How No Rest for the Wicked's Gorgeous Art Direction Was Found First
ign.comWhen No Rest for the Wicked was first revealed at The Game Awards last year, its painterly art style was unsurprisingly a big topic of discussion. Simply put, it was the most striking trailer of the show. While it looked akin to Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook artwork in motion, the gorgeous art also made it somewhat obvious as to who was behind the images.
“This is almost like our DNA,” says Gennadiy Korol, co-founder of Moon Studios and its director of technology. “That's the trademark of Moon, we want our games to look timeless. We want them to look like a painting that is animated.”
That much was obvious to anyone who played Moon’s Ori games, but No Rest for the Wicked seems to take that idea and push it into the next dimension. By transitioning to 3D, Moon has left the ‘illustrated’ vibe of Ori behind for something that looks like a painted reality. It’s hard not to draw parallels to projects like Netflix’s Arcane or the Spider-Verse films, which make their 3D animation appear like 2D, hand-drawn artwork. Those projects will likely prove timeless, and Moon Studios hopes the same for No Rest for the Wicked.
Achieving art design immortality requires an approach that bucks many industry trends. Aiming for higher visual metrics than that used in other games simply won’t cut it. “I think it's always about art direction and art style more than just ray tracing and polygons,” says Thomas Mahler, Moon co-founder and No Rest for the Wicked’s creative director.
“We definitely make a conscious choice to always go against the trend, because the trend right now is doing physical-based rendering and all of this stuff,” he explains. “My problem is that a lot of these games that do that start looking the same.”
Mahler also notes games that chased huge technical innovations a decade ago haven’t all stood the test of time. Technology continues to evolve, and what was astonishing back then can look old today. “But, if I go into a museum and I look at these paintings that are
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