Surprisingly ugly

[nop]

This game is surprisingly ugly. The colors are muted, the horizon looks awfully blueish, no white or bright color is to be found. There's no joy in any of the featured images.

Let's take a look at image 12 (currently)
http://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/916440/ss_4fc844c6fc6f567e38c0f7063621a9def7f3c966.1920x1080.jpg
The fog is everywhere, supposedly white clouds are blue/grey, the distant mountains look flat, dark and blueish instead of green, the beach or sails have a brown tint, the mountains are muddy brown and the water is just as depressing. At least this image doesn't show the horrible depth blur.

The game has lots of detailed items/textures/animations. But the imagery looks technical and devoid of any charm. It's a bloated mess of a game visually.

[banan1996.1996]

I guess I have different taste because it looks beautiful to me. But with my weak laptop I don't really care about graphics too much.

[nop]

Originally posted by banan1996.1996:

...it looks beautiful to me...

That's what they like to say. Look again. Or discuss my description of the image.

[banan1996.1996]

I looked again and I stick to my opinion. I've seen such clouds many times in my life, mountains don't look flat to me, they don't look green because of the fog. Beaches at the front look like real beaches, others are darker because of shadows. Mountains are muddy brown because... they're made from rocks?
Colours are rather cold but for me it seems like it's about to rain or it just finished raining. I like that screenshot.

[FluffyNo3]

Remember that this is set in 1800, the industrial age. Things were moody and sucked for the people working in factories etc.

The style, lighting, fog etc is meant to help the player feel that type of atmosphere

[Teanah]

I feel the colour choices help the realism rather than leaning toward a more saturated palette.

[Sagi]

i find it beautifull
i also remember 1701 wich was loaded with colour wich was beatifull on it's own but did break a lot of realism.

[Buntkreuz]

Originally posted by nop:

This game is surprisingly ugly. The colors are muted, the horizon looks awfully blueish, no white or bright color is to be found. There's no joy in any of the featured images.

Let's take a look at image 12 (currently)
http://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/916440/ss_4fc844c6fc6f567e38c0f7063621a9def7f3c966.1920x1080.jpg
The fog is everywhere, supposedly white clouds are blue/grey, the distant mountains look flat, dark and blueish instead of green, the beach or sails have a brown tint, the mountains are muddy brown and the water is just as depressing. At least this image doesn't show the horrible depth blur.

The game has lots of detailed items/textures/animations. But the imagery looks technical and devoid of any charm. It's a bloated mess of a game visually.

?
Maybe fix your screen then.
I see very light colours. In fact the entire middle of the picture is full with a light colour palette using a lot of white.
Ofcourse the style is using less bright colours, you know, like our real world doesnt have that many bright colours in nature. At least not in europe.
The green is perfect, as is the water.
The red of the tower is bright enough considering the time is built, the colours are very pastel, which not only fits the era but also makes it realistic.

The rest of what you are talking about is bound to viewdistance.
Games limiting the viewdistance put some sort of blueish fog over too distant objects, structures or terrain to cover them up as they dont get rendered.
If you ever happened to see unrendered objects etc you know how ugly that is.
So two things come to mind here:
1. the viewdistance on this picture is set to low or at least not to maximum.
2. the game cant render everything properly due to performance issues and thus has to limit viewdistance sooner.

But thats why you have camera controls in strategy games right?
As the player you obviously focus your view on the center of the screen of what you are looking at, which in this picture is the island and at max the one ship further away.
But everything else is just not interesting at all anyway. If the player wants to have a look at a mountain there, then he/she will move the cam over there, which will then render the environment.

[DivineLion]

looks fine too me?

[Ensign]

This isnt exactly what OP had in mind but can i ask for some fairness?

To compare the graphics here to another production based city builder or atleast another game of the same genre? Becuase if you do you'll realize its actually the best looking game bar none.

Im guessing the graphics here are seen as "ugly" becuase it doesnt look like the latest fps game or third person adventure game made for consoles like say Assassins Creed or Far Cry.

Thing is those games are easy to make look amazing since there isnt alot of AI running or much rendering done outside of an immediate area of the player location. So less resources go to running the game and more to graphical fidelity.

City builders on the other hand and especially production based city builders have little people to animate, various calculations on all sorts of transactions and resource aquisition for both the player and all ai opponents, tons of automated trade ships conducting business between ports apart from naval ships battleing it out on the seas in real time, islands all potentially full of buildings, ect.

I mean im no game developer so i cant name everything happening in the background but im sure its much more hardware stressing than say a very pretty round of Call of Duty.

Im no fanboy though so mabey im wrong. Whats another city builder that looks just stunning compared to this game? Is that game even half as deep as this one?

[Flakey]

This is prettiest looking city sim and the colour scheme really matches industrial revolution era.

[Tiearian]

On an ISF Calibrated screen, The game looks perfect for the 1800's. That in itself is the Charm. Must be your monitor...

The only issue i'm seeing appears on the store page. If you look around, there is these weird scwiggly lines that don't correctly represent the game, and say's something like "$79.99 CAD" That seems a little off to me.. xD

[Buntkreuz]

Originally posted by Ensign:

This isnt exactly what OP had in mind but can i ask for some fairness?

To compare the graphics here to another production based city builder or atleast another game of the same genre? Becuase if you do you'll realize its actually the best looking game bar none.

