131 réponses à ce sujet

[Melca36]

So can we discuss these silent badly rendered lifeless characters that were scattered around the city?




Were these part of DA:2's so called "art style"???


At least the silent characters in Origins were better rendered. They also looked like people and not a cheap cop out.

Modifié par Melca36, 03 mai 2012 - 09:51 .

[Maria Caliban]

Yes, Dragon Age has low-rez textures. It also had repeating dungeons and ugly hands.

That has nothing to do with art-style.

[eroeru]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

eroeru wrote...

hoorayforicecream wrote...

I liked DA2's art style better, because it actually had one. DAO felt far too 'generic' for me. What about it made it distinct? What about it made it special? What set it aside from other generic fantasy games? Honestly, I didn't feel there was much that really set the aesthetic aside from other generic fantasy.

Examples please?

Which of these are Grey Wardens? I can't tell.
[*enter DA:O and DA2 pictures that argue some sort of "distinctiveness"* (though I for one don't understand what's so good about that)]

I was asking for examples of games where Origins' "generic" style has been previously "duplicated".

Modifié par eroeru, 03 mai 2012 - 11:03 .

[Sutekh]

Melca36 wrote...

So can we discuss these silent badly rendered lifeless characters that were scattered around the city?

<pic of furniture elf>
Were these part of DA:2's so called "art style"???

At least the silent characters in Origins were better rendered. They also looked like people and not a cheap cop out. 

I was surprised that no one had yet used the Infamous Furniture Elves.

Do you really think that DA2 artists have voluntarily put that in the game as part of their artistic vision?

Or is it possible that the cause might be lack of time and / or resource?

[Sith Grey Warden]

My biggest gripe with DA2's art style is the darkspawn. They look like the sort of squishy meatbags Shale and HK-47 love to make fun of.

As for the elves, Merrill and Marethari both looked quite good in DA2, though the ears were a tad too big. They were also the least changed from the DAO style elves, so perhaps there can be a happy medium?

The kossith were much improved in DA2, as Sten looked like a rather tall human with strange eyes, while those in DA2 looked like actual giants from an alien culture.

Oddly, realism went in opposite directions for weapons and armor. I prefered the weapons of DAO as they tended to look less ridiculous and more like what someone might actually use, but I liked that the armors of DA2 didn't have the huge shoulders of DAO's massive armors.

Modifié par Sith Grey Warden, 03 mai 2012 - 11:15 .

[TEWR]

Assuming what I'm about to say deals with the DAII art style, I'd like to... well... say this:

Darkspawn -- mostly hate. Genlocks and Hurlock Alphas I approve. The rest can go drive off a cliff, burn in a raging inferno, and have a nuclear bomb dropped on them.

Elves -- the new design is great imo.

Kossith -- so long as the horned Kossith aren't all copypastas of one another, I like the new design. That was the only problem with DAII's Kossith. All of them looked alike aside from the Arishok, Salit, and the Tal-Vashoth commander in MotA.

Modifié par The Ethereal Writer Redux, 04 mai 2012 - 01:31 .

[Kuret]

Bioware's forums are bizarre these days. People hated DA:O's art style when it was released. The blandness of Ferelden, especially Denerim (ugh), generic looking lower-tiered darkspawn and the lack of variety between armour and weapons were rightly knocked. Of course, that didn't affect most people's enjoyment of DA:O.

It's just really weird to see how different the vocal voices of the Bioware forums are almost three years on.

[Rabid Rooster]

seraphymon wrote...

Have to fully disagree with you there on both accounts. I felt the style was much much worse. This applies to everything except for the arishock. it just looked way too cartoony, with the clay style hair, and just gets worse with the way the darkspawn and elves looked.

AS for combat speed, i felt that its too fast for its own good. Ignoring everything else except speed, on above difficultiesyou can find your self pausing every second almost, and creates problems for being tactful as well as unrealistic. not saying to go back to origins speed, but some middle ground would be better i think. The only improvement in combat i saw was the smoothness.

I pretty much agree with you toon cartoony. The elves looked like crap (mutant half sheep/bird people ). The only elves that looked in anyway like an elf was Fenris and Tallis.

The only thing I liked about the new combat was the Mage animations with the staff, this was a vast improvement over DA:O's pew pew pew raise staff animations. The Rogue's animations were cool but turned them into ninjas
The worst was the Warrior's. 1st we were stuck with two hand or weapon and sheild only and the animations were boring (super slide, swish, exploding enemy )

[Jestina]

Dragon Age get's the prize for fugliest Elves. They were bad in DA:O and got hammered with the ugly stick some more in DA2.

[Sutekh]

Jestina wrote...

Dragon Age get's the prize for fugliest Elves. They were bad in DA:O and got hammered with the ugly stick some more in DA2.

DAO elves were perfectly fine.

[Cutlasskiwi]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

I liked DA2's art style better, because it actually had one. DAO felt far too 'generic' for me. What about it made it distinct? What about it made it special? What set it aside from other generic fantasy games? Honestly, I didn't feel there was much that really set the aesthetic aside from other generic fantasy.

