Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis Graphics issues

I can't quite put my finger on the exact problem, but when I view screenshots and such of the game, it seems like there is a decidely console-kiddish, Japanese art style (cartoony) flavor to the characters and some animations. Don't get mw wrong...the work is beautiful, in it's own way. Some of the screens I've seen just don't seem to fit in with what I anticipated in the leap from DD to next-gen graphics of Ego Draconis.

Given the current poll of PC/Console preference being so decideldy one-sided in favor of PC games, does anyone else have the same feeling? What are your thoughts?

Well it's kinda WoW-ish. Not much but it has some minor similarities like "fat" weapons and unrealistic coluors. Not that it looks bad but DD and BD have very dark and somehow mysterious graphics so I expected something like The Witcher (it would add to the athmosphere).
It's far from looking bad but I just expected something similar to prequels. Or is it maybe difficult to make 3D look like that?

Well, in my opinion, the colours aren't unrealistic at all !

I was playing Star Wars Battlefront I. Makes fun.

I bought Star Wars Battlefront II.

WTF?????? WHERE ARE THE COLOURS ?????

The colours in Star Wars Battlefront II are what I call unrealistic. Because there's no colours there at all. Only dark, grey mud.

I once read an article called "the future in gaming is brown !" The title related to a similar experience the author had made that in a lot of games he had played the colours were reduced to a brownish-greyish mish-mash. No colours there at all, but instead some kind of ... well, mud.

To me, it is a fashion currently going on in gaming to take all colours away. Dark Fantasy and gothic having arrived in the mainstream. The darker, the better. Because dark = mature, I guess.

To me, that's just nonsense. A game doesn't get much better if one takes all of the colours awayy ! The gameplay is the important factor ! Not the colours !

I suspect the idea is atmosphere, Alrik. If the games company wants to create a feeling of a bleak world with little hope, muted colours work best.

I'd have to agree that's not suitable for Star Wars, though. The films are very bright and attractive looking.

Yes, I can see that this makes sense, the problem, however, is, that nearly ALL games nowadays seem to contain only such "muted colours" !

I disagree. One of the top arguments going around these days is the colour palette of Diablo 3, which was changed from the dark gray, brown, blacks of the previous installments to the much more vibrant colours of the upcoming release. The argument being, if you are unfamiliar, that they should have stayed with the darker tones. Personally, I like vibrant and varied colours in my games and will prefer that over "muted colours" any day. One of my complaints about Fallout 3 was that the landscape, by design, was so monotonous. There's only so much tan/brown/gray I can take before I want to see something more. Sure, it fit with the post-nuclear theme, but they didn't focus on what impact that would have on the player at all. Once I tried playing the game a second time (because I enjoyed it), I decided I just didn't want to slog through the same tan/brown/gray all over again. But, while colours are important, variety in environments is even more so. If they can use the same muted shades yet make the environments feel very different from one another, then perhaps it'd work.

Regardless, I think it may be the type of games you are playing that hint at the "muted colours". Unless it happens to fit the genre and or setting of the game (wartime, for instance), most games are going the opposite direction.

I dislike the excessive colour, bloom and such that thrive in many recent RPG's. I take more to games like the Witcher and Gothic II, that gives us a gritty medieval look. That doesn't only depend on the colour of the game, but also the graphic design and environment concept. While I think WoW is not an extreme of either of the two, I concede that WoW is, by design, not to be realistically medieval. It's supposed to be a colourful world, and it does what it wants to do; while not being everyone's style, it's definitely most agreeable.

That having been said, from the screenshots we can see that ED tries to give a gritty medieval, plausible feel, without being too skimpy on the colouring.

See, I'm all about vibrant colors, if they match the setting. I think the dragon pic fits that scenario.
http://s536.photobucket.com/albums/ff327/hovercraftdriver/?action=view¤t=dragonredsky.jpg

This fighter running down the hall is another example of graphically matching the setting.
http://s536.photobucket.com/albums/ff327/hovercraftdriver/?action=view¤t=runningdownhall.jpg

My opening post was more geared to these kind of screenshots, which seems to me to go pretty strong on special effects in a Japanese anime kind of way.
http://s536.photobucket.com/albums/ff327/hovercraftdriver/?action=view¤t=battle1-1.jpg
http://s536.photobucket.com/albums/ff327/hovercraftdriver/?action=view¤t=battle2.jpg

I have confidence that the game is going to be a great game. Just an observation, and an appearance I didn't expect based on the style of original game. BTW, I think Diablo 3 looks awesome, even with a similar issue though.

Could it be the camera angles that give it some of that feel? I see exactly what you mean in terms of the look of those latter shots, but it seems that if you look at the scene in a traditional zoomed-out 3/4 top-down approach, there wouldn't be the same impression. It would appear that the shots are designed to be cinematic and depict battle scenes when normal gameplay may look and feel very different than this (if you want it to, of course).

which seems to me to go pretty strong on special effects in a Japanese anime kind of way.

Well since they appear to be screenshots in mid spell/skill, they kind of have to be strong on special effects. I would guess the main visual effect for most spells is not going to last more than a couple seconds, at most.

