Is it me or Baldur's Gate look better than POE?

[sdunny]

Hey, thanks for your feedback.

 

We've referenced the old IE games a lot during the area creation process.  This includes going through and replaying them and having static screenshots up on our servers to look at.  We did make some different stylistic choices than were made with those games - a bit more realism in colors, textures, and design is one of those choices.  It may be that these choices are not as aesthetically appealing to you (or they may be more so, beauty is subjective like that).

Anyways, we've put a lot of consideration into how we wanted these areas to look.  There is generally a reason that an area will look a certain way.  We also have gone through a lot of places multiple times to improve upon the look and try to better make it fit the area's design needs.  In some cases screenshots or video that you're seeing is out of date - either new, improved renders were made, additional effects added, or the scene was given a paintover (or all of the above).  We also have been keeping some of the most impressive screens out of the public eye - a lot of the really cool set pieces play heavily into the story or are just something we don't want to spoil before it's encountered in game.

That being said, we do take concerns with the game's art seriously.  I appreciate any feedback that people have to give and we are working on improving more areas as much as possible before release (for example, working on character/3d object lighting has been a big part of my life the last couple of months).

 

Thanks,

-Sean.

[AndreaColombo]

Sean,

 

I just wanted to tell you that I'm personally in love with the looks of PoE and I greatly appreciate the realistic approach to graphic design you took. It is really refreshing in a world of cartoony over-the-top shenanigans like WoW's or FF's.

 

PoE is, as far as I'm concerned, what an IE game should look like nowadays.

 

Keep up the good work!

[Quantics]

I also want to say that from what I've seen so far, I *really* like the environment in PoE. 

 

Really looking forward to explore this world. 

[Forlorn Hope]

I also want to add that PoE looks very good, in fact better than I hoped. Cartoony games can be enjoyable but I like the realistic style more. Good job! I'm sure the final product will look superb. 

 

edit: I want to add that I do like the looks of Baldur's gate too

Edited February 9, 2015 by Forlorn Hope

[ryukenden]

Although I don't agree with all the points of the OP, there is some valid points that he is trying to make.

 

To me, The reason he might think that way is because Eternity is darker, as in the artwork is more realistic, the color pallet is more muted. Therefore, it looks more flat. 

 

To fix some of these problem, they need a bit of retouch on some existing maps and character portraits.. It can be done by giving the environment more vibrant.  Use richer colors.  Currently, it is missing that "glossy" look. I notice that the portrait for example is missing that "glow", which is found in old IE games. Its the lighting. Make the whites and dark stand out more to give the character a more three dimensional look. 

 

Stronger whites, stronger darks, more vibrant colors, and of course continue to work on that UI.  

[anameforobsidian]

I played the BG series and I have to say the PE shots blow it out of the water.  It would be inexcusable if it did not.  Technology has progressed considerably since then and it shows.  It would be inexcusable if PE was in an 800x600 window.

 

If you don't like the art-style choice then that's fine.  However, our imagination filled in the relatively rough details in the IE games, and so the more detail it has, the more dissonance you will notice.

 

Also, D:OS went for the cartoonishly lush and crowded which I personally don't think is superior to PE's more restrained setting.  It's obvious from looking at PE that the art team really knew where to crank up the detail to make things more impressive.

[Gromnir]

if poe doesn't look better than bg, we will be mighty disappointed. 

 

on the other hand, we thought that the artwork in iwd were fantastic.

 

from the beta, we can't claim to know much 'bout the art of poe as a whole. take a random wilderness map from bg and compare to dyrwood crossing.  given the 15 years between the release o' the games, one would expect poe to have many advantages over its more aged predecessor. sure enough, from a technical pov, poe wilderness looks better, but not monumental better.

 

so far we has seen kinda generic maps from poe... is nothing spectacular. am not gonna spoil, but in the beta there is one dungeon crawl map w/o an ogre that we is  finding kinda impressive as far as the aesthetic is concerned, even if there are too many spiders. that being said, we is hoping for more iwd level o' art. severed hand and black wolf temple and portions o' dorn's deep and wyrm's tooth were visually striking and memorable.  we ain't had a poe "wow" moment yet.

