Guild Wars 2 - The art style

I've read a lot of misconception about GW2 while reading blogs ,forums and their respective comments but the one that puzzles me the most is when people claim the graphics of GW2 are bad, even really dated. It puzzles me because some of them even quoted ArenaNet's statement that GW2 has a stylized Artistic feel to it but they took this statement as an Excuse for bad graphics rather than what it actually says In this video I plan to do three things. One is showing what amazing features the GW2 graphic engine has, features which in my opinion make it one of the best engines available for an MMO right now. Secondly to highlight all the artistic beauty this game has. Finally I will show how all this comes together to create a most beautiful world. Cause ultimately its not the features that make the art but the art itself. First thing we're going to cover is refraction. Refraction is the process that makes light bend as it passes from one mediums to the other This is a perfect example going on right here. Looking through this ICE statue one can see whats behind but slightly distorted as you'd expect if look through mediums like plastic or glass. Generally we take these things for granted but this is really something hard to do especially in a rasterized engine. You can see clearly that this process is not automatic by a bug that I uncovered while making this video, if you'll notice fire does not show through The ice. And if you're asking yes, but report submitted. Anyhow this is not a feature you generally see in a lot of MMO engines but as I am sure you agree it adds quite a bit to the artistic beauty of the world. The next thing we're going to look at is reflection. Look at this big bright room, It is mostly made of marble as we'd expect in real life the floor reflects the room but at a very low intensity. The floor is not a complete mirror showing everything. This can be well seen as the floor doesn’t reflect my character as this is not bright enough. At the same time you can still make out the shapes and colours of all the well lit detail in the ceiling. Once again, top notch attention to detail. Next we have caustics. Caustics is a process light goes through when passing from different medium which are at a curve like this glass window. In addition this being an aquarium and thus fill with water that is in motion due to waves you can also see this effect on the light which is also in motion on the floor and the wall. Truly well done. If you ever did any 3D CGI I am sure you can appreciate how hard it is to make your material look exactly like the material you want to recreate. Even worst is if you're trying to make a material look like a specific material while using a cartoony artistic style. Yet look at the video going on right now and tell me that that material doesn’t completely feel like it is metal. The way light reflects and the way it shines immediately make you realize that is without a doubt metal. Once again couldn’t be done any better in my opinion! And it is not just metal, looking at this material I can immediately tell not just that it is marble but also that it is wet marble, really seem done to perfection in my eyes. One feature you'd expect of a modern graphics engine is for it to support a high polygon count. Once again the Guild Wars 2 graphics engine doesn’t disappoint here either. Characters are highly detailed, Environments and cities are also highly detailed. Those high buildings in the distance aren’t some billboard with an image, they're actual objects so much so there are portals that take you in some of them and you can view them from different angles. this Same high level of detail can be found on statues which are simply breath taking. You can definitely tell these are amazing sculptures and not some quick model designed to fill the world. If this wasn’t enough the viewing distance is also pretty huge. Once again I really have no clue how anyone can say this game has bad graphics. Next I want to step a bit away from visuals because after all the artistic quality of this game doesn’t end with its graphics. Great art is very much dependent on attention to detail. And in GW2 this attention to detail goes beyond its visuals. Hear a bit these different flames. Just by their sound you can tell how many there are as well as how big they are as the size of the flame is also reflected in the fullness of its sound. Size is not the only great characteristics of these sound, hear the following sounds, see how realistic they sound and notice how the sound randomizes in a way that it doesn’t sound like the same clip repeating over and over again, truly great stuff. notice the attention to detail, even the water spray is randomized That’s it for this video, I hope I managed to help you see GW2 the way I see it, Everyone is entitled to their opinion of course and it is perfectly fine if this artistic style is not something you like. However calling it bad of really old is in my opinion incorrect. Let me close this video by showing a few scenes of how all this comes together to really create artistic beauty. As always please feel free to leave your comments and thank you for watching.