Remowned

A couple of years ago, I was alerted to this gorgeous concept artwork taken from the development process of Fumito Ueda’s wonderful PS2 game Ico. It reminded me of the “sketchy” renderer from the well-known NPRQuake project, and I wished somebody would make a full game from the ground up optimized with this kind of art direction. Imagine how amazing that inset scene would look if it suddenly burst into motion, with a cel-shaded approach taken to the hard-edged shadows and maybe subtle animation on the hatching lines for objects that are moving.

Though it’s not quite the same thing, it looks like at least one team is doing something along those lines. SEGA Game Studios Japan is working on Valkyria Chronicles for PS3, an alternate history 1930s tactical RPG with some real-time elements. One screenshot is inset right, and I have a second and third as well.

Even though the overwhelming majority of games shoot for photorealism, or something approaching it, however unsuccessfully in most cases, I’m glad to see that even on today’s powerful systems not everybody is automatically going in that direction.

Still, I’d like to see this sketch concept taken further, to the more high-contrast, hard-shadowed look of that Ico concept art. It seems like it would be a perfect match for the downloadable services, where a low-cost title benefits more from the hype of interested hardcore gamers than it would amid the vast retail sea. With titles like Echochrome, flOw, and Everyday Shooter, Sony in particular seems interested in funding experimental projects such as that.