An incoherent post about asthetic and design in all 3 games.
Sorry for any bad grammar.
Aesthetic design often helps with the world of a game and helps it stick out such as tf2's 60's cold war era that takes examples from james bond and retro sci fi from the era that can be seen deeper into the facilities of red and blu like secret missile silos in grain factories and world maps, cameras and speakers across the map for the administrator to spy on the teams, or the differing materials that make up both teams respective base such as tin and wood for red and steel and concrete for blu. https://youtu.be/7emz8Iq5hkY
Gw1: Gw1 gives off a cartoonish apocalypse element in its environment and you can see this represented well in the environment with buildings at the front looking like places where humans use to inhabit. You can even see billboards and vans with depictions of humans that look like they belong in the universe. Plants are even treated with this grand stature as you see statues of them in maps and in chomp town restaurants have signs saying plants eat free and yes I guess plants could have put them there but I think it works better if it were the humans honoring them. However once you start to explore the environment you notice details like signs saying the end is near, missing person posters, newspapers talking about zombies, and graffiti from both factions lining the city saying things like: we ate the peeple, dumb camping meanie over an image of a poorly drawn cactus and specific signs like jewel junctions with zombie safety instructions and anti plant signs.
Maps across gw1 also had a small graveyard in almost every map serving as the spawn outside of other areas like zomboss mountain or the crashed zombot plane wreckage. There are also details like gate handles being bent into a V between the letter P and Z on gates in certain maps. The environments are generally suburban town that is a cartoonish iteration of things that often exist but does have slight mishaps like destroyed walls crooked arrows and and destroyed bits of land like in crash course. Zombie maps do exist in the form of zomboss estate where its in a dead forest and had gothic architecture, jewel junction would technically count as zombie safety instructions lay around the map and zombie robot carts run around the map with jewels in them. You can also see zombie pirate ships in maps like driftwood and port Scallywag alongside regular boats. Plants got numerous little flowerbeds across maps and things like the chomposaurus skeleton in cactus canyon.
Zombies and plants themselves had some distinct visual changes that were not kept in the sequels. The zombies eyes are bloodshot alongside there faces being having a greener tint like the zombies in pvz heroes and the plants are a bit brighter with more root like veins being easier to see. Other than its mainly lighting changes.
The tombstones were relatively simple as seen here with the only stand out being the glowing skull eyes. In G&G the top portion blows away to have two antennas that create a purple hologram of zomboss's head.
Gardens are by far where gw1 shines over the others as it has two appearances. In ops it takes the form of a sunflower scarecrow on top of fertilizer in the middle of a pvz 1 grid surronded by soil with seed markers and tiny miniatures of the classes in a square made of stones. In gardens and graveyards however it is a peashooter scarecrow with straw hanging out the snout wearing a hat that bobs around on top of cinderblocks. The square is also now made of cinderblocks. A sewer grate and grass are on the cinderblocks and pvz1 lawn tiles. Tires near the edge hold miniture peashooters. The cinderblocks appear to have little almost childish drawings of games like toc tac toe on them. Its adorable.
Their is also the ops exclusive wee garden that is even tinier and is chomper centered as a tiny scarecrow chomper wearing a sailor suit and hat with chomper miniatures in a small garden. It even waila and scream when they are damaged by zombies.
In Suburbination and gnomebomb the standard tombstone and sunflower scarecrow are used for bases with the portion they rise from just being a stone square.
In G&G dark purple clouds will appear and shoot lighting around the tombstone. Bats will also fly out when its completed. This is also the case in gw2.
Now heres a bit where gw1 is superior to every other game and that is the ending scenes of games. In team vanquish and vanquished confirmed a pile of zombie or plant bodies covered in cuts, bruises, and black eyes will pile up to show the score (reminds me of the ds port of pvz1 where a crow would stack zombies or plants on top of a trashcan on the top screen), Suburbination has two gnomes test their might on a high striker where the bar will fill up to a teams progress number, in gnome bomb it is a chalkboar with tomb/garden drawings that will be crossed out for the score with a gnomebomb on top. The scarecrow is now in a white pot in gnome bomb. G&G shows a map of the terrain and if zombies win the circles on points will be tombstones with zombie heads on them while the final X will be a zomboss hologram tombstone accompained by his laughter. If plants win tiny peashooters on flower pots will fill the circles until the end ahere a golden dave statue will appear before birds poop on it.
