Has Blizzard ever done something visually unique?

[Atmos Duality]

By that logic, if another game used the color "red" I guess it's automatically disqualified from being original. Unless you mean to redefine the phrase "any way, shape, or form".

Though there sure are a lot of topics ragging on Blizzard lately.

Like I said to ironic pirate, that is what I'm saying.

A unique aesthetic is impossible, since even completely random colors and shapes has a name, psychedelic.

Fair enough. To that I reply:
"Share the knowledge, compete on execution."

There honestly isn't much merit in this topic as far as it pertains to Blizzard.
Why? Because I'm from that school of thought that says each game should try to adapt their art style for the purposes of gameplay presentation.

How to begin...

Left 4 Dead. Infected vs Survivors. Simple concept, no?

The art direction in the game isn't purely aesthetic. No, it's subliminally designed to help the player identify objects. The four original survivors each have a unique look, unique clothing, and perhaps most important of all, a unique silhouette.
The silhouette is critical, because just about the entire game takes place in the dark.

The artwork design is genius because it sets the mood while still serving a practical function. They employ color correction to enable the player to identify infected at a glance (they are in near-greyscale compared to the survivors).

Original? Hell no, but damn well-executed.

In Starcraft 2, the art design is meant to be somewhat campy, but easy to identify.
It's important that each unit look as distinct as it can from the others while still trying to look like it belongs to its respective faction. This is because it's effectively a game of counters. You need to be able to identify key targets and ready their counters without having to analyze the details. That's why the Raven has a distinct wing pattern. It's why each faction has a default detail color (zerg have purple and maroon, protoss have yellow/gold, terran have blackish metal).

It looks good, but it's also effective.

Style for style's sake also exists; Killer 7 is an amazing game because of its clever use of cel-shading, but I cannot think of a single moment where it served a practical purpose beyond presentation. It didn't NEED to serve any other function; the game rocked enough on its own.

I've gone on long enough though, and I suspect that the entire point of this topic was to rag on Blizzard some more. If that's the case, then here's my prescripted response: "Blizzard released a game I liked last month. What else can I say?"

 

[HSIAMetalKing]

I was recently playing WoW on my new HDTV-- looks gorgeous, especially the Northrend content (flying through Crystalsong Forest was a treat).

 

[Naheal]

22. Copypasta is made to ruin every last bit of originality.

Pretty much sums it up.

 

[martin's a madman]

Perhaps an interesting idea would to be have a planet which is 95 percent swampland and have all the species that evolved from it (maybe even multiple intelligent ones) have that sort of influence in their design. They could have technology scaled to their relative time period, but they would have it adapt to their swamp life example: Probably not a lot of wheels.

Fund it?

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything Original" -Sir Ken Robinson.

I don't usually like quotes, but it perfectly sums up the creative status of the world.

 

[AMMO Kid]

Not to my knowledge, but I've never played any Blizzard games anyway.

 

[Brotherofwill]

By that logic, if another game used the color "red" I guess it's automatically disqualified from being original. Unless you mean to redefine the phrase "any way, shape, or form".

Though there sure are a lot of topics ragging on Blizzard lately.

Like I said to ironic pirate, that is what I'm saying.

A unique aesthetic is impossible, since even completely random colors and shapes has a name, psychedelic.

Fair enough. To that I reply:
"Share the knowledge, compete on execution."

There honestly isn't much merit in this topic as far as it pertains to Blizzard.
Why? Because I'm from that school of thought that says each game should try to adapt their art style for the purposes of gameplay presentation.

How to begin...

Left 4 Dead. Infected vs Survivors. Simple concept, no?

The art direction in the game isn't purely aesthetic. No, it's subliminally designed to help the player identify objects. The four original survivors each have a unique look, unique clothing, and perhaps most important of all, a unique silhouette.
The silhouette is critical, because just about the entire game takes place in the dark.

The artwork design is genius because it sets the mood while still serving a practical function. They employ color correction to enable the player to identify infected at a glance (they are in near-greyscale compared to the survivors).

Original? Hell no, but damn well-executed.

In Starcraft 2, the art design is meant to be somewhat campy, but easy to identify.
It's important that each unit look as distinct as it can from the others while still trying to look like it belongs to its respective faction. This is because it's effectively a game of counters. You need to be able to identify key targets and ready their counters without having to analyze the details. That's why the Raven has a distinct wing pattern. It's why each faction has a default detail color (zerg have purple and maroon, protoss have yellow/gold, terran have blackish metal).

It looks good, but it's also effective.

Style for style's sake also exists; Killer 7 is an amazing game because of its clever use of cel-shading, but I cannot think of a single moment where it served a practical purpose beyond presentation. It didn't NEED to serve any other function; the game rocked enough on its own.

I've gone on long enough though, and I suspect that the entire point of this topic was to rag on Blizzard some more. If that's the case, then here's my prescripted response: "Blizzard released a game I liked last month. What else can I say?"

Holy shit. Some actual design discussion going. This thread turned out infinetely better than I thought.

I agree here. Valve has been excellent at using practical and stimulating designs. Their use of bold shapes in characters and enemies to visually identify game situations is pretty unparralled right now.

In L4D think the best thing they did was boldly colour over chracters in some situation, like the guys sometimes turning complete red in danger. It helped a lot. They were able to have the dark, grey athmosphere without it turning into a guess-fest of confusion which quite a lot of games do since developers collectively decided that colours aren't manly enough.

I don't know why so little people talk about effective art design and not just graphics when reviewing a game. I think that's much more important, especially since it affect your enjoyment quite a bit.

Really now: I'm not ragging on Blizzard. I love them. I love their games. I like their ideas. I was just asking a question about their art.

 

[SuperCombustion]

like it or not, originality does not exist. No matter what you do, someone would have already done it... twice. But I think that Blizzard are quite an original company, they made alot of great games but I think that the art style could be a little less cartoony...

 

[Alfador_VII]

I was recently playing WoW on my new HDTV-- looks gorgeous, especially the Northrend content (flying through Crystalsong Forest was a treat).

I've been playing WoW at slightly beyond HDTV resolution almost since it came out

Course on this PC I can turn all the settings up to eleven and it really looks great.

 

[Dr. Octogonopus]

In this thread: People who think WoW and SC2 are the first games that blizzard made.

Lost Vikings.

possibly one of the most under-rated games of all time