 

the thing is, as others have mentioned, art is so darned subjective.  am not a huge fan o' klimt either, although 1/2 o' the girls we knew in University had a print o' "the kiss" on their dorm room wall. am more o' an impressionists or post impressionist fan, but tastes is subjective.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited February 9, 2015 by Gromnir

[Quantics]

 am not a huge fan o' klimt either, although 1/2 o' the girls we knew in University had a print o' "the kiss" on their dorm room wall. am more o' an impressionists or post impressionist fan, but tastes is subjective.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Sensuki]

The beta also contains a few of the very first few areas from the game. There is a noticeable leap in quality between the Dyrford areas and Stormwall Gorge / Lle A Rhemen (and also differences in the art, because Dyrford stuff was Hector/Sean, Stormwall was outsourced (?) and Lle A Rhemen was done much later in production).

 

Of the areas we've seen so far, the Copperlane District is my favourite so far.

 

If Sean is still reading, I just wanted to ask whether every area in the game will have a paint over pass ?

Edited February 10, 2015 by Sensuki

[sdunny]

Thanks for the comments.

It can be a little tricky unifying work that comes in from multiple sources (especially outsourced work as they may have different workflows and different ways of doing things than we're used to).  The areas around Dyrford were actually the first ones made for the project.  The Temple of Skaen was literally the first area that I made that was not just a test scene.  As the project went along, we got faster and more experienced at making these areas and that allowed the designers more leeway when it came to how they laid out the areas and what exactly they could expect of the final results.

Not every area has had a paintover pass.  Because of the sheer number of areas in the game and the very, very small art team, we were not able to paint over every area.  Our goal was to make areas look as good as they could in the base render under the assumption that we would not be able to paint over them and then we made sort of executive decisions in terms of which areas we thought would benefit most from a paintover.  Most of the areas that have been seen have either not had a pass or only had very minor tweaks.

Because of the real-time lighting situation, we actually can be fairly limited in what we can do with a paintover.  My favorite IE games, visually, are absolutely IWD and IWD2.  Those games still look great and I reference their artwork frequently.  A lot of that work, however, was done in a paintover and they were capable of painting things that we cannot.  We need to be aware of height and normal information in addition to just the render itself.  This can make editing these scenes after the fact even more difficult and time-consuming than it would be otherwise.

All of us enjoy working in 2d and it's fun to get a chance to do a pass on areas, but we just don't have the time and manpower to devote to giving every area a paintover.

 

-Sean.

[Sensuki]

It's a shame that using real-time lighting cripples what you can do with a paint over The 3D lighting affecting the environments was never something I cared about personally, and in combat it's mostly just annoying/obscures units. It seems to really increase the size on disk (multiple renders required) as well.

 

I am the same - the IWDs have some excellent environments (The Astrolabe room is one of my favourites).

 

Hopefully the game sells well so a few more areas can be painted over in a patch or something ^^

Edited February 10, 2015 by Sensuki

[sdunny]

I'm from Minnesota, so I just appreciate anything that's covered in snow and ice.

It is too bad that we were somewhat hamstrung in terms of paintover stuff, but this was a very small project (relative to game development) and we had to be very careful in choosing where we spent our time.  I'm confident in the techniques that we've learned and refined and, like you said, there will hopefully be more time for this stuff in a future update.

Overall though, I'm very satisfied with the work we've done and I look forward to people getting to see the game as a whole.  I know we're not going to please everybody (the nature of life, especially game development) but I think there's a lot to like here.

[Rostere]

It can be a little tricky unifying work that comes in from multiple sources (especially outsourced work as they may have different workflows and different ways of doing things than we're used to).  The areas around Dyrford were actually the first ones made for the project.  The Temple of Skaen was literally the first area that I made that was not just a test scene.  As the project went along, we got faster and more experienced at making these areas and that allowed the designers more leeway when it came to how they laid out the areas and what exactly they could expect of the final results.

 

This sounds great. One of the most important points for me is that you have a fast, established pipeline for building areas for an expansion/sequel. As they say, content is king, and the more you are able to build, the better.

