What about "Teenage Wasteland"?Originally Posted by soldant
If we're going to define "wasteland", let's consider all the implied meanings. Wasteland can mean inhospitable, irradiated, un-farmable, and a myriad of other negative things. It doesn't require the absence of color or even life. The tiberium fields of Command and Conquer weren't devoid of color, and I'd call those wastelands.
I think this is a pretty poor justification for an aesthetic. You can get away with it with storylines, plots and motifs (see: COD and Battlefield existing among each other), but you need to have something to make your existence valid. Variety is the spice, following tradition is boring, etc.
Hmmm... not a lot of scope for a lovely rainbow of colour and vibrancy. The Tiberium wastelands are indeed wastelands and do have more colour, but they're still mostly brown with the glittering green/blue crystals as a blight on the landscape. The colours are still restricted to a narrow range.
If a wasteland is teeming with life (I didn't say "devoid" and I was using 'nothing' more for dramatic effect) then it's hardly a wasteland, just the same as if it's a bright, colourful place. Most conceptions of a "wasteland" have a very limited colour range and are quite inhospitable. This kind of view is reinforced by the setting, which I presume follows on from the original's "Nuclear War". I didn't say that there can't be any colour or differentiation, just that the idea that Chernobyl is the true image of a nuclear apocalypse isn't really accurate, and a 'wasteland' with green forests and green rolling hills isn't really a wasteland.
People complaining about a game not being boring brown/gray? :i
Give me steam and how you feel to make it real.
And the thing is, if it had been more brown and grey, and grittier, then they would be complaining about it not being colourful enough.
Teeming with life goes completly against the idea of a wasteland, but being colorful in itself does not as long as the color is justified.
A green postapocalyptic environment reminds me of the excellent Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, so I have no reservations.
Type in uncultivated land into google and do an image search.
Wastelands can be all manner of shades and colours.
The nice thing about the new Wasteland project is that because of both the budget and the way they are planning to present the game there will be enough room for all manners of wastelands.
I certainly hope that there will be some blasted, barren landscapes, as well as desserts, poisoned marshes (contaminated water can be extremely colourful by the way), burnt-out forests, as well as parts of civilisation that nature reclaimed which will probably be closer to primeval forests than deserts.
Through variety there will (hopefully) be something for everyone.
They've already said it will look less plastic and it won't be as colorful, so the matter is settled.
There are already dozens of very colorful, cartoon modern games. Wasteland 2 won't be another one, thankfully.
Torchlight, TF2, Diablo 3, Fortnite, DOTA2, LOL, Brink, Borderlands, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Unity of Command, World of Warplanes, Scrolls, Tiny&Big, Ultima Forever, Warlock, Marvel Heroes, Heroes VI (DLC coming), Awesomenauts, Trine 2, Botanicula, Epic Mickey, The Banner Saga, Firefall, Defense Grid 2, the new upcoming Mirror Edge, F1 Race Stars, Phantasy Star Online, The Walking Dead, Quantum Conundrum, Little Inferno, Hero Academy, Wildstar, A Game of Dwarves...
It must be every comic fan's wet dream, and it looks like it's not ending anytime soon.
Diablo3 is not PvE or PvP, it is PvAH. -- Tei
I'm fine with the desert being brown, if they do subdue it. But I am looking forward to the cities overrun with plant life, it may be against the notion of a nuclear Wasteland but it would be fun to see.
We can't have games with a original visual styles now can we? That would just be silly.
Who cares about style, there are some games that already do it, that means its fine for the rest to be brown and unoriginal, to portray the idea of what is "realistic" when in fact they are generally more jarring then stylistic games. I love not being able to tell the difference between games simply from a visual perspective.
Saturated colours != cartoon-like. Besides the ladder, I do not see anything that could be considered cartoon-like.
Last edited by byteCrunch; 23-07-2012 at 04:01 PM.
Wake up ! Colorful and cartoony is the norm today. Brown and grey games stand out because they're in the minority.
Diablo3 is not PvE or PvP, it is PvAH. -- Tei
Wake up, stylisation != cartoon-like, colourful != cartoon-like. Games with stylised aesthetics are not the norm by any stretch of the imagination. Brown and grey games stand out because the world is not all brown and grey, so they look stupid, considering most of these games generally fall into the category of trying to be realistic in their presentation, which makes them even more jarring.
You are completely confusing cartoony and stylised, for example Guild Wars 2 is stylised but not cartoon-like, it attempts of emulate the style of its concept art, it is more stylised-realism. Brink is another example I can think of, with its disproportionate character style, I very much doubt you would class that as cartoon-like. So few of the games you actually listed are cartoon-like in their style.
Games with an original/different visual aesthetic should be the norm, games shouldn't look the same, to name just two, saying that The Banner Saga is equal to Tiny & Big in its visual style is completely absurd, one that apes the look of 60s Disney animation and another with a comic-book aesthetic, both wildly different, both styles not often seen.
