@ Esha: There is no attack. I am simply pointing out that the critical eye is inherently a subjective, prejudiced one. My opinion differs to yours, but that doesn’t make it less valid, especially since, as far as I’m aware, we’re both artists of some type.

To me good art directing involves combining visuals and audio with pacing to create a complete experience that complements and supports how the game’s mechanics are designed to be played. And as Metal Circus points out, it’s the experience of playing the actual game that matters. That’s why comparing screengrabs is a very limited exercise.

You’re being amazingly apologist there, suspiciously so even. First of all you say that art direction doesn’t matter, only aural themes do, and then you go on to say that art direction does matter, and you’re probably wrong anyway because we’ve seen so little of the game.

Because of that contradiction, I find it hard to take your view seriously and I’ll just have to say that we’ll have to agree to disagree. There’ll always be the critical eye, and there’ll always be the fanboy who’ll do his or her respective best to debunk any critical views given. Such has been a truth since the birth of gaming, and likely will be forevermore.

So as you can tell, I disagree. I think that visual direction is equally as important as aural themes, and personally I think we’ve seen enough to perceive the discordian nature that the lack of art focus has created. I think the point I made there went over your head, my good man, because the point was that despite how different the areas within a game may be, there’s usually a visual cohesion linking all of the art styles together. In my opinion, Okami has it, TF2 has it, Diablo 3 has a laughable lack of it.

And if the best you can counter that with is that we haven’t seen much of the game yet, then frankly my good man, it is to laugh. I’m sorry.

I guaruntee you the ratio of good to bad games would then lean heavily to good, because then developers can make a game they want to make rather than what the marketing sector of EA games says they should make.

:edit: i also think the ridiculous over-analyzing of the Diablo 3 art style is quite representative of the gaming scene at the moment – i.e. quite rubbish. How are the graphics going to impact on the gameplay?

The whole anti-current art direction argument is actually especially spurious considering we’ve seen a whopping total of 2 locations: Dungeon + Outside Dungeon, one of which is all hard-edged, flame lit architecture and the other of which is primarily organic forms that are diffusely lit. There’s a massive contrast, but saying that they look like different games in-play is a very hard argument to make convincingly, especially since in the cinematic shown, the outdoor section becomes increasingly dark and foreboding as play progresses, and the decayed architectural elements provide some consistency of theme.

All I have to say really is “Oi!”, I don’t think I can add anything beyond that. ;p

@Scandalon

That’s going in my new little book of “What would Niko do?” rules. I needed a new book, because my “What would SHODAN do?” one was getting pretty full.

I do feel as though I’m speaking Russian sometimes, though.

Thankfully however, this time it looks like I got my views across without being mistaken for just another veteran of the AMI movement. This is good.

@Psychopump

If I were him, I’d make excuses too.

The visual flow in Diablo is very broken, and I didn’t really know how to convey that very well beyond the huge post that I made. The thing is, I like Diablo as much ast he next gaming-obsessed fellow and nerd, but whenever I look at this new one I can’t help but recall the line that too many cooks spoil the broth. I just think their team was too big and they’re pulling in so many directions. A game can be as vibrant as it wants, but if it’s not cohesive then it’s just a visual junkpile.

@In General

I have to say that I did like what the AMI movement did with the game, but not because it robs the game of vibrancy, but more because it gives the game some amount of visual cohesion between stage A and stage B, it helps them look more like they’re from the same game. The AMI achieved something other than what they wanted when they started putting these examples together.

To me, at least, they didn’t prove that the game needed to be less vibrant (it doesn’t) but they did evidence the complete void of flow, by providing a flow and focus all of their own, and thus linking the sections of the game by overlaying their own desires on top of it, giving the game more of that feeling that section A of the game really does flow into section B.

And that’s what Diablo III needs at the moment, they need to get their art people to look at the game as a whole and ask themselves how they can make it look as though this is all from the same game, how can they give it that art flow?

And sometimes, I do wonder if this is what the AMI were seeing when they complained, but at the time some of them just didn’t know what they were complaining about, perhaps they could sense the wrongness of it, but they were attacking the wrong area. I’ve done that before myself, when I’ve been unable to properly pin something down. But in the case of Diablo, I can see the problem.

Given that most of the photoshopped correction from “teh gayness” to “teh awesome” is just a color palette shift from color to… shades of browns, I don’t see why Blizzard couldn’t just add an Emo bar to the graphics settings.

This is a really good idea. No, really.

See, that’s a valid argument.
I have, however, heard the Art Director use the work “juxtaposition,” which would explain the seeming lack of direction at this point.

Unfortunately, thanks to you, now I can’t not notice it.

Now most of the enemies actually look like pinatas.

I’m not married to the isometric perspective, but frankly I can’t see any benefit to moving away from it, either.