Welcome to the first TCU Mod development update/insight post! I'm really sorry for stalling for so long since publishing the Introducing TCU Mod post, but the time has finally come. What better way to start off this series of posts than to do an overview and breakdown of The Crew's criminally underappreciated, incredibly sophisticated and nuanced art style? This isn't a 100% super technical breakdown of all it's elements on a computer graphics level (though that may come later), but I'll try my best to break it down in the most understandable and interesting way for players, developers and artists alike. Let's get right into it! Note: This post is strictly about the original version of "The Crew" from 2014, before the atrocious 2015 "Wild Run" iteration that permanently replaced the original game. If you're not aware of what horrible atrocities have been done onto this game by Ubisoft, please read the Introducing TCU Mod post to learn more. Wild Run is the reason nobody even knows or remembers anything about the game's original vision, but let's fix that.(Cover uses game screenshot by Environment Artist Sylvain Pellan)WHAT IS "THE CREW"? Let's step back a bit. What is "The Crew"? "The Crew" is a driving game made by back-then independent French studio "Ivory Tower", founded by ex-Test Drive Unlimited developers in 2007. It's set in a scaled-down, contiguous open world video game version of the North US. The original barebones game idea, codenamed "Road 66", was about an MMO open world driving game set in the North US. It later grew and expanded with new gameplay elements, like the various Car Specs, extensive Car Customization, a whole Singleplayer (or CO-OP) Story mode campaign, and much more. One thing the developers never forgot about is the importance of the game world. The importance of North US as a setting, and it's various varying regions, states and cities. In a way, the game world is the main character of the game."The Crew" was basically begging for an artistic visual direction.HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL Out of all the pre-release developer interviews and statements I've seen and read, none get into the game's art style or inspiration sources at all, which is extremely bizarre and kind of mind-boggling. But oh well, that's what I'm here to investigate! Much like Red Dead Redemption 2, I have no doubt that the original artists at Ivory Tower were heavily inspired by the Hudson River School paintings. I would like to show you some of my favorite examples:
"Hudson River School landscapes are characterized by their realistic, detailed, and sometimes idealized portrayal of nature, often juxtaposing peaceful agriculture and the remaining wilderness which was fast disappearing from the Hudson Valley just as it was coming to be appreciated for its qualities of ruggedness and sublimity."As you can see, if you're familiar enough with the original version of The Crew and it's visuals, these paintings look way too similar. That is obviously no coincidence.THE CREW CONCEPT ART There is some development concept art of The Crew available to find online by various artists and studios Ivory Tower have hired during production. It's all great, but the most notable to me is the artwork done by back-then Ivory Tower developer & artist Mathieu Reydellet. Some samples:
(More can be found at the link above) These are absolutely stunning artworks. If you look closely, you'll notice distinct visual elements and themes found in the final (2014) version of The Crew: the vast country roads, the cracked asphalt, the thick road lines, the detailed environments, the distinctly varying region-appropriate architecture, the high-detailed regional street props, the roaming pedestrians, the artsy rimlight highlights on all objects, the various regional color palettes, moods and weathers, the contrasting play of light and dark, the vastness of space as highlighted by pretty fog effects, and the extremely beautiful and prominent clouds in the sky, and much more... All of these distinct visual elements made it into the final game, even some of the fictional brands and advertisements. In fact, you can even find the exact same place along that Cape Cod road with identical boat/dock/sign/lighthouse placements. They even got the shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral!Extra material:The Visual Development of "The Crew" by Benjamin HayteHISTORICAL INFLUENCEThe next crucial aspect of The Crew's visual identity we have to understand is it's heavy inspiration by vintage mid-20th century aesthetics.
Note the game's use of similar artistic vintage color filters, the subtle aging-like/vintage desaturation...After some research, I've pinpointed it down to the "Route 66 Aesthetic" of the 1950s/1960s."Route 66 is a visual aesthetic centered on the romanticized era of American autotourism along the historic U.S. Route 66 (decommissioned in 1985). The aesthetic often overlaps with Greaser culture and the broader Hot Rod/Kustom Kulture, utilizing motifs like classic cars and "greasy spoon" diners."
