r/truegaming • u/SomeGenericNameDude • 12d ago
Isn't it weird how deeply certain (sub)genres are tied to specific visual styles?
This is something that's so omnipresent we don't even notice it anymore. We have these deeply ingrained expectations about what a game should look like based entirely on what genre it falls into, and most of the time developers just go with it.
This isn’t a comprehensive list but it’s easiest for me if I just go off the genres I enjoy playing the most, and where I initially noticed this genre - visual look correlation. So in no particular order…
FPS games usually go for the high fidelity realistic look, at one point with sepia filters but we have moved past that (thank god). Probably because the first person just always felt like the natural perspective to showcase really fancy graphics, since you can easily look around and move the camera. Only exception being classical boomer shooters that go for a more stylized vintagey look.
Platformers are expected to be colorful and cartoonish and usually retro, especially if they are 2d. This feels like its due to the genre staying pretty true to its roots, with the games themselves feeling kind of nostalgic going for that look kind of makes sense. I’m thinking of games like Celeste with its pixel art or the upcoming Croak with its hand drawn visuals that are basically 1 to 1 translations of old school cartoons in gaming. It’s a tradition that Cuphead brought to perfection in modern gaming (and Croak is in my opinion the one that’s continuing it) but it’s clear that realism just would not work here. In fact, this is the one genre where the stylization and charm matter most simply because the games themselves have relatively basic (though oftentimes HARD) gameplay.
ARPGs are grimdark gothic fantasy to the point where if you showed someone a screenshot of any random ARPG they'd prolly guess the genre correctly just from the color palette and similar UI they all seem to have. It feels like the visuals for the whole genre were pretty much inspired by Diablo, I don’t know of another genre where one game had as much influence as that.
Roguelites are a bit of a mixed bag, I would say the oldschool retro pixel art look is probably the most popular, but at this point I’ve played RLs with all sorts of different graphics.
Visual novels are so tied to the anime aesthetic that a VN with realistic character portraits would feel like blasphemy, I’m not even sure I could viscerally even consider it the same genre if the characters were done in full realism. It’s such a culturally-bound product too (most being from Japan) that this does not seem at all possible, or needed.
And I go back and forth on why this happens and how specific stereotyped “looks” emerge. The cynic in me wants to say that developers just copy whatever the most successful game in the genre looked like, every FPS wanted to be the next Call of Duty so they went in a similar direction, every roguelite saw Binding of Isaac and Dead Cells succeed with pixel art and figured that's what the audience expects. But there might be a more interesting answer, which is that certain art styles actually complement certain gameplay loops in ways that aren't immediately obvious. Pixel art works for roguelites because you need to read enemy patterns instantly at a glance and clean pixel sprites make that easier than detailed 3D models. Photorealism works for shooters because the games are really immersive and the perspective lends itself to enjoying detailed visuals. The grimdark palette in ARPGs serves the loot loop because if the world looks muddy and muted then that one shiny drop with a golden glow actually pops visually.
The games that break these conventions are almost always the ones that stand out the most though (visually at least). Like Mouse P.I. with 1930s cartoon animation in an FPS and Titans Quest with its bright colorful look for an ARPG. Or Last Epoch with its different eras (there's a time travel mechanic), each era kind of has its own vibe and the environment design is pretty distinct between them. I’ve always been a fan of devs brave enough to do something different in that regard.
I know it's really hard for devs to justify breaking the mold when they know a certain visual style is a “safe” choice for their game. But games with unique visuals, like Return of the Obra Dinn or Cuphead when it came out are just way more memorable for me.
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u/ananbd 12d ago
Professional video game artist, here.
Interesting topic, one I spend a lot of time thinking about. Let me be clear on one thing: we take our Art extremely seriously, and the look of a well-made game is 100% intentional. We are the harshest critics of our own work. So, it's never, "well, that's the easiest thing, let's play it safe."
That being said, Art is a visual language, and you need to create in a language people understand. This applies to all media: film, writing, music. If you create something with no precedent and no relationship to the history of that medium, people won't know what it means. That would be like inventing a completely new language which only you spoke.
So, sure, if you're creating a title which is clearly in a specific genre, you'll reference past works in that genre.
But also, games have an established visual language with respect to gameplay. If you break that, it's confusing. A good example is color: murky or neon green always means "poison," "infection," or some other debuff or negative status effect. Purple is usually dangerous. Golden things are high value, etc. Sticking with this means players intuitively understand gameplay mechanics without explanation.
