Big colors and comics-style outlining are in. I’ve heard some complaints about it, but so far I’m pleased with what I see.
Cryptic’s chief creative officer Jack Emmert says Champions Online’s palette of bright colors will help the game stand out against other MMOs and videogames on the market. He said picking comic-book colors was one of the starting points of the whole project.
He said, “When you look at this game it’s not 50 shades of gray or brown. In general, this is an incredible battle with artists, as anyone will know from seeing other videogames, but we decided on bright colors from the beginning. So why did we go so vibrant? Because we wanted to make sure that the comic books that many of us read during the 80s and 90s would come alive. Any superhero you can imagine and create and customize you can sit down night in and night out and live those adventures and feel like you are part of that colorful comic book world.”
I think this is a good idea. It will set the game off from the more muted CoX, as well as lend it, yes, that 80s-90s look. (Do we have to wear jackets then?)
On outlining and cell shading:
We’re trying to go for the look you get in a comic book. But comics don’t transfer directly to real time 3D very well. Cell shading often looks really bland and has very little detail in it so we have decided on a more realistic lighting model.
If something is bumpy you’ll see the bumps and you’ll get highlights and shadows and that kind of stuff. But on top of that we have an art style that’s similar to comic books with bright colors and things that aren’t necessarily realistic. And then also we have an outline effect that outlines things that are near to the camera and adds to that comic-book feel.
[…] Practically it refers to a specific way of doing the lighting. So on a round object you don’t get a smooth transition from dark to light on one side, you’ve got a white and then you’ve got a harsh edge. It’s similar to how you shade something in a comic book but we wanted to bring realistic lighting and a comic-book look.
The outlining feature can be shut off for performance (or aesthetic) reasons. Personally, I like it.
The graphics still look like WoW…..with outlines, no real difference from CoX detail wise. Very low polygon count, one can only assume that the need for a high end grapics card is for particle count.
I like the brighter colors too. That was one of the subtle things which I think differentiates WoW from other fantasy RPGs, and which may have accounted for some of its acceptance and success.
The muted CoH colors really seem so flat and dull when compared to the bright colors of DCUO. At first I would RP that since CoH took place in Rhode Island the muted colors were part of the New England atmosphere. Now after seeing some of the architectural art direction of CO and DCUO, CoH looks like it could use some urban renewal.