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Were all of the enemy models outsourced for Bravely Default II?
- Thread starter ScOULaris
- Start date
That's ... that's not how you qualify the budget of a game. But I see now it's no sense arguing with you on this.
The playable character models are so hideous they make me want to skip the game entirely. It's a shame.
The whole game should have visual quality on par with the monsters. I'm sick of this weird Square Enix trend toward characters and monsters feeling like they come out of completely different games. Octopath did the same shit.
The whole game should have visual quality on par with the monsters. I'm sick of this weird Square Enix trend toward characters and monsters feeling like they come out of completely different games. Octopath did the same shit.
Played the demo weeks back and didn't notice the difference but I did notice the bad character faces.
Dunno about enemies/monsters being outsourced or if they just got more resources for those ones. Then again I'd ask myself why monsters get more resources and budget than the main characters.
So in the video game world where so many things get outsourced (e.g. IIRC many textures in TLOU were outsourced), it's totally within possibilities. It still should be consistent in quality but you never know how it looks like in dev studios until Schreier writes an article about it or things get leaked somewhere.
Dunno about enemies/monsters being outsourced or if they just got more resources for those ones. Then again I'd ask myself why monsters get more resources and budget than the main characters.
So in the video game world where so many things get outsourced (e.g. IIRC many textures in TLOU were outsourced), it's totally within possibilities. It still should be consistent in quality but you never know how it looks like in dev studios until Schreier writes an article about it or things get leaked somewhere.
I don't understand how anyone could look at this game and not think that it was made on a tight budget. Just look at the in-game cutscenes like the old dude fighting with the long haired dude. They look and animate like complete shit. And y'all seriously wanna say in here and in the Asano thread that Asano was given the exact budget he wanted?
Thought it was an intentional callback to how enemy sprites were far more detailed than the party back in the day.
You're insane.
Look at Trials of Mana, that is a game clearly constrained by its budget.
We know what a recent SquareEnix game hobbled by budget look like, Bravely Default II is absolutely not this.
If the budget was the problem and showed in the game's models, it would show for the enemy models.
They are far more numerous and is probably the part that would be 1st on chopping block unlike the player characters that people are gonna look at for the whole game.
Hell If budget was really that tight, they would have gone full Scarlet Grace on us and cut anything unecessary.
So if a game isn't made on a $5 budget like SaGa games it's not low budget? Again. I ask you to take a look at the in-game cutscenes. You're gonna tell me with a straight face that this game doesn't have budget constraints? Okay.
It's literally the same as previous games.
Did you expect the camera to pan out and show all angles of the characters and backgrounds or something?
This isn't a case of budget there, it's a case of design decision.
If they were that strapped for budget the game wouldn't even have english VA.
I'm not super down with the fully budgeted design decisions to not better animate the characters and cutscenes.
well the dev team may have a lot more on their plates to worry about like building tools, getting the game to run right... crushing bugs... especially if it's a smaller team where there's only a few artists or animators... outsourcing to a team that can focus ONLY on character art or animations would usually result in better looking work than the main team ... assuming the talent is there at the outsourcing studio)
It's really not that the main team isn't talented enough... but that a character artist or animator might have to do more than just character art or animation... especially at a smaller studio)
Who knows what's going on here though as there does seem to be a distinct difference between enemies and main characters.
Okay so a console game intentionally has horrible in-game cutscenes with incredibly janky animations, and it isn't low budget because it has English VA. FYI, I'm talking about the actual cutscenes like the sword fight at the beginning of the E3 trailer.
Again, just because the budget isn't $5 like a SaGa release doesn't mean it isn't particularly low budget. It was clearly made on one. No director in their right mind would intentionally want the in-game cutscenes to look the way they do in this game. That's a result of budget constraints it's not intentional.
I'm sorry that this is apparently the first time in your life that you've ever seen a game with a below AAA budget, but yes, this is intentionally done to not require ballooning of said budget.
Again for the people in the back.
This is 4 Warriors of Light on DS
This is how Bravely Default is supposed to look on 3DS.
And this is Bravely Second
Believe it or not there is such a thing as artistic direction that may direct designs more than budget.
Yeah.
This design style came from overcoming hardware restrictions. At the time they came up with this style they had pretty dang big budgets.
