What kind of artstyle do you prefer to see in Neverwinter Nights?

mhroczyn

Hello everyone. After seeing Aribeth's new model I've started to wonder do I like it or not? And I came to asking myself (despite the fact I really do appreciate work Beamdog team put into it and knowing that in the future they're planning to update more models) do I or community really want to see this game following this kind of cartoonish artistic style?

Think about it in this way; Baldur's Gates I & II, both Icewind Dales and mostly Torment, not to mention the obvious NWN, were kept in kinda rough, cold not to say rustical (but still beautiful) artstyle which when combined together provided amazing atmosphere and immersion. I really hope that developers will stick to this route. Even NWN2 with much more colourful palette still wasn't cartoonish. And MotB? Piece of art.
Lets look at titles such as World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, Sword Coast Legends or sth new such as Divinity - Original Sin 2. Divinity is amazing I admit it but cartoonish style isn't something that I find plausible. Maybe others had the same thoughts that's why I've started this poll. Also I'm aware that during some livestream it was mentioned that the 5th D&D edition is made in cartoonish style and they prefer to follow this route but NWN is still based on 3.5 edition.

Now just imagine how amazing it would be to see Neverwinter Nights 3/Baldur's Gate 3 with fully supported toolset in Witcher 3 like graphic. After all Witcher 1 was made in Aurora Engine.

Have in mind that the purpose of this poll is not to discuss new models overall "appearnace" and it's consistence with original model or portraits aka Aribeth's face comparison - just the artstyle.

Dark_Ansem

Cartoonish is a bane,

1varangian

I don't think the point of an EE is to change the art style. And I do hate all things cartoony. I prefer stylized realism for RPGs. For reference, Dragon Age Inquisition looks great even though it sucks as a game.

Mirandel

We can not hope to get NWN at the graphic level of DAI (or DAO, or even NWN2), hence, any "realistic" model will continue to look horrific. To look anywhere closer to normality at this level of graphic it has to be stylized.

1varangian

The new Hall of Justice and Aribeth are on par with Origins and look better than NWN2. Origins actually had some really horrible low res textures so maybe its a step up from DAO too.

Zwerkules

I agree that there are horrible low res textures in DAO (or worse hi-res textures that were so bad that they appeared lo-res), same as in NWN2.

Mirandel

It's not about textures (that can be added at any point, there are beautiful textures from modders made years ago). It's about models, animation and many other things. You can put any textures you want over lego cube - it remains lego. So does any model in NWN - they are as "natural" in pretense to be realistic.

booinyoureyes

Am I the only one who prefers Baldur's Gate 2 graphics over all others? Something about the top down approach reminds me of a moving oil painting.

Sometimes the more "realistic" a game looks, the less immersion I feel. Even great graphics cannot mimic real life. The proximity to real world looks serves only to highlight how different a game is, making you keenly aware that something is "off" here.

For some reason I am most immersed in IWD:EE. The look just brings you into a perfect fantasy setting without even trying to appear "realistic". It's an oil painting of a medieval setting in motion, and that works very well for me.

Mirandel

booinyoureyes said:

Am I the only one who prefers Baldur's Gate 2 graphics over all others? Something about the top down approach reminds me of a moving oil painting.

Sometimes the more "realistic" a game looks, the less immersion I feel. Even great graphics cannot mimic real life. The proximity to real world looks serves only to highlight how different a game is, making you keenly aware that something is "off" here.

For some reason I am most immersed in IWD:EE. The look just brings you into a perfect fantasy setting without even trying to appear "realistic". It's an oil painting of a medieval setting in motion, and that works very well for me.

I begin to think there is a misunderstanding here. I did not read "pre NWN:EE" as "hand painted isometric view BG style" but rather got it as "NWN building blocks style". With the first option as something moving away from generic DIY tool with it's uncanny valley.

FreshLemonBun

I think there's some amount of jumping the gun when I read comments on the art style. As far as I know Beamdog expressed that they were showing work in progress, seeing what kind of content their very recent graphics improvements could render.

I also notice that the poll doesn't seem to have an option for a realism style. While some games like World of Warcraft specifically used a cartoonish style, games like NWN didn't pick a style as much as that was more or less the limit of game rendering at the time. A game like NWN compared to a contemporary rpg like morrowind has a similar style limit, or compared to a realistic fps of the era like Halo it doesn't look too far off in style considering the emphasis in an fps is cutting edge graphics. If you look at NWN2 in comparison to games like Oblivion or Fallout 3 you can see that NWN2 deviates far more, with the fps genre leaving all those titles far behind by this point. Since palettes were mentioned I would like to say that unlimited palette choices is not better, it's actually worse because you risk untrained and unskilled ppl picking colors that clash horribly in an extremely jarring way. NWN2 multiplayer is often plagued by this problem because most servers all use the same unlocked palettes for characters and outfit coloring, looking very unrealistic and jarring.

I think that if NWN was made today it would have a somewhat realistic "fantasy" style similar to contemporary rpg's like Witcher 3, Nier Automata, Monster Hunter World, and Middle Earth Shadow of War.

