- Published on
Dishonored creator's Fallout: New Vegas-inspired immersive sim prefers stylized art to ultra-realism that ages fast – 'Back then it was probably stunning, now you can't even look at it'
Raphael Colantonio, director of Dishonored and Prey, discusses his new game, an RPG/immersive sim hybrid inspired by Fallout: New Vegas, and explains why he prefers stylized graphics over ultra-realism for long-term visual appeal and easier development.
The new game from Dishonored and Prey director Raphael Colantonio probably won't be opting for ultra-realistic graphics, because stylization looks better in the long term and takes way less time.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ after the reveal of his new project - a Fallout: New Vegas-inspired RPG/immersive sim hybrid - Raphael Colantonio, co-founder of Arkane Studios as well as more recent venture WolfEye Studios, said he wasn't daunted by making a game like this, despite a smaller team. "It's more than we had on Arx Fatalis," he says, referencing Arkane's 2002 release, which had a main team in the single figures.
Helping Colantonio and his team keep their workload in check, however, is that "when you commit to doing these things, you also commit to a certain level of execution. The higher the level of execution, the more expensive, the more time, the more daunting it is."
That means that for its new game - a first-person immersive sim with RPG elements that's set in an alt version of the Old West - WolfEye is opting for a more stylized approach. This kind of decision is one that's always made early in development, but Colantonio seems to have a pretty baked-in philosophy on this front: "Are you going for ultra-realism, which takes forever and ages really rapidly, or are you going for stylized, which gives you a little bit of a shortcut from a production standpoint and also ages gracefully?"
Dishonored, Colantonio suggests, still looks pretty good. Its exaggerated, caricature-style faces might suffer a little if you zoom in close enough to check out every single pixel, but the overall aesthetic holds up pretty well for a game more than a decade old. It's a similar story with Zelda, he suggests: "You look at some old Zelda, and it's still cute." By contrast, "there are some other games when you look and you go 'oh, they were trying to be realistic there, and back then it was probably visually stunning. And now it's like you can't even look at it. I think that's the beauty of stylization in general'."