AgentNihilist

Oh there's no denying that graphics are important - they do give a rather large draw to the game. I for one find my self drawn to the cloth map and artistic style of the game - it invokes classic fantasy in my mind. However I believe that one of the reasons Stardock games tend to be commercial successes is that they as a company realize that being a commercial success does not make a game good. The quality and level of support they have shown in their GC games show that

[quote who="Tamren" reply="48" id="2334380"]That said you have to follow the laws of thermodynamics. No free lunch. If you don't then magic would take over the world.[/quote] I think that really depends on how you plan to have magic effect the world. Is it minor? should it be balenced with the mundane? or do Ethereal Dragon Kings fight undead armies from the sunken island of Malfearion while volcanos are raised and broken; all for the last potato?

Another aspect to look at; in order for the statement "Will not sacrifice gameplay for graphics" to resemble a false dichotomy, one of those two elements would have to be driven under a functional level. Sinece there is no question that the gameplay and graphics will be at a functional level, the statement comes to represent that they will not spent undue amounts of time and resources improving graphics if it damages their ability to properly develope the gameplay. Another thi

Another fault of photorealistic graphics is that they tend to age poorly. When a game uses stylized art it tend to have its own defination of "this is how it should be". When realism is the driving factor of a games art design you constantly have new definitions of how something should look. After a year or two it starts to look noticably dated as you've seen newer and shinier graphics. Where the stylized art will still look "like its meant to".

I don't really feel there is a need for any major trailers until we hit at least beta 2 or 3. I don't think the gameplay or grahpical experiance will start to get close to the relase until then. We will have beta access in about a month so we should be seeing most of the content as its being worked on. Obviously we won't have things like tactical combat until its in, but the point is we will be playing with the game soon - so you'll see many player videos and I'd expect dev vids or pict

[quote who="vicwaberub" reply="39" id="2330781"] I played a lot of games in my lifetime, so I think I (and you) can see the direction of development and we can see things that can be made better. Or not? The screenshots in media are (very) old - but I think this would be in the near of the game art in the official version. Brown (on the cloth map) and with low contrast and watercolor (in tactical battle). Stardock should publish more information of the game design and co