Dark and Gritty VS Cartoony. Diablo 3's aesthetic. Thoughts?

[evilneko]

I'm still floored that some people apparently consider D2 "dark and gritty."

 

[Wayneguard]

If they would have just left this game 2d isometric, the system requirements argument would be moot. The facts are that 2d is much nicer to your system than 3d. And for a game that was born of 2d and has no new features that require 3d, to argue that forgoing the traditional art style to allow for low-end play is nonsensical.

 

[Yopaz]

The cartoon look is shit. Diablo has never been light hearted, or comical. The fact that the gold grabbing pigs etc have been dropped due to this reinforces the notion that they are just using WoW designers for a game that should be entirely different in aesthetics to WoW.
Arguing specs is nonsense - Diablo 2 has low specs and doesn't have a cartoony look to it.

That is really not what I've said. I've argued specs in the case of WoW, not Diablo, and that was just one advantage their cartoony graphics gave them, by allowing them to keep it low spec but not look like utter shit. The comparison to Diablo 2 is irrelevant since that was a 2d game that wasn't THAT low spec for the year it launched anyway. Again, it's not the case for Diablo3.

Also the point of mentioning WoW's low spec graphics was that it's aesthetic choice is grounded in logic and serves a clear purpose not because they just like it that way, or had no better ideas.

Cartoony graphics don't give you an advantage in terms of performance. As I said, Diablo 2 is low specs yet not cartoony. WoW was done as it was because it was probably seen to be more appealing to a wider player base.

Diablo 2 is low spec because it's kinda old.

OT: For Diablo I would say dark and gritty is my preference, but Mario would never work out any other way, Legend of Zelda has proven to master both styles.

You completely missed the point as well as making a mistake:
Age doesn't make something low specs; is crysis low specs?

So you want to compare a game that was made a decade ago and a game made a bit more than 4 years ago and say that one require higher specs than the other one? Well I got news for you. Those things increase with years, you also might want to know that Crysis was made too demanding to be played on maxed setting by most computers at the time when it was released. Also Crysis isn't really considered to be in the high end anymore since new games and new hardware has left it behind. So it's still pretty high, but it's not considered as high as it used to be. Give it some time and it will be considered to be pretty low.

You missed the point...again.
I wasn't comparing Crysis to D2, I was saying age doesn't inherently make something low specs.
D2 does not have cartoon graphics yet is low specs. That is my point.
Crysis is still high end. If you want to play it 1080p at 4x AA, the standard gamer resolution setting, then you will need an enthusiast card to get 30 fps+ avg. Crysis may have been very high spec at the time, but look at Call of Juarez. It looks great, is playable by all gaming PC's and does not have a cartoon look.
In short, if Blizzard are making D3 for gamers, there is no need for a) DX9 graphics and b)cartoon style.

You really think so? It was incredibly high when it came out, but now it's really not. I have a strictly mediocre card in my computer and you know what? I can play Crysis with maxed settings at 1920x1200 with 45 fps, 1080p is 1920x1080. So you are wrong. You do not need an enthusiast card at all. Oh, but Call of Juarez look pretty good too and that doesn't require as much? Well there's a massive difference there. Crysis was made to really push our computers to their very limit. Call of Juarez was made for consoles that could not take as much. Also honestly Call of Juarez look bland and grainy compared to Crysis.
http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/OPS/Crysis-GeForce-GTX-560-Ti-OPS

If you are still not convinced that age make specs less impressive? Take Nintendo 64 or PlayStation. Those consoles were pretty awesome. They had some serious power and could play games that really pushed their hardware to the limit. These days some of the best phones can manage the same thing and better.

Sure just because games aren't cartoony they don't necessarily take a lot of power to run, but cartoony games do take less because realistic looks require more processing power in order to get facial expressions right, to make leaves, shadows, water work the way they do in real, but also the character models doesn't need as much "assembling". Just because there are games out there that are low spec and have a realisticish look doesn't make you right. The codes that lay behind realistic graphics outweighs that of the cartoony by far. The more codes, the more polygons the higher the specs. Cartoony games can be high spec, but then it's usually because of how big the environment are and the amount of models in there.
Now let me give you an example of this. I hope we agree that MineCraft is low spec. Minecraft doesn't take a lot to play. However a friend of mine with a quite powerful computer had 10000 dynamites that he placed inside a cave and when that blew up there was simply too much to handle and there was some serious drops in fps.

