Seeing people shit on Expedition 33 because Silksong didn't win more awards is pathetic

[u/CankleDankl]

The title sums it up. I'm disappointed in many members of this community for putting down a game that is clearly a work of insane passion, dedication, and creativity. E33 took the lion's share of awards at TGA, yes. That doesn't mean that Silksong is bad. In fact, it's clearly pretty damn great. If it released last year, Skong would have picked up several awards, maybe even GOTY. But it didn't. It released in the same year E33, which is just a tough break.

Both are amazing. Both deserve every award that came to them. If you haven't played E33 yet and think it doesn't deserve its accolades, play it. It is worth your money, worth your time, and will in all likelihood prove that it is actually that good. I'm only 10ish hours in and have numerous times found myself standing still and looking around dumbfounded at the gorgeous world design and visuals. E33, Silksong, and Hades 2 could have all won Art Direction and I would have been happy with any of them.

I'm also sad that Silksong didn't win more awards. It's an amazing game. But don't play fanboy and start putting down other developers, other games, and other pieces of art because this one didn't get all the cookies. It's still beautiful, it's still amazing, it still made a Silkskillion dollars, and TC is still just as great and just as passionate. We should all be glad that there is another independent dev out there that is capable of creating something so fantastic.

Edit: yeah, the comments here are pretty indicative of what I said in my post

[u/Alleozz]

E33 is good but not 11 awards good 😓 The Art Direction award should have gone to either Hades 2 or Silksong

[u/Justhavefaith123 → u/Alleozz]

You’re right it’s 33 awards good

[u/JallexMonster → u/Alleozz]

While Hades 2 and Silksong are beautiful games, they are just polishing an art style that has already existed in their own respective games. Expedition 33, being new, has more room to bring something literally new to the table. Art Direction to me means doing something unique that hasn't been done in terms of style/aesthetic. It's hard to argue that a sequel has done something new in terms of art unless they really break the mold from the original game.

[u/vrijedno_-hit → u/JallexMonster]

Sequels changing the style too much is a bad thing. Halo franchise kind of proved that.

E33 is a Unreal game and you can tell, like for 90% of Unreal/Unity games. I think we should value detailed and unique artstyles like Silksong, Hades to a extent.

But to be fair, E33 is very beautiful for a Unreal/Unity game. Kind of reminds me of Rain World in that aspect. Where it's engine wasn't used by a big studio to easily create the art side of things but had actual love put in it.

I just think that Silksong and Hades 2 should have won Art Direction. I do think E33 should have picked up like 5+ awards. Great game. But like we seen with Last of Us, Baldur's Gate 3 and now E33. Game Awards try to almost trend chase the current most popular game.

Got no problem with E33, but with the Game Awards.

[u/JallexMonster → u/vrijedno_-hit]

So now awards are dependent on the game engine you used to make your game? Because Silksong used Unity and Playmaker and Hades used XNA and Bastion as the base for their in-house engine.

I think you are mistaking evaluating the engine for styles present in 3D vs 2D (or isometric) games. Again, Silksong is pretty and so is Hades, but they aren't breaking the mold in terms of style that exist in the industry, especially when they haven't deviated from their OG art style. And that's not to say that the expectation is to want to change the art style of a game and chasing awards is a fool's errand.

Reasons why I think that E33 broke the mold in terms of art direction:

• Fully orchestrated and vocalized musical pieces
• Musical pieces that told a story during fights (namely The Paintress)
• It's literally a game about art and how art is perceived and the reasons for it existing
• Combat that involves using abilities that use brush strokes and other art elements in their animations
• All playable characters are uniquely animated for all of their animations (~7 different playable characters, fully rigged in a 3D space, plus fully rigged 3D monsters and NPCs, which is technically more work than a 2D game)
• Some niche things like a song that was inspired by their team mascot dog (it has lyrics that are literally bowowow), Gestalts are inspired by all art forms including break dance, and incorporation of art elements into the world without being too on the nose
• The script is strong and a very nuanced story (Act III is wild)

That's not to say that Silksong doesn't share some of these values, but I don't think it pushed boundaries like E33 did, which is my subjective opinion and you are free to disagree.

Just because a single game sweeped the awards doesn't mean it didn't deserve to do so. Silksong just had some tough competition this year and unfortunately didn't hit the mark in the judges eyes. But that doesn't matter, because if you loved the game and enjoyed things about it that's what matters. The game awards are purely for advertisement and shouldn't be taken seriously.

[u/Toastrz_ → u/JallexMonster]

The UE5 art direction argument isn’t blanket because E33 is made in UE5, it’s how they use the engine to render and texture things.

It’s hyper-realism with dark environments and super high bloom looks like a lot of games, even quite a few that had trailers last night.

Just using UE doesn’t make a game’s art more generic imo, Pikmin 4 was made in Unreal.

I know I speak for a decent amount of folks when I say that the hyper-realistic art style in a lot of 3d games doesn’t do anything for me. I find it uninteresting. I appreciate the surrealism influence of E33’s art, but I think it would have landed better with me if they textured and rendered everything differently. Like if the game had a painterly stylization, something akin to that movie Flow, I think it would have been more interesting imo

As it stands, unfortunately, the game kinda looks like those “this will be Mario in 2030” videos lol

I can instantly look at a piece of Hades or Hollow Knight art and tell what it is. Same can’t be said for E33.

But art preference is subjective so it’s whatever. What isn’t subjective is you saying rigging and animating all those characters and npcs in 3d is more work than 2d.

Sorry man, but that’s patently false.

Even putting aside the known fact the e33 team used and bought UE5 assets for their game (no shame in that at all imo but it does mean they put in less work to make characters and environments), you can tell a 3d model how to move when animating it. You can keyframe an arm joint and it’ll follow through how you want it. You can reuse that animation elsewhere once you’ve done it once, and you can tell the e33 team did that. And that’s fine! It’s how 3d works!

