Dishonored creator's Fallout: New Vegas-inspired immersive sim prefers stylized art to ultra-realism that ages fast – "Back then it was probably stunning, now you can't even look at it"
Aug. 26, 2024“You look at some old Zelda, and it’s still cute”
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The new game from Dishonored and Prey director Raphael Colantonio probably won’t be opting for ultra-realistic graphics, because stylization looks better in the long term and takes way less time.
Helping Colantonio and his team keep their workload in check, however, is that “when you commit to doing these things, you also commit to a certain level of execution. The higher the level of execution, the more expensive, the more time, the more daunting it is.”
That means that for its new game - a first-person immersive sim with RPG elements that’s set in an alt version of the Old West - WolfEye is opting for a more stylized approach. This kind of decision is one that’s always made early in development, but Colantonio seems to have a pretty baked-in philosophy on this front: “Are you going for ultra-realism, which takes forever and ages really rapidly, or are you going for stylized, which gives you a little bit of a shortcut from a production standpoint and also ages gracefully?”
Dishonored, Colantonio suggests, still looks pretty good. Its exaggerated, caricature-style faces might suffer a little if you zoom in close enough to check out every single pixel, but the overall aesthetic holds up pretty well for a game more than a decade old. It’s a similar story with Zelda, he suggests: “You look at some old Zelda, and it’s still cute.” By contrast, “there are some other games when you look and you go ‘oh, they were trying to be realistic there, and back then it was probably visually stunning. And now it’s like you can’t even look at it. I think that’s the beauty of stylization in general’.”
“We’re brothers”: Dishonored and Prey director reflects on 20 years at Arkane as he unveils his new RPG-infused immersive sim.
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I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.
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