356 réponses à ce sujet

[Wulfram]

Stylised can work. The part of SW:tOR I saw in the free trial looked pretty good, and that's certainly not realistic.

(Not talking about the high level armour, which I gather is pretty bad)

[Lord_Valandil]

Yeah, it's really beautiful, I mean, all the recycling...
And the empty city...with dull sand color plastered in every building!
Did I forget to mention that every house looks like a warehouse from the inside?
Really ecological game, even all the caves look the same!!

Sarcasm aside...
I thought it was boring looking, and the character designs were just awful, especially the Darkspawn. I had a better view of the 'generic' style of Origins. The style of DA2, with the silly looking Darkspawn and the bug-eyed anorexic elves didn't do it for me.

[King Cousland]

I despised DA II's art style. Next to recyled areas and lack of choice and effect, it's the things I most hope they change (though I'm not holding my breath). Dragon Age is a game which is supposed to have a dark atmosphere, with an undertone of realism. DA: O wasn't excellent in how it presented this visually (though it did have it's moments) but Dragon Age II was absolutely atrocious. It was far too bright, far too clean, far too cartoonish, far too sterile and soulless, so much so that moments that were intended to be dark and gritty (All That Remains) had their intended effect sapped out of them and ended up appearing rather comical. 

For DA III, "realism" needs to be the operative word, IMO. 

[EricHVela]

Houses and buildings were typically not painted in the equivalent era in real-life. White-washed, yes. Painted? No.

Colorful armor makes little sense, too.

Red and Browns were the first and most common dyes of the period.

What do you want? Cartoon stylizing or something more appropriate to the Dragon Age mood and story?

[Patchwork]

The loading screens had some nice stylized art and I especially liked the Act transition story ones but the game itself was bland and just plain ugly in places.

[Das Tentakel]

ReggarBlane wrote...

Houses and buildings were typically not painted in the equivalent era in real-life. White-washed, yes. Painted? No.

Colorful armor makes little sense, too.

Red and Browns were the first and most common dyes of the period.

What do you want? Cartoon stylizing or something more appropriate to the Dragon Age mood and story?

Yeah, that's so, erm, correct...



(fresco of the effects of good government, Siena. Yep, white walls everywhere)



(Bayertor ('Bavarian Gate'), Landshut. The painted decorations are historical reconstructions. The locals did have to get used to it, initially thinking it too garish. Modern sensibilities...)

In my birthplace, a lot of houses were whitewashed in the 18th century, covering earlier brick or painted walls. Simultaneously, house facades were modified. The aim? To give them a neo-classical, white look. Ironically, classical architecture (and statuary) wasn't (completely) white either, but did they know?

Back to regular programming<_<

Modifié par Das Tentakel, 14 septembre 2012 - 05:38 .

[Melca36]

I agree about the outside scenes in the Wounded Coast.  I thought MOTA had some beautful scenery as well.


But somethimes the lighting came off as over exposed in some aspects. 


But these fake 2D people did not enhance the art style............

[Heimdall]

On the style in general, my only true issues are with the sterility of the city that could use a bit of grit and grime in the lower areas especially and the questionable elf redesign.

On a more design oriented level, I was dissatisfied with the the static city and think that things would have gone remarkably more smoothly had Bioware invested in creating a living world (Like say Skyrim, where most of the NPCs move according to a daily schedule).

[Shadow Fox]

Origins didn't look much better imo but it has one thing that DA2 almost completely lacks Replay value and the world just feels less stale and more lively. In DA2 I kept wondering "why am I staying in this boring cesspool of a city?" that and dual wielders don't look like idiots in their combat stance.

Modifié par Arcane Warrior Mage Hawke, 14 septembre 2012 - 06:50 .

[Amycus89]

Havn't read all the pages in this topic, but...

Tommyspa wrote...

@EpicBoot2daFace You really cherry picked your DA2 screenie didn't you? You know I could pick a picture of Skyrim with their PS1 level snow textures on rocks and porches. Completely abysmal right?

