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Thoughts on the new Jade Sea aesthetic?


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I am wondering what people thought about the trailer today? 

I don't mind changes or updates to art direction, but my first reaction was that it is far too bright green. It's hard on the eyes. This is the softer greenish-blue it used to be:
 


New look:


Color corrected fan edit:


Freshly mined real life Jade for reference


How did people feel about it?

Edited by Lucky.9421
added more pics
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  • Lucky.9421 changed the title to Thoughts on the new Jade Sea aesthetic?

Indeed. Not only the color does not match the previous aestethics, both from GW1 and from the Maw fractal...or even from the very concept art that is the illustration to this video, but (what is far worse) just doesn't look good at all. Almost as if that one part of scenery was forced into low quality effect, with all forms of post-processing disabled on it (and only on it). It's not the issue of color. It's the issue of it, instead of being a semi-translucent material (as before) turning out more like some sort of cheap plastic bricks for kids.

Hope this is not the final look.

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Perhaps we are all of us too (brace for impact) jaded by the glitz and glamour of the game's kaleidoscopically prismatic Fashion Wars to appreciate these bolder and more brazen Canthan colors. Still, this preview does give me more of a sense of the original than the one for Echovald. I kinda like it. I'd like it more if it was less green, though, sure.

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I'm just wondering where the oni are. Won't be the same killing a bunch of mobs not to have two of those kitteners spawn.

Besides that an interesting map. Nice to see JQ.

Interesting that the sea is still jade and yet Echovald wasn't petrified. A insight on how Kaineng might appear too? 

I think i'm more excited to explore this map and thankfully it doesn't give off the POF vibes i thought it would. It looks fresh.

 

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5 minutes ago, Dami.5046 said:

I'm just wondering where the oni are. Won't be the same killing a bunch of mobs not to have two of those kitteners spawn.

Besides that an interesting map. Nice to see JQ.

Interesting that the sea is still jade and yet Echovald wasn't petrified. A insight on how Kaineng might appear too? 

I think i'm more excited to explore this map and thankfully it doesn't give off the POF vibes i thought it would. It looks fresh.

 

I thought echovald was still petrified, the largest trees were anyway, there was moss and vines growing on the trees and some grass and the odd tree on the ground but the ancient trees themselves were still lifeless grey stone. 

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30 minutes ago, Pifil.5193 said:

I thought echovald was still petrified, the largest trees were anyway, there was moss and vines growing on the trees and some grass and the odd tree on the ground but the ancient trees themselves were still lifeless grey stone. 

I'm not sure. I was expecting buildings set in the trees and never saw any? Anyway i'm sure i will revisit my opinions of the forest once i've ran myself round it.😅

Edited by Dami.5046
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I didn't play GW1, so I don't have the sense of nostalgia that people who did have for Cantha. Being honest I probably would have preferred to go to a new area rather than return to Cantha the expansion, but having decided to do that I don't really understand why the original aesthetic wasn't more closely referenced by the developers. After all the people they're appealing to most with this is the GW1 players who enjoyed these maps originally.

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6 minutes ago, Dantert.1803 said:

the new jade sea looks terrible....all saturated green...other than killing my eyes it does look nothing like gw1 jade and it doesn't even feel like real jade...
I'm really sad to see this...I always expected top level art from Anet....
 

I wasn't going to comment about the jade considering how the Echovald thread was treated. But it does beg the question if the map designer actually had a nose at the GW maps because the jade wasn't just a uniform colour there, in some places it actually looked like a solidified sea complete with foam and bubbles. It was blue-ish in some places blue-ish green in others.

However, i'm still looking forward to explore more.  

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It's dragon magic imbued jade, not regular jade.
The color has more bloom on it from post processing but isn't that far off from raw jade.

See mineral data:
https://www.mindat.org/min-10403.html
https://www.gemdat.org/gem-10403.html
https://www.masonkay.com/storage/app/media/mason-kay-color-chart-updated.pdf
https://www.gemsociety.org/article/jadeite-jewelry-and-gemstone-information/

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2 points:

- It's definitely too green.

- I expected the Jade sea to have melted since after GW1 there were report there were sign that it was starting to melt.

Same is true for ecchovald.

Also, it's when the emperor is killed that everything is transformed into Jade, I'm curious why a Human (so a race that's not native to this world) would carry the power of a dragon (one of the primordial force of this world) and transform everything into Jade. I really hope that those questions will be answered in the lore because so far it seem like a mess to have this Jade being a "dragon thing".

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14 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

2 points:

- It's definitely too green.

- I expected the Jade sea to have melted since after GW1 there were report there were sign that it was starting to melt.

Same is true for ecchovald.

