AoM does not have an LoD system that means every single unit is always rendered in full quality.
You can’t expect the same quality as you would get from a 1st/3rd person game that maybe has like 5 enemies shown at once.
You have to zoom in very very close to see those imperfections.
The way bigger issue is that AoMR (and AoE3DE) don’t have any facial animations. All the human faces look so empty and dead if you look at them very closely.
I think that’s a fair point to a certain extent. However, aoe 1 and 2 de were both older than aom and have closer resemblance to their remakes. But this also diverges a bit in the nuance of graphics. You can have a unit have new detailed textures that weren’t around 20 years ago, but that doesn’t mean that the plastic shiny look isn’t bad, and that doesn’t mean that new texture has to move towards the cartoon side vs the realism. So while I think your point is valid, I don’t think it perfectly justifies the direction with it. So new details that weren’t there 20 years ago doesn’t preclude the devs from keeping the colors and overall style closer to legacy aom.
Good discussion, I appreciate the interaction
I see many high detail objects in AOE 3 de that do not look plastic or shiny. So there is merit imo that they can tone that stuff down as well as adjusting colors
Talking about the hair specifically, perhaps a reason could be (and I don’t know, I’m just spitballing), a conscious decision for graphical accessibility?
I do know that fluid hair is very intensive to render, and uses a lot of power and space. Perhaps a decision was made on some graphical aspects to not go a certain route so as to keep the game within certain specifications to allow for a wider audience to play on as higher graphical settings as possible?
Obviously, not everyone has a high spec PC - especially many who would’ve played AOM back in the day and want this. They have increased the pop cap to allow for even larger battles, and with god powers and all other effects (more so than say DE2&3) going off, perhaps certain graphical features were consciously avoided so as not to ramp up the system requirements too much and allow for a wider player base to be able to BOTH play and enjoy the new graphics, rather than be forced to sacrifice the visuals on very low settings just so they can play?
I’m just spitballing here, I don’t actually know. Just a theory
Crybabies mumbling over petty things
i would call it a bit too nitpicky but “disgusting crybabies” wow thats something. much pent up anger i assume? cause thats rude and unfair. (but i have such days too)
“mumbling over petty things” might be another story tho 
but honestly you should delete those first two words and/or apologise. cause again: rude and not fair.
i personally have to issue/problem with things like “plastic hair, fur whatever” since its still an rpg and not an rpg. but i personally think (and this is just an assumption) that even Retold looks really great/beautiful it still has limitations which might be cause by the engine? maybe this (still minor) things wouldn’t be an “issue” if Retold would be in UE5?
opinions?
This is the part that confuses me about your point of view.
AoMR has a toned down colour pallet and is clearly less vibrant which gives it a more realistic vibe compared to the original in my eyes.
For me AoMR would have to be more cartoony to be more like the old AoM.
The reason why AoE3D looks lest plastic is because it has less detail.
In AoMR you can see the normal maps for the fur on animals an myth units while AoE3DE is a lot flatter in that regard.
Something that is flat can’t look “plastic”.
Unfortunately I can’t open AoMR right now and just look at stuff close up in the editor. Because When I played I didn’t really look too much at the small details and I didn’t take any screenshots.
Taking screenshots of streams is always bad because compression and the wiki as very little screenshots so far.
Kinda yes but also no.
UE5 has some very powerful systems to allow you to use very high quality assets without LoDs which is amazing but the engine is not mad for RTS at all and also only runs on very modern hardware. The game would barely run on an Xbox Series S if it was in UE5.
But things like hair are just really really hard. Like think of any game that has really good and realistic looking hair. It’s always bad in some ways or it’s purposely unrealistic.
In a cartoon/anime style game it’s a lot easier to make good looking hair because cartoon shading doesn’t make things look plastic.
The plastic looks happen if you take a cartoony looking object but shade it in a realistic way.
Cartoon/Anime models are made for NPR (Non-photorealistic Rendering), if you use PBR (Physically Based Rendering) they automatically look like plastic or Play-Doh because that’s basically what a figurine looks like, an cartoon/anime shaped thing in realistic lighting.