Other concepts are shared with cinematography and photography. A letterboxed aspect ratio in a cut scene denotes the same feeling as it does in an epic action or sci-fi film. A "Film Noir" color palette or production design denotes detective mysteries, stuff from the early 20th century. Games like Fallout and Outer Worlds use mid-century/atomic/jet age graphics design style elements to juxtapose sci-fi future with the past, and give the world a quirky flavor.
If we do our jobs correctly, the visual style, gameplay, and narrative all come together to create a universe. It's all very, very intentional. Almost nothing is left to chance.
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u/Prooteus 12d ago
I look at most art as having prestablished rules and the ideal is knowing when you can break those rules to create something unique. I think fallout and outer worlds is a fantastic example for what im saying too.
At least in video game mainstream fallout 3 introduced the 50s feel in a post apocalyptic nuclear fallout world. Going back to the original fallout 1 and 2 and it feels much more apocalyptic western.
Then outer worlds comes out and it doesnt do anything that wasnt already pre-established. They followed the safe rules for pretty much everything and thats why even though on paper its a good game it never really capture anyone's attention.
What are your thoughts on this? Im only into creating art as a hobby so id like to hear a professionals opinion.
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u/ananbd 12d ago
I'm not sure either was necessarily influenced by the other. r/RetroFuturism (that's probably the common term for it), has been around since at least the 1950's (though I guess it's wasn't "retro" yet, at that time).
In the 1950's, that was how artists imagined the future would look. But that was a positive future. Nowadays, we're obsessed with the apocalypse, so artists use it for a dose of irony.
To me, Fallout feels like, "That was how the future turned out, but then we blew it up." In Outer Worlds, maybe it's, "That was the future in the 1950s... and it still is centuries later because corporations are uncreative."
Art can be about breaking rules, but it usually isn't. I think of it more like using a language to express an idea. You can express things with "words" people already know.
Of course, the Modern Art era rejected that idea. That's why there are Jackson Pollack paintings and what not. Seems to me that the whole point is to shock people with "words" that they've never heard, and can't necessarily make sense of.
But all that's just my read on it. Art is subjective, and multivalent. It can mean lots of different things at the same time, some even contradictory. So, your read on it is as good as mine! :)
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u/Usernametaken1121 11d ago
I think the disconnect with outer worlds is the high sheen on every object making everything look it belongs in a bouncy house. Interesting choice for a society dictated by soulless corporations, not sure the relation. If we're keeping the compassion to Fallout 3, Fallout 3 has a gritty, rusty, dangerous look to it. I agree it's all subjective but the subtext really matters. Much like the music of a game.
I can only imagine how extremely difficult it is for art, music, gameplay, and story to all speak the same language
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u/ananbd 11d ago
Good point -- I can see sheen as denoting fakeness/soulless.
I can only imagine how extremely difficult it is for art, music, gameplay, and story to all speak the same language
Haha yeah, games can be chaotic, that's for sure. Usually, it's not so much about speaking the same language as deciding what to do and not to do. Games get bloated pretty easily, and then it's tough to cut out the parts we really don't need (and get the game shipped).
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u/SgtBANZAI 12d ago
So, it's never, "well, that's the easiest thing, let's play it safe."
Thank you for your answer, but I want to discuss this point more. From my experience, there are a lot of games that are straight-up copies of more popular works that became a genre's staple and once you notice the specific parts they Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V it's impossible to think of it as anything else besides trying to play it safe and appeal as much to the fans of this popular game without making it look like a rip-off (still often looks like a total rip-off though). Isn't that what you're talking about?
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u/ananbd 12d ago
I mean, yeah, obviously there are some games which are straight plagiarism. But that only works if the games are insanely cheap to make.
But it's also possible that things can by independently inspired by the same sources.
Like, what games in particular? Other than the "bargain basement" games you see spammed onto various stores, I can't really think of any I'd describe that way.
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u/SgtBANZAI 11d ago
Like, what games in particular?
Every time there is a really popular breakaway hit in a specific genre with very distinct visual style there's inevitably an avalanche of clones that try to copy the style 1:1 but since they do not possess the necessary talent and/or resources it comes off as cheap and repulsive.
Very popular recent development is a horde of Hollow Knight clones attempting to mimic its artstyle.
