Games with amazing art direction

TreasureHunterG said:
Metroid Prime

primeugenegc1_640w.jpg

primeugenegc11_640w.jpg

primeugenegc9_640w.jpg

primeugenegc4_640w.jpg
Click to expand...

It's hard to express how beautiful this game is with just screens. The level design, music, atmosphere, architecture - everything is flawless. It's like playing a game Brian Eno would make.
 
Littlegator said:
No, see, these are just bad. The games might look pretty, but the art direction itself is horrible.
Click to expand...

Yes, Starcraft had great art direction (still have) for the kind of game it is, specially if you play the campaigns both for the original and Brood War. The art direction help you to feel the grim, dark mood from some of the campaigns, specially when you play in Char (lava) and space levels. Something, IMO, it was lost in Starcraft 2.
 
teruterubozu said:
It's hard to express how beautiful this game is with just screens. The level design, music, atmosphere, architecture - everything is flawless. It's like playing a game Brian Eno would make.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Screens do NOT do justice to Metroid Prime. Such breathtaking art direction.
 
Stumpokapow said:
Art direction is not just art style. It also involves how the game uses architecture to set an emotional tone, how lighting is used to convey information, camera angles for cutscenes and how space is used to set scope (how small spaces can make you paranoid or claustrophobic, while vistas and skyboxes feel epic and grand in stature), how character clothing conveys a certain style or national background, etc.

There are a lot of people in this thread who are basically posting games strictly because they are pretty. Some games are both pretty and have great art direction, others are ugly but have good art direction, others are pretty but have poor art direction.

Deadly Premonition is an example of a game that doesn't really look that great but that has great art direction. The way things are laid out in the town, the sense of scale, the way all the normal level designs "invert" when you are in the combat scenarios, the biome conveys that sort of mysterious cold foggy great ancient redwood Washington/BC feel, things like the coffee, the flies and beard that follow York around if he's dirty, the day/night cycle. But yeah, it looks like a PS2 game, kind of. But that's okay.

Bully and Mafia II both have great art direction in the way they deal with the passage of time. Zelda and Metroid both have very striking use of biomes and architecture and strongly themed areas to convey certain moods. Assassin's Creed 1 was hideous to me at least in part due to the scorching, bleaching lighting setup, but that did a good job of conveying what I expect the Middle East looks like. Mirror's Edge used really stark, clean environments to set up the theme that the world was safe, secure, and prosperous--by ruled by a panopticon surveillance and censorship regime.

Psychonauts, I thought had strong art design. The Milkman Conspiracy level's dimension bending, the Meat Circus level's clash of realities, the overall design and environment of the summer camp in general, the Fever Dream Neon Mexican Luchadore level. Great choices.
Click to expand...

More people should listen to this madman.
 
RAGE - Flat out gorgeous environments
Uncharted series - Breathtaking at times, and excellent use of color in their titles
Castlevania Lord of Shadows - Beautiful Levels
Zelda Wind Waker
Metroid Prime
 
I dont know, but for some reason, the first game that comes to my mind is devil may cry 1.
Back in the days, there really wasnt anything like devil may cry. Deamons, zombies and all that stuff were already pretty common in video games. But stepping into this HD world (yes, ps2 was HD compared to PS1) for the first time, was really something to remember.

I am actually not a big fan of the series, played through the first one, tried the third, nothing more.

dmc.jpg


600x-1


260c27451027.jpg


m1-01.jpg
 
I've never gotten anyone to agree with me on this, but I have often felt that 3D games released before this generation had more of an artistic challenge to them.

There was so much the developers had to "suggest" by what they were showing you.

Take a look at the world of ICO. It's a world of low-res. textures and blurry backgrounds, but you feel its atmosphere all around you.

With this generation, they can pretty much put anything in the game and there it is.
 
I don't care if half the game was shit and the other half was meh, Sonic Unleashed is beautiful

20080318-103524-000004.jpg

SpagoniaSonicUnleashed.jpg

Dark Schala said:
I just want to say that Adabat is so damned beautiful. God, the lighting and environmental design is exquisite. All of the environments in this game are beautiful (ex: Chun-nan, Apotos, Shamar), but Adabat really stands out to me. A nice, but very muddy-looking video comparing both the HD and Wii versions is here.

So pretty. :3

10zmd0okpl.jpg
pamzdbvjsx.jpg

h52uplujh8.jpg
qaydv8ikf0.jpg
5shkqrhj8x.jpg
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Can't find any good pictures :(
Ghost Trick has an awesome distinctive art style:
ghost-trick_002.jpg

149784-cacaca.jpg

emot-panicdance.gif

The animations make it.

Also, this is more down to world design, but the environments in Xenoblade look gorgeous:
iE3QG8m5S00Qn.png

ibpWRSdWiFcgFJ.png
 
Wind Waker, Skyward Sword, Metroid Prime, Cave Story...

I prefer games with beautiful art direction, this thread is heaven for me.
 
I'm a huge fan of looking for art talent in indie games. Aztaka, by a little indie dev in Quebec looks freaking stellar. The gameplay is a little iffy though.


028A016D02208284-c2-photo-oYToxOntzOjE6InciO2k6NjUwO30%3D-aztaka.jpg

Aztaka-Screenshot.jpg

a_new_power.jpg
 
Dusk Golem said:
Eternal Sonata and Fragile Dreams needs mention.
Click to expand...

Man, Eternal Sonata is such an absolutely gorgeous game, I daresay it even looks better than the Tales games we've gotten this gen. Too bad it's one of the worst RPGs I've ever played :(

Like always, Baten Kaitos series is my pick for this. Absolutely beautiful and extremely creative environments.

