RuneScape's Latest Visual Upgrades Come to the Kingdom of Kandarin

mmorpg.com:

RuneScape has unveiled the latest round of visual upgrades, this time for the Kingdom of Kandarin. The team has some new comparison screenshots and a new dev video taking us through all of the overhauls.

The Jagex team has beenimproving the game visually with graphical updates and overhauls for a while. The starting area has been completely overhauled and now the team is moving its focus to a different upgrade. The Kingdom of Kandarin is the next area that has gotten several layers of polish. Kandarin features a number of areas rich in their own features and lore, including Ardougne, that the team felt were very rich in content and compelling narrative quests but the graphics were so old that they felt an overhaul was necessary. This work aims to make the terrain better match the story and content in the area. 

We get some new screenshots today, where one can compare the graphics before and after. 

Another reason they continue working on these graphic overhauls is in the name of consistency. The art team will continue to upgrade older graphics in the now 23-year-old game. They bring up the possibility that if you're a new player and  the starting area now looks very modern, then you head to a different area and you are in graphics from more than 20 years ago. They want to not have such stark visual disparities when you move between different regions of Gielinor. That seamlessness is their end goal for the extensive reworks.

While the work will continue to take time, one thing the RuneScape team is always looking for is feedback, so the team hopes that everyone will step into Kandarin and weigh in with their thoughts (in the Discord, perhaps). This will help guide them in future reworks.