To be fair, the DA2 pic is from the PC version, and the others are from either PC or console as far as I can see, so not the best example. That being said, the "blighted lands" wasn't exactly the best-looking area in DA2. A more fair example would be the DA:O ogres and the DA2 ogre, or the qunaris.

I, however, largely hated DA2's graphics because it felt so cartoony compared to DA:O. Sure, DA:O wasn't that pretty either, but it still looked better together with the serious theme in the game. I might have gotten a better impression of the graphics though, if it at least didn't use those washed out textures for skin. Unless you play deafult Hawke, your skin will always look like it's made of plastic. Same goes for all the other DA2 characters, except for Fenris, the qunari, and to a lesser extent Varric. Those 3 characters looked great, better than the DA:O characters. The hair could still look better, but if all the other characters had facial textures of the same quality, I would defenetily have a better impression of the graphics in the game. 

[PinkShoes]

DAO was a pretty ugly game but i do think at points it was very beautiful like in the elven ruins. DA2 had none of that.

[Uccio]

DAO art style beats DA2 hands down.

[tehturian]

 Some very selective pictures taken a few pages back. 


This what the Dragon age 2 looks like when the camera purposely isn't being pointed downwards.

To me the Origins art style is as ugly as sin and Skyrim's is just bland. 

[Wulfram]

tehturian wrote...

This what the Dragon age 2 looks like when the camera purposely isn't being pointed downwards.

I'm pretty sure most people play the game is with a downwards pointing camera by default.

There are indeed some pretty nice views you can see in DA2 by pointing your camera up, but I only see them if I'm specifically looking out for them.

[tehturian]

I could say the same about Witcher 2.

[Allan Schumacher]

I don't think the first picture is would be that uncommon of a camera position. The second one is certainly a more scenic pose.

[Wrathion]

BECAUSE THE ELVES AREN'T PRETTY LIKE I WANT THEM TO BE!

just kidding

I find DA2 to be very attractive, DAO not so much. 
It's just so...brown. Denerim and the like mostly browner than brown and the structures weren't that impressive, out in the wilderness? I liked it much better. Vibrant and green. 

Da2 has it. I like being on Sundermount just so I can run around and take everything in. Kirkwall...less so but even with all the oddly placed spikes, and the brownish tiles everywhere. It was beautiful. The vines creeping up almost every building in Hightown? The best.<3

Modifié par Alexandrine Delassixe, 14 septembre 2012 - 09:40 .

[SomniariKess1124]

History can be a life saver for games. why they couldn't just research the armor, weapons, and Architecture, and actually give it a time-period feel. DA series seems like it was supposed to be for Medieval, and DAO did brilliantly at that, but DA2 just feels like... Bioware got cocky. Kirkwall didn't feel like it had a historical origin. just felt like a mesh of recycled enviroments and cave-man days.

Just... make it feel like a real city, with a certain culture there. Kirkwallers struck me as the kind that like to make money, so why not reflect that onto the city?

[PsychoBlonde]

StElmo wrote...
It's not generic

Erm . . . maybe.  Shortly before DA2 came out, DDO released an expansion containing a *ton* of new ogres and orcs and hobgoblins and gnolls in armor that looks VERY MUCH like DA2's new iconic Hawke/Qunari looks.  Is all the black and red and hard planes distinctive?  Yes.  But . . . it's generic distinctive? 

IMO convergent art evolution like this means you're not quite out of the box yet--the avaunt garde that everyone adopted almost simultaneously becomes next year's "generic".

It uses siullete based morphology

*twitch* Silhouette.  Yes, that spelling is insane.  It's French.  And I'm not sure this is entirely true, either.  Silhouette-based morphology would mean that you could tell characters apart at extreme distance when you can't even see the COLORS any more, but they used color as a distinguishing factor in addition to shape in a lot of cases.  Not saying this is bad, just that the term they used (Iconic) is more accurate.

