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Why do so many devs do 'dark' so terribly?

M

MYE

Member
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I'm talking about dark environments and attempts at scary atmosphere by completely fucking up the moody to I can't see shit ratio.
I just started playing Resident Evil 6 and 1 hour in I can barely see what I'm doing. Everything is either poorly lit or pitch black with only a handful of light sources and strategically lit areas providing a jarring contrast of colors. Even the cutscenes suffer from this.
I thought my TV was fucked.

RESIDENT_EVIL_6_Feb15_01_bmp_jpgcopy1.jpg


RE6_Captivate_00012_bmp_jpgcopy-600x300.jpg

(^ and this is actually better than the areas before it)

What the fuck. The game looks good. Looks expensive. Why not hire someone who can properly light the fucking game >:(

And this isn't something only Resident Evil 6 is guilty of. More than half of the "dark" games I play have a few (or a lot) of terribly lit areas.
Off the top of my head (and that I recently played)

Aliens VS Predator
Siren Blood Curse (holy shit that forest intro level! What the hell!)
Tomb Raider
LA Noire
MGS4 (act three is an eyesore)
Resident Evil 5 (those tunnels, christ)
etc...
and yes, even Dark Souls has a bit of this.

Not seeing shit doesn't equal scary. It just means I can't see shit.
And bumping against or looking at a bunch of pitch black polygons that barely stand out on an already overly dark room/area, is a huge disservice to the artists who spent hours texturing and modeling the dinning room I didn't even know I was in.

Its been a while but I remember (for example) Dishonored nailing it. This stealth game is dark, yet I can see exactly were I am and what I'm supposed to be looking at.
Bioshock did a great job of lighting the environment enough to completely sell the art went into building that world. It can be done!

Hire competent lighting directors or whatever for your multi million dollar video game, devs!!!! Pumping up the brightness just ruins the game.

/rant
 
Game that is a positive example in my opinion is Dragon's Dogma.

Darkness rocks in that game.
 
I can tell that a full gamut screen helped me in this matter. (did not buy it for this reason ofc)
 
I feel that a large part of success when lighting dark environments comes from the ambient light sources around the dark areas.

Dead Space is a perfect example of a game that is "dark", but because of the ambient space lighting around it, never appears too dark:

FaLnGgy.jpg


I think the issue of "I can't see ANYTHING" doesn't have to do with the game being dark, but a lack of understanding regarding lighting and environments in general. A candle is great if it lights a room, but if it's the only light source you aren't going to see anything other than the light from the candle and a small bloom around it.

In contrast, games that have multiple, faint light sources seem to succeed in handling "dark areas" well.
 
Yes its a constant question i have with a friend. See dayz ..

apparently at night you cant see shit and everything is black and white too.
 
I think games that do truly pitch black segments need to create an ambiance that compliments the darkness. Making it dark for the sake of being dark alone doesn't cut it. Doom 3 was an example of dumb sort of dark with the poor flashlight mechanic.

The STALKER series is what I would consider a series that does pitch black segments well. It already has an oppressive atmosphere where you feel exposed during the day, adding complete darkness to the mix makes some segments absolutely terrifying. I usually hesitated before hopping into these segments, even with night vision, bloodsuckers are a pain to fight in pitch black darkness.

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MYE said:
and yes, even Dark Souls has a bit of this.
Click to expand...

Tomb of the Giants? I didn't find the darkness to be much of a problem, to be honest. It just forced you to be more cautious in your exploration, and there were several options available for lighting your way.
 
I thought the lighting in RE 6 was fine. Maybe it's because I played it on a 60 inch Plasma?

Either way the problem was with their direction in RE6 and not their lighting. They just tried to please everyone with that game and ended up pleasing nobody.
 
What sort of display are you using OP? I can see just fine in those shots with my IPS monitor.

Anyways, I love really dark areas and I think it definitely can add a lot to the mood of a setting.

This is Fallout New Vegas with some mods:

 
I play in a low lit to dark room on a plasma. I never feel like playing a game that is too dark, i can make out the contours of geometry at least in most of these games. I guess there is a contrast enhancer working in the background of my tv.

I kinda like very dark games.
 
My favorite "dark" in a game was the original EverQuest. The graphics are primitive now but I loved how if you were a human, you couldn't see in the dark well just like in real life.

You had limited visibility and had to rely on lanterns and buildings for light. It kept you from traveling at night due to not being able to see well and made it dangerous. That's how you do it.
 
I thought that F.E.A.R did darkness really well. I don't have any screenshots to show what I mean of FEAR--and it's something that should be played to get the most out of it--but the darkness felt like it belonged, and while there were very few fights in completely dark areas they rocked, due to the muzzle flashes, explosions and debris visible for mere instances. Even the lit areas looked great do to--usually--fewer bright light sources and many very dim light sources. And even the non-combat sections could be really intense and moody in the dark. The shadows are still lovely, I think.

Seanspeed said:
What sort of display are you using OP? I can see just fine in those shots with my IPS monitor.

Anyways, I love really dark areas and I think it definitely can add a lot to the mood of a setting.

This is Fallout New Vegas with some mods:

Click to expand...

Yeees, I love dark NV nights.
 
The original Halo is guilty of this. Vampire Bloodlines is guilty of this, quite a few other good games are guilty of this. But frankly I tend to actually like to have some pitch blacks mixed in with my darks. My biggest complaint with Halo Anniversary was that they made it significantly brighter which harmed the atmosphere imo.
 
