JWeinCom said:
I sort of get what you're saying, but sort of don't. Any specific examples you can give? |
An example would be how all characters were redesigned slightly for 4, to use the same style of details around eyes, ears, and hair. Even on Bayonetta, her ears, face, and the seams on her leather outfit, and the reflections on that, had all be stylized slightly to fit in with the others. Likewise, when two characters stood next to eachother, even if their heads were wildly different sizes, the smallest details visible (like the glint in an eye, or the engravings in a sword) would still match up to a certain degree (in could still be better), making the characters feel like they belong on the same scale of existance.
Aside from that, almost everything in 4 felt softly self-illuminated, giving off a brightly colored feel, with the normal maps (the light-catching details that aren't part of the color layer on a model) only showing their face during close-ups and extreme lighting conditions.
Conversely, in Ultimate, some of the the same models are used, but with the light source influence dialed all the way up, resulting in some details reading with higher contrast, and some surfaces like scales demanding much more attention than might originally have been intended. This sometimes makes a design seem a little unintentionally jumbled and unrefined. On top of that, they add some not-exactly-state-of-the-art self shadowing. That's when you see an animated character's head or hand cause a shadow on the model itself, instead of just the environment. This was always a costly effect that is only really starting to look decent with the tech employed on the PS4 and XBO. On Switch, the rough outlines of these shadows and the simplistic algorithm used to blend their color with that of the model's own texture results in the effect mostly making the characters' detials look harder to read, and the final image overall more murky, with less contrast and rough edges stealing the eye to irrelevant spots.
Look up in-game shots of Ridley to see all of this in action. And that's on a new model even, bringing me to my final area of concern, which is with the new models introduces for Ultimate, hcich just don't seem on par with what was in already from 4. Particularly Ridley is just a monochrome blob, with normal map details of an even complexity covering his entire body. I've got issues with Zeldas model as well. And K. Rool's. And with the way they introduce Shovel Knight unaltered, and add in a bunch of very old looking Pokémon models.
Ultimately (haha) I'm hoping most of this will be cleaned up before launch, but it's looking like a tall order. Some new assets, like Dracula's Castle for instance, really do look great!
Apologies for the lengthy write-up. I wanted to show some pictures, but finding the adresses and inserting them correctly proved somewhat more complex than typing. ^^