Ops also shows daves van flying away with bumper stickers for each wave completed with real world sunflower and peashooters toys in the back window.
Class selection screens had plants in a suburban neighborhood with green hills in the background. Zombies were in a desolate graveyard with fog.
Gw2: Since zombies now rule certain maps and areas of them have now been converted to a futuristic gothic setting where houses and cars are now metallic/robots. Time travel also brought us to many differebt locations but even then they included certain details to make them stand out more like the plants and zombies in zgypts hieroglyphics alongside chomper vases with egyptian hairstyles or the zombie sphinx. The statues of ra zombie and chompers cleopatra vases, Rome has the zomboss caeser and the flags with zombie heads, prehistoric locations have the chomposaurus skeleton and cave paintings of cones, z tech factory/zomburbia had the brain vending machines and graves lying around, the snow pea greenhouses and goalie star hockey rinks in greatwhite north, and the plant aesthetic in the smaller areas its in is relatively the same. I already did a post on the backyard that reflects why i like the aesthetic choices there.
Im not even against the purple coloring for a few reasons I think are best said here:
Tldw: purple is a color usually representing corruption of something that was once good but unlike other "evil" colors it still shows the possibility of being returned to purity. It also usually contrasts against nature since purple is incredibly hard to find in vast quantity in nature. Sure this may be reaching but its nice to think of it this way.
Zombies now have more gray than dirty green tint faces and no longer have bloodshot eyes. It's arguably the most true to the tower defense games but i kinda miss the bloodshot eyes. Other small details were changed like all star losing his red socks and engineer getting a shave but other things were added like soldiers netting. Plants got changes where peashooter is less greeny and veiny in his snout now being a brownish tint and chompers jaw structure changed.
The tombstone in gw2 got a massive facelift as it now sports broken grates at the bottom that let dead root like vines through them on top of a rough circle of dirt. The body now supports these areas where you can see a pinkish liquid flowing through it leading up to a zomboss head with glowing eyes on all 4 sides. Above the zomboss heads are these steampunk esque pipes that lead to the top of a plated over brain that will break away to reveal a pinkish brain with pulsating energy coursing over it. On top of the brain is a three pronged centerpiece with a jewel in the middle that shoots the beam of light showing where a base is. This tombstone design is used in every gamemode except garden ops where tombstones from gw1 will appear on their respective waves.
Gw2 gardens also changed in that we tossed out the scarecrow and now have a marble sculpture surrounded by a bed of tiny yellow flowers with red and bluebplants popping through around it. A large vine wraps around it with small flowers and leaves on its body until it reaches the top and blooms into a sunflower. It appears to have a blue orb at the top that has a crazy dave mural on top of it with a watering can. In gnomebomb crazy dave is removed which allows you to see this stuff better in game. Upon capturing a tombstone in herbal assualt the garden will spew out rainbows much like how tombstones have bats. A bright cloud will appear overhead that is circled by sparkling rainbows.
Gnomes also got their fair share with a cosmic esque civilization that sports neither plant or zombie attire and instead show giant structures with strange new technologies in a dimension that sports floating rocks in a giant void that has giant glowing blue mushrooms where even the water looks strange and unnatural.
The selection screen was changed into both plants and zombies sharing a changing room in a customization booth with moving lights, a mirror, and a closet with browncoat clothes insides.
The multiplayer portal got amped up as while searching for a match your character will float around in the void. In match selection they will be standing on a small grassy platform with other chunks floating around with lawn flamingos, graves, brains, and a white picket fence
Ops also got special selection screen with daves RV having little mini toy plants and a refrigerator. Zomboss blimp has numerous little computer like machines.
The sunflower scarecrow garden appears in graveyard ops for scarecrow waves.
Suburbination neutral zones ditched the stone square for a dirt pile with mushrooms and bones.
One thing that did get sadly chopped off at the knees were the victory screens. Instead of a map of the well map in gw2 turf takeover we get a simple rectangle line with the pieces from gw1 with plants now being flowers with vines instead of peashooters. Team vanquish is just now green and purple score signs boo. Gnomebomb has two gnomes with scores, its nice that they do light at the end though. They took team vanquish than just added some orbs for vanquish confirmed. The podiums at the end in different areas of the map are nice though.
The cracked mettalic and viney hud is a nice touch and the score counter in game has more detail and color than gw1 and bfn.
