Hi folks,
In the world of choose-your-own-adventure games, graphics are often an afterthought, a nice detail but never the star of the show. Honestly, my life would have been ten times easier if Erannorth Renaissance had no graphics at all and was purely text-based. Then again, it would be a different game.
The core pillar of my design philosophy has always been modding freedom. That meant including graphics not because I believed anyone would be thrilled with the default artwork, but because I wanted to give you the tools to make it your own. If you didn’t like what was there, you could change it, as simple as copying a file.
Now, the initial portrait set, the one currently live, is of course atrocious, to put it mildly. When your budget is somewhere between nonexistent and wishful thinking, your choices are limited to bad and less bad. Never ideal. Never what you really want. But, always open for improvement.
This brings us to our new portrait set and the first graphical overhaul of the game since early access began.
Highwaymen
Some of the PC/NPC portraits
I truly think it's a big step up. It strikes a better balance between classic fantasy and gritty realism, so you can pick your poison. But of course, it's still a choice limited to "okay" and "a little better." It also aligns more naturally with the kinds of portraits you'll generate for your own mods, making the overall experience feel more cohesive and immersive. And it's the kind of portrait I can find more of, helping retain a somewhat more uniform feeling in the world.
Some of the new portraits are still firmly in my mental folder of "first to replace if something better ever comes along." Others I just couldn't have the way I wanted.
You can try out the new portraits in the latest build, now available on the beta branch.
Hopefully, you'll find something that resonates with your taste better, whatever that may be. And if not, you can still easily replace them with your own.
This build will remain in beta for a couple days while I fine-tune some things and resume development on Content Update 8. As always any new beta builds will be landing there too.
Whether you'll get the new portraits sooner or alongside the Lacris update is still uncertain. It depends on the game's status when I begin adding new features and content for the next update.
As for what will actually be in the Lacris update other than more Erannorth, well, we'll be talking about that soon!