Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 went through a rather dramatic graphical change recently with a new cell shaded look. At least, we thought it had, but apparently not.
“I wouldn’t describe the new style as cel-shaded, it’s just more detailed and vibrant,” Robomodo CEO Josh Tsui toldGameSpot. “Perhaps you can say it’s more over-the-top–the lighting has been improved and we’ve pumped up the game’s colors. Also, details like motion blur, depth of field, and outlining were tweaked, in the interest of improving the player’s focus on the skater and nearby obstacles and terrain.”
Tsui went on to say that the “visual upgrade” had been planned for a long time and was not in response to the negative comments regarding the graphics when the game was originally revealed.
Why would you reveal a game with screenshots filled with dodgy graphics that were going to be changed, and not mention this at the time? Seems a little odd to me, they could have avoided a lot of bad publicity if they had said something at the reveal.
Source: Gamespot
Light Liguria
How is the originals bad? doesn’t seem so to me. I thought the animations looked off in the trailer but tbh Tony Hawk has long been damaged by Ride so I doubt Thps 5 will best the previous games from Neversoft.
ron_mcphatty
I think the TSA podcast guys put it well this week, graphically it’s not awful but it’s well below par for a £50 game. Compare it with the similarly priced Battlefront and it looks disappointing, I think the complains have come from that.
I don’t buy this ‘planned upgrade’ line at all, true or not they must see that it comes across as insincere, like most marketing cack. What they should consider is being open about their reaction to the internets criticisms, either stick with their guns and be positive or admit the game doesn’t look great and needs a polish.
Tuffcub
I think a lot of the problems stem from the fact the game having to be engineered to run on PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as their big brothers.
Activision have a history of pretty much porting the low end versions on to XB1 and PS4 – case point, the last Transformers game. They don’t spend time or money taking advantage of the extra oomph found in the new consoles. Battlefront is just on PS4, PC and XB1 so has been built using the extra power thus look much better.
ron_mcphatty
Good point about their track record on porting, shame really as there’s so many other companies doing visually impressive work across two generations.
Geffdof23
It’s stylised rather than photo realistic. The shadows and the lighting in the above screen shot are far better than any previous TH game. I thought gameplay was supposed to be paramount anyway, so I don’t see why everyone is complaining so much. I’m still looking forward to this.
Kennykazey
I don’t want to say I told you so, but…. read my comment on the previous article. ;-)