact that the major characters who had time spent on them don't really look like this says to me that it wasn't.

[Mmw04014]

Ryllen Laerth Kriel wrote...
I agree with you about the elves
and darkspawn, Bioware should of just tweaked them instead of totally
revamping them. I think they should of only slightly modified the qunari
though, their visual transformation was entirely too stark of a change
for me and, honestly, makes them look like a generic fantasy race. I
actually felt the DA:O qunari had a nicer look because it was subtle yet
alien. All too often fantasy/sci-fi writers succumb to Star Trek
syndrome, running out of time to create a new race/culture/species and
just end up slapping a dramatic feature on a human like huge horns,
green skin, a tail, ect, ect. In DA:O is was mostly qunari philosophy
that made them alien and interesting.

I think part of the "generic" look comes from every qunari having the same exact model. They didn't look like people, they looked like pointless mooks. I think the Arishok and the qunari you encounter in MoTA were really well done and I loved how they were designed, mostly people they looked like actual distinctive characters.

I agree with LPPrince about their grey colors. I pretty much hate grey characters as a rule. It's such an visually neutral color that I feel it's easy for them to blend into the background. I think that's another reason I dislike the darkspawn too much. I'd take a basic brown over neutral greys, whites, and blacks any day.

bobobo878 wrote...

Personally I liked DAII's art style better. All the textures in DA:O looked like they were painted onto coffee filters with water colors.

Are you talking about the quality of the textures? Because isn't really an art style. I agree that the quality needed to be improved. DA2 seemed like it was better in this area than DAO, at least on my xbox.

[King Cousland]

Would be nice if a dev could comment on this and give us some definite indication of where they're heading.

[bEVEsthda]

Mmw04014 wrote...

I think part of the "generic" look comes from every qunari having the same exact model. They didn't look like people, they looked like pointless mooks. I think the Arishok and the qunari you encounter in MoTA were really well done and I loved how they were designed, mostly people they looked like actual distinctive characters.

I think you're misunderstanding what he meant by "generic".
And I agree. The new Qunari look is just another rushed fantasy race. And they did the most cliche thing they could, by adding those horns. You'll never convince me it's not just a ripoff from 'Legend'.
Everything that is interesting and subtly alien about Qunari was defined in DA:O.

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 24 mars 2012 - 03:37 .

[bEVEsthda]

harkness72 wrote...

Would be nice if a dev could comment on this and give us some definite indication of where they're heading.

I don't think that will happen anytime soon, because I don't think they know.
I think it has been said that everything is on the table. However, I've also got the feeling that they hope to keep most of the current art direction. Somewhere it also goes back to the old 'available resources' argument.

[Sutekh]

RVallant wrote...

Haven't they said they won't 180 on the art design again? They should go back to DA:O's art, it was gritty and real. Why they ruined it with the childish DA2 I have no idea.

And here we go. Took longer than usual, though.

Anyway, I was looking at those pics, trying to understand why the conversion result look so not-good.






Design choices set aside (because they're YMMV), what strikes me here are 1. lack of definition and 2. the lighting.

Looking at Zevran, he went from well-defined, structured facial features to some kind of blurry, blobby... thing . He looks... melted. The placement of eyebrows, eyes, nose and mouth is off too. Not by much, but enough for it to be disturbing. When it comes to facial proportions, it takes very little to go from beauty to ugliness.

On the other hand, the darkspawn - who should be gory and messy - are flat, too tidy and clean, too well-defined, in a way. It's not they don't make convincing monsters, but they are out of character. When looking at them, you don't feel the Taint; there's nothing defiled there.

The differences in lighting are also very obvious. In the DA2 versions, the lighting is very uniform. It lacks shadows and contrast. Again, it's flat and undefined, and the neutral colors don't help. I wonder whether those shots would look different (better) with high-quality ambient occlusion and some self-shadowing (if that's already the case, I'm at a loss).

Speaking of which, I'd like to know the technical graphic conditions of the darkspawn shots, because looking at how pixelised the cast shadows are in the DA2 one, it doesn't feel they were optimum, and by no way as good as in the DA shot. That may be nitpicking, but when comparing visual qualities, it can be damn important.

Anyway, point is: maybe with a better attention to details, better lighting and better use of the CC, DA2 art resources could be used as a basis for DA3 and still give a satisfactory result. I see nothing there that technically prevents Dark and Gritty (or Bright and Luxurious). The CC might need some tweaking, though.

This being said, those pointy neck-guards need to go.

