As crazy as it sounds, is BotW one of the greatest looking games ever made, from an artistic standpoint...

As crazy as it sounds, is BotW one of the greatest looking games ever made, from an artistic standpoint? It just looks far more creative and interesting than most other games out.

>woah a forest....with fog

nope

Nah, Witcher 3 was way more vibrant and it was somewhat grounded in reality with better textures and visual effects.

The issue with BOTW is its blurry as fuck and always has this nasty green fog/tint simialr to Fallout 3 vanilla. It looks disgusting.

You're retarded.

dude, woah, like there is a forest and a fog

lolno

Don't know about that, but it's a pretty fun game

I liked them both desu

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Breath of the Wild does look fantastic some of the time, but I wouldn't call it the best or "one of the best". It's good, though. Especially the grass.

I'd say I liked Xenoblade Chronicles X's look more. The resolution isn't great and the human character models are kinda doughy, but the variety and creativity seen within the overworld and it's indigenous inhabitants is amazing.

Yes. Akkala was jaw-dropping for me the entire time I was in the area.

Yeah, it is.

It's definitely up there as one of the most impressive looking 3D games. It just gets so much shit by people on Sup Forums because it's extremely popular and critically well-received. There are some areas that don't look as good as the rest, but the vast majority looks amazing. But I do wish there was more variety in the way the inside of the shrines look. They all have the same future-fantasy-tech theme.

>BotW
>greatest ANYTHING
how underage do you even have to be to unironically think this "game" is anything more than another shitty huge open sandbox?

This. Xenoblade and Xenoblade X, and soon Xenoblade 2, are the gods of interesting, unique worlds.

What is this, Firewatch?

honestly bethesda should hire monolith to help make the next TES game, then maybe Valenwood or Argonia won't be a complete disappointment

>It's good, though. Especially the grass.
And anywhere there isn't grass, you see the godawful flat ground textures.

It's back enough when you're scaling flat stretched rock textures on every cliff.

That looks awful.

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its a timeless artstyle.

If it didn't look washed out half the bloody time, maybe.

There are far too few places like the lost woods in the game, and there should have been more. Places where you actually feel like you are somewhere, instead of just a random place on the map with some randomly placed trees

It isn't that the style is more "creative" or "interesting," it's just that the vibrant colors and cartoon-esque cel shading perfectly evoke the tone of wonder and exploration that the game is going for.

There are other games with far better textures, effects, engine tech, etc. There are games that have far more creative environments. But not every game perfectly capitalizes on its art style, or its art style is incongruous with its tone. BotW is not one of those games.

Beautiful

I think previous Zelda games looked better.

>instead of just a random place on the map with some randomly placed trees

BotW doesn't have too many areas that really stand out in the overworld, but no way in hell is anything "randomly placed". This is the most carefully pieced-together overworld ever made.

It's going to be a while before another game matches this.

making things intentionally poor looking doesn't inherently make it artistic.

In terms of being carefully pieced-together, nothing still beats Grand Theft Auto 4.

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>poor looking
Doing a great job fitting in on your first day kid.

>uses kid as an insult
If you're going to try and insult someone at least don't look like you have no argument. OP asked a question and I answered.

It's really nice. For once it got me to stop thinking about the technical aspects, except for the unpatched frame drops and occasional pop-in. There's a lot of really beatiful moments and they're pulled off with simple graphics.

Witcher fags like you is why i've boycott all western games.

Anyone have the image of like 20 different screens of BotW put together to show how diverse it looks?

shame the gameplay is trash

Yes. Hear me out.

There's a severe lack of "imaginative fun" from AAA western devs nowadays. It's usually just either one or the other with realism or all out Disney/Pixar cartoon aesthetic, most of which people go with the former. Then there's the western indies who majorly think of artstyle as either a crutch, an aesthetic, or an expression but unlike BotW, wasn't consciously decided to make the game look "fun".

Cuphead's artstyle was done for the fun of watching old cartoons. Journey, Ori, these artsy games made their choice because of expression. Nothing wrong with it. It's just that there's not many people in the gaming industry deciding to switch up their artstyle because the crutch called "realism" or "limitation" is there for them to lean back on, either for convenience or excuses.

Will you see Uncharted in Wind Waker toon artstyle? Definitely not.

T. Never played BOTW

Gigantic did the art-style better. It just needs better textuires, just like BOTW.

You answered with an incorrect opinion.

>the vibrant colors
u w0t m8?

It looks fine, gets the job done well. Nothing too special.

>Cherrypicking
You proud of yourself, buddy?