The maces in the first 'battle' screenshot are a little large for one handed use, but then some of the preview screenshots for BD had giant (anime inspired?) swords and the game itself contained predominantly realistically sized weapons.

name 5 that aren't fable



I found that DD was a very "light" games (the green acres) only the dungeons were dark (sq thay should be). And one of my disappointments of BD was the absence of green acres. In the witcher the atmosphere fit, but if the sun was set right it was also a bright game (remember act 4 with all the green fields).


I follow Arik on this.

As seems to be common with the current generation, "realism" means the graphics look like I'm viewing them through a used coffee filter. What isn't brown is grey, and what isn't grey is too dark to make out.

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/10/23/the-color-of-next-gen-gaming-is-brown/

image


I rather play the right game then the left game.

What it comes down to is: In what season is the game taking place. If it is summer you need to have heavy bloom, en vibrant colours. In winter or cloudy days it can be more greyish and dull.


Personally I like this approach. Start the game heavy with colours but as the game progresses and the enemy comes closer the colours dull out. (or a lot of sun in the beginning of the game, and the enemy moves more greyish colours -> burning houses cloud the sun?). That way you have the feeling that the enemy is really going to town on the villages.



realism has a gray/brown bias!

That doesn't count to me, because it

a) still is dark

b) it uses a rather comic-like look.

What I mean is something I call "Light Fantasy". In terms of colours & setting(s).

"Comic Fantasy" ist just another (yet new) setting/genre in itself in my opinion.

Actually, that quote was out of my post, but quoted from Equisilus. But I get what you are saying and agree with the D3 assessment of comic book look. And while literally hundreds blasted the new color and character style of D3, I personally like it, and think it fits the personality of that game well.

When we get some more solid gameplay video of this game, it may prove that, as someone above said, screenshots were captured in mid-stream and that this enhances the effects of the shots, and not be as drastic as I observed. I was only saying that I felt there was some cartoonish look to certain aspects of the game that I hadn't expected. Story and gameplay (style/interface) are the main attributes that effect if I like games. Graphics help, but not near as big a deal. That could be a whole other topic though I anticipate that like DD, Ego Draconis will be high on the my most important aspects.

Guild Wars (all of the chapters)
Neverwinter Nights 2
Rise of the Argonauts
Oblivion (and Co.)
Dungeon Siege 2

I can give a few more if you want, but there aren't that many recent RPGs worth mentioning to begin with.

Anyway, there are also games that are realistic but also very colourful, like Drakensang and Gothic III, but I would recommend against playing the latter. Drakensang I can recommend, though.

Why do you hate excessive color and bloom???
I think it's pretty awesome how the games look with those effects.

And the games you mentioned:
Half of them doesn't force you to play with those effects and another half had only a small portion of the game(The beginning).

I feel all of them have major problems relating directly to the excessive use of colour and/or bloom.

Of all these games, Guild Wars really had the best graphics, and it was the only one where the bloom and color was not necessarily overdone, but its problem was that it really offered no diversity and after a few hours, everything started to look the same. Sure, there were beautiful jungles and great sand plains and great-looking meadows, but there was nothing in them except enemies and treasure chests, and it didn't matter if you were in Ascalon with the scorched land that was boring, or in kryta with the beautiful fields that were boring, they were just empty fields, untouched by anything, while they were swarming with necromancers and mesmers and such... I just can't see a necromancer languishing in the sun in a lush green field all day long... oh, and why did the sun always shine in kryta? it never even gets cloudy, it never rains, never gets dark... how can anything grow there? yet, the lands look as if it's the only rainless sunrise the land has ever seen.

it just kills your immersion, while, say, the Witcher, has its periods of excessive colour (i.e. the Fields), along with its regions of medieval dreary townscapes, but even there, night will fall and shadowed nooks exist. You'll be running all over the place, afraid you're missing something, while in Guild Wars or Oblivion or some such, you just take the shortest way to your target without so much as looking around. It's just your regular grind game that uses colour as a euphemism for the lack of detail and diversity in their environments.

except, of course, NWN2, which, for all its top ratings, I found to be a horrid successor, graphically and otherwise, to its fantastic precursor.

I do like blooms !!!

@Morbo: Could you please make your screenshot a little smaller please?
Thank you

done (it didn't seem that big on 30" lcd)

Personally - I like the atmosphere in DD and I think what I have seen so far from the screen shots from ED, it looks pretty much like that atmosphere as well. As mentioned earlier - the effects of spells in the screen shots - are just one frame, and probably the one that shows the effect the most, which means it will probably look very ok in the game, = non anime.

As in DD it seams like the dark parts are underground - mostly - which suits me perfectly. I too prefer a multicolored world over a muddy one. One of the reasons I play RPGs is for the exploring, both the surroundings as well as the characters and different wierd and funny things that comes along, and to see how things end. And a lot of different color palettes for different areas increases that experience. I don´t like the sepia-colored worlds because I find them depressing and in the end - deeply boring.

So yey - flowers