A change in direction

After spending lots of time creating visuals and modelling buildings, I had a 121 with my tutor. He pointed out the obvious problem with the game visuals, in that they were too clean cut. If the story takes place where there are lots of poor people and rebels committing crimes, there is no way the city would look pristine as it did in my earlier visuals.
The visuals would have to reflect what was happening in the game. The game would have to reflect visually what was happening in the mindset of the characters within the world. I would have to change the visuals of the city from a utopia to a despotic one.

I partly intentionally made the visuals utopian as a sort of ironic backdrop to the chaos that would happen within the game. The old visuals were also made mostly in Maya with no bump maps or lighting affects so there was a lot of light and clean lines.
As soon as the suggestion to make the visuals and the city dirtier and decrepit, it was like a light turning on. It would look more interesting, it would look like it had more substance, and would reflect what the characters would experience, acting like an instant poster for the feel of the game.

Crits or 121’s are very important for realising things like that, as I was spending so much time doing the visuals and thinking of different vehicles and building designs, that I didn’t put them into the concept of the story of the game I designed. Right from the start of the game, I had the high concept of Blade Runner meets GTA 4. So the visual side of the game had to be on par with the city in Blade Runner.

Consequently I had to disregard a lot of visuals I had already made with lots of light and a bright blue sky.