Why is ZOS obsessed with the color gray? A look at art direction in ESO

XomRhoK

psychotrip wrote: »

Necroing this thread instead of starting a new one.

So, turns out ZOS's addiction to gray has become so crippling...that they even think coral is gray:



Yes, this is the famous coral of Summerset. At least they didn't totally "transcription error" it away, but of course it had to be gray.

I like ESO graphic style. Overall i don't like oversaturated cartoonish style in graphics, but it fits some franchies, Warcraft 3, WoW for example, and i like it in this games.
I found dead corals picture.

So they are grey.
As for your screenshot, it taken against sun, so all look not so colorful, here another shots of Summerset beaches from video.

Water add color, even in rainy weather

Hovewer they can add more coloful, live corals under water.

Kiralyn2000

Troneon wrote: »

I use Hook64/SweetFX/Radeon Pro(With Nvidia GPU)/Reshade previously known at Tamriel Foundry as ESO Enhanced Graphics Launcher...

Now, I love a colorful game as much as the next guy (and always hate when people throw around 'too cartoonish' for everything that has a color palette), but.... wow, dude, those screenshots you put up are over saturated.



(Also, I doubt it has anything to do with "dumbing it down" be not including crazy graphics options. Maybe they just have an art & design style that they want, and why would they include options to change that? Honestly, I'm having a hard time thinking of any games that give you options beyond Brightness/Gamma to change the inherent look of the game.
Hmm... I suppose the every-once-in-awhile game that has some goofy filters - like "TV lines" or "film grain" or "Noir" - would count. But that's more of an Easter Egg like "big head mode", not graphics options like you're talking about.)

Enemy-of-Coldharbour

I think everything looks 'natural' like it should. This is not Final Fantasy.

psychotrip

ces

XomRhoK wrote: »

psychotrip wrote: »

Necroing this thread instead of starting a new one.

So, turns out ZOS's addiction to gray has become so crippling...that they even think coral is gray:



Yes, this is the famous coral of Summerset. At least they didn't totally "transcription error" it away, but of course it had to be gray.

I like ESO graphic style. Overall i don't like oversaturated cartoonish style in graphics, but it fits some franchies, Warcraft 3, WoW for example, and i like it in this games.
I found dead corals picture.

So they are grey.
As for your screenshot, it taken against sun, so all look not so colorful, here another shots of Summerset beaches from video.

Water add color, even in rainy weather

Hovewer they can add more coloful, live corals under water.

“From its shining towers to its white-sand beaches and radiant coral reefs, the Isle of Summerset is a paradise as beautiful as it is dangerous, and it now stands ready to be explored by you and your allies.”

This is from the current description of Summerset on the website. It's from the same page as the image with the gray color. They're literally contradicting themselves within the span of the same statement.

Maybe they just decided to show us something that specifically didn't represent what they were saying on the same page. Maybe there's colorful coral somewhere else that they're hiding from us for some reason. Maybe, but I've been burned before by holding out hope.

For me, this is just a rather humorous symptom of a larger problem. I have nothing against grayness, or dreariness, but there's a difference between dreariness and drabness. When I see gray cities and hazy weather clashing with colorful environments, I don't consider that to be competent art direction. It feels tonally confused.

Either way, this is a fantasy world, and Summerset is supposedly the most "high fantasy" place in Tamriel according to their own words in the livestream. They could have made the coral as vibrant or as dull as they wanted. They chose the latter because that's all they know how to do.

Enemy-of-Coldharbour wrote: »

I think everything looks 'natural' like it should. This is not Final Fantasy.

No it's not Final Fantasy. It's a world where hermaphroditic demi-gods have sex with extra-dimensional horrors. It's a world where legions of warrior scholars are trained on extraplanar satellites within a pocket dimension (the battlespire). It's a world where we just got back from a a wacky steampunk city with robots and a living god.

The ES is allowed to be a little weird, guys. Even Zenimax is willing to go a bit weird when they really want or are forced to. I'm just confused why the Altmer are always left out of this.

NobleX35

The constant gray fog/overcast has always been one of my biggest complaints with this game. It looks ugly, feels lazy, and makes the world feel so much smaller than it actually is. If they would just take the time to render the graphics beyond the fog and extend the view distance to double (or more) what it currently is, the game would feel so much bigger and look so much better. Most other MMO’s and single player RPG’s have significantly greater draw distances and it always makes the world look better and feel bigger because you get to look out over the vast landscape and admire the huge world in front of you. In this game you get to look out maybe a 1/4 mile in front of you and then your view is blocked by the horrible fog.

Tasear

Publius_Scipio wrote: »

I don't know what else to tell you other than that is what the devs themselves have said. It's a fantasy game but they try to keep it grounded in realism. Hence no bright powder blue unicorns with six legs running around. There is magic obviously but they try to apply "what and how would magic work if it existed in the real world". That is why atronach pets look like rocks you would find in the real world held together by whatever the hell lightning magic would be in the real world.

If you get what I am trying to say lol.

If only he new a year later we would get said unicorn.

Troneon

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Troneon wrote: »

I use Hook64/SweetFX/Radeon Pro(With Nvidia GPU)/Reshade previously known at Tamriel Foundry as ESO Enhanced Graphics Launcher...

Now, I love a colorful game as much as the next guy (and always hate when people throw around 'too cartoonish' for everything that has a color palette), but.... wow, dude, those screenshots you put up are over saturated.



(Also, I doubt it has anything to do with "dumbing it down" be not including crazy graphics options. Maybe they just have an art & design style that they want, and why would they include options to change that? Honestly, I'm having a hard time thinking of any games that give you options beyond Brightness/Gamma to change the inherent look of the game.
Hmm... I suppose the every-once-in-awhile game that has some goofy filters - like "TV lines" or "film grain" or "Noir" - would count. But that's more of an Easter Egg like "big head mode", not graphics options like you're talking about.)

Regardless of colors there is in the entire game two things in every area.

1. Insane distance fog that hides long distance very poor textures that are incomplete but game looks way better without all this artificially created distance fog that surrounds every single area, it's awful.
2. The colors they use are very dim, they also have a grey/foggy tint over everything making colors seem very bland

Everyone to their own personal taste and not saying my screens colors are better or anything, they might be too bright or over saturated for you but for me I love it, that being said that does not excuse the over use by ZOS of distance fog in every fricking zone and the tint they use to de color everything to look dimmer....it's awful which is why so many PC players use mods / addons, etc etc to bring the game back to it's full potential since ZOS are too lazy or do not wish to update anything.