It's neither gritty realistic rubbish, nor super fantasy world colorful - it's very painterly.

Painterly, yes.  I wouldn't call "everything is brown" a "realistic" esthetic though.  In my experience the real world tends toward a much more gray pallete orientation.  But that's in Ohio.  Hawaii tends much more toward the "absurd fantasy" colors.

It bathes in light, which is RARE in modern games, which tend to love gritty, muddy shadow - ergh

I'm thinking this means "you can see stuff, it's not all hidden by fog/dust/darkness".  Which is true.  And nice.

Armor is stunning, yet not too crazy (yay for no boob plate armor on the female hawke!)

Erm . . . yes and no.  You've also got Izzy's boobs and elves wearing tights and no shoes.  However, I'll grant that if the clothing doesn't all look truly *practical*, it DOES look like something you could WEAR without either a.) gluing it on or b.) being sewn into it.

The hair styles don't always fit the overall aesthetic

Forget about not fitting the aesthetic, some of them don't even fit ON THE HEAD.  But, yeah, the texture differences between hair and skin made a lot of them just look . . . wrong to me.  Like everyone was wearing wigs.  Maybe for DA3 wigs will be In Style and it will seem appropriate.

The hairstyles are a bit too young looking - about 50% of the hair in the character editor make femhawke look like a 12 year old girl, damn wierd and a little bit creepy.

I had a bigger problem with the fact that if you put any wrinkles on Hawke whatsoever, she/he would look older than his/her mum and yet still oddly younger than his/her YOUNGER brother.

Overused assets sorry, you guys probably hear that a lot.

The only thing that got to me after a while was the incredible prevalence of the brown wattle-and-lathe walls that you get in Darktown and almost all of the indoor town areas.  The reused tiny areas didn't bother me--they had those in Origins for the "travel" encounters, too.

Also, sometimes people say it's too "anime" - but I hate Anime with a passion (don't get me started) and yet I like this art style?

They're talking mostly about the combat animations, the ENORMOUS two-handed weapons, and Fenris' hair.  The new elven morphology does have larger eyes and a smaller mouth, which is vaguely "anime" as well.  (But then, there's anime out there that doesn't consistently follow the "big eyes, small mouth" esthetic, too.)  All this stuff was present in Origins (I wanted to yell "FORE!" every time Sten swung his sword), but to a lesser extent.  It's more obvious in DA2 because they sharpened their focus significantly.

I'll be happy if for DA3 they keep the same core principles as from DA2, but shift it to a more "Orlesian" look. Ferelden was largely . . . muddy, greenish brown.  Kirkwall was more stucco and plaster and iron/bronze, further up on the yellow/orange, with some deep green.  (You're going to have some kind of green pallete in almost any game that involves the outdoors.)  I could see Orlais being more gray/purple/blue with a brighter green for the outdoors--They've actually kind of set a precedent for this with Mark of the Assassin.

They could even continue this trend with other areas as you visit them:

Anderfels: white/blue/gray, outside brown/white/blue/gray (think Skyrim for outdoors)
Nevarra: orange/black/bronze, outside orange/red
Antiva: White/green/scarlet, outside blue-green
Rivain: black/brown/purple, green/black outside (kinda like Blackmarsh)
Tevinter: Verdigris/Teal/Gold inside, pale green outside
Par Vollen: Red/Cream/Gray inside, saturated blue/green/yellow/orange outside 
Seheron:  A mix of Tevinter/Par Vollen in different places 

[SomniariKess1124]

Alexandrine Delassixe wrote...

BECAUSE THE ELVES AREN'T PRETTY LIKE I WANT THEM TO BE!

just kidding

I find DA2 to be very attractive, DAO not so much. 
It's just so...brown. Denerim and the like mostly browner than brown and the structures weren't that impressive, out in the wilderness? I liked it much better. Vibrant and green. 

