And trying to go bigger and include all of Gotham would be insane. WBGM couldn’t just dump the open world stuff and drag the game back into the titular asylum. Justifying all of that at once would bury the player in exposition.)īut then we came to Arkham Origins. (They left the specifics and details as vague as possible, which was certainly for the best. And then it was turned into a huge open-air coed prison-city by way of a ridiculous conspiracy that isn’t even worth analyzing. In Arkham City (the game) Old Gotham (the place) was renamed to Arkham City (the prison) but in Arkham Origins (the prequel) it’s still called Old Gotham.Īrkham City gave us a slightly goofy set-up: At some point Old Gotham was flooded and ruined. After all, I think they did a great job on… New Old Gotham Is Origins the only game with scale problems? Or has the art always been like this, but I didn’t notice until the change in art style?Īre those really supposed to be poker chips? They’re the size of coasters!ĭoes Batman have a keyboard the size of his arm so he can type while wearing his Bat-gloves, or is this keyboard just scaled improperly? Were the earlier games like this? I poked around Arkham City and Arkham Asylum looking for badly scaled stuff and I didn’t find any, although I admit I didn’t play all the way through both games just to audit the art. Some doorways are normal, and some of them are gigantic doors like the ones above. The funny part is that when you walk through this door you emerge from the previous one. This door is a lot smaller than the previous one, but still way too large. I guess this is how the city builds the doors of their sewer tunnels? They have handles at chin height and a window about three feet higher than the 6 foot, 4 inch (193cm) Batman. I know this is supposed to be a “younger, more inexperienced Batman”, but unless he’s six years old then a lot of stuff is too dang big: Perhaps because of this, I’ve been noticing a lot of scale problems with the scenery. If your gameworld is made of nonsense vents and sewer levels, then don’t choose an art style that screams out “THIS IS REALITY”. Don’t promise more realism that your artists plan to deliver. Art style isn’t just about tone or color, it also sets the tolerances and expectations of reality in the minds of the audience. Nobody would mind or even notice if Mario sat down in a double-sized novelty chair, but if Sam Fisher did that he would look like a doofus. This is important because the shift makes the eye expect more realism from everything else. I’m thinking that this is a shift away from the more unreal comic aesthetic to the washed-out grimdark realism we see in more grounded games. Note the color vibrancy, texture detail, model complexity, and character proportions. Worse, it’s hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison, because the Origins Bane is a younger and smaller version of the character, back before his drug abuse turned him into the Pink Hulk. As I’ve stressed elsewhere, I Am Not An Artist and I have an amateur’s eye when it comes to appraising game art. While Rocksteady gave the first two Arkham games a slightly comic style, I think WBGM has moved closer to reality for Origins. This is probably why so many games are ending up in the photorealism rut. They might not be able to create “an Arabian Nights-themed techno-fortress of the future”, but if they know how to use their tools they should at least be able to make basic real-world stuff. I know nothing about the inner workings of the company.)īut while stylistic nuances are hard to get right, just about all the artists at least have technical proficiency. (I’m not suggesting this is the case with WBGM. It’s even harder when you consider that most artists are youngsters who are paid crap. Art teams these days are big, and the larger the team gets the harder it is to get enough people that can nail a really specific point on the stylistic spectrum. If the style your concept art calls for is (for example) “slightly Frank Miller-ish comic-book with a dash of Bladerunner”, then you need a team of accomplished artists to pull it off. I leave the final judgement on this up to the reader. There’s something off with the art, and I don’t know if the art is of lower quality, if they shifted the art style, or if I’m just picking up on old existing problems because I’m looking at the game more closely. In fact, I’m not even sure this next bit is criticism or not. Remember that it’s not a horrible game, I’m just magnifying its flaws.
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