Visual Style of Video Games Cel-Shaded Also known as toon shading, the cel-shaded visual style is based off of comic book and cartoon styles, it is the opposite of the photorealistic style and it is traditionally used for 2D style of games. The process of rendering a typical 3D model into this style consist of smoothing lighting and reducing the amount of different shades of colours used on the object to give the image a flat look. Black ink lines outing the object are also added. Examples of video games that use cel-shading as a visual style would be Legend of Zelda series and street fighter, screenshots of their gameplay are displayed below
The image above is taken from Legend of Zelda: wind walker
Above is a photo of gameplay from borderlands
Photorealism Photorealism is a visual style that is meant to replicate the reality that we live in, however can also introduce non-fictional aspects such as a spaceship in a sci-fi the objective of this style is to make the viewer or player of the game feel immersed into the scene and to give it a much more real-world feeling. This can also help build a rapport between the player Gameplay from Metal Gear Solid 5 and the characters in the game and can boost the emotional attachment they have to them, which provokes a strong emotional response to certain instances, such as a characters death. Examples of games that use photorealism are games like Beyond: Two Souls and the Metal Gear Solid Shot of Willem Dafoe in Beyond: Two souls franchise. Beyond: Two Souls even goes as far as using actors to voice their characters such as Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe, as well as visually copying their looks completely too make them realistic looking characters in the game.
Exaggeration Exaggeration visual style is very similar to photorealism, however it also includes aspects that are obviously unrealistic, this could be for instance that the characters could have overly-enlarged features such as eyes or muscles or they could have an extreme hairstyle. It is a very popular visual style in modern video games and it’s use on characters allows better personification of their traits, such as a tanky Image from final fantasy crisis core and slow boss to be insanely huge or a sweet characters body being surprisingly small in comparison to their head. Two games that demonstrate this type of visual style are the Final Fantasy series and Tekken.
Shot of Devil Jin a character from the Tekken Franchise
Abstract The intention of abstract visual effects is to be original