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Nuvendil on 15 November 2015
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curl-6 said:
Nuvendil said:
curl-6 said:

It's funny, when I first played Skyward Sword in 2011 I loved the game, but found its graphics ugly. I guess it was cos all through the Wii's life, "Zelda Wii" was talked about as the game that would truly push the system's limits graphically.

However, when I replayed it earlier this year, I actually appreciated its graphics more than I did 4 years ago, despite the passage of time and moving on to the Wii U in the interim

Yeah, it's a very unique art direction.  There's a lot of games that go for a "painterly" art style, but few go as all in or get it as right as Skyward Sword.  It's very cool most of the time.  Personally, while I get SS is built around its motion controls and that's part of the reason they chose Twilight Princess, I personally think SS would hold up better as a remaster than TP.  Upping the texture resolutions, improving the filters, and increasing the draw distance for the highest detail level and then upping the resolution to 1080p would result in a gorgeous game.  Twilight Princess really needs a more ground-up rebuild graphically, replacing many meshes, textures, and other major adjustments.  Not saying the remaster couldn't look better without going that far, but it would still suffer from obvious 2006 design flaws

As I've said before, I think the main thing that TPHD needs but isn't getting is a lighting overhaul.

It's Direct X 7 level lighting looks very flat and dated in this day and age; the addition of per-pixel illumination, HDR, atmospheric scattering, etc would work wonders in terms of smoothing over its rough edges.

The lighting is one major thing, and would help a lot.  But you still have other problems that come from age.  One is obviously polygon counts, it was built with the GameCube in mind.  Obvious weakpoints there are character models and definitely architecture in and around Hyrule Castle.  Interiors hold up well enough.  But then you have landscape and vegetation.  Landscape is just desperately lacking is details like grass of some kind and polygons at cliffs and rock formations.  Wouldn't be a big deal except it's going for realism.  And then there's the trees, which is a problem of the game just not using any modern techniques; they remind me of Morrowind trees.  They need replacing as well.  Skyward Sword's art style circumvents a lot of these and also benefits form being designed by a more experienced Nintendo and only for the Wii.  That's what I was getting at.  Yes, this remaster would be improved greatly from new lighting.  But it would still clearly look like a 2006 game with a very good new coat of paint.