Games with great environments

[Gwen]

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Look, I won't argue it's the most colorful game by any means, but's it's far from how it's being described in here. And part of what makes it's environments so great is their color choice, it fits the story very well.

[Koh]

I couldn't say, since I've yet to experience it. I'm just talking about what I see at face-value from screenshots and videos of most modern games. While the formations of the environments usually look awesome, like shown in Xenoblade, some of the other games just kinda kill the excitement of it for me when it's all brown, gray, and brown-green.

It's one of the reasons I think the new Zelda on Wii U is going to really shine, because it has detailed graphics, as well as nicely colored graphics at the same time. Now if they fill it to the brim with interesting environments and lots of things to go check out, it's probably going to top the looks department of every Zelda game for me, with the nostalgia stripped away. With the nostalgia, I still think Link's Awakening/the Oracles had the best visual style, just because everything looked really clean, and even when you add detail to those graphics, they're still clean. Granted they weren't perfect, and had some perspective issues, but they conveyed the messages of what things look like fantastically.

[BullockDS]

-I second Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, at least until Konami got lazy and essentially flipped the castle upside down and tweaked some palettes here and there for the second half of the game.
-The Samurai Shodown series, particularly IV, V, and V Special. There's a great deal of variety in the stages in the series, even when IV-Vs started to shamelessly recycle and recolor stages. Compared to sister series Last Blade, SamSho tends to have far more colorful and varied backgrounds.
-The Last Blade series; what I like about the environments here compared to Samurai Shodown's are that these feel more authentically 18th/19th century Japanese (which is when SamSho is also supposed to occur).
-Fatal Fury 3. Sure, Mark of the Wolves had some well-sprited stages, but I'm a sucker for FF3 and how its environments were colorful, varied, and to a degree interactive: despite there only being about a dozen different stages in Fatal Fury 3, the game takes you through every nook and cranny of Southtown and there are often tons going on in the background. Some stages had elements that could react to certain actions being performed in a certain location (e.g. making a turtle in Joe's stage jump when pulling off one of Sokaku's moves), and having certain matchups will alter certain stages (Geese's stage will be circled in flames after the first round if fighting him as Terry/Andy/Joe). The icing on the cake is how you could finish an opponent and knock them flying towards the "camera" or far into the background depending on the stage. Such a pretty game for 1995 (and criminally underrated for that matter).
-You know what? How about post-1995 SNK fighters in general. There; saved myself a bunch more typing.
-Super Mario Galaxy (far moreso the first than the second IMO). Say what you will about whether or not the game is too linear, but it's a fantastic looking experience through and through; the major worlds reeked of creativity and (perhaps illusory) grandeur.
-Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. The faux watercolor aesthetic of the game is brilliant (even if sometimes the Wii's hardware didn't quite render it fully well at times).

[soulcaliburfan]

I still find Eternal Sonata to be flat out beautiful.

[Mystie]

How could I possibly forget Eternal Sonata? That game is a work of art. Truly.

[Lemonray]

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Look, I won't argue it's the most colorful game by any means, but's it's far from how it's being described in here. And part of what makes it's environments so great is their color choice, it fits the story very well.

I agree. The choice of colours in Dark Souls counts for a lot of the game's visual impact.
The intention of the creators was to use mostly subtle and gloomy colours in the game's enviroments, and it really shows.
The textures are very well done also (some are actually so detailed, that it is impossible to properly make them out on the consoles the game was originally developed for...).

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There are also instances where more vibrant or contrasting colours are introduced, to create visually striking images.

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One of my favorite examples is this part of Anor Londo:

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...Where there are distant green trees to complement the golden-brown rock face. It's very natural but like the rest of Dark Souls, there is a wonderful surreal feeling to it.

[Koh]

Mmmmmmmm, I'd rather have a game that looks like Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams.

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[Gwen]

Don't see what that has to do with anything regarding Dark Souls other than your own opinion. Dark Souls wouldn't have the gloomy feel that it does have it it's colors all popped out and were bright like that.

It's totally cool that you prefer that, just don't get what you're going at in regards with Dark Souls. Are you saying Dark Souls would look better like that? If so I would have to massively disagree. As I stated above, without the gloom and doom, Dark Souls loses a lot of it's impact.

[Koh]

I'm not so sure that those feelings can't be invoked with a more versatile palette. There are other colors you can use to get those feelings, like purples and blues.




Brown isn't the only color to invoke that.

[Gwen]

Invokes a heavy cartoon feel,(whens the last time you were walking around at night and the ground was a rich purple?)that feels kinda kitschy(in a fine way). That's not to say blues are unfound in the game though

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[Koh]

Well the same could be said with brown...I mean when you look outside, everything's not blended to be as close to brown as possible.

I agree that it is a bit bright there (it was a GBA game), but even if they were darker purples and blues, it'd work. I don't think DS has bad environments at all from what I've seen (in fact they're quite good), I just wish that modern games would distance themselves from blending everything with brown.

[Paladin]

Saturated blues and purples are harder to look at than brown. Brown is a pretty dull colour, so it's easier on the eyes. The blues work in a game full of sprites, where you only have 2 dimensions and everything has clear outlines, but in a grand 3D game like Dark Souls, that much blue get be painful to look at pretty fast.

Not saying using blue wouldn't work at all in Dark Souls, it probably could, but personally I think it looks fine as it is.

[Mystie]

Jeez, I make one simple post, and then it unravels into a big, long debate.

[E-Man]

Jeez, I make one simple post, and then it unravels into a big, long debate.

Isn't that how the internet normally works, Mystie?

[Gwen]

Jeez, I make one simple post, and then it unravels into a big, long debate.

That how forums and topics like this work. It sparks conversation.