Disclaimer: I have nothing against remasters. I don’t see OOT as a sacred and perfect thing that nobody’s allowed to touch.
But everyone is swooning over the graphics of the new remaster and I really dislike them. For me, it’s ATBGE: all technics and no art direction.
Sure, the physics are impressive, the texture high res, and the models detailed. But they’re too detailed. It looks like they’ve taken any flat surface and said “ooh, we need to add some detail here”.
So you’re left with something cartoony but with very realistic texture, shaders etc. There’s a mismatch in style between the big geometry of OOT models that they’ve kept and the small geometry they’ve added on top of them. On the other hand, Elden Rings also has an ultra detailed style and I’ve got no problem with it because it’s not trying to be cartoony at the same time.
I’ve found this mismatch repugnant as well, because it reminds me if genAI. I’m not saying they used AI, but when you ask one to “improve” a cartoon, you end up with something similar: it adds unnecessary detail e-ve-ry-where.
It’s so overdone and looks so bad. Honestly though the voice acting so far is worse. They would’ve been better off just not having it with how it is. Navi especially.
Nah, I agree with this.
Take Link’s tunic. What the actual fuck is going on with those designs? I wouldn’t have minded much if it was like his hat, which has a decent rough cloth texture, but his tunic has all this intricately stitched leather which just looks really out of place.
Everything is just so busy when it comes to the art design.
I liked for example how good the boots look when he put them on. But most stuff looks kinda icky.
Yeah, honestly, I had the same reaction when seeing it in the videos. Then I played it and all that criticism melted away and no longer mattered as all that fine detail and uncanny valley nature stuff just…didn’t matter or was no longer noticed as you play. Nothing felt out of place and everything just clicked. You realize as you’re playing it that all that same uncanny nature in the character designs were also there in the original. Didn’t matter as much then and, turns out, doesn’t matter now. It’s just a solid and fun game, graphics be damned, and that’s what should matter the most if you’re going to judge a game.
it’s supposed to be a fairy tale… people seem to forget that.
they seem to be backreading the newer zelda art styles and their ‘mythological’ stories onto the older game, which was never conceived of that way. the modern zelda’s are built around a fairy tale concept they are less ‘magical’.
Not liking the style is perfectly ok, saying it does not have an art direction is ridiculous.
It much more stylized than the original, TP or Skyward sword. It’s why you get a strong reaction instead of just going meh.
Finally the original OoT does not have cartoony graphics, they are just old. They were also quite detailed for the time.
Yeah, the takes here are just… completely ignorant.
Fine to not like an art style, but the rest of this just ignorant nonsense that has no appreciation for the context of the game in it’s own time.
“Art direction” is a term G*mers heard a journalist say once. And have now been parroting it, as if troglodytes like them would know what it means.
I just watched Dunkey’s video about it and the first thing I said to myself seeing Link was “what the fuck? Is he a half-Rito now? Is this Shadow Over Hyrule?”
They kept the grotesque shapes and proportions but added this hyper realistic style to it that just massively triggers the uncanny valley.
Same. He also looks very greasy when he was in tge water which is just weird to me.
My joke when I first saw it after launch was calling it The Legend of Texture: Ocarina of Bump Mapping. It looks OK, but Nintendo has famously steered away from heavy texture work. This shows them giving it another try, and while it isn’t bad, it’s definitely blown out. It reminds me of all of those super high contrast HDR photos that people used to make and swear they looked good. There is a time and a place for everything, and not every texture in your game needs to shout at me for attention.
I like it. I don’t look at it with this much detail. The game has captured me and i have been playing a lot. I didnt even complete the original. I completed majoras mask but never oot. Personally the graphics are secondary to gameplay in all games for me. I never care how a game looks of i can enjoy the way it plays.
ocarina of moist
It looks so greasy
idk man, I think they captured exactly how I remember the original game in my head.
Yeah, it’s the same art direction… with better technology.
Like look at the concept art for the OG game…
The concept art for the OG game was anime-inspired, and the developers represented that as best they could on the N64. What is the new style meant to be? Uncanny flesh dolls?
It’s a remake not a remaster but I agree with you. Might not even be that much of a unpopular opinion. Personally I think a more stilized art direction would have been much better, oot was never about insanely realistic graphics to me.
Link and Zelda look specially terrible imo
I think that’s a fair opinion.
Then went for something that looks a bit like dolls and crafted props. A bit like doll-theater or stop motion, and I think the set art style does make perfect sense for that, but I do feel that it’s all a little sharp and textured for my taste as well. I think I would have preferred more subtlety and nuance. All materials feel very harshly defined, where it would have been nice to have some softer textures and shaders thrown in as well.
Have you played the game? I was shocked as well when it was first announced, i thought everything was overdetailed and too realistic, but then it grew on me and i quite like it now. It took a whole for me to get used to it, now i appreciate how much work went into it, and it’s refreshing to me after about a decade of cell-shaded Zelda games. (Speaking of, i do find pricess Zelda quite ugly in the remake haha)
I didn’t play it, but I’ll watch some streamer play. We’ll see if it grows on me or if it is a definite turn off!
I do agree with you that a variety of style is better than the same formula each time.
I kinda like the look of Zelda to be honest! It’s nice to see some kind of departure from the usual standard of beauty, especially for a child.
To my brain, it feels like the opposite of BoTW. World looks more realistic-ish while Link looks like a Blender project.
Both look fine (to me) but player models is a tad jarring in OoT to me.
Fable anniversary edition suffers from the same problem. The models are overdone
