The game lose its previous art style

[leojch]

What makes me sad is that it seems that after the update for consoles, the game received a graphical downgrade. It no longer has the beauty it once had.

Compare the old videos, the screenshots, the lighting, textures, the fight area against Konrad. Everything now is gray and blurred. It's as if it has lost its shine and personality. It looks like they removed the finishing and lighting polish. The visuals are washed out and blurred, the color and contrast no longer exists. All environments appear gray. Where are the crisp, sharp and bright lighting colors? The new washed look made the game lose its previous style.

[Outsider]

Game lost its identity over time in general.
It had no leveling, no i-frames, no lore dumps, it was strikingly unique and one-of-a-kind.
Now it's just generic Souls clone with a tiny bit of personality left.
Even enemies, previously techno-organic monsters straight outta BLAME!, got replaced with generic knights and undead.

[de-fi]

played since the initial release. After a few patches my performance went to crap. So after every update I've checked back to see if my performance has improved. I'm happy my performance has finally gotten better, but the enemies have been changed for the worse and art style seems worse.

Just my initial reaction from playing the starting area to test performance. Is console to blame for this?

[palacentes]

I suppose those enemies have been moved to later areas, ive noticed several knights being depowered/ replaced. But then again, the knights get stronger as the game progresses, so maybe the old ones will return. ( im starting a new ng run, and I just noticed the strong knights of the first area are gone...still havent progressed enough to see if they come back after I clear enough of the game and trigger the enemy power up event)

I dont know why ppl are complaining that its like dark souls, everyone cried over iframes before and found it hard...( there are still people coming back to check if there are iframes yet/ if its like dark souls) It still has no lore dumps, it never did....you can just skip spam or dont bother w any npcs. As for leveling, its not comparable to souls style. A lot of power still comes from what gem you slot into armor/ weapon, not just the stats.

[r.kohout]

if do not like it disable the fog - under setting - grafics/ - fog scattering off

[Pekop, le Roi des Mérous]

Ah, finally creating a discussion instead of agressively copy-pasting the same message everywhere?

I did see the game at launch, and yeah, it had a bit more color saturations and some lightings seem to have changed since launch. Feel like there's actually more emphasis on little lighting sources (spots, lamps, headlights...) instead of overral light basking the landscape.
Beside Fog Scattering seem to miss hard the mark and tank the performances for not much good.

Also, some genuine questions.
It's very surprising that devs opted to replace assets and models in large parts of the game. Most obvious is well, replacing Konrad by not so Konrad anymore. But there's also enemies replaced by new models (the starter zones lost a big part of their appeal, replacing the cyber scavengers by some random generic ass-naked zombie dudes™) as well as player and weapons model.

Usually replacing existing assets in an already launched game is rarely done if ever so, unless there's big reasons. What was the words from the devs about these changes?

I know devs relied on Unreal marketplace for assets, inadvertantly leading them into using ripped Elden Ring rigs last year.

[Calzkat]

The only graphical changes that have really bothered me is Yuria and Konrad being changed.

[leojch]

Unless they fix this (which would be the right thing to do and would make a lot of people happy), I suggest the developers change the images and videos in the store, as at this point they no longer make sense, the game no longer looks like the sales screen . Review for yourself, go there and compare the advertising images and videos with what we have today. I'll say more, look at what the gamer community screenshots looked like from the beginning of this year.

[Pekop, le Roi des Mérous]

Hey, that's pretty much overreacting, game's graphics haven't changed this much.

Honnestly, appart from the weird boss changes, everything i listed are more like little pet peeves.
If I had real concerns, it will be about the gameplay changes cited by the first post. They discarded some strong -but probably not well executed?- ideas in favor of more regular systems.
Wish I had time to test those before the changes came.

[leojch]

I may be exaggerating, but that's because I care a lot about this game. I see incredible potential, it could become a cult game. And in my opinion, until a few months ago it WAS one of the most stylish and aesthetic games I had ever seen. The atmosphere WAS perfect, they didn't need to change that. The ambience and lighting WERE perfect.
The game lost the color palette that gave it personality.
Neon reflections no longer appear, spot lights were much more marked on surfaces before. The game is GRAY now.
I don't know if it could be a downgrade in the lighting on surfaces. But it appears to be a regression in the lighting engine.
The art direction doesn't look the same now. Even some armor seems to have changed, for the worse.

[Napalm®]

Hmm, I just checked, and you're right, it does look like a grey bleached out mess.
Even combat got worse, tho I thought it's impossible to get worse than it was :D
A lot of things changed, my character has some kind of points (what??).
Oh well, doubt anyone cares now.

[leojch]

It's strange that they didn't say anything about this and all this artistic change. I would like to know the reason. WHY?? Why did they do that? Was it because of the console release? Why sacrifice all that originality and art direction? Look what they did to my baby... It's sad :(

[EpicNameGuy]

Originally posted by Pekop, le Roi des Mérous:

Ah, finally creating a discussion instead of agressively copy-pasting the same message everywhere?

I did see the game at launch, and yeah, it had a bit more color saturations and some lightings seem to have changed since launch. Feel like there's actually more emphasis on little lighting sources (spots, lamps, headlights...) instead of overral light basking the landscape.
Beside Fog Scattering seem to miss hard the mark and tank the performances for not much good.

Also, some genuine questions.
It's very surprising that devs opted to replace assets and models in large parts of the game. Most obvious is well, replacing Konrad by not so Konrad anymore. But there's also enemies replaced by new models (the starter zones lost a big part of their appeal, replacing the cyber scavengers by some random generic ass-naked zombie dudes™) as well as player and weapons model.

Usually replacing existing assets in an already launched game is rarely done if ever so, unless there's big reasons. What was the words from the devs about these changes?

I know devs relied on Unreal marketplace for assets, inadvertantly leading them into using ripped Elden Ring rigs last year.

IMO, the asset swaps and the overall art direction is better. Seems actually more professional, less janky. They need to polish up the animations and interactions still, but its so night and day better.

The old assets were... ass. Thank you devs and please continue the direction.

[Mike]

Originally posted by EpicNameGuy:

IMO, the asset swaps and the overall art direction is better. Seems actually more professional, less janky. They need to polish up the animations and interactions still, but its so night and day better.

The old assets were... ass. Thank you devs and please continue the direction.

While I would not use as strong words you, I 100% agree. I enjoyed the release version, despite is janky nature, but in its current state the game actually feels like a fully complete game with nothing feeling or looking place holder.

I think devs that go out of their way to right their wrongs should be applauded not shamed because very small changes a few people don't like. I would understand if the entrie game was changed but all that was changed some some enemy designs, enemy placements, and boss designs, everything else is identical to the 1.0 version.

I played through the 1.0 version 1 time and I just recently played through the game with the latest patch and I got the exact same feel I did with the original, because the feel, atmosphere, sound design,...etc is still 100% intact even with the recent updates.

No disrespect to OP but I feel they are a little too nitpicky for something that is almost entirely the same. Also no one here mentioned that the player has FULL control of the contrast, saturation, gamma, and the player is given tons of post processing effects they can use to completely change the look of the game to their liking.