Giant Bomb Presents: Hyper Light Drifter's Old School Inspirations

THAT TRUCK IS STRAIGHT DUMPIN'

This was the interview I was waiting for.

So looking forward to this game. Good interview!

Is my boy Teddy up in this interview?

Edit: Yassss - GameMaker representin'

WE DUMP TRUCK RIGHT NOW

If Legend of Zelda and Secret of Mana are their inspiration, then why not actually make high quality sprites, instead of those generic non-shaded stuff every indie game uses ?

Are you seriously accusing this game of *not looking good*?

@ap2000: I'm as tired as anyone of that kind of art style, but from what I've seen of the game it does it so well that I don't care. And when talking of those inspirations I think it's more about gameplay than looks.

Here, let me upload a picture to make it more obvious for you:

The look they use has unfortunately become a generic staple for many indie games now. It looks lazy and uninspired to me.

I've seen this exact same style in countless other games, like in Superbrothers S&SW (but that was one of the earlier ones), before and I've grown completely tired of it.

If you want to see what actually great modern sprite work is, check out the very well done La Mulana.

I love pixel art in games it fits really well, I really don't get why people dislike it.

The thing I dislike in game visualization is the attempt at realism (Grand Theft Auto,Call of Duty etc etc) I see that and it instantly makes me disinterested in the game.

@ap2000: wow your comparison has all the tact of a FOX news report.

Blah, no mention of how they straight up stole a couple monster designs from Neon Genesis Evangelion.

OOooOOoooh! Sieg Heil!

@ap2000: I agree with that to some degree, but your dumb picture ensures that no one will take you seriously.

It's just in illustration for people to understand what I mean.

Sure, whatever you say.

It's not 'pixel art'. All computer graphics are displayed in pixels. It's just low resolution, which looks bad. They can do better.The concept art looked a lot nicer, I don't know why they didn't try to get graphics closer to that.

Some "indie" developers take the time to make nice high resolution hand drawn art that looks nice and makes a more attractive game. And graphics always matter. Graphics have never not mattered.

@ap2000: While applying a quick pixel filter and throwing some bloom over top of it may approximate a static screen shot of many indie games as of late, your ignorance shows through. First, no matter what it looks like, you just look like a bit of an ass by putting developers in quotes. It's a tremendous feat to actually ship a game, no matter what platform you're using, and simply because they have simple graphics doesn't negate their ability to be a developer. Art and programming are two very different things.

Secondly, while there are some cheap knock-offs, there have been a handful of games in this style lately that are absolutely gorgeous. Hyper Light Drifter is one of them. The lighting engine is absolutely gorgeous and they have some of the most detailed sprite animations I've seen. Seriously, the movement is gorgeous in this game. They're doing a very smart blend of an art style that recalls nostalgia, while implementing it in a way that could only be done today.

"Sure, whatever you say" is not a rhetorical strategy that ultimately validates your statement. I'm sorry.

@vuud: You and everyone else know what "pixel art" means, so why bitch about the term?

And if you listen to the interview, making an old school action RPG with modernized gameplay was their whole pitch. Using a pixel art style is just part of what they were selling. They got a bunch of money to make a game with that style.

@ap2000 said:

@spunkrake said:

@ap2000 said:

If Legend of Zelda and Secret of Mana are their inspiration, then why not actually make high quality sprites, instead of those generic non-shaded stuff every indie game uses ?

Are you seriously accusing this game of *not looking good*?

Here, let me upload a picture to make it more obvious for you:

The look they use has unfortunately become a generic staple for many indie games now. It looks lazy and uninspired to me.

I've seen this exact same style in countless other games, like in Superbrothers S&SW (but that was one of the earlier ones), before and I've grown completely tired of it.

If you want to see what actually great modern sprite work is, check out the very well done La Mulana.