Some games get around by that by shading their character in some kind of NPR and the environment in PBR but that only works to some degree.
Level of detail is seperate from cartoon vs realism. You can have a detailed cartoon asset and a detailed realistic asset.
This is a poor example, but I im thinking look at fallout 4/fallout 76 and compare the details of textures on something like battlefield 1/battlefield 5
Both of their textures have high amount of details, but battlefield 5 is sharper in clarity and means more on the realism side while fallout 4 leans more on the cartoon side, less sharp.
I wish I could think of a better way to articulate what’s “off” about retold graphics but somewhere in the mix of the color pallate being used, saturation, plastic look, mobile cartoon vibes, it just doesn’t quite keep the heart and feel of legacy aom. I never felt that way about any of the other remasters.
Now, I will concede that perhaps there are reasons to all of this that are less art direction choices and more technical. I agree that the low poly nature of aom legacy would make it hard to know what it should look like. But I still feel that they dropped the ball with the art style and it doesn’t look like vanilla aom with a fresh coat of paint.
I wonder what the game would look like with the same color palate and art style of AOE 3 de but with aom models
Gameplay is amazing, so I will be playing retold on launch with everyone else
Some of this is hard to dive deep into without comparing screenshots in retold and AOE 3 de editor at max settings.
I also want to reiterate while I think the plastic thing is overkill I’m retold, to me certain textures aren’t necessarily the same as saying the color pallate itself doesn’t quite match legacy aom.
The best comparison will be screen shots from legacy aom, retold and AOE 3 de. So we’ll have to wait a few more weeks.
As far as plastic goes, this is far far far less plastic looking than retold
The sand terrain in Retold looks the best. They need to improve the others.
Here is an example of terrain that needs improvement:
Well it certainly looks more realistic than AoE4’s graphic style (not to say that AoE4’s graphics suck)
Look at the low quality compression nonsense.
I’m not sure what you mean.
Fallout uses a technically inferiour and kinda ancient engine while Battlefield uses a pretty modern one.
Fallout has a bunch of none realistic elements in it because of the none history setting but I don’t think it wants to look “cartoony”.
I wonder how easy it will be to port models between AoMR and AoE3DE. They changed file formats in AoMR.
But maybe they will back port some of the new technology from AoMR to AoE3DE and let us choose effects like Ray Tracing. The main issue I see with that is that that would require DX12 support so the game would stop running on older machines if they don’t provide support for the old renderer at the same time which would double the work for them.
I don’t see what you mean.
Like seriously not.
Maybe you mean something different with “plastic” look then I think you do.
I could see that it might look a little more plastic in some circumstances but you are using a lot of superlatives here as if there was a night and day difference.
tbh. if you would put an AoE3DE model in AoMR or vice versa while keeping the shading from the game the asset came from I would barely notice.
What’s your issue with that?
I like how the grass looks in AoMR. I think it looks better then AoE3DE and that already looked pretty good on max settings.
You gotta zoom all the way in to see all the details though.
Not sure how the AoMR grass looks like on lower settings though.
AoE4 is still miles ahead of everyone when it comes to visual details and organic looking towns.
The whole procedural generation of paths and decorative objects between buildings is so much better then anything AoE1/2/3DE/AoMR has to offer.
The system is ingenious in my opinion.
I absolutely agree with you on that, and I’d love to see it used in other RTS titles as well.
AoE4 does have its weaknesses too, graphical and otherwise. And I do believe those were referenced.
I have no idea how fences, crates, laundry lines, weapon racks, dirt paths, roads etc that are generated around and in between buildings would affect the basebuilding in AoM:R. I can imagine there would be loud protest against it, regardless if units could walk right through them, like in AoE4, or if they are tangible objects with collision. In one case, walking through a fence ruins immersion, in the other case, the base is needlessly cluttered, and units can barely move. But it would certainly look cool.
(Would also mean civilisation specific decorative objects, like greek vases only in Greek bases. Imagine them also update based on age up, so what starts as a dirt path in archaic age turns into a well maintained main road in the mythic age.)
