What art style are they aiming for?

Some of the player summited art looks better than the other art, seriously, hire those guys!...

 

That's very shiny. Even under the pre-Alpha graphics, the armor sets and item models are looking pretty shiny for SotA.

As pointed out before, we're still WAY early in development phases, so don't expect to see out-the-door retail version polish quite yet.

 

I don't think Dark Souls a good example for a "game art style" for SoTA

Dark Souls has a very "linear world feel" in appearance and game play ... Don't get me wrong, Dark Souls has a rich environment but it is a very "dark world/grainy/granular world" - and there is also a lot lacking concerning enemy graphics - it is not polished in many aspects.

... however if you said make our dungeons/caverns have a Dark Souls feel to it I would be 75-80% in agreement with this

I do enjoy the main avatar of the game - movement in particular - but the game as an example for a "full world" seems too limited to game designed around dungeon crawl gameplay

As anyone played Shadow of the Colossus?

 

Me. Maybe a good example of graphics then would be "Drakensang the dark eye" is the game that looks more alike graphically to what they are doing atm (well maybe it looks even better).

I'm just replaying it, its a great german game, very underated id say... Similar to Baldurs Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age, The Temple of Elemental Evil etc.

 

I would concur. The game being raved about is nowhere near the actual product. Shoddy graphics chock full of glitches. Cruddy animations. Linear gameplay. Hideous PC port. For all intents and purposes, a really generic RPG.

The current habit of ranking other, far more worthwhile, RPGs against it as if it were a yardstick is amusing. Difficulty!=content or worth.

We can do better.

 

Shadow of the Colossus - didn't bring it up to say it was a good example - I brought it up because although it has its pluses the world design would not fit SoTA as well (at least not in whole)

- What specifically, concerning art, do you like about your video example?

My take: I'm looking at art style from 3 points of view - resource intensive, game design decisions and impact on game play and does it give me the "feeling" that I'm visiting a new world?

The main reason why a game with linear game play - Baldurs Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age - may not be the best examples - is that the art design is centered around a created "path" for the character ... exploration is limited and that affects the art and feel of the game

Creating a world where a player can go anywhere is a much harder challenge ... the examples that you site; a lot of the focus is on your avatar not necessarily the world ... which changes how we perceive the game ... its a much "zoomed in" feeling ... and the camera is fixed/over the shoulder

SoTA has a great challenge ahead of them do -

The biggest problem - concerning art and "feel" for SoTA has nothing to do with art itself - it has to do with the transition from hex to hex. Even if this game looks 100x better than Dragon Age - if transitions are slow, clunky or unpleasant people will get frustrated

In addition - if the world does not "fit together" - does not give off the appearance that you are traveling in a seamless world - the game will feel like a lot of instances thrown together

But if you look at the 3 towns - I think that they are beginning to demonstrate that they can give you "mood" (which I think Dark Souls does well)

- The new town which gives more of the feeling that you seem to prefer is an example of things to come and that they are possibly headed in the right direction

- at the moment I think that the camera of the game is a problem; it has a huge impact on game play and I think that it is something that they need to address immediately .... but I honestly don't know what the answer is - if they fix the camera behind your shoulder it may bring up other problems

But kingsport has a Neverwinter Nights 2 feel to it

How do you get that "path" feel while playing in a 360 world game?

Hopefully I made sense

 

Neverwinter Nights 2 has some awesome dark ambiental graphics just like the Witcher 1, that uses another of BioWare's engines similar to the one used for NWN2.