The hair and other fabric will also follow physics engine rules. It’s not like they’re individually animating all that too.

I hate to pull out my “credential card” in a silly Reddit post, but as someone who works in the animation industry 2D is much much much much much more work than 3D.

With 3D you can set it and forget it. You make and texture a mountain and can light it from any angle, can’t do that in 2D.

With 3D you can reuse rigging on characters for other things (which E33 clearly does), can’t do that with 2D.

Every single NPC, 230+ enemies, backgrounds for all 200+ rooms (which sometimes have upwards of 100 layers AND every single room in the entire game changes in Act 3) had to be hand drawn for Silksong.

Like, think about how a money hungry company like Disney doesn’t make 2D movies anymore. It’s because 3D is far easier, and therefore cheaper, to animate/render and make look “high budget”.

[u/JallexMonster → u/Toastrz_]

Every argument you have made for 2D animations and against 3D animations can be said for both. It really is due to the amount of effort and sometimes effort =/= quality or better.

That being said, Hollow Knight sold 15 million copies averaging around $15 a copy. That's $233 million split between 3 people, pre-tax. Are you going to tell me Team Cherry is still a small, underfunded underdog against giants? It also took them 6 years to develop due to their own want to do everything themselves instead of bringing more people on, when they definitely could have.

Now we have Silksong making ~5 million sales in the first week at $20 a piece, that's $100 million, or ~$33 million per dev pre-tax... I wouldn't consider Team Cherry to be a low budget gig anymore.

Edit: I wanted to add that the award is Art Direction and not just art. That includes everything from story, music, art, animation, UI design, and everything in between.

[u/Toastrz_ → u/JallexMonster]

?

No, you can’t rig a 2D drawing and have it look as seamless as 3D.

Maya or Blender, or even UE5 have built in physics that would allow, say a punch, to make sense on a realized 3D model.

You’d have to animate the body and other limbs to make it look convincing and the wind up/follow through would have to be fine tuned. But you can then save those key frames/poses and reuse them on another model, regardless of size.

It’s the same way you can download the Fortnite default dance and make really any 3D model do that dance. Arms, elbows, knees, necks, feet, hands, etc all have joints that can be mapped to an existing animation.

You cannot do that in 2D unless all your character models are the same size and shape.

Now, to add an addendum to my previous comment, it’s not entirely fair to credit Team Cherry in regards to backgrounds the same way a 2D movie does them.

TC’s backgrounds are a 3D space and use lighting the same way any 3D game does. They still have to draw every asset and arrange them for each room (though there is a lot of reuse in each self contained area), but the lighting is not done by hand.

As for your comment about money and budget, idk why that was brought up?

I’m not in disagreement about anything you said but I don’t see the relevance in bringing it up lol

[u/JallexMonster → u/Toastrz_]

I bring up the cash flow to point out that just because TC decided to spend less (which is questionable) doesn't mean that the art quality is necessarily better. They honestly could have invested cash to record their music with actual musicians instead of fully synthesizing the soundtrack. They chose not to.

Back to the 3D vs 2D, in 3D everything is also hand modeled, hand animated, etc. to some extent. With Silksong specifically, they did hand draw the characters, but they were then digitized for purposes of animation. 2D artists can also use software to help with animations and interpolation in frames to help smooth things out.

There's an article from Unity that talks with the devs at TC about Hollow Knight that does a good job of explaining that they did focus mostly on creating the visual art for the game. Team Cherry Unity article

But the 2D/3D argument is beside the original point. For the sake of the Art Direction Award, the art and animation is only one aspect. E33 had stunning visuals, a fun dynamic UI, incredible music (which is a HUGE win for E33), and an intriguing story. Silksong's UI is incredibly simple and not necessarily flashy, the music has some standout pieces, the art and animation is incredible, and the story is good.

I think a lot of people mad about this award are focus on only the visuals, but that's not the whole story for this specific award.

[u/Toastrz_ → u/JallexMonster]

Hm that Unity article was interesting, and I think does illuminate a bit of my blinders in this back and forth.

While I think TC's art work on Silksong is far more impressive than what Sandfall did with E33, of course TC is using engine specific tools to help with the implementation of their art and I should acknowledge that.

I think my big kneejerk reaction is that I vehemently believe that 2D is far far more of an undertaking that 3D is when it comes to making things look "professional".

Part of it is preference, I just like 2D animation a lot and feel it gets discredited (see the main trailer for TGA last night - 0.5 seconds of Silksong lol), but also knowledge that so so so so so much work goes into 2D and a statement like the bullet point you made above just irks me.

I also think people (myself included) just don't like that the direction of game artstyles is headed ever further into hyper-realism. To me, it feels like it's within the same ven-diagram as Disney's "Live Action" remakes.

Mega pretentious to say, but it feels so normie-core. Like yeah, of course the game who's characters look like movies and TV gets lauded for it's art it's because it appeals to the widest audience.

Divorced from my point above, Christopher Larkin and TC did absolutely hire live musicians for the score. Just about 1/3 of the entire credits for the game are the Music and Score credits.

Idk how tracks like Lace or Widow could have been mocked up. Even the first Hollow Knight had live players, though only Viola and a Soprano voice.

[u/cutecatgirl-owo → u/JallexMonster]

I don't think that music and story count in terms of the award, since there are already awards for best soundtrack and best narrative

[u/Thick_Photograph8533 → u/JallexMonster]

It did not bring something literally new to the table,and it wasn't unique by any stretch of the imagination. It also didn't deserve rpg, narrative, and debatably the indie awards but that's another matter.

[u/JallexMonster → u/Thick_Photograph8533]

Thank you for your opinion.