Well, there are probably multiple reasons why the art goes more and more generic, one of them is the idea of trying to emulate the reality rather than the ideal, the other is we know the corpo culture does not incentive risk taking and the globohomo culture ensure that all risk goes in the wrong way.
This is precisely why I despise realism in games. I play games to go to fantastic places, do interesting things, and become something different then I already am. They're so obsessed with recreating the real world, when I'm here to go anywhere else.
That's not to say you can't have realistic games that do interesting things and have interesting places. But it definitely makes the developers have to work that much harder on the setting and characters.
Realism is fine, when it truly means "internal consistencyism", which is what a lot of people mean by it when, in example, they're talking about a universe with magic in it. Unfortunately, others do actually mean real-ism, that magic shouldn't exist in a high-magic setting.
I mean "Trying their hardest to make the art style look as true to life as possible." That is what I'm decrying here. And again, I'm not saying it's all bad, but the more "grounded" you make the game, the more effort goes into all the nitty-gritty detail, and the less goes into making something that's actually fun to play.
Fantasy/SciFi are the places for some degree of stylization, even if its minor. Even BDO is stylized, and they went for realism in their human/elf models+environment more than not.
There's also projects becoming so distended in AAA studios that it becomes hard to create a cohesive product, let alone stylized art direction, without really good leadership/organization.
Did 2000+ people need to work on D4, as an example? Probably not.
Well, there are probably multiple reasons why the art goes more and more generic, one of them is the idea of trying to emulate the reality rather than the ideal, the other is we know the corpo culture does not incentive risk taking and the globohomo culture ensure that all risk goes in the wrong way.
This is precisely why I despise realism in games. I play games to go to fantastic places, do interesting things, and become something different then I already am. They're so obsessed with recreating the real world, when I'm here to go anywhere else.
That's not to say you can't have realistic games that do interesting things and have interesting places. But it definitely makes the developers have to work that much harder on the setting and characters.
Realism is fine, when it truly means "internal consistencyism", which is what a lot of people mean by it when, in example, they're talking about a universe with magic in it. Unfortunately, others do actually mean real-ism, that magic shouldn't exist in a high-magic setting.
I mean "Trying their hardest to make the art style look as true to life as possible." That is what I'm decrying here. And again, I'm not saying it's all bad, but the more "grounded" you make the game, the more effort goes into all the nitty-gritty detail, and the less goes into making something that's actually fun to play.
Modern shooters are the place for realism.
Fantasy/SciFi are the places for some degree of stylization, even if its minor. Even BDO is stylized, and they went for realism in their human/elf models+environment more than not.
There's also projects becoming so distended in AAA studios that it becomes hard to create a cohesive product, let alone stylized art direction, without really good leadership/organization.
Did 2000+ people need to work on D4, as an example? Probably not.