Well in the end it's a personal preference which style better suites the game and it seems CD Project Red decided it's the new colorful style.I disagree with that, but maybe I will change my mind when I finally get my hands on the game. But I don't see how creating a complex and authentic world has anything to do with the graphic style. If they chose to go with the older, gritty style I doubt they would have made a less complex (or less dark and gritty) world, just because the graphics would be enough to create a gritty mood. I also didn't say the new videos lack mood. The Witcher games always had a great atmosphere and I'm sure Witcher 3 won't be a exception. But from what I have seen so far there is a lack of a visually desperate and depressed mood vimo. I'm not saying every region must have this tone, but the war ravaged Velen should have it. From the gameplay I have seen so far I just don't feel it. Everything is way too colorful. Maybe it changes after I meet some people in the game and listen to their stories, but appropriate look would definitively help.
Emphasise mine.
Conveying a dire atmosphere almost solely via an excessive use of a limited colour scheme is simply an overused, unearned and ultimately lazy way to approach worldbuilding.However, I'm not decrying the graphic style per se. I was simply stating that leaning TOO heavy on ONE SINGLE ASPECT - washed-out, desaturated colours - was probably not the best way to create a specific tone, let alone the whole world of the Witcher 3, since its also pretty reductive and doesn't leave much room for diversity. Of course graphics can and should be used to evoke atmosphere. Even more, they should be utilized to construct a coherent, believable world. Environmental storytelling is one of gaming's greatest, unfortunately too often underutilized strengths. However, I fail to see how this is related to my previous post.
Yes, visuals (in tandem with writing and audio) can and should be used to create "a desperate and depressed mood", as you put it, but then I wasn't really saying anything to the contrary. Let's put it this way: If you want to portray a ravaged, war torn countryside, you show destroyed cottages, unkempt or burned down fields, broken-up roads, people wearing filthy cloaths, people robbing travellers out of necessity, rotting bodies etc. ... all this accompanied by a mournful score and perhaps an eerily howling wind. However, contrary to popular belief (
) colour doesn't just disappear out of the world or lose its intensity. Grass, unless its actually burned, is still as green, leaves and foliage in general just as colourful, the sky is just as blue or - depending on the time of day - red, orange or purple as it was before. That's why I don't understand the rationale behind the act of putting a monochrone filter over everything to convey a desperate tone.
I think we as a society are primed through years of WWII film footage, newspaper coverage and "Saving Private Ryan"-inspired war movies to assume that a war or post-war landscape is this greyish nightmare, when in reality there's really not that much difference unless you really are in the middle of urban city centre that has been reduced to nothing but rubble. But in Geralt's world cities are a rarity, most of his time is spent traversing pristine wilderness. And nature is normally the first thing to recover from the damages a war has wrought anyway.
Now, If you argue that there should be more destruction and despair on display due to the ongoing war with Nilfgaard ... well, that's a fair argument. But that has not really something to do with the actual design of the graphics or the colour scheme and how both may have changed between the VGX/SoD trailer and recent gameplay videos. That's simply CDPR having made the choice to build an untouched village into the game instead of a wrecked one. Showing a field of lilies instead of a mass grave. Whether that field of lilies is colourful or greyish wouldn't really have an impact on the tone of the game, right? Unless of course there has been a vulcan eruption and the desaturated colours of the environment are due to a all-encompassing ashfall that covers everything.
Ah, okay, sorry for the somewhat meandering post. I'm sure by now we're again kneedeep in false advertising allegation and console bashing.
