I mostly like where Diablo 2 sits, though I understand the need for certain effects to stand out in the chaos that is combat in a Diablo game. It should be used more sparingly than it was in Diablo 3 though.
Diablo 4 I feel is too desaturated. I get the effect they’re trying to go for, but desaturated colours have just never appealed to me. Give me some colour. You can have a dark game with colour.
That said sticking with what they’ve got(which I assume they’re going to do) isn’t going to ruin the game if it’s otherwise great.
I might have framed then illustrated it wrong. What I meant was, to me, if the game is bad there’s something more wrong with it than color for me in particular.
This is why I usually stay away from previews or this example or that example because it can put in my head that it’s disappointing before I even actually get a chance to play it. A screenshot doesn’t do a game justice most of the time. Is what I’m saying. If I had seen a screenshot of D2 with a side by side of say Act 1 and Act 2, I might have had second thoughts about buying it. Not that I wouldn’t have but that just looking at a particular part of the game without context isn’t always the best course.
I am someone who is naturally very focused on aesthetics and I am very aware of what I like and don’t like. Not saying that this is objective or that everyone also should like what I like, but I am speaking for myself here.
It would be like putting a somewhat photo-realistic image of rotten meat, or images of Soviet brutalist-style prefab buildings into my room.
They wouldn’t have shown what they have shown if they wouldn’t want us to get a sense of what the game is supposed to look lik, and also in various interviews they said that the game will tend much more towards the greyscale in regards to the color scheme, like this interview here:
Quote:
“We want to make a medieval masterpiece,” Murphy told Gamasutra. “It’s a very classical, painterly approach with naturalistic colors. We look at Rembrandt, we look at Remington’s nocturnals. There are natural color palettes and the tonalists like George Inness, which are very grayscale.”
I definitely agree with the latter two statements of yours.
With the first one I may would say that D4 looks too bright, as in that they made it look like the particles in the air are glowing.
I think that color and brightness, etc definitely contributes to the modd, the tone and the atmosphere, just like music does.
Search on YouTube for “movie scenes wrong music” and some examples will come up (some good, some less good, but this one here is a decent example).
I totally agree! It’s worse than still life. It brings a Rembrandt feeling, but forgets that the game is meant to bring joy to the player, not sadness.
Music and visuals aren’t the same. Yes, when they “match” it can be really good and when they don’t it can be really bad but that’s got to do with the difference between what you’re hearing and what you’re seeing.
The senses are too different to be comparable like apples and oranges. It’s not a good example where something doesn’t match something else.
As far as, game play footage, it’s also out of context most of the time because of time restraints or one part or another isn’t complete. Also Gameplay videos are meant to illustrate mechanics not the colors. I mean to me that is. To you folks it might be different.
And that’s fine and all. Which is why I had stated that I liked it because it emphasizes the world’s current state. Imo, going Diablo 2 artstyle wouldn’t had accomplish that, nor would Diablo 3 would. If the developers are telling us that the land has been abandoned by hope, then I need to see it, which the Diablo 4 artstyle/color scheme does well imo. Now if you don’t like it then that’s fine, that’s your opinion, however others don’t share that view.
Like this one where it’s not as grey as most of the other areas shown, and instead mostly dark: https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/gallery/WWC9XB8OY24Y1593029848293.jpg
I also want to say, which might diminish everything else I’ve said to you so far…
I loved and played D2 for years, but I’ve also played D3 for now 7 years. I won’t say one or the other is better. They both are cool to me.
But this is from a guy who has only played games in the Diablo Series. Diablo way back in the day, Diablo 2 for close to a decade, and now Diablo 3 for nearing that same amount of time. But that’s it.
I take Diablo games as I find them. I’ve yet to play a bad one and I’m confident it will be the same with D4.
It is just like D2’s oroginal cover art that you can see in my original post.
It is dark and has (medium saturated) colors.
Things can even be painterly and still dark, both in the use of colors as well as psychologically.
I can understand and respect that.
For me as a naturally more aesthetic focused person (with my own preferences), I put a much higher importance on that the game has a style that I like than maybe many other people.
See my answer to Cyonan above this quote of yours, as the same answer applies here.
This here might be a better example:
Happy Tree Friends VS Batman - the Animated Series VS Death Dealer
They are all a different kind of darkness.
I know that it is a matter of taste, but there are always people that forget that, which is why I emphasize it often.
That is a small room and most of the overworld is still very, very bright (in regards to lightning) and very grey, and even a lot of the dungeons have this “bright lightning that makes the air glowing effect”.
Looking at the gameplay trailer and the rogue’s gameplay trailer, I see plenty of parts of the overworld that aren’t uncharastically bright while the dungeon-like areas possess the seemingly right amount of darkness to them. Now if you want darkness at every corner, that’s where an optional settings can come in and make the difference imo.
I like a good aesthetic in any game but how much I care about it depends on the game. Diablo is a very combat oriented game for me, so I’m very focused on gameplay and character building.
Though I’d still prefer a bit more saturation in the colours, up to Diablo 2 level.
