Artistic styles within games.

Cel shading

Games such as the Borderlands series are a great example of cel shaded games.

The art style used stands out significantly and is easily one of the most prominent features in the game.

This picture of Borderlands 2’s main antagonist shows very clearly the cel shaded art style that has contributed to the feeling of the game. As you can see the lines in the hair and clothes are very bold and prominent, this makes the game feel less serious and more like a comic book, adding to its RPG fantasy like theme. It also makes the lighting more dramatic and plays heavily with depth of field, the character is much more focused than the blurry background.

Photo realistic

Games that use this style attempt to make their game look as realistic as possible. Games like this contain a lot of detail in the graphics.

 This example of Sgt Maj Johnson in the cut scenes of halo 2 remastered. It was made by 343 industries in 2014 and the halo series among other things. Other games such as GTA and metal gear solid the phantom pain. Most FPS games use this style such as halo and battlefield, also some RPGs like the Skyrim. As technologies in game engines advance, the depth and realism of the animations become a lot better. But games like this also take a long time to make.

Pixel

This style is used mainly In older games such as pacman and super Mario. It is a very simple style and is mostly to always in 2D. it does take long to create games like this because of the simplicity. It was mainly used because of the limitation of software. It is not a realistic style.

Exaggerated

Exaggeration is an art style most commonly found in JRPGs, with the style being used to reflect the popular Medias of manga and anime. As the name would suggest this art style consists of highly exaggerated objects and features with two popular examples being the Devil May Cry and Final Fantasy series with their oversized objects such as swords and their facial features like their eyes being quite sizable when the character is sad. The body types of the characters will follow a similar way with male characters being strong and muscular and female characters often being overly sexualized. This style is often used in japan but quite a lot other games like the darksiders series rely heavily on this style.