Now my point here was that more than graphics matter in setting spec requirements, but graphics do matter and specs do age because technology ages.

 

[BrionJames]

I just liked the feel of the rest of the world's hope lies on the shoulder's of these chosen heroes. When I look at screenshots of Diablo 3, I don't get that feeling anymore. I probably will still end up getting Diablo 3, but it won't compare to the atmosphere and feel of Diablo and Diablo 2. Also, the Cow level was an easter egg of sorts and by no indication had any relation to the overall story of the game.

 

[Layz92]

I don't get the outrage here. I played a hell of a lot of D2, grew up playing it with my brother even. It just becomes a bit of a joke if everything is grim. Many Warhammer 40k writers make this mistake. It needs to be broken up with a sunny day or a day or two of relaxation for the character. In a world of only darkness who cares about it being dark?

It's not the writers fault if your attention span cannot handle grim for more then 20 minutes.
Take 40k for example; it's never meant to be funny, because billions are dying everywhere, all the time. To "break it up" would be a grave mistake and would only be there to help those who cannot cope with intense atmospheres. Imagine walking around in Amnesia to have a side-kick crack jokes every 30 minutes. It'd ruin the atmosphere.

You misunderstand me. I am not talking comedic relief. I am just talking a few moments when the world isn't baring down on you. I read a lot of 40k so I am awre of it's goal but the good books always have their light moment. Like the inter-battle transit parts of Gaunt's Ghosts or the part before the massacre of the victory march in Eisenhorn. It is a well known fiction device to add lighter moments to make the dark ones have meening. Without them people stop caring about the bad bits. A wise cracking sidekick is the bad application of this idea. Gheed from D2 partly filled this role as the brighter moment. All I am saying is that if the writers/designers play their cards right then they may make a more jaring (in a good way) game that has more impact with it's darkness.

 

[guidance]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcnIIVYSuLM

this guy changed the color scheme of the game with an ingame pixel shader.

 

[Yopaz]

The cartoon look is shit. Diablo has never been light hearted, or comical. The fact that the gold grabbing pigs etc have been dropped due to this reinforces the notion that they are just using WoW designers for a game that should be entirely different in aesthetics to WoW.
Arguing specs is nonsense - Diablo 2 has low specs and doesn't have a cartoony look to it.

That is really not what I've said. I've argued specs in the case of WoW, not Diablo, and that was just one advantage their cartoony graphics gave them, by allowing them to keep it low spec but not look like utter shit. The comparison to Diablo 2 is irrelevant since that was a 2d game that wasn't THAT low spec for the year it launched anyway. Again, it's not the case for Diablo3.

Also the point of mentioning WoW's low spec graphics was that it's aesthetic choice is grounded in logic and serves a clear purpose not because they just like it that way, or had no better ideas.

Cartoony graphics don't give you an advantage in terms of performance. As I said, Diablo 2 is low specs yet not cartoony. WoW was done as it was because it was probably seen to be more appealing to a wider player base.

Diablo 2 is low spec because it's kinda old.

OT: For Diablo I would say dark and gritty is my preference, but Mario would never work out any other way, Legend of Zelda has proven to master both styles.

You completely missed the point as well as making a mistake:
Age doesn't make something low specs; is crysis low specs?

So you want to compare a game that was made a decade ago and a game made a bit more than 4 years ago and say that one require higher specs than the other one? Well I got news for you. Those things increase with years, you also might want to know that Crysis was made too demanding to be played on maxed setting by most computers at the time when it was released. Also Crysis isn't really considered to be in the high end anymore since new games and new hardware has left it behind. So it's still pretty high, but it's not considered as high as it used to be. Give it some time and it will be considered to be pretty low.

You missed the point...again.
I wasn't comparing Crysis to D2, I was saying age doesn't inherently make something low specs.
D2 does not have cartoon graphics yet is low specs. That is my point.
Crysis is still high end. If you want to play it 1080p at 4x AA, the standard gamer resolution setting, then you will need an enthusiast card to get 30 fps+ avg. Crysis may have been very high spec at the time, but look at Call of Juarez. It looks great, is playable by all gaming PC's and does not have a cartoon look.
In short, if Blizzard are making D3 for gamers, there is no need for a) DX9 graphics and b)cartoon style.

