Freelance Artist Attempts to Redesign PS5, PC Flop Concord's Cast

The cheekbones are too sharp. Me as a person with fatty cheekbones am offended and I'm taking it to Twitter to demand this artist gets silenced, fired or demonitized weee

Seriously thouy, those are valid points he makes. Especially on the robot one. It's like toddlers made this game, but toddlers are actually creative. These were adults who took 8 years to design this crap. It's utterly baffling

The biggest issue for me is they look like Marvel knock offs. Like the game itself it feels like they're just copying better more popular things with no new ideas of their own. Overwatch may not be what it was but its cast stand out, i don't play OW but i know a Overwatch character when i see one and that's because it has its own identity and feel.

It would have still flopped but this would have definitely been an improvement! If they don't want to throw the whole thing away redesigning ALL the characters while making it F2P I think it can have a small dedicated audience.

Nice designs. I know some people have redoing their versions with more sexualized women (because...of course...internet), but you can still make non-sexualized versions without looking boring.

This artist achieved that!

It's called being "flashy" without relying on titillation (not that there is anything wrong with sexy outfits, but clearly the developers wanted to avoid it).

The Hawaiian shirt on the robot is great!

Not enough gyatt

The artist's versions are a massive improvement. They feel like they have more of a visual personality instead of just being bland as hell.

I told a friend that all of the character's design in Concord just look like Guardians of the Galaxy movie rejects.

This is why Overwatch's character designs are top notch, they're all easily distinguishable and their look/outfits fit really well with their personalities/roles.

I’ve seen a lot of character design videos around concord. There’s so much to learn about how much these fail. So many muted and blended tones, random splashes of color that don’t blend well with the rest of the color palettes, and a lot of extraneous additions that don’t serve to communicate gameplay function or express character. Idk how they’re gonna radically redesign the cast with them already being set for Secret Level, but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to make them distinct and appealing.

Kudos to the artist. They made Lennox (the lizard guy) actually look cool.

Concord designs should be taught in art colleges for what to avoid. This one guy improves them all, on his own, for free.

I don't think any of these peoples' redesigns are good and they look just as awful. Like the concord designs are just fundamentally bad that there's nothing you can do to make them good. Just make new better characters

Firewalk should have hired this person.

@GamingFan4Lyf Video game character design 101: Make them cool or make them sexy.

It really, really is that simple. Let us all be very clear about one thing here. If the cast of Stellar Blade was on the front cover of this game then Concorde would right now be flying off the shelves.

It is not an "Internet thing". It is a "human nature thing". We love kicking ass as cool people and we love kicking ass whilst staring at hot people. And the original Concorde characters were universally none of these things which is in part why it failed.

I don't think better character designs would have saved this game.

Like many people here I saw the initial reveal during the livestream and people in the chat seemed pretty interested/curious about the game when it was the cinematic story trailer.

It was when the words "5v5 team based hero FPS" were uttered was when the vibe shifted to overwhelmingly negative.

It's somewhat amusing because you can pin point the exact moment the game was doomed lol

Considerably worse

The original character drawings are actually great. It lost a lot of the charm when it was modelled.

"We’re sure there are talented artists at Firewalk who would have had similar ideas, so we’re a little baffled as to why the game came out the way it did."

It is very clear as to why the devs took the decisions that they did when it comes to the art style - you just do not want to talk about it. And I do get it, I really do. You would be stepping into a minefield to talk about such things. But let's not pretend that it is "baffling" when it really is not.

The character design being this games downfall is so over exaggerated. This game has had a target on its back the moment it was announced before we even knew what the characters would look like.

It wouldn't surprise me if the original concept designs were along these lines. Before months of committee-led tweaking whittled them down to the barest bone, weak-lemon drink iterations that eventually got used.

I've seen a lot of people mentioning the green guy looking like Star Lord, but I see him and think of Yondu?

@McTwist
In fairness, I doubt these were the original artist designs. Most likely they went through hundreds of focus groups to weed out everything anyone could possibly find offensive or challenging, and this slop was what remained.

@LifeGirl
lol, I read that in the voice of bill burr, and imagined everyone on staff trying to look dumbfounded.

Reminder that Firewalk's Lead Character Designer had never previously held any kind of character design-related role, only gameplay design and QA. Doomed from the get-go.

@LifeGirl "If the cast of Stellar Blade was on the front cover of this game then Concorde would right now be flying off the shelves."

Would it have sold better? Absolutely! But it still wouldn't be flying off the shelves as the game itself is boring, generic and very bland while doing nothing new.

