The Larry Elmore art of the 1983 D&D basic 'red box' was directly responsible for certain major paths I would take in my life. It had a massive impact on the 8 year old me. It's now something I can point to as being directly responsible for getting me involved in gaming, fantasy and eventually majoring in fine arts & illustration years ago.
Art is important. To me, it's clearly very important.
With that in mind, I'd like to ask about the art direction for Pathfinder Online. Will we see a strong Wayne Reynolds influence, as we do in the books? I personally think his strong style suits existing Pathfinder works perfectly and also feel it would translate very well into 3D graphics (wait, it IS 3D, right?), provided caution is used to avoid overly cartoonish results and a more styelized flavor could be achieved.
So, I'd like to ask: Where are we on that front? Has conceptual work even started yet, and if so, is there anything that can be shared with us in terms of what to expect regarding art direction?
Thanks
Goblin Squad Member
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Thank you, thank you, thank you! The not-quite-a-comic-book art style in the books goes really well with the slightly gritty, slightly dark style of the setting/writing.
On a slightly different topic, this has me thinking about the graphics engine. Which one should PFO use to render the game? Although 2D graphics can look good, especially with the resolution/detail you can get in a spritesheet nowadays, I think PFO is more suited to 3D; I like being able to rotate the camera in every direction, especially in a game with open PvP.
I'm personally voting for some cel-shading. Although a truly cartoony look would go against Pathfinder's style, a little bit of cel shading would help keep the graphics from looking obsolete, especially in two or three years.
I'm very interested in art style/direction. Blizzard do an overall excellent job, I recently played D3 and was very impressed by the looks. Guild Wars 2 has a very nice aesthetic (haven't played it). For me at least, the stylized designs win out vs. the realistic ones. However some things like weapons so big they could never be wielded (even in magical settings) do bother me.
@Valkaern, I loved that box art too.
@Arbalester, I hope the graphics are 3d and don't try too hard to be next gen.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, it's very much appreciated.
Arbalester, there was a thread some time ago in which they mentioned some engines on the short list, I think Hero engine came up as a primary candidate, I think there was another I can't recall at the moment as well.
I'll see if I can find it.
Here it is:
Kryzbyn wrote:
Can you discuss which engines are in the running?
Mark Kalmes (CTO, Goblinworks) Nov 23, 2011, 08:22 PM:
The big MMO engines: BigWorld, HeroEngine. We also have a few other options that we'd like to explore.