loftar wrote:wonder-ass wrote:they should have never changed the art style imo
I mean, the intention was to keep the art style as similar as possible. I still think the
Christmas preview screenshot is fairly legacy-like, for instance. Of course there are some things that are hard to translate between 2D and 3D for sure (the trees, for instance), but that was always the basic intention.
Being a spriter myself sometimes, I can tell you that 2D often doesn't translate easily or well into 3D, that's just how it is. You don't use the same palettes on spritework as you do in real world and it's why you are told never to take a picture and get your palette off real life colours. 2D Sprites are often more saturated and colourful than real life, in a sense so is haven. Consider the base player's sprite as well, the player is bulky and blocky in new haven, in the sprite iteration they're fairly lanky and subdued in comparison, with relatively undefined faces due to their sprite's size.
Same can be said of the difference in the foliage in both games. The mulberry trees, wheat crops, bee hives, all just look much different in legacy haven as compared to new haven's new bulky shoot system. The best example of new art in this haven is probably the flax crops which make very nice looking purple fields. Though compared to the farmed fields of old haven, they do look beautiful.
Haven's an old enough game that it was in an era where graphics were rapidly evolving and the advent of 3D mmos was just coming out and booming really, World of Warcraft classic was still popular and people still played doom a lot more consistently, the idea was that your game was crappy and was catering to limitations of the engines you were using if it wasn't 3D, but nowadays, 3D engines are pretty abundant and classic spritework is a novelty that people want to see.
It's a bit like when they made the photo and how that affected realism in artwork. Why bother painting for life anymore when a picture was faster, easier, more accurate than the human hand could ever be? Art evolved into things that were not real as a result, more abstracted, and creative. I do like the sprite game design, it's pretty charming.