Materials

Well, the most realistic materials and textures are created directly from real photos (from our archive or directly taken from us here and there) with software like CrazyBump for example. The others are usually created and modified using Substance Painter, Photoshop or Illustrator.

The look

Unity is a great engine as any other engine available now for developers. This is because results depend on the people using the engine itself. When we started the development, we thought about the chance to use Unreal or even CryEngine but we decided to go with Unity for very practical reasons. First of all, the entry level to use it is a bit lower than others, so it’s easier for us to bring people in without relocating from abroad (Italy is not the best place to develop games actually). Then we were sure that to achieve a good result in terms of visual, considering the isometric nature of the game, it was enough to do what we had in mind. We even considered that (with the right proportions and staying humble of course), Obsidian made something great with Pillars so at least it was possible to try this way. When we started prototyping the game it was fully 3D then we decided to move to pre-rendered stuff to stay safe in the long run, with optimization for a console especially. We are constantly improving post effects and would be great to add new features such as a true dynamic day/light cycle in the future. We have it now but is something happening on the game map only so when you enter a city or a fighting area, you can find day or nights, following the game clock which is connected to events happening in the world.

VFX

When you saw the game at GDC we have just switched from 3D to pre-rendered and it was the first public showcase of Alaloth. We invested a couple of months to achieve the results you are talking about (since then we kept going on in obtaining even better visuals of course and we are pretty satisfied with that at the moment). All the cool details and the majority of the lighting job (light-sources, shadows, general light conditions) are obtained working on the 2D image that represents every single environment as we said previously. This way the artist’s touch and light modulation (color, brightness, even the size of the light range for each light source in the scene) is the key. Of course, we also have a bit of 3D light (ambiance), but it mostly helps the look of the characters and details on their armors/bodies rather than the environments themselves.

Optimization

As I wrote previously, the game is born with a full 3D soul. Then, considering the idea in the back that was staying in between classic and modern action RPGs, we thought that switching on a Pillars-like style with a real-time hardcore combat sys could have been a KSP for the game. But we did it even because of tech reason because of course optimizing a full 3D game is harder than working on something that runs only models/effects in real time. This is especially something we thought with consoles in mind. Moreover, doing like this the weight of the production is more on artists than on coders. And finding a good artist is always easier than finding a coder following our experience.

You can see the progress the team made by comparing these screenshots from the older versions of the title…