Visual consistency or lack of thereof

[DraQ]

Which is better and why?

Discuss!!

</andharia>

I have noticed one thing lately - that I was inexplicably annoyed by visual presentation in some games. Trying to trace the source of this annoyance I realized that it's the visual inconsistency grating on my nerves.
An example would be an otherwise realistic looking game, with all the bells and whistles used for great effect in creation of the visually convincing environment involving floaty and sparkly, clearly symbolic representations of pickable items - generally I find it annoying when a game presents different types of objects using wildly different visual styles, what are your thoughts on the subject?

 

[Big Nose George]

People saying they dont like it either.
Remarks how there are exceptions.
Volourn/racofer/Cloaked Figure
/thread

 

[Kaucukovnik]

And I'm even more annoyed by visual "genericness" of nowadays' games. Most of them have no distinct visual style, and the only thing to distinguish them from screenshots is often their user interface.
I mean, every sci-fi or war game tries to look "realistic", every fantasy game has more or less cartoonish monsters and characters and colorful flashy magic effects... The visual style has no personality, no soul.

Well, it is a business and outsourcing is more and more popular among devs. Hiring "labourers" for artistic representation of a game is nothing good...

 

[DraQ]

I mean, every sci-fi or war game tries to look "realistic", every fantasy game has more or less cartoonish monsters and characters and colorful flashy magic effects...

Well, you can still go realistic or cartoon with vastly different art direction, but yeas, that's true. Also, I despise cartoony style trend in fantasy and hyperreal flashy GFX are my pet peeve (ok, one of) since the ubiquitous "omg planar shockwave fapfapfap!!!" fad in 90's - ubiquitous bloom, light trails and other such miscellaneous faggotry only exacerbated the issue and break immersion with horrifying effectiveness.
Regarding cartoony/highly stylised fantasy GFX, it worked much better back in the DOS days, without the dissonance from realistic hardware GFX, not to mention current take on cartoony being horribly gay.

The visual style has no personality, no soul.

So very true. Very few games have an actual art direction today. Witcher did and it was awesome.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'm all for good art direction and consistency. Morrowind fuck yeah, I still love you for that.

That said, shiny sparkling items graphically yelling at the player to pick them up and question marks above heads can go fuck themselves and eat a dick. I generally tend to talk to every NPC that isn't called Generic Farmer #101 so I'll find out if you have a quest or not even without the question mark above your head, thank you very much.

Oh, and over-sized shoulder pads can go fuck off too. I want to see realistic armor for a change. I do not mind chainmail bikinis smug but at least have all armor parts have proper proportions. There have been so many awesome armor styles throughout the ages that look better than those overdone impractical things, so please try to use them in your games. Thanks.

 

[DraQ]

Oh, and over-sized shoulder pads can go fuck off too. I want to see realistic armor for a change. I do not mind chainmail bikinis smug but at least have all armor parts have proper proportions. There have been so many awesome armor styles throughout the ages that look better than those overdone impractical things, so please try to use them in your games. Thanks.

Well, I'm definitely not a fan of huge, oversized shoulder pads, but nerdraging about shoulder pads being impractical, but being ok with something that is less of an armour, more of sexy metallic undergarments is downright hilarious.

I don't mind even full nudity in games, I certainly don't mind female nudity, but it's fucking retarded when developers try to convince me that 4cm wide strip of mail, two metallic nipple guards and some leather straps holding it all together, don't cause any chaffing and provide protection equivalent to male variant of Epic Plate of Awesome +17 against WMDs, unless we are talking solely of protection against moderately turgid dicks. It just doesn't click in my head. Make some witch/sorceress mostly naked if you want - you can justify it with the requirements of her art, if you don't want it to be lulzy, But If a chick is a warrior of sorts, wearing heavy armour, this armour should be armour, not the excuse to show as much skin as possible. Same applied to the clothes of females in cultures that otherwise don't seem to encourage walking around butt-naked.

Besides, MW, with it's good-to-awesome art direction did have some outrageous shoulder pads, but no actual chainmail bikinis.


Plus, aren't huge shoulder pads also a way to minimize clipping problems?

 

[JarlFrank]

I never said that chainmail bikinis should provide good protection, I just said I have no problems with there being chainmail bikinis in the game. They should provide minimal protection but could give you the ability to "distract" male enemies

 

[JarlFrank]

Plus, aren't huge shoulder pads also a way to minimize clipping problems?

Used to be. Nowadays, in games like DA and FO3, it's not necessary anymore.

And I believe it wasn't clipping issues but texture problems.

Medieval Total War 2 has realistic gothic armor, for example:

Fantasy game devs still think they have to make shoulder pads huge for some reason.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Medieval Total War 2 has realistic gothic armor, for example:

*fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap*

 

[DraQ]

Medieval Total War 2 has realistic gothic armor, for example:

*fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap*

You do realize you're faping to armoured men?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I didn't. The all-covering armour made them kinda androgynous.

 

[DraQ]

I didn't. The all-covering armour made them kinda androgynous.

Well, medieval Europe wasn't exactly known for its armoured females either.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I didn't. The all-covering armour made them kinda androgynous.

Well, medieval Europe wasn't exactly known for its armoured females either.

 

[Jim Cojones]

It is not a crucial element for me but it does matter. Shining sparkles around the objects in otherwise a game with a realistic graphic are quite annoying. Different quality of body and face textures makes me puke. Yeah, it is reasonable that there is some difference because player will see faces from close distance more often and the surface needed for head texture is much much smaller but sometimes it is really overdone. It is even stranger when faces look worse than the rest of the model (f.e. some Risen characters).

On a related note; it's not a graphic element but I hate how some games use numbers floating above heads to represent damage. Not only it is difficult to see who's hit but also feels very awkward when the visuals are mixing with the mathematical feedback.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I agree about the shining sparkles (it was particularly horrible in NWN - ugh) and floating numbers. I dislike them too.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

I guess using subtle effects needs true artists to make game art. Anyone who can technically use the required graphics software can make game visuals at least bearable (and breathtaking for the masses) through overdone next-gen effects.

Regarding the inconsistency - an example of undermining fantastic visuals with rotating flashy items/weapons can be Unreal Tournament 3. Some maps would be real pieces of art if not for the items and their "pedestals" spread across the sceneries.

 

[DraQ]

I guess using subtle effects needs true artists to make game art. Anyone who can technically use the required graphics software can make game visuals at least bearable (and breathtaking for the masses) through overdone next-gen effects.

Which were as shitty in the mid-90's with their "planar shockwave!!1" tripe, as they are today.
Overdone GFX have never looked good.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Fantasy game devs still think they have to make shoulder pads huge for some reason.

Because of World of Warcraft