Yeah, I love Lost Odyssey's art direction.

Though I still am on Disc 2, The areas seen so far are vastly different from every other Unreal Engine game.

I love it.

First post for Thijzo -

Welcome!

I remember playing Unreal for the first time on my shiny new PIII 500 back in the day and being blown away by it. And then after UT all the games that came out using the unreal engine that pretty much universally sucked.

I've always hated games that used this engine. Until Lost Odyssey...

There were a few times with a wee bit of chug that I bitterly cursed the Unreal name, but this is one of those few games that rises above the engine for the most part.

I've played Mass Effect for 30 hours, and Lost Odyessy now for 27 hours, and I love both games. Graphically I would have never assumed they were built on the same engine as per say Gears of War, I think games like Gears got that color palate popular and since they themselves make Gears and UT3 which both hoard dark colors it perhaps works well with them. But personally I hate GEars and UT3s look, if you just flick through the pages of the game guide in a store it looks like every level in the world is the same. So I think the look and feel is more of an artist thing rather then an engine thing, it just requires game developers to look beyond the engine makers titles themselves, and develop a unique palette.

Stick, I think you're looking at things rather backwards here. UE3 doesn't force developers to use a grey color palette, the developers who use UE3 choose to use a grey color palette.

Think about who has used UE3 the most over the past two years... Western developers. Those guys have been in love with the color grey for the past half decade. Now that UE3 is being used occasionally by Japanese developers (including SE), we'll see a bit of diversity in styles and color palettes. It's not a limitation of the engine, just a preference by most of the developers who have used it up to this point. Remember that Western devs are much more inclined to use middleware to help in development of a game than are their Japanese counterparts.

Pig, either way, I was just asking to see if Lost Odyssey strayed from the "typical" FPS color pallete that seems to of pidegonholed the UE3 platform.

Which is why I like UE3, it's so versitile for all kinds of neat games.

It does somewhat, though I expect to see more varied games from the engine over the next year or two. By Japanese standards, Lost Odyssey's art style is pretty muted. After all, let's not forget this fruitcake:

In the history of bad character designs, Tidus has to be one of the worst. God, what a terrible character. He single-handedly turned me off JRPGs for two years.

Lost Odyessey looks superb. Didnt even know it was UE3. That shows you.