It resurfaced again in the ds/3ds era, as the chibified character models had much bigger heads than normal proportioned characters, which means you could read their faces from farther away even on a low res screen.
For bd2, I feel the chibi abstracted art style has to do with the animations they wanted in battle which are very obvious homages to the animations of the older sprite based ff games, which maintained that abstract style of attack, even when games like chrono trigger had animations where the character actually ran up and attacked the enemy with a more direct attack animation.
I would think that would look very strange indeed with a character model as detailed as the enemies.
...... Actually now I want to see it because of how strange it would look.
Doesn't really translate over to 3D HD games well.It's literally a staple of old JRPGs,
contrast and compare :
FFVI
Romancing SaGa 3
Now from the same Squaresoft but with more consistent style for enemies and party members:
Bahamut Lagoon
Yes the cutscenes look and animate like shit because of budget constraints. Glad we agree.
Man Era would die if they know how many parts of their favorite games were made from outsourcing lol.
You would be surprised.
Japanese directors have different sensibilities and what you think is clear jank may be appealing to them.
Take the 2nd Berserk movie, it's a full length movie with 3D elements and it's initial release even had 3d sterescopic incorporated.
And yet the 3D animation felt incredibly choppy because that's what they wanted to make for some reason, they would have fully be capable of making something smoother but went against it.
This game is clearly not Final Fantasy budget but it's not shoestring budget either like you're implying.
It's like you're arguing 2D Mario is somehow cheap to make, like seriously we know better.
That's why instead of having this proportions
They opted for this for the 1st 3d outing
Although if you ask me the proportions can work
And really I'm just looking at proportions here, nothing else.
I think it's this and I think that's what the OP is missing. The job system and the numerous costume changes (which are different based party member gender as well IIRC) signficantly ramps up the amount of modeling work for the party.
I agree with the people who argue it's an intentional design decision to harken back to earlier ff's.
But this is where I am at with how I feel that decision panned out.
I would have preferred going on model with the gorgeous concept art at long last, now that the series is on a platform that can do it.
Honestly, the outfits already look much more detailed than the character models, and would look fine on non chibi models. I dont think it would really be more work than they already did.
Yes... YES!!!
After beating the big bad that was causing them to be chibified they go through a horrifically painful nornalization transformation and find themselves plopped into the real world.
Where, because of their education level and non applicable skillsets, they have to get unsatisfying dead end jobs and live a dead eyed existance for the rest of their days.
Ok considering the AR models from previous games you may be onto something here
It's a 50+ hour RPG. The graphics aren't retro 2D. There are 4 playable characters each of which has a couple dozen skins or so (one for each class). There's a playable card game mini-game. I get that it's not a AAA game, but it's also not especially low-budget either.
They probably could pull it off if that was the sticking point, they could reuse and tweak some FFXIV models if that was a problem.
Heck Yoshida, the chara designer for Bravely Default and Second is also known for working on FFXIV after all.
Strangely enough I think it's more that it really was the style they were comfortable with.
they had to go back to the drawing board from VII onward for FF (with FFVIII completely ditching any chibi models).
BD2 having realistic proportion would be a dramatic shift for the franchise and I don't think that's what they want for it more than anything.
With Trials of Mana for example, they have far more realistic proportions in 3D while the original spritework was barely a step above chibi FF games.
A shift that dramatic is probably closer to the Crystal chronicle games
that started like this
And had a big cinematic finish like this
Although Crystal Bearer really looks like the least cohesive game out of the franchise.
Is this a Secret of Evermore joke?
Having just played the demo, my only gripe are the main characters faces. For some reason, what worked perfectly fine on lower resolution and polygon count (DS / 3DS) just doesn't translate well to an HD model.
And seeing what the team is capable of (budget constrains or not), they probably chose this art direction for the reasons mael has so well highlighted.
And seeing what the team is capable of (budget constrains or not), they probably chose this art direction for the reasons mael has so well highlighted.
I thought the thread was going to be about the opposite, i.e. the enemies looking bad.
While that's certainly a possible takeaway, the OP could also be referring to the inconsistency looking as if they were made by two dev teams with no communication between them, that targeted entirely different looks. In a game you want to allocate resources to achieve consistency in addition to quality, because otherwise the "better looking" elements will stick out and make the rest look worse (exactly what's happened here). Sometimes the simpler look is a stylistic choice but you still want to enforce it throughout the game; e.g. a COD enemy model in SuperHOT would look super awkward.