Bfn: I went through all the maps and one thing really stuck out to me. Outside of peachy district there arent any real signs that anythings really happening in meighborville. In peachy district while not common you do occasionally see thing like newspapers saying the zombies are coming or little stands selling seeds. Other than that though theres nothing really in the maps that gives them anything. Sure zombie equipment is laying around in like a corner of rocky flats but its the same thing copy and pasted twenty times in a stack from the pve regions. Its nothing like the mass amounts of graffiti or propoganda in gw and it makes the maps feel empty since it feels like no side really has a presence there or that its even about plants/zombies.
Plants still got off way better than zombies by a far margin. I already mentioned the dissapointing zombie aesthetic in giddy park in my backyard post. Maps like preserve psatures also got further into this with the pickle festival and the overgrown plants on the farm. Zombies dont even have a single grave or tomb and the only thing grave in the grave o matic is the tiny skull on the bottom. They do have machines but compared to every other installment they look like a whiteish/yellow washing machine more than anything. Even in maps where its more abundant like daisy drive or tourist trap island none of it really screams out that these belong to the living dead and just looks like a bunch of spare parts lying around compared to say the houses or cranes from gw2. Look at the zomboss blimp in gw than look at the floating battle bus that drops you off in preserve pastures ( it couldn't just be a cliffside cemetery popcap?). The z tech factory is a lottle better but once again a lot of the machines just feel random and even the cone ones produce the wrong looking cones. Look at the tallnut cannons in peachy district rather than come from a plant like the coconut cannon of gw its stead comes from an amalgamation of random junk.
Gardens are now gardenators. I dont know how to feel about these. I like the sunflower scarecrow haveing a more farmer style overalls and it swaying in the wind is cool but the random box, techno doo da, fans, and freaking hairdryers it sits on are just so random.
The one in gnome bomb is imo better as it sits on a matbel pot with vines and flowers wrapping around a sunflower scarecrow with a mailbox and a lawn ornament on its sides. A bird bath sits at the front to hold the bomb.
Than theres the grave o matic. I hate it. Reusing the same color paler as all other zombie machines in bfn its a yellowish white machine at the bottom with 4 black skull shapes at the very bottom but past that it is a bunch of tesla coils lesding to 3 spinning batteries in the middle which were attached to a small electrical blast hoisting up a sign with a neon pinkish Z flashing above it.
The gnome bomb one is eve worse though it looks more like a crashed satellite with a telescope sticking out the middle with an outstretched metallic hand to hold the gnome. It still has the neon Z on top of it
I hate that both bases now have a convienent put bomb here area. Like its not much but its kinda stupid when you think about it for gnome bomb.
The gnomes also got new environments. I dont dislike this more ancient temple style in ruiny ruins, I just vastly prefer the much more cosmic powerful watchers of time thing they had going on in gw2.
Rather than raise gardens or tombstones we now trade colored lines near the baseline which simply flash the leaf or Z for teams when captured. We no longer get the skyclouds across the sky with weather effects. The final results are now just purple or green banners with leafs or Z theybdont even have a special one for getting all bases. They even reuse thisbfor ops. Boo.
The signs are better than gw2 in that its a wooden sign grabbed by vines on grass for plants and one of those malfunctioning display machines for zombies.
The score signs i also take issue with. In gw its dave's hand and a severed zombie hand reaching towards a trophy filled with coins. The hands shaked more the closer they got and the winner grabbed the trophy on their side.
In bfn its just a green and purple bar where a tiny banner will fold down over the winners emblem. I'm not saying they have to reuse the hands but the bfn version is just lame.
Suburbination. I hate it. Rather than even bothering with a garden or grave we instead gets a freaking antenna with an orange light that changes to a green leaf or purple z upon capture. This is what Im arguing as a whole. That this asset looks like it could be in any random game. Heck just photoshop the red or blu holograms from tf2 and there you go.
I think I finally got what bothers me about bfn designs since the characters were overall just redone rather than built off their previous designs. I cant say im a fan of the green iris every zombie now has as it just feels wrong. The sunken fish eyes also dont really do it for me.
My main problem with the style is how thin some zombies' necks/limbs are, while they also got much taller.
