To me aesthetics in DS3 are simultaneously very profound and very lazy. When I am trying to recall the world in my memory it is brown and grey, with streaks of rust and occasional red-amber. Intentionally thinking more about it I do recall purple flowers near Cursed Greatwood, gold chalices and cerulean sky over Archdragon Peak, and striking red-maggots-over-grey places in Ariandell. Piece by piece, the DS3 world does have some vividness about it, but to me this vividness is overpainted by grey and brown crags, grey and brown walls, multiple poisonous swamps and even more numerous areas of rot and sludge.
Which goes very well with overall DS3 theme of everything being so worn out, tired and old that it is time for the cycles (and games, at this moment) to end, but it doesn't make it very appealing to look upon in still pictures. All Souls games have a lot of grey and brown, and DS2, in particular, has the rugged, dirty, tattered, frontier-like feel to it, and yet there is more colour to even its poisonous areas where spitting statues in Black Gulch are vividly, almost neon-like green. There are voluminous skies over Heide's Tower of Flame, bleached summer grass over the sea in Majula, Shrine of Amana pale ghost-blue flowers, thundering darkness over Drangleic Castle, and that tiny and surprisingly cozy corner after Executioner's Chariot which hosts the most violent covenant of the game. With its fair share of murky, brown and grey colours (Huntsman's Copse, Harvest Valley, Shaded Woods, Lost Bastille) mixed with occasional lava, DS2 still sticks more firmly in my memory than DS3, and I found DS2 world to be more interesting to think about and remember despite DS3 having more interesting areas gameplay-wise. For an artbook in particular the feel of the gameplay isn't important, which makes DS3 artbook even less desirable.
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| (I play Sorcerer and use bows in DS2 so I am entirely fine with Shrine of Amana) |
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