NST Ridiculous Nitpicks: Design Hierarchy

A lot of deep contrast in a very tiny space

In what we have seen of the remasters, there was often a lot of microscopic detail in areas that were, in comparison, simpler, bolder shapes before. And I’m not just talking about the low-poly aspect—more on that later.

While being an easy way to produce highly meticulous-looking content, the issue with giving the same, high amount of detail and importance to every single thing is that will forcibly result in every prop having the same importance on screen—which amounts to none. If everything is contrasted the same way, nothing stands out. What we lack here is hierachization. It could be compared to mall alleys, with every product trying to be catchier than the other. I’m making a caricature here, but this hierarchization thing was particularly verified in the jungle and river levels of the first games.

One of the aspects I have the more respect for in the original games is how well balanced every portion of every level is, mainly thanks to color composition. For the moment, this reflexion seems to have been left aside in the remasters, which worries me a little. Most of the time, the contrast in each object is much more important than the contrast of the scene as a whole. It often seems like all the global shapes have been softened, and then contrast was added inside of each one—contrast as in post-process contrast. As a result, contrast is there, but it seems to have been distributed randomly, without purpose.

That same issue of “micro-contrasts” versus “composition contrast” is the reason why the grass seen above kind of hurts the eyes. Every little detail tends to carry on his own contrast instead of being part of an organized scene (this is also closely related to lighting, which I’ll come back to in part 3 later this week).

Dirty mockup by yours truly

Here’s a very quick mockup I did. I just tried to bring back the original balance by adjusting the importance of each object through color, contrast and scale. As an example (and as silly as it may sound), I reduced the number and size of dots on the mushrooms.

I know from several work experiences (in character design, but this applies to anything) that being given the ability to rework a design at a higher resolution instinctively draws you to add complexity. Though natural, this habit should really be avoided, as it quickly ruins the balance of a scene or a model.

It is something we have seen happening many times when a franchise comes to a new console generation or skips one entirely. A notoriously bad example is none other than The Wrath of Cortex.

Fortunately, there is also plenty of good examples. Mario is one of them. Contrary to what appears to be the direction chosen for these remasters, never did Nintendo feel the need to use a realistic hair shader or actual skin textures. These are cartoon characters. While it can be a really good idea to bring photorealism to them in some aspect, it must be done very carefully. 

Speaking of which, the Ratchet & Clank remake is another project that was handled with a lot of artistic care and thought. And yet, while more integral to the character than in Crash’s case, the fur is still much more subtle and its shading doesn’t feel out of place at all in the environment. I’ll get more into character design details in part 3.

Limitations were the base of the aesthetic choices that shaped all this unique style that—ironically—is so hard to get back to with modern limitless possibilities. A mix of low ploycount and cartoonish irregularity, initially the result of technical limitations, shaped a timeless style. In the end, theses limits weren’t the only reason for the polygony-zigzagy-design to exist anymore. It had become integral to the identity of the series.

This is the single reason why post-PS1 Crash games failed to capture this unique aesthetic. None dared to look back to the edgy, geometric yet irregular proportions that had reached their best in Crash 3. Being the first PS2 title of the franchise (and its more complicated development) TWOC tried so hard to make everything round, just because it could, completely overlooking years of defining a consistent shape language.

Polygons were still very noticeable of course. It was only 2001 and the PS2—and Xbox, and GameCube. But they had no reason to be used as integral components of the design anymore: to the excuse of TWOC, this completely was the tendency at the time, since they were becoming for the first time a lesser preoccupation for design teams. It’s only very recently that ultra-high definitions started a new era of playing with crisp lines. Which brings us to ‘Thumpin’ Wumpa Islands’.