Colorful stylized graphics in games - Americans vs Europeans vs Japanese

[Rincewind]

Oh yeah, Tolkien's watercolour illustrations are glorious. I purchased an art book featuring his art last year, I really love his style. But he still very much uses pastel colours.

Btw, I'm not quite sure why many "colourful" games look like crap. I've just done a quick search for "fantasy landscape" on ArtStation and clicked randomly on some colourful results, and look what I found. These are very vivid and colourful but still look good; I wouldn't call them garish.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OyxmXv
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/aO44z
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/g2y6XG

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Shots are called by art directors, and in general, by investors. Project leaders might have something to say as well. None of the people calling the shots in game making have taste, but that's a given, engineers rarely have any taste or culture at all.

 

[Viata]

Dragon Quests and Final Fantasies as other japanese foundational examples were inspired by western Crpgs, (early Wizardrys and specially first Ultimas), but not directly by "D&D" original source or any other P&P rpgs "local trend" influence. D&D and P&P rpgs in general were never truly popular in Japan, not remotely at anglosphere or continental european levels.

Final Fantasy is well known to be inspired by D&D, though. We even know something like this from the team that made FF3:

One opinion you hear a lot about RPGs, is “if there aren’t distinct roles/classes, it’s not an RPG”. And it’s true that many of our staff love those tabletop games like D&D, and some of them feel that way themselves.

source: https://shmuplations.com/shortcuts/

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

FF1 uses Vancian casting too. Dragon Quest was directly inspired by Wizardry though.

 

[Viata]

Dragon Quest was directly inspired by Wizardry though.

Yes. To the point one of the games Horii made before DQ, Portopia, had a message "A monster surprised you" in a 3D dungeon that Horii included just because of his love for Wizadry and his interest in making a game like that.

 

[Rincewind]

Shots are called by art directors, and in general, by investors. Project leaders might have something to say as well. None of the people calling the shots in game making have taste, but that's a given, engineers rarely have any taste or culture at all.

If I had to make a game, full artistic freedom or go home.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Shots are called by art directors, and in general, by investors. Project leaders might have something to say as well. None of the people calling the shots in game making have taste, but that's a given, engineers rarely have any taste or culture at all.

If I had to make a game, full artistic freedom or go home.

I agree, to an extent. You don't want the inmates to run the asylum. But a certain sense of independence is needed in the genre, I'd say. Innovation is discouraged in game development as a whole, imo.

 

[Rincewind]

I agree, to an extent. You don't want the inmates to run the asylum.

Sure, within reasonable limits. But investors having a say in the art style just seems fundamentally wrong ("I have the money, and I know what I like").

 

[Morenatsu.]

So like I was looking out my window after it rained and thought ‘wow this looks just like gothic’

REAL COLOURS 4EVAH

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

We should never have moved beyond ASCII.

Indeed:

 

[Rincewind]

We should never have moved beyond ASCII.

Indeed:

I'm yet to beat Rogue!

 

[Lyric Suite]

If we are talking about vydia, we have long since passed the era of shit brown or vomit color filters and everything is indeed super colorful now, but it's only another form of cancer as the color schemes are inspired by mobile game aesthetics. Even games that should be grim and dark now look pastel for some fucking reason. Like Doom Eternal which looks more bright and colorful than Doom 2016, to the detriment of the setting.

Original Doom may have been full of colors but i don't recall it as being kiddie looking like this mobile game fad.

 

[Gerrard]

There's a reason why Berserk never became a huge hit in Japan, at least in the same scale that other manga have, and also why Berserk is more popular sales wise outside of Japan than inside of it. Miura said that the "Tolkien club", a term he used to describe the western fantasy fandom, was made out of a dozen people in the entire country.

Uh-huh, I'm sure the fact that Berserk was on hiatus for 95% of the last 15 years had nothing to do with its popularity.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

We are living in the "oversaturation" age. Just check your photos on any mobile device and then compare it with reality.

 

[luj1]

American color palette (colors!) and a European color palette (drab and dreary)

colors dont have nationalities you tranny

there are good and bad games, and good and bad art directions, regardless of who made it

 

[whydoibother]

American color palette (colors!) and a European color palette (drab and dreary, just like what they're used to in their lives)

And the classic

philosopher was changed to sorcerer in american release

because the publishers feared americans are too dumb to know what a philosopher stone is, and would just think its some school teacher thing

 

[Rincewind]

Since we're going offtopic and everybody is posting random shit, here we go:

The C64 palette is the most glorious of all, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a man of no taste or refinement whatsoever.

 

[Rincewind]

There's more where this came from! (in a demo-watching mood right now)

 

[Lyric Suite]

We are living in the "oversaturation" age. Just check your photos on any mobile device and then compare it with reality.

People buying wide gamut screens and companies putting that shit on phones without understanding what it does to sRGB content is probably training thousands of normies to think over saturated colors are "normal".

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

It's not just screens. There's no issues when it comes to coloring now that the only limit is your screen's resolution. You don't have to worry how it's going to look like in the master copy, and even less about how it's going to appear in the reproductions. It's always going to look the same, and you are not a slave to the CMYK setting unless you voluntarily replicate it with your software.

 

[Immortal]

Since we're going offtopic and everybody is posting random shit, here we go:

The C64 palette is the most glorious of all, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a man of no taste or refinement whatsoever.

I was gonna shit on it just to be contrarian..

But those HD pixel booba.

 

[Derringer]

A Samsung phone I tried out years ago had oversaturated colors so I figured that oled screens were just oversaturated from the factory to make them look more vivid. You have more control over the colors with a shader hooker either way and I wouldn't think you'd get that on phones unless the rom had support for it.

 

[Siel]

European vaporwear looks nice

 

[Dadd]

Foggy neon cyberpunk shit needs to die

 

[Siel]

My favorite art direction in recent years still remain Dishonored 2