Modifié par Sutekh, 24 mars 2012 - 04:24 .

[Meris]

Since I advocate a return to Origins in pretty much every respect, just better, I'm inclined to prefer the more realistic look - which would also be in line with my personal taste as well.

But considering that if you look at WoW's newest zones/races, you'll see that things aren't bland or bad looking - this is yet another issue where DA2 desperately needed more polish. Regardless, I'm the kind of RPG player that doesn't care about graphics so whatever is done, just make it interesting, no need to blow my graphics card. Focus on solid gameplay instead.

Modifié par Meris, 24 mars 2012 - 04:35 .

[bEVEsthda]

Sutekh wrote...

Design choices set aside (because they're YMMV), what strikes me here are 1. lack of definition and 2. the lighting.

Looking at Zevran, he went from well-defined, structured facial features to some kind of blurry, blobby... thing . He looks... melted. The placement of eyebrows, eyes, nose and mouth is off too. Not by much, but enough for it to be disturbing. When it comes to facial proportions, it takes very little to go from beauty to ugliness.

On the other hand, the darkspawn - who should be gory and messy - are flat, too tidy and clean, too well-defined, in a way. It's not they don't make convincing monsters, but they are out of character. When looking at them, you don't feel the Taint; there's nothing defiled there.

The differences in lighting are also very obvious. In the DA2 versions, the lighting is very uniform. It lacks shadows and contrast. Again, it's flat and undefined, and the neutral colors don't help. I wonder whether those shots would look different (better) with high-quality ambient occlusion and some self-shadowing (if that's already the case, I'm at a loss).

Speaking of which, I'd like to know the technical graphic conditions of the darkspawn shots, because looking at how pixelised the cast shadows are in the DA2 one, it doesn't feel they were optimum, and by no way as good as in the DA shot. That may be nitpicking, but when comparing visual qualities, it can be damn important.

Anyway, point is: maybe with a better attention to details, better lighting and better use of the CC, DA2 art resources could be used as a basis for DA3 and still give a satisfactory result. I see nothing there that technically prevents Dark and Gritty (or Bright and Luxurious). The CC might need some tweaking, though.

This being said, those pointy neck-guards need to go.

I suspect the lighting may be due to a more economical rendering. DA:O might have relied more on handcrafted light maps. The rendering might also have worked for better performance on the consoles, where M.L. was convinced combat had to be faster and more fluid.

The new look of the rendering might also have been perceived as a bonus, making DA2 and DA more marketable, through anime and comics. Some might feel that's bordering on the insane, but the doctors and others have said much in interviews that support the suspicion that Bioware really thought a new look would be beneficial for DA. (Now who could have fooled them into believing something like that?). This view is also supported by all the redesigned models.

To me, personally, the rendering doesn't matter so much. Since it's the designs, and redesign I dislike so much.

[AkiKishi]

I remember when they posted some screen shots and people were saying they could not really be from the game. DA had it's own style, sure it was generic fantasy but it worked.

[LPPrince]

Also, be sure to note that graphics and art style are two different things, people.

[Meris]

LPPrince wrote...

Also, be sure to note that graphics and art style are two different things, people.

In retrospective, it appears my post implied such a conclusion. I for one feel that whenever going for a realistic art style, developers will spend money on making the game look pretty - this relation make me worry for about the future of the franchise's gameplay.

Modifié par Meris, 24 mars 2012 - 05:08 .

[bEVEsthda]

BobSmith101 wrote...

I remember when they posted some screen shots and people were saying they could not really be from the game. DA had it's own style, sure it was generic fantasy but it worked.

Not "generic". Classic Fantasy.  And they were alone of that look. DA:O owned classic fantasy. Can that really be such a bad thing?

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 24 mars 2012 - 05:06 .

[AkiKishi]

LPPrince wrote...

Also, be sure to note that graphics and art style are two different things, people.

When I look at the DA screen just above I see Goblins,Orcs and an Ogre.
When I look at the DA2 screen I see what sort of look like badly drawn zombies.

[King Cousland]

LPPrince wrote...

Also, be sure to note that graphics and art style are two different things, people.

Quite. 

[LPPrince]

Lets compare some art styles from several games, and y'all can decide on what's preferable.

Dragon Age:Origins-

http://desmond.image....png&res=medium

Dragon Age 2-



Mass Effect-

http://desmond.image....png&res=medium

Mass Effect 3-



Assassin's Creed Revelations-



(decided to throw in a picture from a non-Bioware game for the hell of it)