richternj

You've got me, there. I did find it very nice to see much less of the ink-washed sprites this time around. The spriting isn't 100%, but I, personally, found it a lovely improvement. I guess I just found A:EftP and the Avadon series somewhat limited in the maps and sprites. I was really happy to see the improvement. Maybe I was a little happier after spending more time than was strictly necessary reading the Steam forums where half the topics were drek of the "1900s grafx much trolololo" sort. Oi, mate. Steam is a lovely, if expensive, marketplace. Also, filled with some very, very angry people with ill-informed opinions.

I figured I'd come here to discuss this, among Jeff's faithful, and away from angry Russians on steam simply trying to derail the conversation. Avernum 2 (2015) is visually beautiful. I've always loved Spiderweb's games, even down to the hand-drawn character art. However, I have to admit that it hasn't always been the strongest part of the mind-blowing RPGs I've come to enjoy. I admit a -small- amount of disappointment in the art direction of some of the recent products. It's not the 2D isometric view, lord knows I'd never have willingly given away over 500 hours of my life to these games otherwise. But the sprites. Oh god, the sprites. They were good enough. They worked well. I knew what my Characters were, I knew what was around them, what they were facing, that was never an issue. The pallet-swaps, though. I must admit, I used to cringe at the color choices. We would have one normal sprite, and the remaining choices looked like someone dumped a colored wash over them and let that be that. Fair enough, I didn't exactly have to use them as my character. It used to make me grind my teeth, a little bit, every time I'd come across one of these dipped-in-ink looking sprites as an NPC. It kept prodding at the fringes of my immersion that I so desperately wanted to remain unspoiled. Especially in later titles as A:EftP or the Avadon series. I would not consider myself, by any stretch, a graphics whore, and yet, it -bothered- me on a level I don't think I quite understood until Steam finished downloading A2:CS and I fired it up. There my party was, trudging through a Neph cave. I knew I was coming up on the big bad at the end of it. That little voice in my head told me to look for a cat that looked like it had finished a color run in the past few minutes. And there it was. Only it wasn't. Standing out like nothing else, this beautiful grey/white/blue sprite, reflecting every bit of the text description of the elder Nephilim warrior. I stopped dead, and my appreciation of a game I was super excited for changed. I started noting the greatly varied tiles and placables on both the overworld map and the towns/dungeons. Without equivocation, this is the most visually impressive and immersive title Spiderweb has produced. I know the games tend to get slammed by the casual observer (and snarky Russians... ugh, Steam forums...) for being a visual throwback, but this time, it was done -so- well. They gave it the perfect little tweak, tightened the spriting, and it really looks like Jeff went balls-to-the-wall with his overworld map and location design. What's everyone elses' thoughts on this? Is it just me, or does it seem like A2:CS is a significant step forward for Spiderweb in the visuals department?