This feedback is based on watching a bunch of the "Alpha with the Devs" videos from the past few months.
I wish there was more of a signature art style to the world art and, especially, the character art. To me they read mostly as realism without having much of a chosen art style. I realize it's probably too late to deeply question the direction of the game's art, but I bring this up in case any Pantheon devs agree with the critique and if they think there are some tweaks that could be done to layer in some stylization. I think the issue particularly affects character models, which are far less stylized than something like EQ1's characters. When I look at a character in Pantheon, in terms of art style (not character concept) it looks like it could come from many other MMOs.
Also -- and this is a related point I think -- the game in general looks quite dark. Even when you're outside, there's something dark about the lighting, shadows, and the materials. In the outdoor zones, even during the day things like the grass and dirt paths use fairly muted colors, and the shadows everywhere are very dark. EQ1 was much brighter and while this game doesn't need to be EQ1 in all ways, I do think that many of the post-EQ mmos have gone for too dark a look (EQ2, Vanguard, etc.), either deliberately or in some cases it could be because new lighting technology just made dark-ish shadows everywhere and it wasn't reined in.
I'm not arguing for the cartooniness of WoW. But part of EQ1's appeal, I think, was its art stylization. The slight stylization EQ1 had gave Norrath a unique feel and helped immerse you in its fantasy world. EQ1 wasn't even heavily stylized, and from what I've seen Pantheon is much less than that.
I can't go into details right now, but I can say this: recently we've been able to bolster our team size (thanks both to how well crowdfunding is doing combined with some timely assistance from accredited investors who share our vision of an MMO Renaissance). We decided right away that most of these resources would slot into our art and world building teams. We've also been updating our engine to keep up with the latest enhancements to Unity. Finally (and this is a big deal), we're at the point where we have the time, talent, and resources to dig deeper into visuals programming and the technical side of art (lighting, custom shaders, etc.).
What this means at the high level: we have a lot more concept art being created to help our artists bring both amazing creativity and detail to the world but also a consistency and degree of art direction that has been lacking. In addition to more character art, more environment art, and more concept art, and in addition to more coherent and big picture art direction, the overall visual quality and the representation of both our amazing and detailed world and its inhabitants is going up, big time. Upgrades to the Unity engine as well as our own custom visual tech are also big pieces of this delightful puzzle -- the look and feel, what makes the game Pantheon as opposed to a collection of art assets, and the unification of what is both classic and also modern has begun.
When we're ready to start revealing all of this, I think your concerns above will be more than addressed. When and how we start this reveal is TBD... it may be screenshots first, then a video, and then a stream, or it could all be in a different order... we have some time and options here and want to reveal this significant jump in a way that gives us all the biggest bang for our buck. I'd also like to stress that, as exciting as all of this is, it's also just the beginning... the genesis of what's to come. We're not talking about just one visual jump, but rather a series of jumps up to and beyond launch. Likewise, with our next major milestone being bringing outside people into the game to get testing underway, you can be assured that bolstering our art effort has in no way taken away from gameplay and programming or content creation and tools. In all ways we are making measurable forward progress and we look forward to sharing it with all of you.
Aradune said:I can't go into details right now, but I can say this: recently we've been able to bolster our team size (thanks both to how well crowdfunding is doing combined with some timely assistance from accredited investors who share our vision of an MMO Renaissance). We decided right away that most of these resources would slot into our art and world building teams. We've also been updating our engine to keep up with the latest enhancements to Unity. Finally (and this is a big deal), we're at the point where we have the time, talent, and resources to dig deeper into visuals programming and the technical side of art (lighting, custom shaders, etc.).
What this means at the high level: we have a lot more concept art being created to help our artists bring both amazing creativity and detail to the world but also a consistency and degree of art direction that has been lacking. In addition to more character art, more environment art, and more concept art, and in addition to more coherent and big picture art direction, the overall visual quality and the representation of both our amazing and detailed world and its inhabitants is going up, big time. Upgrades to the Unity engine as well as our own custom visual tech are also big pieces of this delightful puzzle -- the look and feel, what makes the game Pantheon as opposed to a collection of art assets, and the unification of what is both classic and also modern has begun.
When we're ready to start revealing all of this, I think your concerns above will be more than addressed. When and how we start this reveal is TBD... it may be screenshots first, then a video, and then a stream, or it could all be in a different order... we have some time and options here and want to reveal this significant jump in a way that gives us all the biggest bang for our buck. I'd also like to stress that, as exciting as all of this is, it's also just the beginning... the genesis of what's to come. We're not talking about just one visual jump, but rather a series of jumps up to and beyond launch. Likewise, with our next major milestone being bringing outside people into the game to get testing underway, you can be assured that bolstering our art effort has in no way taken away from gameplay and programming or content creation and tools. In all ways we are making measurable forward progress and we look forward to sharing it with all of you.
The first streams showed a very basic game, but every stream past then has given us more and more detail in the world. Honestly reading this post that basically says "we weren't even trying yet" makes me very excited about whats to come in the future. Thank you for taking a minute to write a post for us!