Games with a more stylised look are making a bit of a comeback, thanks in part to mobile platforms where resources are more limited. Just because you can list a group of games each with generally pretty different looks, with many of them not even being cartoon-like, does not mean cartoon games are dominant.
Last edited by byteCrunch; 23-07-2012 at 05:43 PM.
I said colorful/cartoony, and Guild Wars is a fireworks display. The argument is that realistic-looking, or at least grey games are supposedly the norm. But they're clearly in minority.
I'm much more interested in games having depth and interesting mechanics, thank you very much. There's overabundance of stylized games, it seems to be all 'innovation' they can do. Indies in particular can't seem to do anything else, they just churn out platformers memorable only for their aesthetic. A big fuss is made about occasional game with procedurally generated stuff, whereas in the past it was a common sight. Average games like Warlock are praised, because they belong to nearly extinct TBS genre. I don't watch games, I play them.
Boardgame players seem to understand this better. No one wants to play a boring game that looks great.
Last edited by b0rsuk; 23-07-2012 at 08:04 PM.
Diablo3 is not PvE or PvP, it is PvAH. -- Tei
Your comment astounds me, inferring things from my comment I did not even hint at. When did I say gameplay was less important then aesthetics. There really isn't an overabundance of stylised games, any more then there is an overabundance of brown games. I take issue with your use of the word "cartoony" to describe any games that does not fall under your definition, a game can be colourful and authentic, in fact a game would be more authentic if it did have a lot more colour. CoD is a fireworks display does that mean it has a colourful/cartoony aesthetic?
I am very much with you on the games should be played not watched (though I do not understand when I said anything to contrary), however it is completely ridiculous to even suggest that somehow graphics are unimportant, games are a visual medium they must convey information visually, an appealing and consistent aesthetic greatly helps to transfer that information.
You bring up indies, amazing, do you know why indies tend to rely on outdated or stylised aesthetics, its quite simple really, they don't have the budget to do "realism." A striking art style is more likely to attract attention initially. Not to mention why do you consider graphics and mechanics independent from one another, visuals can be used to create gameplay, for example a game that comes to mind is Snapshot (oh no its an indie platformer with a pseudo-pixel art style,) in the game you are able to photograph the environment/objects, and re-purpose these "images" to solve puzzles.
On the Wasteland 2 front, RakeShark put it pretty well:
Last edited by byteCrunch; 23-07-2012 at 10:24 PM.
So, you picked out one single definition, which doesn't even apply with the Wasteland 2 game-world, and decided that it's the correct one to apply? That's not how definitions work... I might as well tell you to type "wasteland" into Google image search and see what you get. Hint: mostly brown/grey.
Seriously look at the setting of Wasteland 2 and try to justify having a wide range of colours to match a rainbow. I'm not saying that the game has to have a single set of drab brown and grey colours for everything, just that the general conception of a wasteland (particularly in the context of the game) isn't for an EGA kaleidoscope of colour to show up.
Eh, consider it a difference in imagination on the "wasteland" definition. I know the go-to look of a nuclear apocalypse is rocky deserts and boiling sunsets, just like in Judge Dredd or Fallout.
But consider this alternative. Replace the rocky deserts with drenched swampland. The stilted water lets nasty mold and bacteria thrive. The local animal life not only thrives in the water, but the predators are hidden within it. Flora and other plant life can be as damp or as colorful as they wish, being colorful will probably help remind herbivores and omnivores that you're REALLY poisonous. You can't farm it, you can't build on it, no easy way at all to clear it, you can barely move through it, and it can kill you in kinds of fun ways.
Toss in "the nuclear holocaust caused the ice caps to melt enough so the world is covered in mutated swamps" and you have a wasteland. You can make it arctic if you want, that's another fun palette to play with. A wasteland isn't so much defined by how it looks, it's more or less defined by how hostile and inhospitable it is to live in. A lush jungle utterly heaving with self-replicating land mines. An adapted grasslands plain with a regular sulfuric super-acid rain system. A scenic caribbean archipelago sitting on a hyperactive volcano fault line. A lovely green mountain valley with a tendency to turn into swiss cheese sink holes depending on the tides and the weight walking on the surface.
I mean, come one, half the fun of imagining a wasteland is perverting what we know to be safe and habitable. The other half is inventing mean animals in those areas that will try to eat your face off.
Wasteland = wasted land
Sounds right to me. If the game ends up being very colorful, it will be a misnomer like the latest Alone in the Dark.
Diablo3 is not PvE or PvP, it is PvAH. -- Tei
I am not sure anyone is saying it should look like a rainbow, however some people are complaining that even the current colour palette based on the screenshot shown is too saturated and colourful for a "post-apocalyptic" setting, which I can't quite comprehend, the current palette fits perfectly well with a desert wasteland. Rich, saturated colours as a result of the bright sunlight, if this was an internal environment, I would maybe understand peoples complaints.
Please explain exactly why the word wasteland must equate to a muted colour palette.
Last edited by byteCrunch; 24-07-2012 at 08:34 AM.
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