Also, it's when the emperor is killed that everything is transformed into Jade, I'm curious why a Human (so a race that's not native to this world) would carry the power of a dragon (one of the primordial force of this world) and transform everything into Jade. I really hope that those questions will be answered in the lore because so far it seem like a mess to have this Jade being a "dragon thing".

I think its pretty obvious that the jade is absorbing magic from the dragons, it wasn't always like this, this is a more recent thing, which explains why its now a very saturated green color rather than a more teal color like in gw1, its literally saturated in dragon magic

 

The real question is, is the dragon magic from the dragons we killed, or is it specifically the doing of the deep sea dragon

 

At this point im confident in making the assumption that the jade maw creatures are directly connected to the deep sea dragon as well as the other tentacle windrider like creatures, they fit the bill of "eldritch tentacle horrors" that are supposed to be from the deep sea dragon 

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I don't know what to think here. Look at 0:19 in the trailer, it all looks low quality. The jade is definitely a different color palate from what it was in GW1. It's too green. I also noticed they used a line about it being imbued with dragon magic. That is most definitely NOT how it was made, so I am hoping maybe that is an explanation towards the color shift since GW1?

I don't know. The more I see of this expansion, the more worried I am that ANET is taking too many liberties. I am not saying make GW1 into GW2, but the color palate shifts in Shing Jea and Jade Sea here are really bizarre.  I'm now really worried what they are doing to this "New" Kaineng City which in my opinion was one of the most unique region types for an MMO. A city spanning such  big portion of a continent.

Edited by Faridah.8431
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Honestly it looks nice, I hope there's more jade though, like I wanna walk on the jade sea, not just be beside it in the mine. Don't really care about the jade being green, I just want them to make that work as well as possible. Honestly I thought the jade would be more translucent, like glass but oh well. Seeing fish or wurms trapped in the jade could be sick

But the fights pique my interest, they look like they might be great, can't wait for the livestream.

I am a little surprised there's not more water though, I honestly thought there may be streams of water(melted jade) for us to take our skiffs into. Since skiffs are a big part of the xpac I thought water would be everywhere. But we'll see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by artcreator.4859
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The green is too green I agree, but I like the rest of the trailer. The magi tech/fantasy progression stuff appeals to me a lot and this seems to be portraying it well.

I’ve made peace with it not feeling like GW1 anymore. I think stamping on the nostalgia glasses might help me enjoy it better and Factions was my least favourite campaign anyway.

 

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I think people are over reacting, if you look close in the trailer you can see old colored jade. At the 41 second mark that doesn't look like stone to me that's sitting right behind that bright green jade. They mention some of it has been imbued so I think that's different jade from original. Maybe the bubbles sweeps by and blasts some of it every once in awhile like the dragon's blood weapons.

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 I'll just quote myself from the other thread to share my thoughts. Maybe it is a bit too bright? Not sure though.

The first video seems to only show the Jade Sea in a darker / nightish light.

There are greener tones in WP's gameplay video (I do miss the white stuff in GW2).

 

8 minutes ago, Raknar.4735 said:

Well, the mined jade does look similiar to the jade on the surface to me from GW1 (Reference: https://windyweather.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/gw_factions_0019.jpg)

It did get a blue hue on maps with night time, or the deeper you went e.g. in The Deep.

So maybe it'll change the same in GW2, blueish hue during night time.

 

Another reference video from WP (Starts approx 17:30)

 

 

Edited by Raknar.4735
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I prefer the original green which looks also to be more transparent. 

The new green look like plastic. 

If they say something on the line "the jade see color is different as it is imbued with dragon magic now" it's a cheap excuse not to revert it to the original colour imho. 

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Yea, regardless of what a lot of jade is IRL, the stuff in that trailer hurts my eyes. I liked the gw1 aesthetic a lot better. 
 

I suppose the reasoning they’ll say is that in the lore, this is not the same jade as the jade from gw1. And that all of that gw1 jade is now liquified. And the only reason that this gw2 jade is still solid is because of dragon-magic that happens to also make it more green. 

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9 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

It's dragon magic imbued jade, not regular jade.
The color has more bloom on it from post processing but isn't that far off from raw jade.

See mineral data:

https://www.masonkay.com/storage/app/media/mason-kay-color-chart-updated.pdf

Depends on the IRL jade. They could have made it more like #36 thru #41 on your link. 
 

imo, regardless of the purported lore reasons, the new stuff is painful to look at. And the whole dragon-jade-tech angle is just weird and random to me. 

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I definitely liked the old GW1 jade color because it looked more aqua in color which was fitting as a frozen ocean. A very cool aesthetic unique to the franchise. EoD Cantha seems obsessed with neon green and plastering the same aesthetics across the entirety of Cantha and I really don’t get it. Why smother a wonderfully diverse region with the same look?

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