If The Last of Us Online had come out and it was the cast of Concord on the cover the game would have flew off the shelves regardless, yes sexy sells but it can only take you so far you also need to be fun and engaging.

My feeling is it's the narrative angle that took Concord down the wrong route. These designs are much better for a hero shooter - but not for making you feel part of a cohesive world.

As InfidelFrigidstraigh said, when the cinematic trailer was showing, people were curious - the designs worked well enough. It's when it was revealed to be 5v5 that things fell apart.

I think the devs overfocused on their lore, and it cost them a lot of the distinctiveness of their designs.

These redesigns look really good and its sad to think that someone can come up with better designs in an evening than a whole team of people can in 8 years

As Captain Price once said, “It’s not hard to improve on garbage”.

This is bril. Hadn't actually seen some of the character designs jesus why were they so bland and colorless 😂

The art direction on this game was the least of its worries

For sketches they do do a better job in some areas for sure.

Then again some people go yep in a few minutes can make up game ideas or sketches. Some people in meetings and regular game company tasks had way more sketches and yet we ended up with whatever was approved in the end. I want to know what the actual sketches were in comparison from the Devs if fans/outsiders can do a better job.

They don't have to all be appealing in a fan service way or anything just more slick, more sharp, confident , cool, varied of maybe not stereotypes/tropes but more fitting of their roles in the game as a crew or class.

That and less Guardians of the Galaxy and others what people think is popular and have more flare about them then being a bunch of people in a room with a cultural push, no care for what they are making or even understand video games and not making anything unique in the game (it had a few fair ideas but they weren't strong).

Art matters, I care for gameplay but even then it's culture push and art style were a problem as well.

I like how Lennox actually looks like a lizard and not some guy doing a Yondu cosplay.

Generic art style with very little creativity apart from BIGGER GUNS and some corny edgelord ***** doesn’t improve on the already mediocre designs.

@SoulsBourne128 a humanoid lizard with a Dundee hat. So original. So brave. 😂

I like the re-designs. The idea of the robot being a party dude reminds me of BIV from Fallout 76 or even Bender from Futurama.

The robot still looks like a rip off of the cleaning bot from outer worlds and the Michael rooker rip off now looks like a "creature from the black lagoon" rip

There's plenty of artist who redesign Concord characters.

Watch this CriticalArt_64, who did the redesign with sketch + 3D model which looks great
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ksyqqojCNJI&t=0s

The Concord designs are just so bland when compared to these sketches.

Anything is better than concord original design, the game is closed in 2 weeks with the original design 😅

@thefourfoldroot1
Yeah lol you are probably right on the nose. So many people and it leads to something this bland...
Just proves that normal people don't dare to speak up anymore in fear of being offensive to these crazies who run the show lately by victimizing themselves 24/7

The sad thing about this is that multiple random people are doing redesigns of Concord characters and ALL of them that I've seen so far are better just as experiments with the designs than actual paid for work of 8 years.

The entire cast could've been the 2nd coming of Heavy Metal Geomatrix: roided-up musclemen and strippers on bikes, it still wouldn't have mattered.
The market is massively over saturated and even F2P titles like Gundam Evo have shown it's difficult to hold a playerbase, even with a known IP attached to it.

it’s like putting make up on a pig

A hero shooter would've failed regardless , they really don't understand why helldivers 2 did good , and tried to replicate it . A mass effect approach might've done way better but screw singleplayer games when live service multiplayer is a thing right?

@BamBamBaklava89 better to have style than to have none lol the base design was just a generic white dude but with green skin. Atleast this one's tries, unless you're one of the few rare people defending the game's art, in which...well, more power to you 😅

@ThomasHL That's what I thought as well. Atleast with Overwatch the story is your standard heroes vs villains, with playable characters from both sides. Even in Paladins, it's centered around the conflict between the magistrate and the resistance, as well as othe factions.

In Concord, freegunners are supposed to be like, mercenaries or something? Supposedly, accorisng to the story, it's focused on a conflict between them and some kind of organization, but we don't have any playable characters that are part of that side, so we just have freegunners fighting other freegunners because...well, it's a competitive 5v5 shooter game, don't think too hard on it. If it was just a singleplayer/co-op action adventure rpg a la Guardians of the Galaxy with multiple choices the player can make given they belong to no one but themselves, I can definitely see this become, at worst, a cult classic like Days Gone.

@thefourfoldroot1 funny enough, there's a concept design for Emari and it looks miles better while keeping some of the good elements of her final design. Makes me hope someone would leak the entire concept art of the game, cause I'm more interested what was behind the game's development process if anything.