UE4, Shaders, Bloodstained, and you

That was me, and its very relevant. What you are all looking at as a "3D that looks 2D" shader that can just be slapped on a character is actually so much more... It's the very high detailed character models, the extremely high bone counts in the skeletal rigs, the custom outline meshes, the hand tweaked normals/vertices for shadows, the mesh swaps for abilities and animations, and finally, but most importantly the lighting.

Now I want to be clear here, I love the Xrd style and would be giddy if they pull it off for BS. But I think the application of technique is different enough that people shouldn't get their hopes too high for visual parity between the two. Here's why:

UE3 works with a forward rendering solution. UE4 made the switch to a deferred renderer and there is no option to go back. The engine now uses PBR (physically based rendering) for all of its materials. Without getting technical, it's a HUGE change to the way the engine works, specifically to lighting and rendering of things like... Shaders.

The Xrd team was working with a completely different type of rendering and they heavily customized it for their purposes. On top of that, yes they only had to worry about rendering 2 characters at a time in one isolated environment. The VFX as mentioned, are the least impactful variable of the equation. It's everything else they're doing, that's impressive.

UE4 is great, I use it everyday. But achieving what the Xrd team did, and doing so in <2 years with dozens more characters, hundreds more animations and countless more environments is going to be one hell of a task. Bottom line, please don't hold Inti to the Xrd standard. BS is a different type off game using a different engine and working within a budgeted timeframe. I am certain they will make awesome art and no one should worry, I just want to be realistic about expectations.

There's no doubt they can do cel shading, but I really hope it looks better than that image. That's exactly the kind of "slap it on" shader I think needs to be avoided. It's not refined, it's not unique. It simply has a hard edged shadow. Meh.
Making it look toony or anime just for the sake of doing so will make me sad. I want the game to standout as its own style so when you see a screenshot you say "That's bloodstained!" Instead of "that's just another game with a 2d anime style"... There's enough of those already.

It was just an example ^_^

The funny thing is i feel like cell shading is the least generic style to go with. I see more bland 2.5 looking games than I ever see cell shaded ones. Usually the cell shaded ones are the stand out games. I notice that the non-cell shaded ones usually are very bland color wise and that's always my biggest issue with these games.

Heck, Dracula X Chronicles is a perfect example of this. The 2.5d version of the game is just colorless compared to the 2d version, i feel like if it was cell shaded it would have popped more and been more colorful. That's not to say they should just slap the shader on and call it a day...Just saying.

Totally agree, I strongly disliked the 2.5d version of Dracula X Chronicles...felt lifeless.