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Yup, the art design is top notch, sad to see it perform like shit on the Switch. Same with Bloodborne on the PS4.

Art direction is one of the most important things, most game nowadays just copy pasta the art design over and over.

What an ugly hud

Maybe, although it is serviceable. You can turn it off too so there's nothing on-screen except hearts.

I'm really not.

This, Mira is phenomenal. Can't wait for xenoblade 2 or future MS games

Not at all. It's very inconsistently stylized compared to, say, Wind Waker. Some areas look great but some look just awful. Though to be fair Wind Waker was not a true open world game, the ocean was basically a big blue loading screen.

I could not disagree more. Everything in BotW looks cohesive, whereas Wind Waker's cel-shading on simplistic characters with shitty poorly filtered environmental textures drives me nuts.

>its literally a flat open plain with 3 unique locations in the background
damn thats kinda sad. this is only like a 5th of the game right? seems rather small and basic.

>Hyrule Castle
>some towers
>Death Mountain
>fuckall between it

>this is only like a 5th of the game right?
Less

I played the game for 50+ hours if not more (haven't checked in a while) and I haven't revealed the whole map yet. It's fucking gigantic.

I'm a PC uck and I have to admit that the picture in the OP is absolutely beautiful.

The game is shit though

I don't think it's all that creative or amazing in terms of ideas, it's just superbly executed with exceptional polish, and an artstyle that's really going to hold up, just like Wind Waker before it.

By far the best grass though.

I find the character designs and animations even better than the environments. Impressed with the quality and amount of unique NPC designs, and most of them are super-charming in their own way.

That is the opposite of vibrant. It looks washed out.

>BOTW is blurry as fuck
>always has this nasty green fog

thanks for confirming you haven't played the game

Why would it be crazy? Zelda has historically been the cutting edge series whenever it comes to graphics. Especially when you consider the content density they boast.
>first Zelda game was very good-looking for such a huge game.
>Zelda II basically invented the look of Final Fantasy and the Ys games.
>ALttP was mind-blowing in its day
>nobody even knew the Gameboy was capable of rendering LA.
>Ocarina of Time was the first game in history with face animations and a cacophony of cinematographic elements like free-roaming camera (cutscenes), etc. Not to mention was the best-looking game at least until the Dreamcast excluding maybe SF64 and Banjo.
>Wind Waker is still the most gorgeous game OAT.
>TP was pretty mindblowing, sans the fact that Nintendo postponed it until after the Xbox 360.

Of course Nintendo couldn't compete during the Wii era, but there's no reason to ignore the history that's there.

Nah, it's just your fanboism talking

Both Xenoblade and Botw would have benefited from having a stronger console.

Xenoblade looks great, but the land is unchanging, and unclimbable. Like you're walking in a picture. It looks great, but you can't change anything.

What's even worse is the draw distance. Grass, land, and NPCs all appear out of no where, even with the full game loaded on the console.

BOTW looks great, but its highest resolution is 900p and it suffers from a horrible draw distance as well. It also has no AA or AF, which would have improved the game by a lot.

Aside from their flaws, they both have great artstyle that truely shine from time to time.

That's what I'm saying. The pics I posted are an argument against the supposed 'vibrant colors'. Most of what I've seen of BotW looks washed out like that, and it's the saturated screenshots that look cherry picked.

BOTW is the GOAT, but people will deny that because "open world meme" and the fact that it sold well

Oh shit, I see the problem, I quoted myself instead of the guy saying I was cherry picking. Whoops.

"washed out"

niggers that know nothing about art.

BOTW choose a serene impressionistic art style which avoids deep blacks. Like a water color painting. It relies more on cohesion of composition and color rather than contrast.

We don't shade with blacks because it looks horrible.

This is your brain in fanboyism

>in
why are all nintendo haters foreigners

>Zelda has historically been the cutting edge series whenever it comes to graphics.
Imagine believing this.

are your mad?

is just a game

Damn it Linky...

Are you high?

It's about one step removed from pic related

Everyone complaining about GoW graphics is stupid. Put the shader setting on "vibrant", dumbasses.

I'm a little disappointed that all of the dungeons are just magitech aesthetic. I liked different types of dungeons in the previous titles.

Depends, are you comparing it to other 3D games or counting 2d and older games in general.
In case of 3D and modern games, sure, it has pretty good art direction that makes it stand out, it's no Okami but it's good.

That is a totally different direction compared to BOTW.

BOTW is literally the opposite of that. BOTW is full colors and they use complementary colors very well.

The shrines shines in orange because that is a complementary colors to blue. The whole game is a green tinge filter on and that is analogous to blue. Reds and oranges esp shines like neons.