The differences between those three styles a bit skewed to me. Loved B: TAS. So naturally, that’s going to be the one I prefer. The Death Dealer is also something I’ve read, and it was the story that I found entertaining not the the colors, if the story was bad, I might be less inclined to give it a good mark. The other, I’ve never heard of but the imagery is sort of funny so I’d have to see more to really know if I’d liked it or not.
That’s not to say that that first one isn’t a good representation of something like Whimsydale. But it’s more like my feelings about D2 Act 2. Not exactly like them but sort of. But it’s also like the original Teen Titans and Teen Titans go. Teen Titans was dark with a bit of humor thrown in while Teen Titans Go is basically all humor all the time. But you know what, I’ve watched them both. Plenty of times, I’ll watch a news channel in the morning and eventually I’ll change it Teen Titans in the morning after one show I watch or another is over.
So it’s kind of like Diablo to me. One is really cool and fun, and the other is sort of cool but really really fun. Neither is really better than the other in my opinion.
and colors are so easy to change, a play d3 with 50%/70% saturation/brightness since its release.
My whimsydale look like a creepy toy factory straight out of Child’s Play 2.
I agree that d3 colors are not the problem, the WoWzation of everything else that is not “fixable” through my GPU drivers is the real problem
Gosh if d3 had an offline SP option i would mod the sh*t out of it!
Yeah, there were some that had a bit more saturation, while many of the other ones they have shown there still look bleak and depressing, at least for my taste.
It is not necessarily that, it is rather that I would like the brightness to be tuned down, as it causes the game to look much more grey than it already is…
… but I have to admit, I like the contrast of blackness / darkness with medium saturated colors in general.
Yeah, the combat, the character building and progression, the items are all important, but for me the aesthetics, the visuals and things like that are basically on the same level.
It is a show called Happy Tree Friends, which is kinda gorey, silly/flimsy humor, that portrays extremely violent and gruesome stuff in a comicy style with a flimsy and silly tone to it, so irony and absurdity is a large theme here.
Now imagine that Batman TAS and Death Dealer also have such an art style to them. Not speaking of the flimsy/silly tone for now, just the art style. I would strongly argue that such an artstyle would have drastically shifted of how Batman TAS and Death Dealer would be perceived, and that even without taking the flimsy/silly tone into account.
I haven’t seen these, so I can’t talk much about that, but I get your point.
What for me is one artstyle versus another artstyle, might for you be like one franchise versus another, like imagine they would turn Batman into something like Dr. Phil or Judge Judy or Formular 1 or something else that you may not like… that is how the change to D4’S current artstyle is too me in a way.
Do you use a (third-party) shader or just tune down the brightness/contrast/etc in the option menu?
I would like to see some screenshots.
Towards these things I have been vocal about as well.
The color scheme and the bright shiny neon colors, etc are just one issue that D3 has.
In a way, it has, but only on console.
I also modded D2 by a decent amount. From what I have seen and heard from the the D3 devs, making certain changes to D3 is much easier than it was in D2, at least with the D3 developer tools, and making basic changes (like weapon damage, mana costs, cooldowns, affixes on items, etc) in D2 was already fairly easy.
There is also a brief glance you can get in how these D3 dev tools work in the Making of Diablo 3 documentary. Maybe I post a screenshot here of how that tool looked like if I find the particular part in the video…
Nice use of the cover art as an illustrating metaphor. Personally, I really dislike the art style of D4. D3 is done right (well to a degree). The stained glass window motif used in earlier D4 visuals is really unappealing. The colors are washed out because many of them are pastel, grey filtered, or dumbed down in number of colors, stained, or purposefully darken. The art style looks ghetto-fied, hobo-field, and drab. My first impression was a PoE copy cat. The starter gear one encounters in that game is ugly grey/brown. The environment in the starter areas looks like it was intensionally dumbed down to reduce the time to render. D4 looks like it was copying that same style.
Play PoE with a fresh character for 4 hours, then comeback and play a level 70 full geared character. The impression you should have is that PoE looks like the art is still in beta, as in it is unfinished.
I know Blizz wants D4 to have its unique art style, but I hope they take lessons from D3. The art style doesn’t is a major negative. If I’m going to put 1000+ hours in a game it should not have a constant yuk factor.
I get that. It’s basically like turning on Discovery ID which is basically a channel dedicated to True Crime and finding a cartoon on it. Just sort of not what you were expecting.
I tried it as good as I could with the limited tools I had available, so it is not a 100% accurate, but it should convey the point somewhat well.
I also dislike it
Are you referring to this image here?
But you are right, now that I think about it, it is not just washed out and too much on a grey-scale, but it also feels kinda unnatural / forced, if you know what I mean…
“Drab” is a word I previously did not knew, but yes, that also fits very well to describe D4’s color scheme. It is just not really appealing.
It reminded me of PoE as well. To me it looks like a mix of PoE, Grim Dawn and Lost Ark, with more of a focus on PoE, just with much more washed out and drab colors.
There issues that I have with PoE, including the setting which is too technological for my taste, the needlessly large skill tree, and the gameplay and animations feeling too clunky, but also the brightness and sharpness of the visuals.
Yeah, that is a good analogy. It is very much like that.
Rembrandt paintings when finally photographed in color were covered in four centuries of grime and varnish. None of them I’m aware of were restored to their original colors.
