[Graphical Update Feedback] Eyes and Limbal Rings on Au ra

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

EDIT: BENCHMARK UPDATE HERE

I’ve been keeping a close eye on the graphical update since it was first revealed, partly excited, partly anxious because, like most people, I’m really attached to my character.

For me eyes add a lot of personality and individuality to a character. You can express a lot through the shape of the eyelids, the color and size of the iris, the direction they look towards, etc. It’s what makes the character feel alive.

So I was a bit concerned when I noticed that, while the eyes of the new models were a lot more realistic, they seemed to lose a lot of their personality too. Eyelashes were less full, the shine that made M’iqote, Roegadyn and Au Ra irises interesting was gone, and when I compared screenshots of only the eyes of each model I was sometimes confusing myself between the old models and the new ones, because I found the old ones just more appealing.

The screenshots shown during the Keynote today were a lot better, and so I was more reassured that my character would remain roughly the same.

But then I watched the Technical Art section of the Development Panel, and I am once again swaying between excitement and worry. I am really looking forward to the improved textures and materials, and, even if it was not shown explicitly, I did see a pretty detailed teeth texture (!).

However, the Elezen head that was first shown in that panel confirmed my observations from the Las Vegas Keynote video: some facial features have changed.



On this specific model, the mouth corners are less pronounced, erasing the slight frown it used to have. The cheekbones seem to be a bit lower, and the chin is missing that curved shadow, which really used to give a stern, serious expression to this character. That expression was reflected in the brightness of the irises, that contrasted with the shadows around it. But with the new model, the eyelashes are longer and that spark in the irises is gone, and it feels like that severe expression is not as present. To me, it feels like another character.

But it’s with the update on the Au ra limbal rings that I became very concerned. It just looks completely different, even the color is rendered differently.




Limbal rings feel like a unique trait of the Au ras, and the way they were contrasting so much against their irises really gave them an otherworldly look that I think many of us enjoy as it is currently, especially when they give the impression of glowing in the dark.

After the lore details revealed during the Korean Producer Live Letter last May, it made even more sense that they looked the way they did, and I started thinking of them as magical “circle lenses”.

And so, I understand the drive towards more realism, but as someone who plays an Au ra I feel like I can’t really trust the promise of “maintaining the game’s aesthetic” and “your characters will still look the same” anymore…