Bethesda have sent along the next video in their developer diary series for the hotly anticipated first person shooter Brink. In today's clip the Splash Damage crew including Art Director Olivier Leonardi and (Aussie) Lead Environment Artist Aaron Hoffman discuss a topic that has seen some pretty polarised responses from the community - the game's part realstic, part cartoonish art direction.

Watch the latest video right here on AusGamers.

That vid made me hate it's art style even more. He says photo realistic has been done thousands of times? I totally disagree, I don't think it's ever been done. I've never felt that any game looked believable, Arma 2 & Crysis at some points are the closest I have seen but overall they just aren't there. What Brink is producing has no immersion at all, at least from the videos.

Olivier is wrong.

while i agree that photo-realism has never been done in games to date... i think they made the right choice to comic it up a bit. they could've tried to go for photo-realism & failed like everyone else... even animated movie makers... or done this where at least it's a bit different from other games.

Think it's pretty obvious that references to other games doing photo-realistic doesn't necessarily imply that said other games have achieved it, just that it's the art direction they apply. Like Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc etc, they tend to not diverge from a realism intended style - even though the tech isn't really here to get them all the way there.

The idea that Brinks quasi-cartoonish style has the effect of making characters individuality stand out a bit more is a good positive imo. Considering the level of character customisation and the persistent character stats, I reckon it's pretty cool that it's easier to identify individual players quickly on the battlefield just with a glance.

I'm not completely sold on the overall style yet myself and will be interested to see how it holds up over the various maps but I'm not really getting all the super harsh criticism some people are barking - it's not like they took an existing franchise and warped it into this, it's fresh IP.

I'd just prefer they say that this direction makes it easier to produce game assets, larger somewhat more simplistic models and minimalist architecture are just methods of reducing production load imo. That's all I got out of it when they explained these things. And they have such egos, they try to pump it up so much... it's perfect apparently! I don't see it.