This style was a bit too flashy, causing many to sprain their backs.
Everyone's first reaction was confusion. Was Chen Mo going to let loose again?
Needless to say, Chen Mo would always come up with designs that were completely unexpected, going against the expectations of the players.
Although it was good to be surprised, it wasn't good to make the players doubt their own intelligence …
"Wait, I don't get it. Why is Chen Mo's new game so cartoonish?"
"Aiya, this isn't cartoonish, this is … mmm … oil painting style! Watercolor style! "
"Anyway, it seems like it's going against the mainstream style … it reminds me of a certain manga."
"Yeah, the scenery looks alright, but the characters don't look too used to it."
"But the characters and scenery are very similar, there's nothing wrong with that."
"Well, it's Chen Mo after all, he can do whatever he wants …"
After a long discussion, the consensus was that it was pretty good, there was nothing wrong with adding another style to the game.
But … what kind of game was this?
What kind of game would use such a style?
Although most of the players had an unconditional trust in Chen Mo, their interest in the game was slowly decreasing even though they said "it's pretty good".
After all, most people liked to look at good looks. For VR games, good looks meant realism, realism, exaggeration, and cool special effects. Just like in Uncharted Sea, many players couldn't help but want to buy it just by looking at the tiny pores on the character's face.
Needless to say, the first art of The Legend of Zelda wasn't very attractive …
…
There were some players who were worried about this style, but … they didn't get any response from Chen Mo.
Not responding was normal. In fact, Chen Mo received thousands of private messages on his Weibo every day. It was unknown if he would even look at them, let alone reply to them.
To Chen Mo, Weibo was a platform to announce new games, similar to how a certain leader in his previous life used Twitter to govern the country.
In the headquarters, Qian Kun asked the same question that many were asking.
"Manager, what's so good about this art style?"
Qian Kun knew very well that this art style could save time. It wasn't because most of the resources in the library were realistic, like Uncharted Waters and Assassin's Creed. Creating the art style of The Legend of Zelda meant that the project team would have to do a lot more work.
Especially considering that The Legend of Zelda was an open world and had a lot of resources, this method was even more exhausting.
However, Chen Mo had emphasized two key words before he started: animation style and extroverts.
The so-called animation style was a style that had a clear distinction between the light and dark sides. To put it simply, under real light, the light and dark sides were gradual transitions. In many Japanese animations, the light and dark sides were often summarized, and the gradual transition in the middle was omitted.
For example, in some animations, if a character's green pants were shaded under the influence of light, then in real life and in a realistic art style, the shading should be gradual. In animations, however, the entire light side was light green, and the entire dark side was dark green. There was a clear boundary between the two, and only these two colors didn't have gradual transitions.
Extroverts meant that when drawing outdoors, due to the rapid changes in light, the artist had to quickly grasp the characteristics of the scenery, and use color blocks and brush strokes to complete the work before the colors changed.
In Breath of the Wild, it was large color blocks, hand-drawn, and exaggerated perspective, giving people the feeling of a watercolor painting.
To complement this effect, the special effects in The Legend of Zelda didn't use particle effects, but frame by frame animation. These special effects were clearer, more striking, and more recognizable.
However, Qian Kun couldn't think of a reason for doing this style.
"Then tell me, what are the pros and cons of doing this?" asked Chen Mo.
Qian Kun thought for a bit, "The pros might be that the amount of rendering is small, reducing the burden on the hardware? As for the cons … it's the opposite of the current mainstream art style. "
Chen Mo laughed. Qian Kun had never been in charge of the art side of things, and was mainly in charge of systems and numbers. Therefore, it was normal that he didn't understand this style like many other players.
Chen Mo explained, "Firstly, it's to reduce the burden on the hardware, allowing The Legend of Zelda to be played on the Switch.
The Pro version could be played at a high frame rate with high quality. Secondly, the style was almost never outdated. The physics rendering is updated every year, and the realistic style is getting stronger every year. If we were to use a realistic style, the game would look outdated in a year or two.
"The most important thing is that it can highlight a sense of romanticism. The Legend of Zelda isn't a blockbuster, nor is it history, it's a fairy tale. Therefore, this style is the most suitable for The Legend of Zelda.
"As for going against the mainstream art style … What is the mainstream art style? We're doing the mainstream art style. "
Qian Kun was speechless, and after a while, he said, "… Awesome."
…
Actually, in Chen Mo's previous life, The Legend of Zelda's art style had caused some players to question it.
The core point that many people used to criticize The Legend of Zelda was that after all that was said and done, weren't you forced to use this art style because it wasn't up to standard? This was obviously a cheap trick!
In reality, this kind of argument would only be laughed at by many professionals.
Even on the powerful PS4, there were many games that didn't use a realistic style, such as Wind Traveler.
Not using a realistic style wasn't because it couldn't be done, but because the designers combined the characteristics of the game to create the most suitable art style for their game.
Actually, in terms of the difficulty of controlling the art style, a cartoon style was more difficult. After all, a realistic style only needed to be realistic, while a cartoon style required a lot of art design.
Of course, it wasn't that these two styles were better or worse, but for a game like The Legend of Zelda that was a bit like a fairy tale, this style was the most suitable art style.
Even for many players, the art style of The Legend of Zelda was a key plus, and was the most obvious difference between it and other games.
Perhaps many players in the parallel world wouldn't understand what was good about this art style, but that didn't matter.
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