That explains a lot: the old muscle cars, the collectible hot rods, the clothing styles of the main protagonist and other in-game characters, the game's entire UI design style... Kind of obvious in retrospect, but very interesting and informative to pinpoint it down to an exact aesthetic now... Gee, I wonder if The Crew was inspired by the Cars movie much? (I'd certainly bet so)WHAT NOBODY SEEMS TO UNDERSTAND... ...Is that this game was never meant to look photorealistic (which was the go-to graphical trend during the mid-to-late 2010s). In fact, it is the complete antithesis to the typical pseudo-photorealistic AAA video game trend, before it even became a trend.The Crew was always meant to be a highly illustrative, highly artsy non-photorealistically rendered game.It's designed to look like a moving, constantly changing, beautiful painting. Do you see it?
Original The Crew eye candy brought to you by Sylvain Pellan.OTHER VIDEO GAME EXAMPLESHere are some of my favorite non-photorealistically rendered and stylized video games as examples/references:- Team Fortress 2 [2007]- GTA San Andreas [2004]- GTA 5 [2013] (Specifically the original gen 7 release on the PS3/Xbox 360)- NFS The Run [2011]- Skate 2 [2009]- Driver: San Francisco [2011] (Excluding the poorly ported PC version with botched graphics)- Test Drive Unlimited 2 [2011] (Mostly same artists worked on both TDU2 and The Crew) I'm having a hard time finding newer examples (post ~2014/2015), because that's when the industry started pushing, or basically forcing all their studios to do pseudo-photorealistic graphics with PBR (Physically Based Rendering), ugly Tonemapping algorithms, pseudo-realistic procedural sky/fog/cloud/atmospheric shaders with nearly 0 artistic control, etc. The Crew did not use PBR, choosing to use a highly developed custom traditional shader pipeline, it did not use any ugly Tonemapping algorithms, it did not even use Adaptive Exposure (deliberately), it offered a variety of built-in artistic post FX filters for artists to adjust and configure per-weather in the game, all sky/fog/cloud/atmospheric shaders and effects were clearly done by artists for artists, and were highly customizable. The Crew Wild Run on the other hand did everything the opposite way - it used a poorly made, simple, generic and broken PBR renderer, it uses a horribly ugly Tonemapping algorithm (that the devs themselves had to fix with LUTs... why not just use a different tonemapper then??), the game used the ugliest, most erratic and uncontrollable Adaptive Exposure filter I've ever seen, in fact it had 2 of them at once fighting each other (I'm not kidding), all artistic post FX filters were completely removed, replaced with just a per-weather LUT feature (which is still good however, because I can imitate the color filters I want using LUTs. Would've been so so much worse without LUTs at all...), all the sky, fog, cloud and atmospheric shaders are mainly procedural, with nearly 0 artistic controls; they're almost entirely automated and non-customizable, because "that's just how it is in real life, why would you want to change it?"...This is what the industry has been like since the mid 2010s. I'll likely talk about this more in-depth in later post(s).
TCU MODI am doing my best to bring back as much of this super sophisticated and nuanced art direction as possible with TCU Mod. I like to think that I'm quite experienced in the video game visual design field, so I hope the images and the demo reel in the Introducing TCU Mod post speak for themselves... Despite the ASTONISHING amount of limitations, bugs and setbacks found in the Wild Run iteration of the game's graphics engine...I've decided that instead of simply trying to copy the original game's graphics to the best of my ability, I'll allow myself to improvise more, and come up with some never-before-seen looks and designs for the various regions, fully and respectfully based on the original material, and all of it's inspirations and origins that we've just went over. One day the original The Crew will be restored and playable once again, which will make TCU Mod's visual design obsolete in comparison if it's a simple imitation. Either way, TCU Mod will still undoubtedly be recognizable as "The Crew".And now, some more up-to-date TCU Mod photos!(Should go without saying, but this is still heavy W.I.P.)
I'm super excited to finally start sharing more insights and updates on TCU Mod here (...on a more regular basis). The next TCU Mod post will likely be something more in-depth and technical about graphics and rendering... or maybe something about the regional weathers... we'll see... I've got lots of stuff to talk about and show. Feel free to leave me suggestions/requests in the comments (or on the TCU Discord)!Thank you for reading, I hope this was interesting and/or educational to you. Feel free to sign up as a free member (or drop us a few bucks via a paid membership if you really appreciate the TCU Project), and tune in for the next TCU Mod update post! Have a good day.- whammy4