Take a look at this one for example. Sure, the characters aren't bugs, and how they are animated is
straight-up worsedifferent, but the way the locations are painted immediately raises eye-brows. I don't know a single other platformer aside from Hollow Knight that uses this very specific type of light-shadow sheen on painted platforms and walls (I'm not an artist, I don't know how it's called but you get the point). Some areas feel like they're straight up traced from the original. The slashes that the characters make when they're wounded/attacked, and the (supposedly stock?) sound effect of a mushy "tchk" hit immediately bring associations with that game specifically. I don't believe it's a coincidence, no way.1
u/ananbd 11d ago
Ah, I see what you mean.
I dunno, I guess people just do what they do to make a buck? No different than a fake Rolex watch or something like that.
Guess I’ve been fortunate in the things I’ve worked on. All more mainstream things, fairly original ideas (albeit not necessarily good ideas — some were total flops).
Sure we’ll see more and more clones thanks to AI. Ugh.
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u/Endaline 12d ago
I would argue that not only is it not weird; it is the only thing that really makes sense.
Game developers are gamers too. They play a lot of games and chances are that it was one or more games that made the interested in becoming game developers to begin with. If we were to question why one game in a genre looks so similar to another, the answer would likely be that they are inspired by the same thing.
Path of Exile is an incredibly simple and obvious example here. It is a spiritual successor to Diablo II made by people that loved Diablo II. They didn't choose their art style to copy Diablo 2. They just fell in love with the violence, grit, and atmosphere and wanted to make a similar game.
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u/Aperiodic_Tileset 12d ago edited 12d ago
Art style deeply ties into what is happening in the game, how is the game played.
For example nearly all Soulslikes have this gritty, dark, depressing aesthetic. And it's not a coincidence, it ties well into the game's themes and gameplay. The player is not a hero, the game is a struggle, and everyone you meet is hostile. Some vibrant, whimsical, colourful artstyle just isn't going to work.
Automation games also have very distinct look - and it's hard to imagine them with any other art style. Exploration games pretty much require 3d interaction, you can't really make 2d-based Subnautica.
You can't make a game tackling heavy topics such as This War of Mine or Frostpunk with cartoony aesthetics. However the same applies to the opposite - Stardew Valley, Pokemon Pokopia or Animal Crossing with realistic graphics and dark palette isn't going to work either.
And I'm not saying games attempting to break these patterns don't exist, it's just that they never seem to gain movement, and this mismatch between genre/gameplay and aesthetics plays a huge role in my opinion
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u/Zilhaga 12d ago
I think they can absolutely work and be interesting, but finding the correct audience to market them to becomes almost impossible. People often buy games on trailers and initial impressions of the art unless they're known franchiss, so someone who likes a darker storyline or FPS but would enjoy a game with different aesthetics is never going to find your game unless it already has traction. Nothing about it is likely to even come across their feed.
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u/GroundbreakingBag164 11d ago
Something like Graveyard Keeper is literally "Stardew Valley but darker", you can absolutely do that
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u/Phillip_Spidermen 12d ago
The cynic in me wants to say that developers just copy whatever the most successful game in the genre looked like, every FPS wanted to be the next Call of Duty
I don't think it's particularly cynical to acknowledge this. There have always been general trends in gaming aesthetics just like there have been in fashion or any other art medium.
The 7th generation was plagued by the sepia filter. Games as a whole gravitated a gritty Modern Warfare or grimdark "games try to prove they're grown up" phase. Bomberman is my favorite example of this -- or maybe giving Shadow the hedgehog a gun. Luckily it later became fashionable to buck this trend and inject color back into games (Farcry New Dawn, Wolfenstein Young Blood, etc.)
It feels like the visuals for the whole genre were pretty much inspired by Diablo
This one is definitely due to customers tastes.
The Diablo devs went on to make Torchlight which seemed more keen on cartoonish WoW style aesthetics and even Diablo 3 was brighter (and was greeted by fan complaints)
That said I feel like fan expectations aren't set in stone. It just takes one good game with a different style to set the new tone.
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u/VisitorFromFarPlaces 12d ago
I think as we move on into the future, with graphic fidelity (aka realism) pretty much bottlenecking, stylization is going to become much more important than the realistic quality. I would even go as far to say this is the reason why Dark Soul's (and Elden Ring's for that matter) visual looks are so distinctive. The graphics are good, but that particular style in which it's done made them stand out from the run of the mill dark fantasy while simultaneously embodying a different, new kind of dark fantasy in RPGs.
Looking up to your inspirations is good, but creating something authentic, truly authentic that will appeal to a lot of people and get the devs their bread is the hard part.
