Art direction overhaul and visual consistency

Scars of Honor's art direction is described as undergoing a broad visual overhaul intended to unify the game's style across characters, environments, armor, and creatures. The revised direction keeps the core ideas of earlier work while changing how those ideas are executed.

The main criticism of the older assets is inconsistency. Earlier character models, architecture, and textures are described as reflecting multiple development phases and conflicting visual approaches, which made the game feel dated and uneven.

Problems identified in older assets

Older character models are described as having inconsistent proportions, anatomy issues, and mismatched style between races and even between male and female versions of the same race. Examples include unusually long arms, short legs, weak heroic silhouettes, and base meshes that would create downstream problems for all later variants built from them.

Environment assets are described as suffering from overly noisy texturing. Surfaces such as brick, grass, and dirt were said to compete too strongly for attention, reducing readability and making the world visually overwhelming.

New visual rules and style guides

The revised approach begins with a holistic review of lore, target audience, and technical constraints. The team describes building a set of consistent rules that apply across concept art, 3D modeling, texturing, animation, VFX, and UI.

Characters are treated as the visual anchor for the rest of the game. Once the team became satisfied with the new character style, the plan shifted to building the wider world outward from those character standards.

The style is described as modernized but still somewhat retro in spirit. The goal is not photorealism, but a stylized fantasy presentation with stronger cohesion.

Materials, texturing, and readability

The game has moved away from a diffuse-only, fully hand-painted look toward a physically based rendering approach. Materials are intended to behave more like real materials, so metal should read as metal and surface roughness should be controlled consistently.

Automation in the texturing pipeline is used to help a large team maintain consistency, with hand painting added on top for final polish. This is presented as a practical response to the difficulty of keeping large-scale hand-painted work visually coherent across artists with different experience levels.

Readability is treated as a core gameplay concern. The environment should not overpower the player character, armor, spell effects, or combat information. Visual clarity in combat is prioritized over highly detailed ground textures or noisy scenery.

Stylization instead of realism

Stylization is presented as a deliberate choice. A realistic approach is described as less suitable because it would shift attention toward fine surface detail rather than strong fantasy design.

The stylized direction is also said to provide more freedom for exaggerated silhouettes, creature design, bosses, and race identity. This is considered more appropriate for the game's fantasy MMO format than a grounded realistic style.

Transition period and legacy assets

The game is described as being in a transitional state, with many older assets still present while replacements are in progress. Some legacy assets may still appear temporarily because the project contains hundreds of existing pieces that cannot all be updated at once.

At the same time, not all earlier work is discarded. Some older architectural concepts and faction ideas are described as worth keeping, with the main need being improved execution rather than complete replacement.

Lighting and skybox work

The current lighting setup is described as unsatisfactory and still under active revision. Tech artists are said to be working on better lighting control, improved sky presentation, and related atmospheric elements such as fog.

These changes are expected to significantly improve the overall look of the game even without requiring the same scale of rework as the character and asset overhaul.

Source

• Recording: Scars OF Honor - Graphics and Art Discussion with Art Director Rasmus Hansen
• YouTube: Watch on YouTube
• Published: Sunday, March 1, 2026 at 9:09 PM UTC