The Graphics Rant

Draggonnfs

[12] Conqueror
Alright, so, I've been rambling about this for quite a while, so I want to make a post about it and see what other people think.

In my opinion, SoulCalibur IV has the nicest graphics in the series, and I don't understand why I haven't seen more people talk about this. I love the lighting and lighting effects in SCIV, and I found most of them missing in SCV. Now SCV has most likely better models, and certainly better shading, but a lot of lighting effects are missing.

Well now if we look at what we've seen of SoulCalibur VI... It might be the art style choice, but if you directly compare Sophie from SCVI to Sophie in SCIV and Elysium in SCV... The skin reflection is completely gone, her eyelashes are weirdly thick and pronounced and the hair! What happened to the hair? Not only is the reflection gone, but you can see the roughness on the edges, literally! SCIV and SCV both had smooth and nice hair. So what the heck is up with this?

Now, SCVI overall looks really great, the lighting overall is beautiful, the stages are beautiful, it's finally 1080p (likely even higher on PC) the clothing is really nice quality.. So why do the characters look WORSE than in SCIV, a 10 YEAR OLD game?

So is anybody out there with me on this? I just find it quite ridiculous.
 
I can't really agree here. I'm actually a really big fan of the graphics, it's a huge improvement. I was literally just playing 4 two nights ago at a friend's birthday party. I remember the game looking good, but it has certainly aged.

Allow me to make a few observations. The skin texture has been improved substantially over previous games in the sheer fact that it actually exists. On Mitsurugi's character model, you can actually see little bits of skin texture. Previous iterations of the game have always seen decidedly porcelain-like skin with a kind of soft glow shader effect, giving characters an almost satin-like sheen. To me, it honestly felt kind of over-processed. The same went for the hair. Nobody's hair looks like that in real life, and even in SC6 it's a bit of a stretch.

Onto the hair, kindly take a look at this video and skip to about 5:10, we actually get to see Sophitia fight with her hair down at this point. You can see that it looks quite good - in addition to that, the physics treat the hair like it actually has weight. While it's still a little stiff while it's braided, it doesn't just look like a baguette glued to the back of her head, as it did in SC4. There's also plenty of reflection.


Overall though, it looks like they've ditched the type of processing they use (which I think they originally did to make the characters stand out from the environment a bit more, since lighting was somewhat less sophisticated in that day and age) for something more realistic. Personally, I like it, but obviously the sentiment is not echoed.
 
Well I guess it all comes down to personal preference again. I liked the smooth and obviously quite unrealistic lighting/shading and look of SCIV. Even though the physics on the hair is quite a bit better in SC6, you can still see the hair "standing out" a bit too much, I think this was already discussed somewhere here, that it's appearently a difficulty with Unreal. Well nevermind that, we'll all get used to it. Thanks for replying.
 
The issue with the hair is clear: It's not transparent.
It's a like a bunch of solid blocks masquerading as hair.

It's an issue with Tekken 7 as well, especially apparent with Lily's hair. It looks a little better here, but still, they didn't seem to have fixed the problem.
It's easy to blame Unreal Engine 4, but it's a fully customizble and versatile engine.

This is a game made by one dude in Unreal 4 and the hair doesn't look like pieces of plastic:

I think Namco just doesn't care... Not many people complained with Tekken 7, and they probably thought it was fine.

Personally, it's an eye sore.
 
The issue with the hair is clear: It's not transparent.
It's a like a bunch of solid blocks masquerading as hair.
Yeah, forgot to say that. Well I'm just terrible at expressing myself. I guess they won't make any further changes to the graphics now, so we'll have to deal with it. It doesn't look bad when Sophie's standing in the shadow, but in direct light you can really see the problems.
 
Best art style by far was SCIV. All characters along their costumes looked awesome and most stages were really good. SCV was a mess in all aspects. Most of the characters looked along their costumes looked rushed and unpolished. Stages were dim and nothing interesting about them. Not to mention the awful design of the new characters.
 
Here's my opinion, the graphics are basically SC5 but with different shaders. If y'alls hate the graphics, just get a PC that can handle Ultra settings (keep in mind I built a PC designed for work so YMMV), download HD Texture Packs + ReShade and bam, you're good.

Of course, not all games will have HD Texture Pack mods and not all games will allow ReShade (aka online games ban you for using ReShade as it is an overlay).
 
Best art style by far was SCIV. All characters along their costumes looked awesome and most stages were really good. SCV was a mess in all aspects. Most of the characters looked along their costumes looked rushed and unpolished. Stages were dim and nothing interesting about them. Not to mention the awful design of the new characters.

There's no discernible art style between SC4/5/6 which is why there's complaints about the graphics. People had the same complaints about Tekken 7 even though the game looks amazing on PC and runs at 4K+.

People are taking their dislike for SCV to prop up SC4. SC4 had some good stages mixed with stages from SC3 and awful stages around TOLS. SCV offers lots more variety in stage design, transitions, and lighting.

The 2P costumes for characters in SC4 consisted of awful CAS parts. How is that not rushed?
 
not anymore lol
I think it still is. It's just that the community in this forum wasn't as active due to no news of SC6 at that time. The majority of the active competitive players seem to hang around Discord to play SC2 and maybe perhaps other SC titles.
 
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To be fair on the stage thing, SC V also had a lot of variations of the same stage.


In general I prefer SC IV's art direction, simply because it was darker and gloomier, which for that game it made a lot of sense (Literally everyone was fucked in some way in their storyline)

SC V art direction doesn't fit my taste, but it is graphically very nice.


That said, everything so far used this one playable demo, so lets wait and see how the final game looks (IV and V trailers were not really all that amazing looking if people remember it properly)

Also, people please don't compare RPGs to fighting games, in RPG only a handful of characters need to look amazing, FG rosters are much bigger than your usual party in a RPG, so lets give fair judgment in context.
 
honestly just having higher poly faces and more detailed skin textures (pores, discolouration) would do wonders for making the characters look good. sophitia's chin is blocky from some angles and her skin is too waxy + smooth. i've talked about hair before, it probably isn't changing. too much work.

on a positive note, they've definitely learned from T7 to not make everything so goddamn shiny. knit wool sweaters are not shiny. please.

of course this all comes down to art style, so if they're keeping them semi-realistic, then it's fine in the current state. i do prefer realism though.
 
of course this all comes down to art style, so if they're keeping them semi-realistic, then it's fine in the current state. i do prefer realism though.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I can't recall "photorealism" ever being prioritized in the japanese fighting games (I could be wrong).
I agree the screenshot of Sophitia makes it seem she got replaced by a wax figurine of herself.
 
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