|
I feel that, very often, the art direction of games gets hung up on details. Take one sci-fi shooter versus another sci-fi shooter. They have a space marine with armor, and you can see the armor was intensely, lovingly crafted by a talented artist to specifically carry visual touches that they think are relevant; but, if you take a step back, the two games don't communicate much different.
JJ: Yeah, I agree. This is something that we did in Human Revolution. The amount of detail is pretty crazy at every level of the game in terms of the environments and the characters -- even if you look at all of the props. Something like 1300 props were all concept art-ed.
The style is very homogenous in the game; it's not a very photorealistic game. It's a stylized game because I truly believe that, if you have a proper stylistic visual language, that actually makes the world more credible -- not photorealistic, but credible -- because everything fits within the same visual language.
If you have a head that looks super photorealistic but then the texture behind it is not, to me there's a discontinuity there. But if everything fits within the same stylistic language, it feels more credible. Anyway, that's one of my theories.
So you need to get into a lot of details, to get back to what I was saying, and it's exactly that. To some degree, I can say that there's almost as much love that was put into designing the little tech props that go all around the game than put into the armors like you were saying or stuff like that. It's very thick at all the layers of the game: high and low.
From object to world.
JJ: From object to world; it's exactly that.
You talked about cyberpunk being done before, and it certainly has. Did you use any reference?
JJ: Yeah. You can't get around Blade Runner, obviously -- the canon -- visually, at least. Ghost in the Shell; Akira... It's very obvious when you look at the game, as well, that I'm a huge fan -- and also the artists that I work with -- of Metal Gear Solid and a bit of the Asian aesthetics in the game. A lot of people ask me: "It's so obvious that Square Enix are in there, visually," and I'm like, "No, this was all in there before they acquired us." This is stuff that we already loved. We did that ourselves.
Though Metal Gear did something similar, very few games have done what you're doing in terms of sticking to a reduced palette, and emphasizing that as a visual strength. If there's one series that's done that, it's Metal Gear.
JJ: I totally agree with that. Also, in terms of movies and other cyberpunk stuff, obviously we reread all the William Gibson stuff. All of those things are really important. And reading all of the things in transhumanism and cybernetics, because it's such a central theme to the game, was important.
Another good reference that is not cyberpunk at all, but was important for the whole Baroque/Renaissance feeling was the movie The Duelist. It's Ridley Scott's first movie, which is actually more in the Napoleonic era -- which is not Baroque or Renaissance at all, but it's got a way of treating the image that's really reminiscent of Vermeer's paintings or Rembrandt's paintings and stuff like that. Also, the movie The Girl With the Pearl Earring was all about Vermeer's painting. He was an early Baroque painter, so that was very good reference for that.
What's interesting about those is that they're one-step-removed references. Did you actually go to Vermeer, or did you go to the things that were influenced by Vermeer? Did you want to create a Vermeer-esque feeling, or did you want to create an interpretation of an interpretation of Vermeer? Do you know what I mean?
JJ: It's a bit of both. The thing is that, when you tell your guys, "We're going to mix cyberpunk with Renaissance stuff," it's like... [makes the sound of a heart monitor flatlining]. It's never been done. I couldn't walk into the office one morning with a reference from a game or a movie or whatever and say, "This is how you mix them." It just did not exist. Only so much iteration -- it looked really crazy, at first. It did not work, and at one point it started gelling.
My point is, those references -- let's say Vermeer. Sometimes, those things are not present at all in the game. We had to kind of dose them properly. The more a character, or the more an environment, is engrained in the transhumanist values -- are really pro-transhumanist -- the more Renaissance stuff is going to be there; and the more against transhumanism that character or environment is, the less there is going to be.
So if you look at the CGI trailer, for example, there are parts in that trailer that you pause, and it's Adam Jensen talking to David Sarif; it looks like a Rembrant painting, literally. I'm not talking about the actual reproduction of the painting The Anatomy Lesson from Rembrant; that is obvious.
But other scenes in those sci-fi offices -- with the way we did the lighting and everything, if you pause it, it looks just like a Rembrant painting. So that was overt. Other times, we're using it more as an inspiration than trying to make a scene look like a Vermeer painting or whatnot. There are places like that, but usually it's more of a global inspiration.
|
Printer-Friendly Version
I see the point being made here, and I don't diagree entirely. But isn't there a danger of taking it too far -- of so strongly emphasizing form over function that "real art direction" is used to paper over a lack of depth in the gameplay?
To reference a well-known game design model, if art direction satisfies the need for Aesthetics, doesn't a great game still need significant attention paid to Mechanics and Dynamics?
I would make an analogy of the fun factor of a supposedly perfect VR apparatus, what I mean by this would be to consider the most realistic representation of vision, audio and perhaps data glove hardware setup, but, in this context, all the player can do is explore the environment, there is no story, no other characters or players, just the player and the "realistic"environment... Soon, maybe after 15-30 minutes, the player/user would probably be bored since there is no objective, no story, no goals, no conflict, thus no defined intention but wonder about... Like: "Wow, this is beautiful... So what?" There is no fun.
And that's where I think the subtleness of art direction comes in, like mentioned in this interview... Good art direction is not only about visual, or sound, it's about creating the mood, giving a slight enlightenment of the world the player finds himself in and *suggest* things that should or would happen, and when this is well done, the sense of "danger" eminent, or conflict about to happen, this adds up the player expectation, thus intention and willingness to take action... And a good art director will be able to grab all those references from the past, movies, paintings, stories, tales, mythology, comic books, street art and reality, bring some of that background and feeling, that players somehow will identify (some of them called clichés), even though they might not be conscious about it, for that moment in the game. Take all of that and add in all of the variances of culture and subjectiveness of individuals... This should be very difficult to achieve!
also, I would like to mention, of course, one could consider that if interactiveness is also an art form, as about the endless discussions of games as a whole being an "art form", then game mechanics would be part of this too, part of aesthetics (aesthetics is not only about visual), the dynamics and the harmony of temporal connections of events, like hard paced deathmatch frenzy or just a zen fly through...
So, this is what I think is meant to differentiate art from tech.
Just my opinion though.
This is the kind of design consciousness I can get behind.
Great interview!
I too am awaiting the arrival of Mr Postman.