 

If BG2 was released today, areas like Umar Hills, Trademeet, Windspear Hills and de'Arnise Hold would have been DLC. As things happened, Bioware were able to release BG2 with a lot of content, creating the illusion of a open world in a story-driven RPG - essentially getting the best of two worlds. It is my hope that you, with future releases, will be able to surpass this amount of parallel content in a game which beats BG2 on story (at least the latter I'm 100% sure Obsidian can achieve).

[Sensuki]

Yeah Josh Sawyer said he was pretty confident you guys would be able to pump out some amazing environments for the expansion.

 

Going by what the BG/IWD etc credits say, it looks like you guys did extremely well for the amount of environments you were able to produce with 4 (or less people). I can only imagine what 5+ of you could do

[Justinian]

The thing that bothers me the most about the backgrounds is the strict adherence to an isomethric layout to all the buildings and rooms. One of the most striking features of the prerendered background to IE games was the irregular shaped dungeons and structures - Round, organic, oddly angled. It made the dungeons and buildings feel like they were real structures, instead of being constructed out of repeating tiles in a game editor.

 

Combined with the sparsely populated areas and overly expansive interiors (inns are supposed to feel cosy!!), POE feels way more artificial than the IE games.

[Sensuki]

The thing that bothers me the most is the lower camera angle outside, and the 16:9 aspect ratio exteriors like The Dyrford Crossing make exploration feel squished compared to the 4:3 layout of the BG/IWD maps.

 

Lle A Rhemen is pretty organic in design IMO.

Edited February 10, 2015 by Sensuki

[Gromnir]

 My favorite IE games, visually, are absolutely IWD and IWD2.  Those games still look great and I reference their artwork frequently.  A lot of that work, however, was done in a paintover and they were capable of painting things that we cannot.  We need to be aware of height and normal information in addition to just the render itself.  This can make editing these scenes after the fact even more difficult and time-consuming than it would be otherwise.

 

-Sean.

thanks. your response is reassuring and disappointing.  am glad that what you think is bestest ie artwork is in line with what Gromnir believes were the best ie art.  taste is subjective, but we applaud your taste eve so. conversely, am saddened to hear that in some ways, the excellence o' the ie environments is difficult to replicate for technical reasons.  

 

ah well. good luck... though am suspecting you is likely working on the expansion or some other project at this time.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps add more snow and ice.

 

http://thewayofbeauty.org/files/2010/06/turner-snowstorm.jpg

[Sensuki]

Sean is still on PE afaik, he was in the development meeting video from a few weeks ago. Probably doing ambient map, shadow map and lighting tweaks

 

If my bug report hasn't been put through already, there's a texture glitch on the road in the Dyrford Village that could use fixing up

Edited February 10, 2015 by Sensuki

[ryukenden]

I know that the devs are working  to polish the game but...

 

what exactly is being polish? (I don't want a list or anything, just the major ones). Will there be enough time to squeeze in some paintover? The more, the merrier. 

[ManifestedISO]

No way, an art thread where the William Turner hammer gets dropped like its hot. I am onboard.

 

 

Also, Klimt entirely meant for his piece to include a nerf herder and her royal highness, definitively. 

 

 

 

Nerds rule! Jocks drool!

 

 

 

[Sensuki]

Will there be enough time to squeeze in some paintover? The more, the merrier. 

 

I doubt it. Kaz is maxed out doing UI (and maybe portraits) and Lindsey is probably doing portraits.

 

Wish they had another 2D artist for PE. Hopefully for the expansion/sequel.

[ruzen]

Although It looks cool but I cant help to think after hearing about dynamic light, which took much of the devolopement time and has little use of gameplay elements.

Edited February 10, 2015 by ruzen

[Quantics]

Although It looks cool but I cant help to think after hearing about dynamic light, which took much of the devolopement time and has little use of gameplay elements.

 

I tend to agree with this as well. 

 

I'll reserve my final verdict for after I've played the full game, but at the moment I can't help but think the lighting system has been a strategical mistake – given the available resources and development time. 

 

But maybe it turns out to look completely amazeballs, in which case I'll happily admit I was wrong.

[AndreaColombo]

I too will wait and see, but I think dynamic lighting is a big part of what makes PoE look so good

[rjshae]

If nothing else, I have to say that the in-game characters in PoE look vastly better than in the IE games.