Important information to base discussions around Game art and its direction

Hi all,

I’m sure many of us fall on one side of the ‘fence’ here regarding the games art style and direction, and I’ve seen ‘mobile game’ and ‘cartoony’ used more times than I can count. More recently ‘textureless’ has come around which I thought was interesting (all close ups show all models are in fact have many textures). So at the very least, its interesting that people seem to not appreciate them. Descriptions of units being ‘flat’ or not feeling like they’re part of the world are also abound.

Whilst many of these things have game-play reasons associated with them, and I also have my own opinions regarding the art-style and direction, I thought it’d be great to arm the community with some good knowledge and tools to structure their critiques in an ultimately more useful manner to communicate that with the devs.

This is a fantastic GDC (Game Developers Conference) talk that breaks down some really good information on game-design and art direction, and also the tools we can use to give meaningful critique to something where our initial reaction is - “I don’t like that.”

GDC You Tube Talk Link

for anyone that has the time I would great recommend giving this a watch (I know the start seems rather elementary talking about hue value and saturation for those who are already familiar with such things)

I will also put down in the comments below in a little while my own analysis on some chosen screenshots of the game in the future.

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Hey dude, i seen the video but i Would Say that developers have already said this art direction and units “less textured” have been made for readability (there’s a german interview to the Art director). We can Explore all reasons behind this art direction but It’s not matter After all: what it’s importante for many people Is what the game actually shows and the hundread threads around the web about the graphic should explained that pretty well.
Many people don’t like It.

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Fair enough points, I know the devs have defended their choices, and quite well in my opinion. However as you say many (or just some loud people) are particularly upset at some aspects. Just giving everyone some extra information and tools so they can use address this complex issue in a more thoughtful manner :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Or more Simply, give to players different graphic choices. A Graphic DLC could be a good solution for everyone

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except it would be used by a minority and keep developers from working on DLC.

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So modern video games these days usual have a global post processing effect, and it makes me wonder if some major parametres of that could be exposed to the option menu to help keep people happy. Things like global contast and brightness, although tbf these arent fixes for real art decisions, and also its fairly difficult to do what Jimmy suggest - choices for such a variety of graphics that are asked for, everything from the texture to the lighting all need to be finely tuned. Tricky stuff

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For this reason i’m speaking about a separate Graphic DLC: i know it would be a lot of work to do but we don’t ask for a release at launch.