You really think so? It was incredibly high when it came out, but now it's really not. I have a strictly mediocre card in my computer and you know what? I can play Crysis with maxed settings at 1920x1200 with 45 fps, 1080p is 1920x1080. So you are wrong. You do not need an enthusiast card at all. Oh, but Call of Juarez look pretty good too and that doesn't require as much? Well there's a massive difference there. Crysis was made to really push our computers to their very limit. Call of Juarez was made for consoles that could not take as much. Also honestly Call of Juarez look bland and grainy compared to Crysis.
http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/OPS/Crysis-GeForce-GTX-560-Ti-OPS

If you are still not convinced that age make specs less impressive? Take Nintendo 64 or PlayStation. Those consoles were pretty awesome. They had some serious power and could play games that really pushed their hardware to the limit. These days some of the best phones can manage the same thing and better.

Sure just because games aren't cartoony they don't necessarily take a lot of power to run, but cartoony games do take less because realistic looks require more processing power in order to get facial expressions right, to make leaves, shadows, water work the way they do in real, but also the character models doesn't need as much "assembling". Just because there are games out there that are low spec and have a realisticish look doesn't make you right. The codes that lay behind realistic graphics outweighs that of the cartoony by far. The more codes, the more polygons the higher the specs. Cartoony games can be high spec, but then it's usually because of how big the environment are and the amount of models in there.
Now let me give you an example of this. I hope we agree that MineCraft is low spec. Minecraft doesn't take a lot to play. However a friend of mine with a quite powerful computer had 10000 dynamites that he placed inside a cave and when that blew up there was simply too much to handle and there was some serious drops in fps.

Now my point here was that more than graphics matter in setting spec requirements, but graphics do matter and specs do age because technology ages.

...Those settings aren't maxed out and don't have any AA....
I've the GTX560 Ti OC'd and know I'm right - you are completely wrong about your FPS. Plus the GTX560 Ti is a) an enthusiast card and b)does not give 45FPS at 1080p with 4xAA.

I also have MSI Afterburner so I can see my real time FPS. To be brutal about it, I'm right; you're wrong.

Call of Juarez was made for the PC and two yeas later ported to the 360. So far you've made two claims and both have been completely wrong.

My point about age is that not every old game looks like a cartoon, therefore there is no need for D3 to have a cartoon art style.

Considering modern PC power, there is no need for cartoon art style or even DX9.

Minecraft isn't low spec because it's so poorly made that it eats RAM. It can't be used to judge processing power because it is a complete joke.

OK, so I was wrong about a few things there, I was aware of that the first Call of Juarez was made for PC, but as I said, it looks really grainy so you can't really compare it to Crysis. You also completely ignored my explanation why cartoony games require less than realistic games. Do you stand by your explanation that games that require less processing power to process every bit of the environment because they don't strive towards realism aren't low spec simply because they require less power? Because that's pretty much what I thought low spec means.
Now I NEVER said that all old games look cartoony. I said that technology improves so what was considered highs spec before is low spec now. If you disagree with that will you make any claims that System Shock is a high spec game even though it requires 8 MB RAM?

Cartoony games require less processing power because of every tiny bit require less processing power to run smoothly. Do you disagree with me when I say that because every movement in the game takes less power to keep up that game takes less processing power?

 

[evilneko]

I'm still floored that some people apparently consider D2 "dark and gritty."

Someone doesn't know what gritty means and is taking the word dark a little too literally.

Apparently quite a few someones.

 

[Don Savik]

If you ask me its to make a game SIMILAR looking to WoW to intice players, thats why they're giving FREE COPIES OF DIABLO 3 IF YOU PAY A YEAR SUBSCRIPTION TO WOW. Yea, its about money.

And with Acti-blizzard losing all its money, then it needs a backup plan.

 

[LazyAza]

People who refer to stylized art direction simply as "cartoony" make me rage.

 

[Weslebear]

Personally I prefer the new style, it's nice to look at with all the same macabre feel of before. And you can actually see what the fuck is going on, seriously in Diablo 2 in caves you can't see shit against the floor and background.