>good and notable art styles can boost even an average game's success and popularity
>good and memorable music can boost even an average game's success and popularity
>good and resonant writing can boost even an average game's success and popularity
>good and relatable characters can boost even an average game's success and popularity
>even the best environments and locations in a game won't do anything to boost its success or popularity meaning they're a waste of time and effort
Environmentbros...
Environments are something you can botch even if they are visually stunning. Especially in old JRPGs, you'd be wandering around looking at neat shit but it was completely uninteractive. The only things you could interact with were things on the paths, leading to every area effectively being a pretty hallway, which is boring. If the environment is only a vessel for offering up story or combat, and not part of the gameplay challenges too, then it ultimately doesn't matter how detailed it is, it's a meaningless visual paint job.
But what you are describing are badly handled environments, whereas the thread is about the best case scenario. Take Mario 64 which had very rough early 3D environments, and Spyro which had some of the best environments and locations in the generation, I'm saying that even if you swapped how their environments were handled it wouldn't affect their success and popularity and that both already achieved all they could on their other qualities.
Octopath Traveller 2 , crystal project is a better game that this
It's simply incorrect, but difficult to prove one way or the other.
For example: The newest Final Fantasy has very poor environment art. Anyone who used to buy those games for the art had a higher chance to skip after seeing this. But the character art was also poor. Which one was the greater dissuader? Impossible to say.
There are many games where environments may have caused lower success and popularity. But we simply cannot say.
the one reason xenoblade 1 managed to be popular enough to get more games was the environments
nah it was the hot bird c**t
rogue galaxy was pretty cool, combat got kinda boring after a while though, and the story was mediocre
the factory exploded my little 12 year old brain when I first tried it out so I didn't get any of the seven star weapons from it
the aesthetic was great though, I'll give you that
Level-5 always does amazing environment art
They have fantastic artists all round.
Shame Hino can't direct a game to save his life.
Shit I already thought the horizons in the OP image looked great
true
I can never replay this game again because you get the fast travel spell too late. The beginning of the game was a slog. Should of gotten it immediately after leaving the first area.
Dark Cloud 2 still being beautiful to look at is nothing short of an accomplishment. Normally PS2 games age like milk.
>Normally PS2 games age like milk.
Ratchet and Clank 1 and Jak and Daxter are early life PS2 games and I just played them on the PS2 and they haven't aged that badly. In fact aside from strafing, they still hold up and look good.
>Dark Cloud 2 still being beautiful to look at is nothing short of an accomplishment. Normally PS2 games age like milk.
What are you talking about? As long as they had strong art direction to begin with, they hold up just fine.
>has a good art style
>has forgettable music
>has no writing
>every character dies of depression
Elden Ring was literally made to make use of the fricking "Facebook button" on the Playstation controller. Everyone gushes over how amazing the landscapes look but that's always when you're on a hill overlooking them. Once you actually start traversing those environments the camera is going to be pointed at the fricking ground 90% of the time.
Dropped Rogue Galaxy after my second attempt at playing it up the same spot. The mining planet after getting the Dog. It's such a chore. Spamming abilities and items. The combat system is so damn undercooked. And the random encounters are too frequent. It's a shame because I enjoy systems autism and Dark Cloud 1/2. But I just couldn't get into it. Even worse when you need to break enemies defenses by throwing shit at them. It just feels so bad because targeting is so slippery. It's a great looking game and the music is nice. Would've been really nice if it played more like an action RPG with real-time combat without menu shit or random encounters instead of this weird bastardization of systems we got.
You just know that Steve Blum was pounding on Sony's door, going "ME! ME! LET ME VOICE THE EYEPATCH GUY!!"
It has been years and I still miss Rogue Galaxy... It's a shame it never got a sequel.
95% of the reason I like Xenoblade Chronicles is the enviroment.
And in some cases the enviroment is part of the level design that is very important to certain styles of games like FPS.
>95% of the reason I like Xenoblade Chronicles is the enviroment.
You're the exception, the vast majority of people doesn't care and never has. I've seen games brought up and praised by normalgays for all kinds of reasons, but never environment art or locations.
Name one average game that was made more popular/succesful by music or writing.
