BlazeHedgehog
Member
People are going to claim that it "ruins the original art" or some other BS, but I don't care. That looks friggin' great!
It's kind of true, though. Going back up to what was said earlier in the thread about Resident Evil 4 texture packs:
when the textures are high resolution versions of stock IM OK
when they aren't and they change the look/atmosphere of the game because of it IM NOT OK
What this literally means is that HD texture packs need to look exactly like the original textures, just cleaner. And I mean exactly. "I found a texture on Google Image Search that looks similar but isn't totally correct" still probably isn't good enough.
But some of those HD textures in the Twilight Princess comparison video significantly change the entire color palette of some areas. Why, exactly? As somebody who has painted textures in his time, it's not very difficult to use the color dropper tool and get colors directly from the original texture to make sure they match. Respect should also be paid to things like contrast levels and such.
It ends up looking kind of arrogant in that "Well I'm going to IMPROVE it! Because I know art direction better than the original creators did!" sort of way. Chances are, you don't.
And that's not even counting the fact that the textures look too realistic for TP's art style. TP had some really blurry textures in spots, but I don't think they'd look like that when they were clarified.
And with the increased fidelity, you more easily notice that all of the grass is exactly the same height, which ends up looking very strange at a distance - these very square "blocks" of grass everywhere, like there's a landscaper traveling around Hyrule trimming everything all the time. That's not just an art direction decision, that's a design decision - you just don't notice something like that with the thicker blades. With the HD textures, it might as well be N64 grass.
Sometimes, having too-high of a fidelity exposes the limitations of everything around it and creates a juxtaposition that ruins the entire scene. Obviously there are people out there who don't mind that kind of stuff, but I do.