There is also a chance that OP just got it's RGB settings wrong. And if you play on an microsoft console you will suffer from an additional contrast boost (except you are using VGA on 360).
 
Games usually have the opposite problem where night is daytime with a darkness filter right out of the Walking Dead Season 2 (Tv show).

Skyrim is big offender, the night is so bright you can see the shadows on EVERYTHING.
 
I played all of those games and had absolutely no issue seeing. It must be an issue with your TV.
I do hate it when a game drops you in a really dark room and says "Trust me, this is scary". It's the same way a jump scare isn't scary, at its finest its startling, but never truly horrifying. A game being dark isn't scary, I just cant see shit. That's why Dead Space is such a failure of a horror game, its a series of poorly lit rooms and dead bodies that are going to jump up and try to surprise you even though it happens in every other room.
 
I didn't like much else in the game, but the lighting in Dragon's Dogma was incredible. Being in the dark actually felt like being in the dark, and the lighting effects from lanterns/torches/spells were just awesome.
 
Arma 3 has some of the best darkness I've seen in a game. Black is actually black.

Until we get ray tracing and global illumination implemented into a game engine, a lot of the light/dark aspects of games are up to the artists discretion.
 
I had this issue with ZombiU - if I leave brightness down I can't see anything, if I turn it up everything's blown out. There doesn't seem to be an acceptable middle ground.
 
benny_a said:
Game that is a positive example in my opinion is Dragon's Dogma.

Darkness rocks in that game.
Click to expand...

The one thing I was most fascinated by in that game. It had the best night light ever.

Celegus said:
I didn't like much else in the game, but the lighting in Dragon's Dogma was incredible. Being in the dark actually felt like being in the dark, and the lighting effects from lanterns/torches/spells were just awesome.
Click to expand...

Yep!
 
KKRT00 said:
Skyrim ENB the thread.
Click to expand...

I'm currently playing through Skyrim, and going through dungeons is horrid. I hate having to use candlelight every few seconds because I can't see anything. On PS3 it wasn't that bad (I modded the PC version right when I got it, so I'm not sure what original Skyrim PC looks like).

While yes it does add to the atmosphere. I still find it more annoying then atmospheric.
 
Many LCD's will make this inherently more difficult, especially if they're attempting dynamic contrast ratio, (it'll downscale the entire brightness gradient based on how much of the image is dark). But I certainly agree OP.
 
Thought Dark/Demon's Souls were pretty good with the darkness. Pretty much all dark areas you were able to see well IMO, and in a place like Tomb of the Giants in Dark Souls it was intentionally really dark, so you just needed a light source and it's fine afterwards. I also like how obtainable items in the Souls games are really bright, so no random walking into the darkness to see if I can find anything. You can usually tell where it is well enough.

Dragon's Dogma is cool with the darkness. It's really dark at night, and it makes the game give off a different kind of atmosphere. Lanterns help, but you still have to be a bit mindful of where you're going, especially since the world is big. The game will tell you that it's dangerous at night but I haven't really found that to be the case yet though lol.
 
Lighting is definitely difficult. Until recently, lighting models have mostly been fake and thus things like HDR and global light changes were tricky to utilize without jarring effects. Often times this can lead to darker scenes that have more lights requiring more horsepower to render, so things like darkening the rest of the scene to hide lower fidelity assets can help shuffle resources.

For example, a game like The Last of Us has some great darkness but you can spot the changes between lighting models as you progress through areas, sometimes triggering it in a corner of a room before you go outside. Still, it handled darkness outdoor and indoor rather well thanks to talent with art and lighting design (and the flashlights that cast shadow were nice, too).

Now, a game like Beyond: Two Souls, which had some access during development to physical/material based lighting (like Killzone Shadowfall), was able to produce some stunning results like in the scene where Jodie is at a birthday party and it's sunny out. Then the game transitions dynamically to a darker room as the window shutters come down (and you're still playing) and things like candle-light become more prominent in an overall darker scene.

This new gen should hopefully allow for better models, such as what we see on some modern PC games and upcoming titles like Drive Club.
 
those RE6 shots look fine to me? it's a horror game? it's also Leon's campaign that is particularly dark like this.

^siren however is too goddamned dark. the FOV is also jacked which doesn't help.
 
There was Resident Evil 5 where the dark really wasn't dark at all. Just looked more like a grey filter placed on the environment. Gave it a saturated look more than anything.

But I didn't have that issue in Resident Evil 6 with not being able to see anything. After all, you're not doing much anyways in that stage.
 
"Adjust brightness until logo is barely visible."

Yeah fuck that I'll turn it up until I can actually see shit, thanks.
 
I remember having to switch TVs while playing through Shadows of the Empire on the 64 for a couple levels (the sewers towards the end of the game, woof) because it was impossible to see anything.

Seconding props to Dead Space, great example of darkness done right.
 
I kinda works in SIREN because you're expected to creep around a bit stealthily and sight-jack.

Action/shootbang games it's annoying.
 
Played Gone Home on my laptop during the day, and it may has well have been called "Find the Light Switch" considering how much of my playtime was spent simply hunting for the lights so that I could see what the hell was going on.
 
Hmm, I have always found most games never do dark, dark enough, Besides Dragons Dogma. If you feel the games are too dark, dont most have a brightness option? Even though you say your TV is correct, I would still look into that again and get it calibrated or something.
 
I've spent way too much time messing with the settings on my tv cause I thought that the tv was the reason I could only see pitch black in most games' default brightness settings.
 
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