KNSB Tower in Sofia vs City 17 Citadel. Viktor Antonov (the art director of Half-Life 2 and Dishonored) grew up in Sofia. This is why there are so many signs in Bulgarian (even in Half-Life Alyx).

#Valve #ArtDirection

Honestly, I'm impressed with artistic choices, but the art director of Infinity Nikki definitely deserved his role!

It's Unreal Engine 5 and RTX Accelerated version of Lumen lighting system.

There is even their official interview about switching to Unreal Engine: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/developer-interviews/behind-the-scenes-of-infinity-nikki-tracing-a-glamorous-turn-to-an-unreal-open-world

The trick is: they haven't just adopted the engine, their rendering developers recreated lots of features, like Order-Independent Transparency (OIT). Imagine, that folks can do rendering in a gacha about dresses, but AAA games are all using the default UE.

#ArtDirection@GameDEV
#LevelArt@GameDEV
#UnrealEngine@GameDEV

Remember Me, a 2013 game that still looks impressive thanks to art direction! Yes, the lighting is baked and sometimes can be off, but you see the artistic vision in every detail.

And the same goes for game design: it can be off, but it's anything but generic. The movement system, the camera that sometimes switches to the predefined angles — it's bizarre in so many ways, like a forgotten age of gaming.

#GameDesign@GameDEV
#ArtDirection@GameDEV

People are generally impressed by the level of details of the new game and how they tried to preserve the art style but without technical limitations of the past...

#ArtDirection@GameDEV