Nier
>music
Undertale
>writing
Disco Elysium
Helltaker
>music
touhou, undertale, most jrpgs
>writing
all the vns with gameplay elements like ace attorney, nonary games, danganronpa, etc
also every wrpg and jrpg ever
>>good and memorable music can boost even an average game's success and popularity
nah
That's probably the most common case out of everything OP listed though
Persona 5
after reading through this thread i've come to the conclusion that nobody cares about gameplay, it's all about that youtube experience
The whole point of the thread is which non-gameplay features can make up for gameplay shortcomings
As much as I hate most parts of Genshin's gameplay, they absolutely nail the environments at the cost of having very few real dungeons. For some reason, the vast majority of AA JRPG devs forgot how to make visually appealing levels during the 7th gen, when the PS2 still had drop-dead gorgeous ones like Rogue Galaxy and Tales of the Abyss.
I think Genshin has a lot of great ideas for environment art but in practice it's almost always kind of sterile and lacking roughness, they could use some texture
No it doesn’t need more “roughness”you stupid shit eater. You are so used to low quality garbage that you cannot fully appreciate high art.
Also the Japs did not suddenly forget to make appealing environment. They are just too incompetent to translate 2d concept art to actual assets that can stand up to close inspection.
You have to have a vision, resources and commitment to the art, all of which the west and the jap are not capable of. All of the shit coming out in the past 10 years have been “procedural generated.” That is why all of them look like shit outside of distance 2d screen shot. All of them there is not a single exception
>Also the Japs did not suddenly forget to make appealing environment. They are just too incompetent to translate 2d concept art to actual assets that can stand up to close inspection.
It's absolutely a money thing, these days. Look at how CS3-4 and Xillia-Berseria look, compared to NNK2, Tales of Arise, any Xenoblade game, or Elden Ring.
No it's really fake and plasticky looking
Think that's usually thanks to the rain, since there's a day and night cycle.
He's not wrong you gaylord. Look at the blades of grass in the game, there's literally zero texture on them and the distant LODs having no texture makes that part of the game look like an N64 game when there isn't fog obscuring to. Fontaine is a great example of that, it looks bad.
I was seething when they let us know they have like 150gb of uncompressed textures they won't let me use. Maybe that would help.
>there's literally zero texture on them
Does there really need to be? BOTW and NNK2 work the same way, I think. Also, they kind of need to be that easy to render so they can have enough polys to bend when something walks over it.
I don't know about NNK but BOTW's grass looks a lot better. This isn't something that has an FPS hit either, they're just lazy or something since like the other anon said it looks like plastic.
>BOTW's grass looks a lot better
They're the same t-b-h
They are not stop being moronic.
Yeah I completely agree.
Genshin is also one of the few games that actually tries to put caves you can explore all over the place.
I wish Genshin was good.
Usually good enviroments come with a good artstyle and direction.
Not necessarily, Okami and Wind Waker have a great visual style but the environments themselves are kind of disappointing
exactly this
you can't expect good environment design when everything else on the art directory is already poor
Old CRPGs have ass art direction but superb location design, it can happen
>even the best environments and locations in a game won't do anything to boost its success or popularity meaning they're a waste of time and effort
Nah - Xenoblade had fantastic environments and it's half the reason i continued playing it to the end. Otherwise It was just a bloody mediocre game with bad combat and atrocious writing and utterly shit character designs and really awful quests etc.
>>good and memorable music can boost even an average game's success and popularity
The reason FFVII and its "Remake" were popular
>>even the best environments and locations in a game won't do anything to boost its success or popularity meaning they're a waste of time and effort
The reason Remake looks like an ugly tech demo slapped together in a week despite actually taking five fricking years to market
Aren't video games magical, kids?
>yfw that edit of E.T. with the music edited out
Daily reminder that if your production, be it a film or vidya, can't stand on its own two feet without great musical scores by genuine talent, then (You)'re a hack fraud who has none. Music (and sound design) is its own art form and should be used to enhance a film or video game, or in Final Fantasy's case, a film masquerading as a video game. Not a crutch to rely on.
Lookin' at you, Kojimbo.