Best Art Direction of 2016 - Article
by Brandon J. Wysocki , posted on 09 January 2017 / 8,795 Views
Art direction plays a crucial role in video games. It goes way beyond simply making a game visually appealing; done well, it can elicit emotions and strongly influence the way in which we immerse ourselves into games. They say 'a picture is worth a thousand words', well that would be 30,000-60,000+ 'words' (a decent-sized book) every second in most modern games. Overthought idioms aside, the truth is that good art direction deepens our connection with and overall elevates games. These are the shortlisted titles for Best Art Direction of 2016.
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While Overwatches visuals are nice and somothing bright and colorful was sorely needed in the gaming space, it dosn't do anything particularily interesting with it's art direction.
An award for best Art direction should highlight something daring and stricking imo, not something nice but relatively cookie cutter.
As others have said the omission of games such as Superhot, Hyper Light Drifter, Inside and Darkest Dungeon (yes that game officially released in 2016) is puzzling.
I personally would've gone with Superhot, I'm surprised it didn't even make the cut.
Eh... Overwatch's art direction is fairly generic if you ask me.
Paper Mario
Doom
The Witness
No Man's Sky
Abzu
Owl Boy
Ratchet & Clank
These are better choices for Art Direction in my opinion.
Despite my love for DOOM, the same brown and red colours aren't what I call great art direction, especially with the same old blood and guts that we've seen in plenty of other video games. R&C has had the same style for years as well and joins the ranks of other games out there that employ a simplistic or bright art style.
Simply put, the lack of Hyper Light Drifter is a sin.
Overwatch has great character designs, good aesthetics and nice colors but "best art direction of 2016" is pushing it too far.
Oh, Okay. Because Overwatch's art is sooooo unique.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Overwatch visuals are really nice but I don´t think they really excel in art direction.
In my opinion, Superhot should get the 1st place. or Hyper Light Drifter. Those are games with really unique art design
Stop please
Agree. Overwatch is a true masterpiece. Pixar looking visusls. Well deserved.
I'm sorry but this Overwatch dickriding is getting out of hand.
I'm hoping we see more of this next year when X game wins multiple awards, from the same people next year.
Just saying, because most that say "boo the game shouldn't have won this many awards" are the same type that turn their back when their absolute must have game wins more than the rest. I mean you could try saying you absolutely will not change your stance for any game ever (no one is ever really neutral forever and we're biased creatures in general), but there will come a time when you do.
@Chazore: I could be wrong, but I think his problem is more about Overwatch winning just because of its popularity. A lot of people feel like Overwatch absolutely doesn't deserve to win in this category (and possibly doesn't even deserve to be a candidate), yet it still won.
That's the thing though. It won due to general popularity. The game isn't complete garbage by any means, but it's still loved by many. It'd be weird if the game was utter crap and loved by millions, especially with a specific category for it to be placed in.
Art wise, the game (like R&C) looks almost like a Pixar type of game visual wise. Gameplay wise it reminds me of TF2 in various ways. All of the games listed have some form of unique art style and direction. They all had a chance at winning, but I'd say OW won due to a mixture of popularity and it's style that helped it become popular and stand out amongst the crowd of other games like it (Just look at Battleborn and others like it for example).
Chazore.....this is about best ART DESIGN......which has ZERO to do with popularity. There's literally nothing special about the visuals of Overwatch, especially compared to something like R&C and Abzu. All you're saying is it's okay to be biased in these awards and not give them away on the catagories merits itself
Chazore.....this is about best ART DESIGN......which has ZERO to do with popularity. There's literally nothing special about the visuals of Overwatch, especially compared to something like R&C and Abzu. All you're saying is it's okay to be biased in these awards and not give them away on the catagories merits itself
Chazore.....this is about best ART DESIGN......which has ZERO to do with popularity. There's literally nothing special about the visuals of Overwatch, especially compared to something like R&C and Abzu. All you're saying is it's okay to be biased in these awards and not give them away on the catagories merits itself
Chazore.....this is about best ART DESIGN......which has ZERO to do with popularity. There's literally nothing special about the visuals of Overwatch, especially compared to something like R&C and Abzu. All you're saying is it's okay to be biased in these awards and not give them away on the catagories merits itself
Didn't mean to have that post 4 times lol wtf
I think the quality of art is subjective in it's own right tbh. What is trash to you (and you've displayed the difference already with said subjectivity) isn't trash to someone else. I said before that it's a mixture of popularity (near the end) and it's art style. The art style was what drew me to the game from the moment I saw it's first teaser trailer, not the gameplay.
Uncharted 4, Abzü and The Last Guardian > all. 100 %.
