GRAPHICAL UPDATE

[DiaDeem]

I'll never understand what ppl dislike on our "mud filter"... i could throw up whenever i see someone using these terrible filters on the game (Pint is especially terrible to me...) and its mostly just our artstyle imo... the worst problems really are lighting, antialiasing and some textures....

Well, there's plenty of filters to chose from. Not all of them are so intense. Human eyes are built to capture more detail in good lighting conditions, and that's because the cones in our eyes (photoreceptor cells) can capture way more detail from color than our rods (the other type of photoreceptor cells used to see in low light). In an image, more color usually just means more detail. Many of the filters that you see boost the saturation and contrast of the game to different degrees and using different techniques, but most of them result in helping the base game textures just look better.

Take a look at house facade, and you should be able to see how much more of the little details in the wooden textures just pop at a glance. Same goes for the white archway and the flowers on the top right. The image is much more vibrant, and that's just the result of a rather soft filter.





Believe it or not, the "mud filter" is another indirect result of flat lighting, specifically in this case it would be Global Illumination. If we look at what Yoshi showed us and look at the windows in The Dancing Plague, there it is again: Color variance and contrast reveals more detail on them. See the leaves on Mustard Seed? Same thing: Color variance and contrast make the foliage look so much more alive:



Right now, these filter options are only available for PC users through Gshade, and they're only post processing tweaks. I think it's very exciting for console players (and just everyone in general) that the dev team is bringing an entirely new lighting model to the whole game to bring out so much of the detail that's already there but just hiding in plain sight.

I hope this helped in understand why some people enjoy the ever so contentious filters, though keep in mind: Taste is also involved so there's really no right or wrong answer, though for my money, I prefer a more vibrant, better lit and more detailed game. It makes the beautiful art style shine so much more imho.