Back in 2013 we created Zoey. Her personality evolved over the years but the main concept of her stayed the same. While most assets in the game followed the development, they got updated and renewed she didn’t. Why? Well it requires a lot more time to update a character and we wanted to redesign her, which meant the same as creating a new character from scratch. It took around 4 weeks of work to model, texture and rig her. We spend around 1 week animating some new content for her, and fortunately we didn’t create all her in-game animations. We did however have her in our intro cinematic which also needs to get renewed. What I’m saying is that it’s a LOT of work. She is an important character so we think it was worth it.
This is the new design Nikki Starostka did.
This picture shows the Zoey we had before and the new version.
Was it worth the time? Let us know in the comments.
We also worked on the hoverbike scene again, because the environment needed some refinement
and the light needed tweaking. Below I added a screenshot and a gif.
Last but not least, we are going to Comic Con in Copenhagen. It’s going to be great. We will bring the latest build of the game and we will be there for a chat.
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well. 2013 had its own thing, and new one is just too generic, IMO.
Well we wanted to make her more appealing and sexy. That's also generic in the gaming world. But I don't think her style and appearance is generic. Thank you for your comment.
totally agree, looked interesting/less human which gives your mind the freedom to envision the character as you want --- where as the new one, is pretty defined to a common stereotype which will make the character feel disconnected should you not fit within that stereotype
that's the problem with better graphics, it's removing the fantasy of character interpretation and pigeonholing the character solely based on the aesthetic.
That's an interesting observation. We are happy to hear your opinions on the matter. We heard a lot of people say that they though Zoey needed a new design, but it's also nice to hear that you find value in the original. I think that stereotypes offer great opportunities to play with story-wise. It's easy to set up a story with stereotypes since we then know more or less how you presume the characters would be, and then we can hopefully surprise you with some interesting twists in their personalities. :) Again thank you for the comment!