DA2 had distinctive looks, and I liked that. I could tell the templars apart from brigands because they had uniforms. Grey Wardens had uniforms. Chantry sisters had uniforms. I liked the architecture in Kirkwall better than Ferelden for the same reason - it was distinctive. I could tell that the major landmarks (Sundermount, the Bone Pit, Wounded Coast, Hightown, Lowtown, Darktown, the Docks, the Chantry) were distinct, while I felt like Denerim didn't really differentiate its parts very well. I *remember* Kirkwall. I don't remember much of Ferelden.

I also concur - the animation speed is much improved. While some of the other posters in this thread would say that they dislike the new speed, I've seen plenty of posts from players who tried to go back to DAO and couldn't stand the combat anymore. I didn't like the old combat animations or speed - it always felt slow and the hits weren't solid enough. I much prefer the new.

^^ This is exactly how I feel, excellent post hooray. The only thing I would add to this is that I would like the combat speed to end up somewhere between Origins and DA2.  

[ReallyRue]

Jestina wrote...

Dragon Age get's the prize for fugliest Elves. They were bad in DA:O and got hammered with the ugly stick some more in DA2.

That prize ought to go to Skyrim.

DAO's elves looked just like humans, so that suggests that all the humans in DAO were also fugly, meaning that everyone who wasn't a dwarf or Sten in DAO was fugly. Personally, I think there were plenty of pretty elves in DA2. I liked the style. They could do with a bit more meat on them though.

Modifié par ReallyRue, 04 mai 2012 - 12:46 .

[Rawgrim]

The DA2 elves looked like some creatueres from some anime, copied and pasted into a western rpg. I cringed everytime I ran into one, and cringed even more when 2 of them were basically forced down my throat as "companions".

[Sutekh]

Rawgrim wrote...

The DA2 elves looked like some creatueres from some anime, copied and pasted into a western rpg. I cringed everytime I ran into one, and cringed even more when 2 of them were basically forced down my throat as "companions".

Then all you had to do was not recruit Fenris and leave Merrill home. They weren't forced down your throat, basically or otherwise.

[Eternal Phoenix]

Melca36 wrote...

So can we discuss these silent badly rendered lifeless characters that were scattered around the city?




Were these part of DA:2's so called "art style"???


At least the silent characters in Origins were better rendered. They also looked like people and not a cheap cop out.

No. That's Lowtez Draken's sister. Here's the legend himself:

 

Here's Older Lowtez Draken:

 

And here's The Alien Man:

 

Vote for your best character here:

http://social.biowar...21/polls/19152/ 

Lowtez Draken's bio:

Lowtez Draken is said to be a powerful mage who can make copies of himself. He cannot be spoken to in Dragon Age 2 but he appears throughout the game spying on Hawke. The theories go that he will play a large part in Dragon Age 3 and will actually be the protagonist.

Sutekh wrote...

Rawgrim wrote...

The DA2 elves looked like some creatueres from some anime, copied and pasted into a western rpg. I cringed everytime I ran into one, and cringed even more when 2 of them were basically forced down my throat as "companions".

Then all you had to do was not recruit Fenris and leave Merrill home. They weren't forced down your throat, basically or otherwise.

 

Well Merill would appear in different acts regardless of if you leave her at home or not. She'll then show up at the end along with the rest of your companion. In Dragon Age: Origins we could send companions away or even decline their help which is a feature that I hope returns for DA3.

Modifié par Elton John is dead, 04 mai 2012 - 04:08 .

[piloteyre]

It's funny to see how much people defend the style/models of DA:O 3 years later. I mean, there's a reason DA Redesigned is one of the most popular mods out there. That said, I do think DA2's story would have benefited from a grittier, more realistic style, particularly Chapter 1 in the slums. Everything just looked so... bright and cheery and streamlined. Hate be a cliche, but TW2 really was superior in that sense.

And on a non-art style note, I actually liked how the elves looked distinctively nonhuman in DA2. Unfortunately, they were also an example of the old "when [they] were good, [they] were very, very good, but when [they] were bad [they] were horrid" rhyme in action. Poor, poor Orana.

Modifié par piloteyre, 04 mai 2012 - 04:13 .

[Eternal Phoenix]

piloteyre wrote...

It's funny to see how much people defend the style/models of DA:O 3 years later. I mean, there's a reason DA Redesigned is one of the most popular mods out there. That said, I do think DA2's story would have benefited from a grittier, more realistic style, particularly Chapter 1 in the slums. Everything just looked so... bright and cheery and streamlined. Hate be a cliche, but TW2 really was superior in that sense.

And on a non-art style note, I actually liked how the elves looked distinctively nonhuman in DA2. Unfortunately, they were also an example of the old "when [they] were good, [they] were very, very good, but when [they] were bad [they] were horrid" rhyme in action. Poor, poor Orana.

Dragon Age Redesigned doesn't change the artstyle. The artstyle refers to the colour and style of things not the facial features. Another poster said that Dragon Age 2 has a more unique and better artstyle because he/she could make out who the Grey Wardens were in the Dragon Age 2 screenshot but again that has nothing to do with artstyle but rather to do with what the Grey Wardens were wearing. 