InflatableFriend

So the options are A: Western Cartoon, C: Asian Cartoon and B: Unspecific magical style that's somehow all of the old pixelated low resolution low polyness, but with none of those defining/limiting factors. To quote

Nu Rave: Combining elements of the past and the future to make something not quite as good as either.

I've had clients like you

I've always felt that NWN had a rather cartoonish style right from the start, it's full of exageration and overblown proportions.

I think the path most likely to be taken is in slightly stylised realism falling in the NWN2, DAO/I, Witcher camps.

That said..... The most recent live stream showed us an updated player model that looked like a straight update of the old NWN models - At a distance it looked very much like the originals but up close it had all the new fancymaps and a much higher polycount. It was an impressive interpritation of the origional work, so you may have your option B after all

Lastly, Mirandel, the usable polycount for models is already much, much higher. Witcher 1 content has been available (without fancymaps) for many years, so we know the old engine is (maps aside) unsurprisingly on par with that prior to any of the EE changes.

Maps do most of the work in changing blocky lego into smooth awesomeness, fancymaps on the existing content will make a big difference, fancymaps on new meshes will make a huge one.


Alright it's Witcher 3 so the polycount is likely 2-3 times what you'd expect the max to be in EE (a lot of that's the head though, that face has a lot of detail). Polycount remains the same from Left to Right, showing base mesh, smoothing groups, normal/displacement, everything.

Mirandel

@InflatableFriend I like everything you say (and even understand some of it) but my impression was the very idea of NWN-EE is "to change without changing", so any mod (including graphical) from NWN should continue to work with NWNEE. Already we have complains that EE PW will not run on rusty toasters with early Win XP on them.

Hence, I would not expect heavy changes in maps (and particular in models) that would "ruin player base". As awesome as new Aribeth looks, it's still - as you said - "at a distance looks very much like the originals" and only up close you can see that pretty picture painted over crude blocks. Better than nothing but as far from modern games as original.

So, switching to a new style - more simplistic but because of it more flexible too - to me sounds like a good idea. But I can be mistaken, can admit it right away.

FreshLemonBun

Essentially if Beamdog puts the graphics technology in the engine but refuses to create content that the community wants to use, and the community is still active, then the community will make the semi-realistic models and the Beamdog models will largely fall out of favor.

Libertyisback

I dont like Witcher's style - i dont like the ultra realistic art which comes with things like Assassins Creed (it is kind of like Witcher, right?).

To keep the fantasy feel, i prefer leaning towards more cartoonish/anime style-- more like Prince of Persia 3 or even WoW. I favour this also with the hope it can be made to be less demanding on computer hardware specs, but im not sure if this is possible.


edit: and yes Torchlight is lovely, as mentioned below.

voidofopinion

I think NWN would look beautiful cel shaded with potato textures much like Torchlight.

mhroczyn

Libertyisback said:

I dont like Witcher's style - i dont like the ultra realistic art which comes with things like Assassins Creed (it is kind of like Witcher, right?).

For all of those writting about "realistic, ultra realistic" graphic - NOT cartoonish/anime doesn't mean realistic it simply mean what it suppose to mean NOT cartoonish. About the Witcher (which doesn't have "ultra realistic" graphic btw) it was just an example, just check those titles for what it mean to not be cartoonish and still not being realistic: Mass Effect 1, Pillars of Eternity, Thief Deadly Shadows, Diablo 2, Styx, BioShock, Unreal Tournament, Gothic I&II, Dragon Age, Divinity II: Ego Draconis, Skyrim, Oblivion etc. list could go on for hours.

mhroczyn

Also I do not hate cartoon graphic. For example Fable 1 & 2 belong to one of my fovourite games and if you'll manege to find sth more cartoonish (despite the obvious of course) I'll... do nothing:) That was just my short inside. Still it pains me to see beautiful artstyle being replaced by nowadays omnipresent trends.

Libertyisback

that's a really big and wide list --- but actually, i tend to dislike gfx in most games after nwn. i dont know why, but sometime after nwn, many popular game artstyles just went down what i call "dark zombie route" (grim/gritty?). So i find it is easier to pick out artstyles i like, and everything else is in my "erm not so nice" bag.

i didnt like Morrowind, Skyrim or Oblivion styles by the way. I feel they were trying to depict reality. Whereas what im after is fantasy, slightly exaggerated features, colours etc

artstyles i like:
1) Torchlight
2) Fate
3) Aion
4) Regnum (maybe not enough detail, but i like this clean cut look)
5) NWN (with a bit more lean to colour and anime)
6) WoW
7) GTA 3+ (esp GTA Vice, skip the ghetto greys)
etc

I wonder if cartoonish style gfx is less demanding on gfx cards.

FreshLemonBun

I think you have to remember that graphics were limited and the most "photo realistic" products around that time don't actually look realistic. In that sense they were closer to the realism trend than they were to the cartoon trend of the time. It doesn't make much sense to switch that with the enhanced version. Then again popular cartoonish and anime games of today made with 3D graphics tend towards much higher fidelity and realism than NWN but that's purely because graphics technology has changed so much.