Who of the AAA devs have the worst art teams in the biz?

I was looking at some designs, namely Black Canary a more obscure DC characters, and noticed, even if you had pre-knowledge of the character, you probably would never be able to tell, who this is who it is supposed to be.

It's just... some mocapped womans face, with bland, dark clothing with seemingly no color-scheme to it either, eye-catching, or related to the character. Just, the most, bland as **** looking thing they could make.

Some of the MK11 designs were fine, but otherwise I think these fellows have an overall shit art team. Especially when compared to what Japan land is putting out.

Who are other disgusting art teams deserving of contempt?

To start with some positivity: I really liked Red and Antea's designs in Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden.

Both had some very unique designs that fit well with the theme of ghost hunting and both stood out as game characters to me while still have that realistic look that fits with modern day graphics. They will stick with me for a long time because of their well crafted character designs as well as mocapped and voiced performances.

I don't know but I'm kind of regularly pissed with the CoD Warzone team/s for basically throwing whatever the hell they want in there.

It'll be Spawn one month, then one of those rap prostitutes people love for some reason, then (again, for some reason...) it'll be WH40K themes.

I don't get it. It's just, idunno...unethical? To just throw in whatever you want into a modern-era mil-shooter just to capitalize on an IP. There has to be limits.

I don't know about the worst, but 343i is god awful.

I could do a post like that with any of the characters from the Arkham Batman series and animated series, highlighting the loss of humanity and dignity in beasts like Clayface, Croc and Bane, the sluttiness of Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley, the lame armor plating of the heroes and the over-design of everyone. Comic book artists and cartoonists have to keep their designs simple because they draw them over and over, which makes them more visually striking, but video game artists intentionally cram tons of detail in because they are not limited in that way. Rocksteady's games have no style, never did.

I mean, yeah. BC is an obscure character unless you watch Arrow where they consistently went out of their way to get the character wrong. Netherrealm is up and down with their designs and tend to overdo shit when simple works better. It should really just be a navy blue small leather jacket and corset with fishnets but they couldn't help themselves and made her an MK character

I'd say Fromsoft and R*

I'm not sure about a specific company, or if it's the couple of engines everyone uses, but frequently I see art that looks fairly realistic, yet exceptionally flat. Maybe I'm misremembering, but it seems like characters and such had a little more detail or grime to them. I don't even want everything to be realistic, but if you're going for that... do it.

@mrbojangles25: Totally. It feels like they have no clear definition of what they are, and are just chasing trends. It's gross. Honestly, I hate pretty much any property crossovers. Rather than having one fictitious world with a bunch of half-assed properties, I much prefer having infinite worlds with their own unique lore and aesthetic.

@last_lap: Fromsoft has gorgeous art direction lol.

Elden Ring is a gorgeous game despite "looking like a PS3 game" which ironically some sheep here love to say (even though Elden Ring is 10x more graphically advanced than the best looking Switch game).

Bloodborne has more jaggies than a PS2 game and the character models look like they belong in Silent Hill 2 (the original) but the art actually makes it a beautiful game.

AC6 is also a basic ass game graphically / technologically but the art makes it a beautiful game.

AFAIK AC6 was shortlisted in DF's best graphics of 2023 and I think Elden Ring even won the official award for best art direction.

what this isn't the picture of WW2 you have in your mind?

But yeah they'll throw whatever the **** they think will earn them the most money in there.

They'll treat people who spend €70 on games like peasants and people that spend extra (on skins) like kings.

That is their entire tactic and style be damned.

What the ****.

The French...

Netherrealm is a good choice for this. I overall like the art direction in MK games, but it can be hit or miss. Injustice however, is consistently shit.

@judaspete: Even MK, the only one argue looks good is 11.

And that's the one everyone hated because it wasn't copy pasted big boobed ninjas.

That reads like a recommendation.🤔

Western art teams seem to be getting progressively worse as they just design the characters based off the facial models and then just make them uglier.

@Pedro: couldn't stop playing Banishers. The gameplay loop is so well crafted and addicting.

I heard you finished with Outcast. So if you've run into a gap, be sure to give it a shot!

Western devs have a bad habit of taking an attractive model IRL and making her look unattractive in the game.

It could simply be that they're incompetent at rendering 3D models, but it's more likely that they're deliberately doing this to please a loud minority.

Yea I agree. I've heard people blame technology but I think Capcom does an excellent job at using a real model and then tweaking it to look like the character you remember.

Capcom is one of the few AAA devs to get it right. Their in-game characters usually look about as attractive as the IRL models they use. Whereas Western AAA devs make the in-game characters look unattractive compared to the IRL models.