Im guessing the graphics here are seen as "ugly" becuase it doesnt look like the latest fps game or third person adventure game made for consoles like say Assassins Creed or Far Cry.

Thing is those games are easy to make look amazing since there isnt alot of AI running or much rendering done outside of an immediate area of the player location. So less resources go to running the game and more to graphical fidelity.

City builders on the other hand and especially production based city builders have little people to animate, various calculations on all sorts of transactions and resource aquisition for both the player and all ai opponents, tons of automated trade ships conducting business between ports apart from naval ships battleing it out on the seas in real time, islands all potentially full of buildings, ect.

I mean im no game developer so i cant name everything happening in the background but im sure its much more hardware stressing than say a very pretty round of Call of Duty.

Im no fanboy though so mabey im wrong. Whats another city builder that looks just stunning compared to this game? Is that game even half as deep as this one?

especially when you played the beta of the new Tropico, which looks like a game from 2013, worse even than the previous Tropico i would say but at the very least with horrific terrain and vegetation (texture) quality.
It just looks, well, really bad.
Anno 1800 looks great. Not only for a City Builder with a quite large map but also in comparison to other games it is a very nice looking game.
What we also have to notice here is the following: NO Anno game before 1800 had this many people running around that your PC had to calculate.
And i sincerely hope they leave it this way and arent cutting it down to optimize it for worse PCs and if so then with an option slider.
Because i loved the Beta and its presentation especially because of the liveliness of the city coming from all those people running around.
So lets face it, Anno 1800 looks great while also having hundreds of people running around and doing ♥♥♥♥.
Keep that in mind, this is a technical step forward and hard for other companies to even get close to.

[nop]

@Ensign, thank you for your post. I will answer your question in a bit.

The game isn't "ugly" per se but "surprisingly ugly", meaning I have been told many times (here too) how beautiful this game looks but it doesn't.

It's also uglier and dumber than it should/could have been. The banner/cover image with the ship is a sad reminder that there was once an artist at Blue Byte that understood the thematic content and had the means to express it artistically. Bright(!), sunny(!) clouds and bright(!), baby blue(!) sky against the black(!) smoke and body of the ship (with masts but no sails). Larger version:
http://s3.gaming-cdn.com/images/products/2249/orig/anno-1800-cover.jpg

That painting looks kind of depressing but also beautiful and majestic. The game looks just depressing. I mean, can the zoo or the exhibition look any less random or joyless?

City Skylines is 4 years old but it looks far more fun(!) than Anno 1800. It has blue skies, white clouds, colorful sunsets, funny donut cars, quirky car movement, lively attractions and it can simulate up to 1 million citizens. The custom Anno engine struggles with 10.000 citizens. It can't utilize modern multi-core CPUs. It looks technically outdated and seems to have missed the physically-based rendering "revolution". It looks strangely cardbordy and 2D.

[Buntkreuz]

the thing is, this is not Tropico with fun colours shiney paintings etc.
And in my eyes it shouldnt be. I get what you are saying, but i dont think the picture you linked looks in any way depressing or joyless, it rather looks authentic and beautiful while also carrying what the game is about, it looks like a propaganda poster.
And 1800 is also about that.
Its partially a time where revolution happens, not only in an industrial way with having new technology but also in terms of society.
That means the world grows darker and foggier for some, while also being more beautiful for others.
At the same time society more and more makes use of such propaganda paintings to fuel their political agenda.
So the cover not only fits everything this itteration is about thematically, it also is a great piece of art in and of itself.
I might further point out, pretty much none of the content in Anno ever had a different colour pallette. It was ever rather muddy and pastelic.
The brightes colour you had was the grass texture.

Yet look at all the covers. 1602, brown and red-ish colours mixed with reflections of orange and a blue sky.
A rather ugly cover even for that time but nothing bright at all.
1404, absolutely white and brown reliant colours, again pastelic in its totality. The only brighter colour is the sky, thats it. But its far from an out of ordinary sky colour.
1701, brown and pastelic, the sky even got less blue and went more towards light blue with a lot of white. And the PC version looks even absolutely similar to the 1800 cover (here: https://www.gamestar.de/spiele/anno-1701,11855.html)
The gameboy version even distanced from the brighter blue ocean and got a rather light blue one.

As said i get your overall view, but not where that comes from.
The Anno 1800 packshot is what Anno ever was, except that it now looks like a proper portrayal of the time.
Looking closer they even managed to theme it with a rather blackened sky so it goes with the industrial revolution.
Like this one: https://de.gamesplanet.com/game/anno-1800-uplay--3776-1
But also on the cover you linked they themed the black colour in.

All in all, the art fits perfectly and looks great. Its simply how it should be and how it ever was. And i further dont get what that means:"a sad reminder that there was once an artist at Blue Byte"
Anno was a series of Sunflower, MaxDesign and more important Related Designs, not Bluebyte.
Bluebyte got a grip later and even then just partial as they work in "tandem" with Related Designs.
The first Anno BlueByte did as a major influence was....yeah you guessed it, 2070.
One that would be called by many fans the downfall of the series, followed by 2205.

What i know is that the Artist doing the cover art for Anno was probably working on the series from beginning till now. But no matter what 2014 was when BlueByte got involved with the series, everything before that had nothing to do with them.

[Commander Freedom]

You can't be serious?
This game looks beautiful as f*, I would advise you to go check your eyes bruh.