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Just wanted to let you guys know we are still tweaking the light and environments settings smile

It's a real hassle trying to get good colors, brightness, contrast, and not have those settings ruin the overall gameplay experience. You don't want to play a game wearing sunglasses :p

Last edited by Koen; 01/02/09 06:23 PM.
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No, that's right. And therefor, please don't overdo it with the blooming. Or make an option to turn it off. In my opinion, blooming steals a lot of realism from a game. Don't know any game where blooming was used in a "I like it"-manner. ^^


"They say if you play the Windows XP CD backward, you can hear satanic words." - "Oh, that's nothing. If you play it forward it installs Windows XP...!"
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I think it's really nice in an 'initial phase' where everything is supposed to be all fine and dandy. It's very pretty and it makes me giddy, but when it comes down to doing the dirty quests and murky deeds a good RPG conveys to the player, then it can significantly detract.

That's something Guild Wars did really well, I think. The bloom made all the areas look really pretty, and it was a marvel to run across a field in search of some NPC who was supposed to teach you how to fight, the sun glinting off of your sword into your eyes... but then you actually had to start fighting monsters, and the sun and beautiful fields, lush jungles and dreamy valleys just don't pull you in like a dank tavern and a murky swamp. They're just a bad setting to fight in. You just want to make love between the flowers and become a farmer.

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The history of gaming technology has been one long quest for total realism, but now [that] we're on the verge of it, I'm seeing that it's probably not worth the effort. The ultra-realistic games of recent years have been one long gritty depressing gray-a-thon after another. Sometimes realism is an acceptable sacrifice if it means I get to have some fun.


reality is depressing, if I would like to have my games ultra realistic I would just go outside? Yes it is less realistic. But I think we can chuck realism out the window since we are playing with a dragon transforming knight :p.

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It's a real hassle trying to get good colors, brightness, contrast, and not have those settings ruin the overall gameplay experience. You don't want to play a game wearing sunglasses :p


I know smile

But then again you can't realy go out side and look at the sun without sunglasses. I'm just saying that it has to fit within the game, but also that vibrant colors aren't something to be afraid of hehe


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Don't be so quick to discard realism in a game. The keyword here is escapism. People want to escape to a different world. The thing here is that this isn't supposed to be the perfect world, or a world full of sunshine, but a world in which the player can mean something, can do something to set him apart, in a manner of his own interest. For a financial genius who only cares about calculus and money, escapism wouldn't really be necessary 'cause he'd be living his dream. But for people who have a romantic view of the middle ages, the perfect setting would be a romanticized view of the middle ages. That doesn't mean people have to wear the same kind of underwear as they did in the middle ages, or crap out of their windows like in the middle ages... That kind of realism isn't necessary. The point is it has to be romanticized, so it can perhaps be more civilized than the real middle ages... but you can't have anachronies going on... some things can be explained by a different world in which other rules apply... but suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

What I like is low-fantasy. That means a medieval European world, slightly romanticized, but without magic like mages use, no magical projectiles or mental spells, but yes to dual-wielding and elves and stuff... That doesn't mean I refuse to play a game with magic... but it does mean that the less I have to experience magic, the more I enjoy the same game. Like Gothic II for example... hardly anyone is ever seen using magic, so i don't mind that I can use magic... I just don't and it's credible.

Which means I don't have to make the game less fun for mages, cause i don't hate the PC using magic... but as long as I don't have to see it if I don't want to, my disbelief is suspended. It's all about preference.

Personally I love gritty and gray, with some bright areas. I would hate the whole game to be too bright, such as for example Fable. Your preference may be different. That's why we have graphic settings. It's a very minor problem. Content issues, though, are much harder to achieve compromise upon.

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I like gritty and grey + magic! Magic doesn't have to be all giant purple and blue lightning spells. It can be subtle, and the low-fantasy approach, where magic is grounded in real medieval 'science' and magick (like alchemy, theurgy, or astrology) is my fav as well. That being said, I like lush beautiful areas in games also, just as long as they aren't too cartoonish and surreal (like Fable, since we're picking on that game).

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I found a quote today over there at RPGWatch, in a news article about another article about Dragon Age :

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"A lot of fantasy games, traditionally, have been high fantasy - Tolkienesque fantasy, where good battles evil. And there's another end of that spectrum, the low fantasy, which is a lot darker."


I noticed that it is set as

low fantasy = dark

high fantasy = light, bright

I was wondering, why this is.

Why can't there be low fantasy = light, bright and high fantasy = dark ?


All in all, I rather tend to agree to Morbo here. I'm a person who is pro bright colours, and making games dark & gritty just depresses me.

Whereas I think I've found that many people believe that

dark & gritty = mature

light & bright = childish

in games, in general.


Which just means - if true - that there'll be no game aimed at a mature audience which is at the same time light & bright, not only in colours, but in all themes. There'll be no game like that, EVER.

When you look around you in a gaming shop, you'll clearly see that ALL brightly coloured & themed games are children's games.


And since it is "uncool" to be or act or even considered as a child - or with the even slightest hint towards being or having something like a child - most gamers would clearly prefer the dark & gritty version.

Like Gangstarappers wouldn't ever rhyme about the beauty of a rose / of roses.


That's imho because the future of gaming becomes brown - or at least dark & gritty - : Because everyone wants to be or act like a full grown adult, which means no bright colours or themes in the game involved.

If I'm following this thought, this would also mean that the games become not only more & more mature - with all coming implications - but more & more brutal and cynical, because these are signs by which people usually in a cliché recognise - or at least seem to recognize, because everyone believes that without ever asking whether this is true at all - a full-grown adult: Strength, bruutality, a dark & gritty look on the world around him/her, resulting in utter cynism.

This is just an extreme view of that, the result of trying to follow the thoughts to the end.



As a sidenote: There are exactly TWO parts of Larian representing this model:

Light & Bright = Ketnetkick, Adventure Rock, Superia

Dark & Gritty = LED Wars, the Divinity series


I very, very strongly believe that they will not meet somewhere in the middle, ever.

That would be a breach of "gaming industry standards".


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Alrik I think you're mistaking "I prefer X" to mean "All things should conform to X" I myself am dark and cynical and I like to see it reflected in games and literature sometimes, but not all the time. Even though I prefer gritty and "realistic" (but too realistic, the whole point for me is something of an escape, and after all it's dragons and magic we're talking here) I would be sad to see the bright, child-like games and motifs disappear from any area of art or entertainment. It has it's place, but I also like to see the nod toward the grim and the fact that things often don't turn out all bright and sunny - or maybe sometimes they do but it's made all the more beautiful because of the hard grey road that came before it.

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I'm also for a balance, but currently I see a shift in gaming development according to that article "the future in gaming is brown" or how it was called.

On the other hand, trying to imagine smurfs that are cynicals is really, really hard to manage.


Sometimes I think that I see the gaming development trends too cynical myself.

Last edited by AlrikFassbauer; 09/02/09 05:33 PM.

When you find a big kettle of crazy, it's best not to stir it.
--Dilbert cartoon

"Interplay.some zombiefied unlife thing going on there" - skavenhorde at RPGWatch
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