Golden Lance Award for Best Art Style
A game’s art direction can be the difference between forgettable and truly unique. The art direction can do wonders for establishing mood, tone, and overcoming budgetary constraints. The art direction a game chooses tells a lot about the people making the game and what kind of feelings they want to invoke. Good art direction hides flaws and emphasis strengths. This year the nominees came from some unexpected places. That’s part of what makes it so wonderful is that studios with long track records and newcomers alike can make something feel special through the art. With that said, here are our winners for Golden Lance Award for Best Art Style.
Winner: Elden Ring
So much praise has been heaped onto Elden Ring this year, and yet every single element of it is fully justified. Not least of which is praise for the game’s lavish art style. Fans of FromSoftware’s previous games will be well aware that when it comes to world-design, the developer goes all out, and titles like Bloodborne show just how talented Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team are when it comes to creating immersive, memorable worlds and monsters.
Elden Ring’s varied maps take players from the deepest depths to the highest mountains, and cover just about everything in between. Memorable villains such as Malenia and Starscourge Radahn were designed to intelligently compliment their lore and backstories, and areas such as the poisonous swamps of Caelid and the Royal Capital of Leyndell manage to show off Elden Ring’s diverse settings perfectly. It is absolutely fitting that Elden Ring should win our Golden Lance Award for Best Art Style.
Runner Up: Stray
What is strange about Stray is, I believe that there is a slight fatigue setting in when it comes to post apocalyptic Cyberpunk universes. Yet with Stray, everything is delivered with such care and charm you can not stop yourself from wanting to see what this game is. It is not just the perfectly detailed cat. It is the empty somber city streets and neon lights.
When it launched in July it was one of the most popular games on the planet. This did not happen through word of mouth and reviews, this happened the second the game went live on Steam. The art direction in this game is good enough to move a few million copies through just a short trailer. The small team at BlueTwelve Studio worked on Stray for six years and accomplished more through art house animation than some Disney movies.
Runner Up: Plague Tale: Requiem
I am not always a fan of photorealism in games. But with games like A Plague Tale: Requiem, they absolutely nail it. The adventure you go on in A Plague Tale: Requiem has so many varied locations with bright and darker color palettes. A beautiful sea of trees, drab burnt bee farms, and some of the most haunting scenery I have seen in recent years. I always found myself stopping to take in the breathtaking landscapes and in moments that I could wander around the beautiful cities.
A Plague Tale: Requiem is a beautiful game through and through. As it not only captures the subtle beauty of its grounded world but draws you into its suffocating darker areas. Certain places in this game that wowed me will always be in my memory for years to come. It is a fitting runner up for Best Art Style.