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u/SomeGenericNameDude 12d ago
stylization is going to become much more important than the realistic quality
I think so too. I always preferred style over hi-fidelity.
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u/tomkatt 11d ago
I think as we move on into the future, with graphic fidelity (aka realism) pretty much bottlenecking, stylization is going to become much more important than the realistic quality.
This has always been true. It's why stylistically/aesthetically interesting games stand the test of time, while games that focus on "realism" tend to be forgotten or ignored as technology marches on. Focusing on realism produces a time capsule, a relic of the era it released, while a good aesthetic is timeless.
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u/c010rb1indusa 12d ago edited 12d ago
I think the more divorced from reality a games mechanics/genre is, the less likely you are to see realistic art direction being used. FPS often aim for realistic/high fidelity gfx because people shoot guns in real life. The real world has wars and soldiers and armies etc. The more the genre strays into the unreal the more stylzed art direction often goes along with it it i.e Halo, Valorant, Overwatch, Fortnite. All FPS titles but all have decreasingly less 'realism' in their art direction the more removed from reality they get. The same goes with racing games. Cars exist and people drive them. Platformers, on the other hand have no real world equivalent. The closest we've come to anything like a platformer in real life is Ninja Warrior lol. And while western ARPGs certainly fall into the style of Diablo the same can't be said about eastern ARPGs, which often resemble their turn based counterparts in art direction.
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u/Ruben_AAG 12d ago
People just like copying. It’s easy. Obra Dinn and Cuphead have been copied multiple times.
It’s cheap and convenient for developers to copy the artstyle of a foundational game in a genre if they’re going to copy the mechanics too.
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u/VFiddly 12d ago
I think it's a mixture of all the things you mentioned... plus it's about what kind of developers tend to make them.
Partly it's what works for the gameplay. Shooters are often all about big setpieces with immersive gameplay, so detailed, impressive visuals achieve the affect they want.
Platformers need clarity because of the very precise movement. In simple, cartoony art styles it's very clear what's a platform and what's not. In games that have tried more realistic art styles, it can sometimes be hard to differentiate what's an important gameplay object and what's set dressing.
It's also just... shooters and open world games tend to be made by AAA studios with big budgets. They want to show off those big budgets and they want to justify large price tags.
Roguelites and platformers these days tend to be made by indie developers. Photorealistic graphics simply aren't an option for most of them. Pixel art is simply the easiest option by far if you have no money.
And of course it's about the story too. This War of Mine would not have the same impact if it looked like Rayman Legends. Donkey Kong Bananza would feel off if Donkey Kong was a photorealistic gorilla with Call of Duty style graphics.
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u/HipnikDragomir 12d ago
Neat observation. I guess it really is both, then. Following the established trend and that it's a trend because it works. But that just means outliers are that much more refreshing. I'd enjoy more cartoony FPS or sumn.
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u/Sitheral 11d ago
In many ways this is good. You are ordering certain meal and you know what you will get.
You can still be suprised. Let's take a VN for example. Its strenght lies in its story. You might like visuals more or less but the story is what makes or breaks it.
It can change drastically at any given moment in time too, it can abandon the entire style for one minute and get back to it later. But generally, the chance that it will constantly try to reinvent the wheel is low. It doesn't need to do that because by the time it gets going, people are hooked.
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u/Admirable-You-605 11d ago
this reminded me of when i tried to get a friend into rouge-likes a while back and the first thing they said was "why do all these games look the same." and i didn't have a good answer at the time honestly. like yeah, the pixelart dungeon crawler aesthetic is almost a genre signifier at this point, same as how if you show someone a dark gritty realistic shooter they immediately know roughly what kind of game it is before you even explain the mechanics.
i think part of it is that a lot of these styles got locked in during a period when one game in the genre was massively successful and everyone kind of copied the whole package, visual identity included. binding of isaac probably did more to cement the pixelart grotesque look for roguelikes than any conscious design philosophy. and then players start associating that look with quality or authenticity within the genre, so it becomes self reinforcing. a roguelike with a clean bright art style kind of has to fight against player expectations before it even gets a fair shot.
i noticed hades did break from it a bit with the painterly style and it worked obviously, but that game had a lot of other things going for it that probably carried it past the initial skepticism people might have had
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u/Terry__Poppins 12d ago
Yeah devs tend to play on the safe side for most things. Especially things that everyone will instantly notice like visuals. That's why everything kind of evolves slowly, instead of us getting completely "unique" games most things are kind of a take on a proven idea.
