OUAN404 - Visual Language, Spaces and Places: Environmental Animations 3

OUAN404 - Environmental Animations:

Now, although I may have mentioned anime before what lengths some go to in order to get that sense of "epic" in their environments to compensate for the unrealistic style of the characters, I feel that not only in film animation does this work and make a successful animation, but in video games this works too. More so as you are able to interact most of the time with the environment and feel that you are there. You are able to almost become one with the scenery opposed to simply sitting on your couch watching some poor soul explore a dark cave which has hardly enough impact on your emotions in comparison to video games.

Tales of Symphonia, (yes, by far one of my favourite games if you haven't gathered already!) has a wonderful use of setting and style. In this trailer for the very first ToS game ever to be released (which was released in Japan in 2003, Europe 2004), you'll see that not only were the graphics pretty impressive for an early 2000's RPG, but the environments are beautifully done with the hand-painted style I mentioned in earlier blog posts.