This one is all monochromatic with barely any colors.

Every picture and video I've ever seen of this game looks like it has a thin layer of vaesline spread over the screen.

>Chromatic aberration.
>Blurry and muddy as fuck vignette effect.
>Ugly skyrim-tier environment maps that make everything look wet.
>Gears of war color pallet.
DaS3 and BB are ugly as fuck.

>Fucking Witcher/westernfags is right and IT PISSES ME OFF SO MUCH! So I made it my mission to be complete contradictory to anything they say, never play those games, and hate them no matter what to spite them!

Hire for what? Have you ever looked at tes concept art? And I don't mean just art books that only have select concepts so people don't get mad with missed opportunity.
For example, Adam Adamowicz family released all of his concepts for Skyrim after he died of cancer, the sheer imagination and missed opportunities for both design, gameplay and aesthetics is staggering, I can post some stuff.
Bethesda does not have issues with creative staff, they have good artists and can get kirkbride if they would want Morrowind atmosphere and writing.
It's a conscious decision on their part not to make tes that unique because Todd is a faggot.

>It's a conscious decision on their part not to make tes that unique because Todd is a faggot.
It's because Todd hires friends and family over talent. Bethesda's teams is the actual definition of incompetant.

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I'm more curious about why you know what vaseline on screen looks like.
Care to tell us the story?

It makes pretty good use of distance haze, gives the environments more depth and scale (of course there's hazy/foggy weather as well).

Are you retarded?

Wait, there's hazier and foggier weather in BotW? Why?

>It's because Todd hires friends and family over talent.
You don't know shit about Bethesda team and development process it goes through. Bethesda has a lot of talented developers and artists working in it, all of which is completely fucked because of the way Bethesda is managed and decisions that Todd Howard makes as the head.
Case in point, originally Dragonsreach was supposed to be built on a giant crystaline cavern, with growing crystals inside that grow through the castle itself where they are chiseled and refurbished into statues and whatnot. The throne of Balgruf was supposed to be a giant crystaline growth, on top of that the cavern under the Dragonsreach was supposed to be part of a questline, most likely part of the cut Daedric quest where Balgruds kids under the influence of Boethiah can kill him depending on your choices.
All of this was cut because
>It's too unique of an asset
Which translates to
>We can not copy-paste this asset multiple times over, this spending resources on making it would be pointless

i've heard this game can't be criticized, is this true?

I'm not saying what you said is wrong, because it's obvious that you're right, but a lot of Bethesda's developers are friends and family that Todd just hires despite them lacking in experience or knowledge.

so nothing new then

Another good example of decisions that head made for art department is the way Draugr and Dragonpriests were presented to look less boring and less like just zombie people.
Dragon priests were supposed to be booming with energies they gathered from Draugr over the centuries, flames would go out upon death etc. and there were supposed to be multiple versions of Dragonpriests including female ones.
This was of course scrapped in favor of floating Draugr in robes.

I don't know man, didn't the face artist for Fallout 3 end up working on Deus Ex HR anyway? I'm going to need more sources outside of the guy who did the fucking disgusting Fallout 3 faces.

Bethesda hired one the industries best concept artists starting with Shivering Isles and ending with his death though, so it's not all shit staff.

Link is for impregnating

Correction, Bethesda is already a place that is mostly formed by people who were friends or knew each other somehow prior to being at Bethesda.
MK and Kuhlmann were best buds, lead animator is Todds highschool buddy if I am not mistaken etc.
But it was the same during all stages of all TES games. I can't say that I am experienced, but I did an internship at a game dev studio as a concept artist, and I can say for certain that strong direction can make or kill the game regardless of individual skills of devs.
Now, of course if you have a star team with a genius Creative director/Art director/Lead designers etc. it will be perfect, but even mediocre staff can churn out great games as long as the direction and vision is clear.
Here is cute female Dragonpriest.

What game/studio was your internship for?

Why should I be? I'm not the one throwing vaseline onto a screen.

Also, there is indeed foggier weather, the Lost Woods are such an example so that you can't really see the way. there are also heavier fog effects in the morning or after/during rain. It's mostly weather related aside from the mandatory fog in lost woods.

the gap between concept --> reality has more to do with sheer technical limitations than anything else honestly

i'd love to see those Skyrim/Fallout concepts come to life too but we're just not there yet on a technical level, even Witcher 3 doesn't look that good.

So the game looks like a dull smoggy mess normally, and then they flood it with even more fog in an attempt to simulated weather?

How terrible.

The landscape looks really ugly when there's no grass hide it. Xenoblade X was a better looking game on the system.