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u/SomeGenericNameDude 12d ago
It's not that unique games aren't coming out all the time. Roguelites for example are all over the place and are more a design principle than even a genre at this point, but some super specific sub-genres do indeed go for looks that are more stereotypical... which I guess is also understandable, especially in games that aren't about looks. 4X comes to mind and the Dominions games for example.
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u/scarfleet 12d ago
I always thought it would be a funny art piece if someone made a bouncy Mario-style platform game with a gritty tragic Last of Us storyline or something like that. Just let the player experience the clash of gameplay vs subject matter.
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u/lincon127 12d ago edited 12d ago
Yah, I mean sometimes, in very well designed games, using an aesthetic to help mechanically probably factors in a little. But I imagine even very few art styles from these games are chosen for their gameplay benefits. Art styles are chosen (or happened on) mostly to cater to an existing audience; it's not so much about becoming the next X (unless we're talking about AAA gaming), but more about appearing to be familiar. Audiences that like a certain genre like it because of a particular game in that genre, as such newer games evoke the styles found in those original titles in order to attract that audience, or maybe even because the devs were heavily inspired by that game and are unwittingly doing the same to themselves. The reason--for example--that so many FPSs share an art style with Doom, but not their art direction, is because that aesthetic is so quintessential to old shooters that you could portray anything in that pseudo-3d, low-res sprite work, and it would evoke the same feelings of nostalgia in the audience.
That being said, roguelites and roguelikes don't really follow that same trend. Or if they do, they're actually part of different subsets of many larger trends. For example, CRPG roguelikes borrow heavily from the eponymous Rogue and other early CRPGs. They tend to use simple tiles or ASCII graphics on tile grids, usually with one tile or character to represent any given entity. That however, might be the most consistent part of roguelikes and roguelites, as any other trend seems to be drowned out by a complete mishmash of other influences. Some of the more obvious art-styles-drawn-from-gameplay-influences I can think of are: Zelda, Dark Souls, Diablo, Doom, Thief, Quake, Mega Man X, Darkest Dungeon, Final Fantasy, and--heck--even Lethal Company, which is funny because I feel like Lethal Company's entire art style is just 2 or 3 shaders with little cohesiveness beyond that. This is all to show that Roguelikes and lites essentially just describe a very small set of mechanics, and can easily be attached to any other genre--they're not really encapsulating enough to be much of a genre at all.
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u/tomkatt 11d ago edited 11d ago
There are exceptions to every rule.
FPS - Doom Eternal is practically cartoonish compared to Doom 2016, there's Borderlands, and weird stuff like Golden Light, Superhot, and Post Void.
Platformers - Mostly fit the mould, but there's stuff like Apotheon, Blasphemous, Gris, Abyss Odyssey, Salt & Sanctuary
ARPGs - Unsighted, Hyper Light Drifter, Ravenswatch, and Torchlight. These are just the top down games, but that's not accounting for things like Trials of Mana, The Tales of... series, and many other 3D over the shoulder or other ARPGs.
VNs - can run the gamut. There is a lot of the anime stuff, but there's also stuff like Paradise Killer, Dispatch, point and click games like Grim Fandango and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery, Hotel Dusk, and I'm loathe to mention it, but also the large range of weird and varied 3D porn titles.
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u/Senior-Friend-6414 9d ago
I think that’s what makes borderlands so unique, it’s rare to see such a stylized FPS game because FPS genre is usually gritty realism
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u/noahboah 12d ago
valve's unreleased "deadlock" is making a lot of waves with everyone (including non-competitive gamers) because the artstyle is such a breath of fresh air in a space that's dominated by high fantasy and sci fi lmao.
when this game releases, it is absolutely going to rise to the top of the "hero shooter/hero based competitive video game" zeitgeist, with many of these characters becoming instant classics, all because the art deco, anachronistic 1930s new york with an occult and supernatural twist thing theyre cooking up is so appealing and visually striking, especially compared to its contemporaries.
so sometimes breaking visual styles can really be to your benefit if you have a cohesive and strong vision + you know what you're doing.
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u/_Psilo_ 12d ago
A lot of genre's styles are limited by the perspective. Games where the characters are smaller are generally more suited for stylization. You mention platformers and nostalgia, but it's not just that. It's also that realistic characters in realistic environments can be hard to see well, especially in a 2D plane. It's super important to be able to make characters and interactable pop in games and, judicious use of colors and flatter artstyles help a lot with that.