Da2 has it. I like being on Sundermount just so I can run around and take everything in. Kirkwall...less so but even with all the oddly placed spikes, and the brownish tiles everywhere. It was beautiful. The vines creeping up almost every building in Hightown? The best.<3

Lowtown looked like the buildings were made of mud. Hightown didn't look all that high and mighty, and Darktown looked like it was in cave-man days. The Gallows were just ugly, really, and the wounded coast looked... depressing, like the kind of place you go when you're just flat out depressed. And i hated the caves. they were all the same cave. and they didn't even look like caves. they all looked like mines, and the point of caves is that you are supposed to get lost.

[SomniariKess1124]

how about this

Anderfels: Vikings/German
Nevarra: sounds like a place that would be cold, so maybe russia would fit that bill
Antiva: Italian
Rivain: Spain
Tevinter: I... really dont know.
Par Vollen: Maybe Jungle Island theme?
Seheron: maybe more Spain

And keep Inon Zur to work his magic with music. I would be very ticked off if Inon Zur was fired. But sometimes it isn't bad to Visit sites like Deviant Art to look for potential designs.

Here's some stuff i made, just to prove my point. (don't want accusations from my fellow artists)









There are some awsome artists out there, and DA deserves the best of them. not nominating myself here, but just saying that there are some people who would practically leap with excitement if they were asked.

Modifié par SomniariKess1124, 14 septembre 2012 - 10:08 .

[formaristarry]

King Cousland wrote...

I despised DA II's art style. Next to recyled areas and lack of choice and effect, it's the things I most hope they change (though I'm not holding my breath). Dragon Age is a game which is supposed to have a dark atmosphere, with an undertone of realism. DA: O wasn't excellent in how it presented this visually (though it did have it's moments) but Dragon Age II was absolutely atrocious. It was far too bright, far too clean, far too cartoonish, far too sterile and soulless, so much so that moments that were intended to be dark and gritty (All That Remains) had their intended effect sapped out of them and ended up appearing rather comical. 

For DA III, "realism" needs to be the operative word, IMO. 

Agree 100% with everything said. Art style plays an integral part of the storytelling in games and DA2's did not match up. DA2's was immersion breaking and disappointing because instead of feeling like I had returned to Thedas, I felt like I was dropped into Spyro or some other children's game, so I could not take the mature themes of the story seriously. One comparison that I made at the very beginning of DA2 was how even though I spent roughly the same amount of time getting to know the siblings (Carver or Beth) as I did King Cailan in DAO, their similar deaths at the hands of an ogre had a very different impact on me, and I knew immediately that it was all due to the different art styles. DAO's wasn't perfect but it was more in tone with the writing.

[Das Tentakel]

Wulfram wrote...

tehturian wrote...

This what the Dragon age 2 looks like when the camera purposely isn't being pointed downwards.

I'm pretty sure most people play the game is with a downwards pointing camera by default.

There are indeed some pretty nice views you can see in DA2 by pointing your camera up, but I only see them if I'm specifically looking out for them.

Same here. There are some decent vistas here and there, but the way Kirkwall is set up you almost never see them. This is actually rather unusual in my experience, in most RPG's and RPG-ish games you encounter these vistas pretty regularly, the 'ooh' and 'ah' moments when you stop in your tracks when you see something really pretty. Having some nice vistas is not necessarily dependent on the art style, though it helps. 

Perhaps it was deliberately done this way in DA2 in order to create a depressive, claustrophobic atmosphere?
Either that, or they did or could not figure out a way to create spaces in Kirkwall where you would have these vistas occur more or less naturally.

Modifié par Das Tentakel, 14 septembre 2012 - 10:08 .

[Lotion Soronarr]

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

Most arguments against DA2's art boil down BUT IT'S DIFFERENT WHY OH WHY? DA2's art is better than the bland, stale, gungy, trope-fest of DAO's art.

HAHAHAHAHAHAa....  ....   no