Epic's GDC 2012 Unreal Engine demos shall have you gasping

[zarx]

famousringo said:

Zim said:

You could have a beige post-apocalyptic war zone that had utterly beautiful art direction and style. 

Given how often they've tried, if that were possible, I think somebody would have pulled it off by now. It's fugly in Gears of War, it's fugly in Killzone, it's fugly in Fallout, and it's fugly in Borderlands. That last one is cel-shaded, so it should have all kinds of style, but there's only so much style you can give a garbage dump. Even worse, the aesthetic seems to ooze into into other games which aren't set in war zones, but somehow everything has to be rotting and run-down anyway.

You're right though. None of this is the tech's fault. Good technology and good art direction shouldn't be mutually exclusive. The cynic in me just can't help but feel that rather than enabling greater or cheaper creativity, UE4 will enable sharper textures on rotting cardboard boxes, a more realistic sheen on corrugated aluminum siding, and better animated bulbous ape-men. It wouldn't bother me so much if it didn't feel like every, damn, developer was drifting in the same direction.

I would love to be wrong. Maybe UE4 will bring some much-needed freshness to videogame art design. Or maybe I'm the outlier, and what the mass market wants is pro wrestlers in gritty wastelands and I should stop being a whiney bitch and suck it up.

It will do both and it will be 100% up to the developers how they use it. 

there are actually a wide veriaty of art styles used with UE3 not just the bald space marine warzone, there is no reason to hate on the unreal engine or it's tech advances because you don't like the current popular art styles the are used in most games.