Nunki_Valley-Sadal_Suud-view.jpg


WAZN.jpg


baten2.jpg
 
Dark Souls, Paper Mario: TYD, El Shaddai.

One another note, I can't stand the way Okami looks. It boggles my mind that people praise it so much for it's art direction.
 
I'm surprised that nothing for SaGa Frontier 2 has been posted.

tumblr_kxr1j1wseI1qay4x5o1_500.jpg

saga_frontier2_00.jpg

16311741:jpeg_preview_large.jpg


Even a decade later, the game's beautiful water color painting backgrounds still impress the shit out of me. The character art isn't too shabby, either.

cover_l.jpg
 
I can't find any good screenshots of the parts I'm thinking of (some are technically spoilery anyway), but Uncharted 3 has some absolutely jaw-dropping moments art-design-wise. The final setting in the game is gorgeous.
 
Sayah said:
Aw, hell no.
Valkyria Chronicles has horrible art direction? What? Tales of Symphonia too? Have you played these games?
Click to expand...

I agree. Felt VC had a style that was much indebted to its coloring book filter but the game itself didn't draw me into a world all its own. We are talking Art Direction.

Symphonia I really have lots against it but the shapes really bugged me throughout the game. The world wasn't as consistent (mish-mash) but also made horrible use of shapes. Hard to explain but Abyss is better in that regard and Vesperia miles better still when defining a visual identity. Still may not be a fan of the team Symphonia titles but Symphonia itself really bugged me with its use of rigid shapes.
 
pakkit said:
cntrl-f enslaved

c'mon son.
Click to expand...

Yup. First game I thought of when I clicked on this thread.


Stumpokapow said:
Art direction is not just art style. It also involves how the game uses architecture to set an emotional tone, how lighting is used to convey information, camera angles for cutscenes and how space is used to set scope (how small spaces can make you paranoid or claustrophobic, while vistas and skyboxes feel epic and grand in stature), how character clothing conveys a certain style or national background, etc.

There are a lot of people in this thread who are basically posting games strictly because they are pretty. Some games are both pretty and have great art direction, others are ugly but have good art direction, others are pretty but have poor art direction.

Deadly Premonition is an example of a game that doesn't really look that great but that has great art direction. The way things are laid out in the town, the sense of scale, the way all the normal level designs "invert" when you are in the combat scenarios, the biome conveys that sort of mysterious cold foggy great ancient redwood Washington/BC feel, things like the coffee, the flies and beard that follow York around if he's dirty, the day/night cycle. But yeah, it looks like a PS2 game, kind of. But that's okay.

Bully and Mafia II both have great art direction in the way they deal with the passage of time. Zelda and Metroid both have very striking use of biomes and architecture and strongly themed areas to convey certain moods. Assassin's Creed 1 was hideous to me at least in part due to the scorching, bleaching lighting setup, but that did a good job of conveying what I expect the Middle East looks like. Mirror's Edge used really stark, clean environments to set up the theme that the world was safe, secure, and prosperous--by ruled by a panopticon surveillance and censorship regime.

Psychonauts, I thought had strong art design. The Milkman Conspiracy level's dimension bending, the Meat Circus level's clash of realities, the overall design and environment of the summer camp in general, the Fever Dream Neon Mexican Luchadore level. Great choices.
Click to expand...
This is a very good post. I agree that good a art "style" does not necessarily equal "pretty," or even "interesting visuals," but I don't agree with everything you listed contributing to what an art style is. I don't think camera angles in a cutscene, for example, contribue one bit to the actual art style of a game. Everything about the environment, setting, characters could be top-notch, but a bad camera angle is just bad direction/photography/cinematography, nothing to do with the art. Good art design can stand on its own in just its conceptual stages.
 
I would consider Trine 2 an example of poor art direction. There is so much colored lighting and each screen is so busy that playing the demo was a chore - it was often difficult to tell what was even happening onscreen. I'm sure a lot of stuff is going on technically but visually it's a bit of a mess.

IMO colored lighting is hard to get right and a little goes a long way. I think Kingdoms of Amalur also suffers from this. The individual assets look pretty good but the scene composition (at least in the demo) is often a jumble of low contrast, gauzy, soft lighting with a haphazard color palette.
 
MGS4%20-%20Middle%20East-620x.jpg


Always thought Act 1 of MGS4 looked beautiful and really matched the bleakness the game was trying to convey, this one part had really amazing art direction IMO, shame the rest of the game had to happen.
 
The image doesn't do it justice but the bit.trip series and more specifically bit.trip runner looks amazing, specially in motion.

AT4uB.jpg
 
OUTLAND

outland1asjrx.png


outland2n1k6g.png


outland3trk8f.png


PS: Outland in general is criminally overlooked by way to many people. In terms of art style the game is ridiculously good.

PPS: REZ Art Style wise looks crazy good in HD. Makes everything look like real vector graphics. I'd go so far as to say it looks better than it's spiritual successor Eden.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Demon's Souls Remake is sorely dissapointing in the art direction
2 3 4 5 6
272
16K
poodaddy replied
Amazing Moments in games that amazed you?
2
84
3K
IDKFA replied
  • Poll
Should Microsoft and Sony compete directly with Nintendo instead of just making a handheld for their games?
32
817
LavitzSlambert replied
  • Poll
Message for devs: graphical settings is the wrong direction for console games
2 3 4
173
5K
shamoomoo replied
Art Director at Guerilla Games responds to Aloy face controversy
2 3
116
9K
PixelatedBeast replied
Top Bottom