I'm sorry, as someone who has no nostalgia for super Metroid and the "competent" artists(?) who spawned it, I am going to say that image is ugly and it makes me think you have poor taste. Poor use of texture, poor allocation of detail, bad creature design, ugly pillow shading all over the shop in the absence of true form, ham fisted use of colour (though a lot of these are forgivable due to technical limitations, separated from nostalgia its just ugly, I don't understand why anyone would use it as a modern example of great pixel art), it makes me think all you want is detail for details sake. This doesn't even get into the importance of animation, and how simplicity can lead to extremely fluid animation (which hyper light drifter does indeed have, and Metroid or la mulana does not).

neither of our opinions means anything, and im sure many consider super Metroid to be beautiful, this is just a difference of taste. However, hyper light drifter is perhaps the last game you should be using as a platform to air your grievances with modern pixel art.

I can't wait. With Paul Veer working on the art for this, it's going to look freaking excellent.

"Things will die very quickly, and so will you."

Oh my good freaking Lord, is this going to be a Secret of Mana / Hotline Miami hybrid??

@ap2000: Your use of "devs" is pretty dumb and puts a big hole in any argument you think you had... I don't really understand your beef.

@ap2000: Some developers rely on low-resolution pixel art to sell nostalgia without having to be amazing artists. When I think of something like that, Terraria comes to mind. However loved that game is, the art's not that great, but it more or less gets away with it just because it's pixel art. Hyper Light Drifter's art is excellent in its category and absolutely stands out, whether you like big pixels or not. Whoever the game's artists are happen to be people who know how to make good art, low-res or no. It's not something that you can just fake, at least not to people who know what to look for.

It's also worth mentioning that pixel art alone isn't a style - it's really more of a medium. Compare something like Super Metroid to Earthbound, and you get two very specific, very different art styles within the confines of 16-bit pixel art.

I think it's fine that you just don't like the medium, but people who are good at pixel art are doing a lot on a very limited scope. It just plain isn't easy to convey a lot of information with just a few pixels. It's a skill. Some people do it well, some don't. These guys do.

I love block pushing puzzles. Especially when they're well done like in Wild Arms 3.

If you want to see the design philosophy of the game, it's super reassuring.

It's good enough to blow off lame heckling from folks who think that constantly bringing up Fox News as a stand if for evil incarnate is witty though.

I think this game looks super cool. I'm definitely looking forward to trying it out and hope it does well.

But I take issue with it being called a Zelda-esque game for the same reason I had issues with the Mana series, Beyond Oasis, Ys, Landstalker, and other such 16-bit games being called Zelda-esque games: they weren't. Not at all. This game doesn't look like a Zelda game. Bastion, Lunar Knights, and other similar top-down action RPGs weren't like Zelda. For as successful as Link to the Past was, I was always shocked by the lack of direct rip-offs, almost like no developer actually realized what made Zelda games Zelda games. They're not RPGs at all, they're fantasy action-adventure/puzzle games. Darksiders was kind of neat because it was ACTUALLY LIKE ZELDA for once, and not "Zelda-esque" in the way these other games supposedly were.

/rant over. I guess time will tell if it actually ends up being like Zelda, but based on the conversation, if they thought Secret of Mana was like Link to the Past, then it probably won't be.

I think it was quite fitting for such a garbage attempt at a graphical comparison, I'm sorry you love FOX news so much must suck for you.

@masterpaperlink said:

@ap2000 said:

@spunkrake said:

@ap2000 said:

If Legend of Zelda and Secret of Mana are their inspiration, then why not actually make high quality sprites, instead of those generic non-shaded stuff every indie game uses ?

Are you seriously accusing this game of *not looking good*?

Here, let me upload a picture to make it more obvious for you:

The look they use has unfortunately become a generic staple for many indie games now. It looks lazy and uninspired to me.

I've seen this exact same style in countless other games, like in Superbrothers S&SW (but that was one of the earlier ones), before and I've grown completely tired of it.

If you want to see what actually great modern sprite work is, check out the very well done La Mulana.

