• Synapse@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Who cares about photorealism ? Artistic direction just has to be consistent to contribute to the world building. Other than that, I think many will agree with me that most important are: good writing (characters and story arcs), good gameplay, creative concepts.

    • novibe@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      I think he means as a style, they aim for a “realistic” style. Not that they will sacrifice anything for “graphical fidelity” or smth

      • Synapse@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Well, realistic graphics are costly and time consuming. If development time and budget is spent of photorealism, it’s not being spent on game mechanics or additional stories.

        • novibe@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          Not photorealistic, realistic. So normal proportions, faces, textures etc.

          Like I’d argue Golden Eye is a game with a realistic art style. It is as realistic as the technology allowed at the time. But it clearly tries to emulate the real world, and not a fantastical cartoony world or a woodcarved illustration, or anime etc etc.

          The comment from the ME guy is probably in response to Dragon Age Veilguard being much more cartoony than Inquisition. Characters have huge heads, textures are flat and stylised etc.

        • gerbler@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Eh stylized assets aren’t necessarily easier or less time consuming than PBR. It’s not difficult to make a game look realistic these days at least to a reasonable amount of scrutiny. Also this is a large developer with a lot of funding so EA isn’t going to cut corners in the art department with one of their flagship IPs. You also can’t just reallocate artists to work on mechanics, these are entirely different departments and the process of hiring/firing workers dynamically doesn’t gel well with a production pipeline.

      • Cyberspark
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        2 months ago

        Except the complaints about Veilguard are about the pixar-like characters with very little expressiveness. So even if that were what he meant he’s still actually not addressing the real issues

        • novibe@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          Well… the “Pixar-like characters with stiff expressions” seems to be a stylistic decision, not a technical blunder.

          • Cyberspark
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            2 months ago

            The unemotive faces is the real issue. Facial animations from bioware seem really bad.