That said a simpler explanation could be e.g. that characters and backgrounds are reused across different points of views due to being used for map exploration and cutscenes, and therefore need to be more aggressively optimized, as opposed to enemies that only appear in combat.
While that's certainly a possible takeaway, the OP could also be referring to the inconsistency looking as if they were made by two dev teams with no communication between them, that targeted entirely different looks. In a game you want to allocate resources to achieve consistency in addition to quality, because otherwise the "better looking" elements will stick out and make the rest look worse (exactly what's happened here). Sometimes the simpler look is a stylistic choice but you still want to enforce it throughout the game; e.g. a COD enemy model in SuperHOT would look super awkward.
That said a simpler explanation could be e.g. that characters and backgrounds are reused across different points of views due to being used for map exploration and cutscenes, and therefore need to be more aggressively optimized, as opposed to enemies that only appear in combat.
Still don't understand and will continue to not understand the rather extreme hate for the character models when they're literally Bravely Default in HD.
Saying a game generally looks low budget and wondering if a certain aspect came from another studio because it's higher quality and seems inconsistent with the rest of the game? That's insulting game devs by insinuating they are untalented, and it shouldn't be allowed? That's pretty funny. OP specifically avoids indirectly calling the devs bad by pointing to the budget, but I guess for some people here there's just no way to make a distinction between good things and bad things kindly enough to not be "insulting".
Not sure about outsourcing or not, not something you can readily tell one way or another I would think. Personally I wasn't a fan of the graphics/character design in the demo. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also, that whole more distinct enemies vs the party style in old 2D RPGs, IMO, doesn't work as well in the modern 3D visuals. Notice the "IMO" though, so YMMV on that.
Also, that whole more distinct enemies vs the party style in old 2D RPGs, IMO, doesn't work as well in the modern 3D visuals. Notice the "IMO" though, so YMMV on that.
They probably could pull it off if that was the sticking point, they could reuse and tweak some FFXIV models if that was a problem.
Heck Yoshida, the chara designer for Bravely Default and Second is also known for working on FFXIV after all.
Strangely enough I think it's more that it really was the style they were comfortable with.
they had to go back to the drawing board from VII onward for FF (with FFVIII completely ditching any chibi models).
BD2 having realistic proportion would be a dramatic shift for the franchise and I don't think that's what they want for it more than anything.
With Trials of Mana for example, they have far more realistic proportions in 3D while the original spritework was barely a step above chibi FF games.
A shift that dramatic is probably closer to the Crystal chronicle games
that started like this
And had a big cinematic finish like this
Although Crystal Bearer really looks like the least cohesive game out of the franchise.
Is this a Secret of Evermore joke?
Honestly, those crystal chronicles screens just dont look chibi deformed like bd. They look stylized and kind of cartoony, but not deformed chibi.
Although we already know realistic proportions isnt really a dramatic shift for the franchise, it's what the characters are 'supposed' to look like, while the in game ones were always an abstract representation of them. Just like games used to have to do in the early 2d sprite based rpg days.
The concept art for the characters is realistically proportioned, as is their portrayal in the CG intros and the ar segment.
I loved the old FF games and I can jive with higher end enemy models but god damn are those main characters hideous
Some of this summarizes my take on the whole thing, too.
I'm flummoxed by how much anger and hot take energy there seems to be in replies on the forum lately. People seem so ready to pick a fight. IDK.
I appreciate that devs post on here to illuminate us on the realities of production, like Weltall here. I hadn't thought about the second paragraph up there. Wouldn't we all be better served if we just tried to educate each other about this kind of stuff instead of leaping down each others' throats and making assumptions?
I mean Crystal Chronicles started as a FFIX offshoot so the proportions are really the same.
And you won't tell me this
looks like the same proportion as Crystal Bearers.
Heck between the e3 presentation and the final game, Crystal Bearers itself had different proportions for the characters
No, I have the artbooks from the first two games. The concept art, and the vast majority of promotional art has always been Chibi for the games whether it came from Yoshida or Ikusy.
They were meant to be Chibi.
ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ I don't think this is intentional, gf is just like idk, not talented technical people.
I'm just pointing to a game thar clearly doesn't have budget restraints having a janky animation to counter what the other user said.