Let's look at the description of the DA Redesigned mod:

This mod will redesign the WHOLE of the NPCs in Dragon Age to fix skin issues, face proportions, personality mismatches, gender identification, race identification, etc. in an attempt to make each character fit better with the the lore of Dragon Age.

This mod makes changes to the NPCs within Dragon Age Origins and it's expansions and DLCs. Many of these were done from scratch as no source files are provided for DLCs and/or expansions and I used the Dragon Age Toolset to replicate and make adjustments to Bioware's original renditions.

The mod doesn't change the colours or graphical style of the game. It simply makes some NPC's look better and more suited to their scenario:

 
 
 
All that the mod has changed has been the faces and nearly every PC RPG has such a mod.

On another note, Dragon Age 2 does have a mod which actually changes the textures:

http://www.moddb.com...2-re-imagined1 

 



I'm thinking the aim was to try and make the artstyle look dark and realistic just like Origins was...

Modifié par Elton John is dead, 04 mai 2012 - 04:33 .

[Annie_Dear]

I can’t comment on the “art style” considering how I’m not 100% sure what that means. I will however give my two cents.

I hate the way DA2 looks. The environments and the elves are my biggest complaints. If we get the chance to play elves in future games, I can’t go through with it. Their eyes are too large, their bodies too thin. Just because they’re “different” and “unique” doesn’t mean they’re good.

Some changes I did like: the qunari and the Grey Warden armour are great.

As for the combat… if I wanted to play “Devil May Cry”, I’d play “Devil May Cry”.

Modifié par Annie_Dear, 04 mai 2012 - 04:29 .

[cJohnOne]

Just say you disagree with the Art decisions that would solve most of the problem with Art Styles definitions. I was playing DA2 and the unique companions look pretty good to me. Visually speaking.

[piloteyre]

edit: just realized I don't really have enough investment in this topic to continue the conversation, which would make for a very boring thread indeed.

Modifié par piloteyre, 04 mai 2012 - 05:05 .

[StElmo]

Vicious wrote...

The problem with DA:O's art style was it was extremely generic. All the armors were a palette swap. You could not look like the Warden in the trailer. Darkspawn looked like orks, the Ogres and the Genlocks being the main offenders to this. It looked like generic kinda-tolkien-but-not fantasy.


But The art style is moving along, and eventually Bioware will figure out that zombified monster DA:O Darkspawn = cooler, Orks = not cool,  and nobody really likes Mages wearing robes anymore.



That said, I think the only thing that they guaranteed would return in DA3 would be the voiced protagonist.

But I highly doubt they'll go back to the DA:O days of art style. Hopefully they just keep progressing.

DA:O looks droll. I hate it;s look and the gameplay is slow.

If people want old DA:O graphics, I think they are being unecessarily traditionalist.

[bEVEsthda]

StElmo wrote...

Vicious wrote...

The problem with DA:O's art style was it was extremely generic. All the armors were a palette swap. You could not look like the Warden in the trailer. Darkspawn looked like orks, the Ogres and the Genlocks being the main offenders to this. It looked like generic kinda-tolkien-but-not fantasy.


But The art style is moving along, and eventually Bioware will figure out that zombified monster DA:O Darkspawn = cooler, Orks = not cool,  and nobody really likes Mages wearing robes anymore.



That said, I think the only thing that they guaranteed would return in DA3 would be the voiced protagonist.

But I highly doubt they'll go back to the DA:O days of art style. Hopefully they just keep progressing.

DA:O looks droll. I hate it;s look and the gameplay is slow.

If people want old DA:O graphics, I think they are being unecessarily traditionalist.

The graphics of DA:O are, taken as a whole, undoubtedly dated. Both because of long gestation and because EA delayed the release yet another year, for remaking it for consoles.

"Old" only means "bad" for some kind of people. DA:O looks good. But people don't want "old DA:O graphics". It would be much more fair to say that they want new, modernized DA:O graphics. DA2 touches on that, with some improved human character models for instance. But largely, DA2 also does something completely different. The art director, Matt Goldman maybe has a similar taste to yours? In any way, he was very proud of the design of Fenris, and from an interview it appeared lots of effort had been spent on that.

Which makes it easy for me to put the finger on a big, deal-breaking difference about design between DA:O and DA2 with only two images:


 




There's a major break here. A big reorientation. About what DA shall be, and about what group of gamers they are trying to appeal to.
I don't really feel like saying so much more about this, but just out of curiosity: Would you describe the first image, about the underlying form of DA:O armor, as "droll"? Or did you have something else in mind?

And the second picture with the two images of Fenris and Flemeth, how would you describe that?

Anyway, I feel there is something that is hard to unify about these two visions.

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 04 mai 2012 - 10:15 .

[Si-Shen]

Origins was a crisper and much more interesting style as for the combat it was too fast, it had no style too it and was rather boring. It was more along the lines of attack next... attack again... done. I rarely had to use tactics to get through a fight.