Let's talk about the graphics, design and art style of the upcoming fighters in here.
How do or will fighters look on the current generation consoles and PC? Here's a little overview to start things off:
Killer Instinct (already released, Xbone)
:
Guilty Gear Xrd (December 2014 release, old and current generation consoles)
:
Dead or Alive 5 Last Round (2015 release, old and current generation consoles)
:
Tekken 7 (2015 release, arcade and current generation consoles)
:
Mortal Kombat X (2015 release, current generation consoles and PC)
:
Street Fighter V (2015 release, current generation consoles and PC)
:
*takes a breath*
Killer Instinct is ugly. What I mean by that is they put TOO MUCH detail into it. The two humans there are way too cluttered up, so it'll be like watching live action transformers when they fight. What they need to do is either streamline/simplify the designs to look better, or make some better color contrasts between characters and stages so everything on the screen isn't little dark chunks squirreling around. Its also a total waste of effort, since 2d fighters move too quickly to really look at the character models outside of win screens.
Guilty Gear, is another waste of effort. While the models are amazing and I love them, and they could rival CC2, there was no reason to dress up 3d models to look 2d when the game is still 2d. Only two advantages are cutscene supers, and alternate costumes. That said, the game IS beautiful and I love the art style and animations.
DOA5, still really ugly. Sure character faces are more realistic, but everything is still low detail reds and browns, the whole game just looks muddy in every sense. Tthey need the aesthetics of the old DOA (all the vibrant blues and greens and whites) to come back, instead of trying to be "gritty" the whole time.
Tekken....everything looks laminated.
Mortal Kombat, I'm not gonna lie, looks great. The character designs aren't overly cluttered, the graphics are good, we know it will have gore mechanics like wolverine and splatterhouse...Although seeing Kano turned into the new Hsu Hao/Jax hybrid is still throwing me off lol.
Street Fighter looks....okay at best. It looked far better with sprites, to be honest. but I'm glad they dont look like Looney Toons anymore.
I wish DOA would have the graphics of the new Guilty Gear....or an aesthetic more like Final Fantasy XIII, which is an absolutely gorgeous game.
So in order of best to worst looking games
1) Guilty Gear
2) Mortal Kombat
3) Street Fighter
4) Dead or Alive
5) Killer Instinct.
Its not just about how high poly/res the graphics are, art style is a balance between polys, textures, color palettes, stage and character designs, and game type.
A (sort of) HQ version of the latest Tekken 7 trailer is finally up:
While the backgrounds look much better and the character models are definitely improved (Xiaoyu looks almost completely different)...
...you can still see noticable polygon edges on clothing (imho more than you can see on current fighters, like DOA5 or Soul CaliburV):
(nice textures though!)
Also they seem, to go more for some sort of plastic doll look, like DOA in the past. The characters are very shiny/waxy and seem to have less skin detail:
Animations are, as always in a Tekken, top notch!
Tekken doesn't know how to do skin textures...or normal maps. That said have you ever looked at the bottom of King's feet in T6? That's horrific lol.
It's not so much the lighting, but the shaders. It's them, that give the fighters this waxy, undetailed look. But I agree, it's not so much bad graphics, it's obviously the preferred stylized look, that they are going for. It's such a shame though...this generation of consoles is capable of more. I was really hoping for graphics/art style like this also in fighting games:
this makes for a good looking movie, but a very boring looking game.
What they need is a mix. The more detailed graphics of this, but the more dynamic colors, lighting, and designs of the current tekken designs.