Does Miriam's Cell-Shading Look Not Fit the Enviroment?

I don't see it. It's probably the fact that the area in the video is a really early version that was hastily thrown together for the update. In which case it's the area that needs to be changed, not Miriam's shader. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

But...the game still has a year+ of development...soo...


I wouldn't get too nitpicky, until later on in development... :/

I wish I was around for the voting, because I really wanted the more realistic griddy style of SOTN. This whole cartoony look really takes away a lot of the "feel" for me. I'm sure if there were more non-forum original SOTN players aware of this game the voting would have went the other way.  

SotN's look is conceptualized in a pretty manga-ish style, Rondo of Blood before it even moreso, and SotN as its sequel reused a good bit of that. A bit gritty yes, but nothing near realistic I would say.

The only kind of realistic look that Castlevania has had to me is the old NES art and how Castlevania 4 looks.

I think what happened is that the player can interpret how the pixels look in different ways, how they prefer to imagine them, since there isn't a face drawn. Inspiration-wise (Vampire Hunter D) and concept art wise (Ayami Kojima), it was very much Japanese animation style though, and many wanted to recreate the idea/vision of that look in-game with the shader. Rondo though...heh:



So yeah granted, SotN isn't THAT anime XD...but yes, I and many others as huge SotN fans saw it as leaning a bit more JP 2D. It wouldn't have changed how Miriam looks overall though, which is in itself too a fairly darn Japanese fantastical design.

It's highly unlikely that we will be able to switch the shaders. The whole point of the vote was that assets needed to be created with only one shader in mind. It just isn't as simple as switching up in real time and expecting both ways to look polished and cohesive. I wouldn't expect the option at all, even though a few people have asked for it.

We must've played different versions of SOTN. Mine was never what I would consider realistic. It was very much anime-inspired. Not anime as fuck like Dawn of Sorrow, but cartoonish nonetheless.