I'm sorry, as someone who has no nostalgia for super Metroid and the "competent" artists(?) who spawned it, I am going to say that image is ugly and it makes me think you have poor taste. Poor use of texture, poor allocation of detail, bad creature design, ugly pillow shading all over the shop in the absence of true form, ham fisted use of colour (though a lot of these are forgivable due to technical limitations, separated from nostalgia its just ugly, I don't understand why anyone would use it as a modern example of great pixel art), it makes me think all you want is detail for details sake. This doesn't even get into the importance of animation, and how simplicity can lead to extremely fluid animation (which hyper light drifter does indeed have, and Metroid or la mulana does not).

neither of our opinions means anything, and im sure many consider super Metroid to be beautiful, this is just a difference of taste. However, hyper light drifter is perhaps the last game you should be using as a platform to air your grievances with modern pixel art.

Super Metroid is one of the best platformers of all time and even now looks incredibly good, though? Hyper Light Drifter doesn't have the limitations of a 16-bit palette("homage" does not mean they're limiting themselves to an ancient engine), while Super Metroid pushed that to its limits. The amount of detail in the sprites is mindboggling, down to the point that Samus has two full sprite sheets because her suit is asymmetrical, so there's one sheet for when she's moving left, one for when she's moving right, to show her arm cannon on either side. She has TEN FRAMES of running animation, which is crazy for a single character on a super nintendo. The attention to detail is astounding, and the ambiance and detail in the world around it, as well as the room-filling monsters she fights, is amazingly well-crafted. It's completely unfair and irrelevant for him to compare Super Metroid to an indie game though, simply because one was made by the top minds at Nintendo with a big budget nearly 20 years ago on ancient hardware, and the other is made by a small team with access to all the conveniences of developing with a PC. Regardless, Super Metroid still holds up today and if you have a Wii or WiiU, you should definitely pick it up from the eshop. It manages to tell a tragic story with next to no dialogue aside from the opening crawl, as well, and has incredible music to boot.

excited for this one

I just find people who compulsively rail against Fox News and drag it into unrelated conversations tend to be to be sort of ridiculous, shady, hyper-emotional, given to stupid hyberpole, and generally not worth listening to on any topic. They seem to think that ragging on Fox News is a means for them to self identify as cool or highly educated, when it just makes them look like obsessive, closed minded twerps with a big dumb ax they have to grind EVERYWHERE they go.

It must be a real bummer for you, having Roger Ailes living in your head rent free, and casting a poisonous shadow over your whole world, such that you can't even disagree with someone about video game art without bringing Fox News up to show how you don't like them.

your post puts a smile on my face, it is not often you see someone spew out such vile awful dreck (unless you watch FOX news that is) I hope the mods don't delete your post so that in the future you can look back on this and learn just how rotten you really are and hopefully just maybe you might learn something from it and cast off your child like vitriol.

PS I have no idea who Roger Ailes is

Who's saying I was trying to do that ?

His short-sighted answer did not warrant actually being taken seriously and getting a full response.

@ap2000: do you know what shortsighted means?

@illuminosopher: I see what you're getting at but GTA is actually pretty stylized, great art direction throughout.

@bbqbram: yeah you might be right, I just don't care for the GTA games and I tend to lump them in with Call of Duty must be all the wholesale murdering.

@ap2000: We actually use a higher resolution than the Super Nintendo was capable of. Also achieving legible and useful lighting and depth is not an easy nor small task by any means. The same goes for well animated, hand-drawn sprite art. I have great respect for Super Metroid and the fidelity it achieved (it still holds up incredibly well), just as I have for any well crafted game. (La Mulana included.) You mention my style being exactly like countless other games; which would those be?

Creating art for any game, low or high res, wether one thinks it looks good or not, takes an immense amount of time and reducing such a broad discussion to a poorly-represented visual punchline suggests a lack of understand about the subject matter.

@ap2000: haha nice example

Well, this comment thread sure was a fun one.