I really don't like this art style. I don't think SoR was ever meant to look like a comic. It was going for realism and probably would've been rotoscope style if they made a fourth game.
… Eh, we got stuff like that with Final Fight Streetwise and Fighting Force in general. And then we have things like The Takedown and Raging Justice. I mean, if anything, the art would look more like Ayano Koshiro's art:
More at the SHMUPlations SOR2 translated Interview.
I think it honors the SOR name that this game doesn't look just like every other BEU that's come out in the past 5+ years. Not Fight'N'Rage, Dragon's Crown, and not like the Scotty P games or even Double Dragon Neon or DD4. It's made into it's own thing, and not just an attempt to cash-in on something else.
It's interesting to see the difference in how different developers create their assets for characters. The lab zero team for instance would have all of the frames of animation for any particular motion completed in a rough form before they would start coloring them in and shading them. While it looks like Lizard Cube likes to fully polish each individual frame before moving on the the next frame (or at the very least the incomplete frames or not added into the shown game until finished.)
Yeah, I don't think many show the roughs in gameplay to the public. It was always cool to see with SG's during their early previews, though! It sounds like there may have been something like that playable behind closed doors for SOR4 too. I liked the bit of sketchy-for-motion looks we got in the reveal trailer.
I love Streets of Rage and I adore the art style in The Dragons Trap... but the chunkiness of the characters here doesn't look right to me.
All these recognizable designs but stretched horizontally.
I'm still gonna get it but yeah not feeling the art style for this one unfortunately.
I definitely understand the feeling, but including the shots shown in the animated premiere, it just seems to be how the artist draws. And I definitely don't think that's bad overall. Once we see the full game, the "stretch" feel will diminish, and it'll just be "The Style of SOR4".
I don't know if it means anything, but IGN tagged it for everything. PC, XBO, PS4, Switch. Could be that they just tagged it with everything because they don't know, or maybe they do. 🤔
That's how Dragon's Trap was released, right? So wouldn't be too surprising. Even if it doesn't hit all at the same time, it'll probably be ported everywhere eventually.
Not having the original composer is one of the few downsides
It's probably just in negotiations right now. Considering how active Koshiro still is, I'm sure he and all of Ancient are willing to contribute to this.
I hope they put the Streets of Rage 3 dash in it. It inproved the gameplay a lot
Eh... it did make it feel more modern, but I really never liked it all that much... except on Zan. It'd actually be pretty nice to see various playstyles of SOR spread between the characters. Or even just variations for each. But that's a bit too far ahead of where we're at now...
I don't like the effects. They look corny. I know I'll catch flack for this but I'd rather have particle physics like in KI.
Just as a note, they did mention that the effects were still a WIP before. But otherwise...
...Naaa. Like, why? Why would you want particle effects in a 2D hand drawn game to be something that's not used anywhere else in the style? Generally when that happens, it's because of a lack of budget, or talent to draw the stuff themselves.
They'll keep iterating, so hopefully they start to add some transparency, and maybe additional fragmentation to the tail end of the animations. That might make a best-of-both-worlds feel.