All star doesn't look buff and heavy, he looks like some skinny guy wearing a big suit. 80's has more muscle than him. Sure, he looked as thin in the gw games, but he was shorter and didnt carry around a gun so big to the point he's forced to lean back, so the proportions didn't look as weird. Idk, it's just awkward seeing a character as tall as SB being so thin at his legs. Z mech is another example of this with the noodle arms.
Soldier and slides neck are thin and long which doesnt really help hold up their head in comparison to 80's or SB's much larger and more fitting neck.
But across the board the plants look like plastic toys and their animations were downgraded from gw. Citron and Sunflower's walking animation for example looks so awkward compared gw2 like citrons body not being connected and just kinda wobbling every time he takes a step. Citron without his glasses is really ugly and their are edits with the glasses that are way better. Rose also looks ugly.
The bfn selection screen is also dissapointing. Remeber how gw1&2 had multiple selection screens, well in bfn you only get one: the neon void. Its used in every gamemode for both sides with the only change being the upgrade selection being purple or green with team insignias. Its just not interesting and looks like it could be used in any game.
In gw1&2 the night sky had constellations making up dave or zomboss and a moon with a zombie face lingers above. Bfn does not have any of these.
Now heres a big one. Its a difference between the two that I think sets them apart while not appearing like a big deal: Animated blood.
In gw1&2 plants bleed when they are hurt (probably cause gw1 upgrades imply there getting hit with baseballs filled with lead and molten magma). We see a greenish/yellow liquid fly out of them when they are shot. The mega flower is a good showing of this as yellow liquid pops out of her vines as she wails in agony. We can also see leaves or tiny portions of vines fly out. Maybe its just the lighting but I think it was a bit more prevalent in gw1. Gw1 also had the buckethead "stain" yet both gw2 and bfn removed this, why? Is it because its red? You can just say its paint or even make it green plant blood.
Zombies dont bleed but for obvious reasons. Gw ops also has red blood droplets fly out of the ops portraits when a character is heavily injured and the portrait expands and shrinks like a heartbeat yet in bfn their health bar just slowly flashes when it gets lower.
It may not seem like much but I do think this ultimately led to bfn's demise as fans of gw feel like the franchise had gotten even more childish. Im not saying gw was ever some ultra edgy and mature shooter as its for all ages but bfn just takes the cartoonish element a bit too far like i mentioned with the character designs and proportions and avoiding things like animated blood which has been in all the other games, even with jokes or information in the pvz 1&2 almanac about how these zombies still eat peoples Brainz and kill them through that. Bone of my friends ever played pvz because they thought it was childish and that belief only got worse with bfn's overall look. Im not saying their right but i can see where theyre coming from since they represent a fair amount of the outside audience sadly.
I think the bfn maps also really siffer to stand out in the series. Theres nothing in them that really gives them a strong pvz identity, even the more meh gw1 maps like sharkbite shores or boney island still had enough to make them fit in where bfn really lacks. I mean replace zombies in bfn with aliens and what changes?
They use bizarre technology for bases and weapons, dont rise from graves or tombstones, and want human brainz. Zombies or aliens you tell me?
Compare a gw1 maps against a bfn maps for an understanding: jewel junction vs colossal fossil. Both have a mine lined with jewels with a hazard in the middle that can vanquish you. In jewel junction its giant zombot trains carrying brainz, yetis, jewels, and other cargo over the middle of the map. In colossal fossil its just regular minecarts which only carry barrels, dynamite, and bananas. In jewel junctions you have a western setting to the map but you have zombie signs advising them to wear hard hats, the center mine advertising zomboss' radioactive dairy prodycts on his totally not a secret mine, antI plant signs, and even zombot minecarts rolling around the map overhead carrying jewels. There's even a cemetery in the corner of the map that serves as a zombie spawn. The jewels also stick out a lot more as they are collected together under the mine shaft in greater numbers, you even have barricades around them that say "back off zombie"
Outside of the mine colossal fossil doesn't really have any unique type of buildings or graffiti like jewel junctions did and the fossil isnt really a factor as it just hangs above the map and is just a random dinosaur called the enormosaurus apparently. Colossal fossil has no real identity like many other bfn maps because of these things and it hurts the game as a whole.
There are also other things like how gw1 used actual cannons to launch characters over jump pads or molten lava against hot cheese but this post is already long enough.
Ill try and put pictures in if I can to show what I m talking about with the gardens and such.
Ranking offensive spawnables may be the next thing I do.
