While it often takes a back seat to overall gameplay and mechanics, a game's art style can be extremely important to establish a sense of identity for a given title. A unique art style can communicate a game's style and tone and set it apart from its competitors. The art style can even draw the player's attention to or away from different elements, as well as give a level of visual clarity to the work. While it isn't the end all, be all of the game's overall quality, visual presentation is important. Game designers will often put a great deal of thought into what art style their game should incorporate.
Something that can occasionally happen during game development is for the game to completely switch art style part way through. This can be done for a variety of reasons ranging from trying to increase marketability, wanting to set the game apart from its contemporaries, or just because the new style suits the overall vision of the game better. Very often a change in art style will result in the game receiving a major shift in tone. In this list, we will be looking at some examples of games that changed art style mid-way through development.
6 Team Fortress 2
One of the better-known examples of this phenomenon, Team Fortress 2 originally started development back in the late 90s and would utilize Half-Life's Gold Source Engine. This initial version of Team Fortress 2 was intended to have a realistic art style (for the time at least) and possessed numerous gameplay differences from the final release.
After almost a decade with little to no news on the game, Valve reintroduced TF2 in 2006 with a final release in 2007. The final game had undergone a number of major changes in development, not the least of which was a completely different, more cartoony art style. The change turned out to be the correct choice. Not only did it set TF2 apart from the other military shooters flooding the market at the time, but it also provided the game with a timeless appeal. This style also allowed for more exaggerated proportions, a great boon to the gameplay as it allowed different classes to be identified from a distance by their silhouettes.
5 Okami
It can be hard to imagine, but there was once a time when Okami lacked its iconic art style. While the game was still in development, it originally featured a more realistic graphical style. Thankfully, this was later replaced with the game's iconic ink wash painting style that fits the folkloric feudal Japan setting.
The final game's art style is one of the most visually striking, and outright gorgeous ever to grace the medium, and it still holds up incredibly well. While the original look would have still been impressive for the time, it is likely that Okami would not have gained nearly as much of a hardcore following as it did if the developers at Clover Studios hadn't changed the game's art style.
4 Overstrike/Fuse
Unfortunately, not all art style changes actually improve a game. At E3 2011, Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac Games revealed their new project, a third-person shooter called Overstrike. The game was campy in tone and featured a bright and colorful art style to reflect it. This actually garnered a decent amount of interest and stood out amidst the generic gray/brown gritty shooters of the time. It therefore came as a shock when a year later the game had been rechristened as Fuse, and now sported an entirely different art style.
This was apparently done as a result of focus testing, which showed that teenagers thought the previous style was too childish. The game now embraced a dark, gritty look and tone. This turned out to be a costly mistake, as the game ended up bombing at retail. While a wide variety of factors can be attributed to this, one of the largest is that the game lacked a unique identity. It ended up getting lost in a sea of other gray/brown military shooters from the time. It's a sad end to what initially seemed like the start of a promising new series.
3 The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was originally conceived as a sequel to Wind Waker, and would have featured a similar art style. However, there was some concern that the reason behind Wind Waker's somewhat lackluster sales in the west was due to the cartoony art style, giving the impression that it was for younger gamers. Due to this, developers decided to go with a more realistic look for the game which would become Twilight Princess.
The final game still utilized the same engine as Wind Waker, albeit heavily modified. It is not clear how much work had been done on Wind Waker 2 before the choice was made to change the art style. While it might be argued that something in the style of Wind Waker might have aged better, there can be no doubt that this was the correct decision for the time. When announced, Twilight Princess generated a massive amount of hype and excitement from western fans and ended up selling more than 2 million copies more than its predecessor.
2 Final Fight Streetwise
Changing this game's art style ended up being a catastrophic mistake. Final Fight Streetwise was originally pitched as Final Fight: Seven Sons and was conceived to have a colorful cell-shaded art style. Its gameplay and tone would also be more in line with classic entries in the series.
That was until the higher-ups at Capcom noticed the popularity of the Grand Theft Auto series and demanded that developers at Capcom Production Studios 8 drastically alter the art style and gameplay to make it more like GTA, and hopefully appeal more to western fans. This ended up backfiring spectacularly. Fans from both the east and the west ended up despising the game, seeing it as a betrayal of the series' core identity. The game bombed hard, ultimately killing the franchise.
1 Borderlands
It is somewhat difficult to image Borderlands without its now iconic art style, but for about 75% of the game's development, the game had a very different look. Originally, Borderlands followed the visual conventions common to games of that era with a more muted color palette and extensive use of the colors brown and gray.
This was problematic for a couple of reasons. First, the game's tone was beginning to shift away from realism and in a more cartoony direction that the art style did not suit. Secondly, the developers were concerned that the game looked too similar to other titles from the same period such as Rage and Fallout 3 and struggled to stand-out. Thus, the decision was eventually made to lean into the cartoony tone with a new art style reminiscent of a comic book. This decision would ultimately prove wildly successful, as it soon became an iconic aspect of both the game and its numerous sequels.