A Living Background

Graphics

Odium's real time 3D lighting and shadow effects create a dark, foreboding mood to fully immerse you into the story. The real time lighting also enables characters to cast true shadows; since characters are illuminated only by light sources, monsters can be completely hidden inside darker areas. Odium gives the player an isometric perspective of the city, and while you cannot rotate the field of view, you will be able to zoom in and out. All the characters and monsters in the game are 3D rendered in high detail (with a polygon count ranging from 800 to 2000) and animated with skeletal animation. Many of the weapon effects are rendered in 3D as well, with particle based explosions and multiple transparency. The flamethrower we saw in the demo was pretty impressive, lighting up the surrounding background as it roasted an attacking monster. You can plainly tell from the screenshots how graphically crisp and detailed Odium is. Don't be fooled by the screenshots you see here, none of them are from cutscenes; they're actually in-game screenshots.

Through the junkyard

With lush 800x600 backgrounds in 16 bit color, Odium's graphics will draw you into the edgy, anxious atmosphere the creators intended. Probably the central feature to Odium's graphics is what the developers call the "living" background of the game. The "living" part refers to the fact that these backgrounds are not just a static canvas on which game play unfolds. There will be a lot of action going on around the characters as they make their way through the city and explore the buildings. You'll see water flowing, leaves blowing across the ground, and burning objects strewn about. None of these particular events were apparent in the demo we saw but we were able to glimpse a monster popping up through the tile floor of a museum. These scripted features aren't just eye candy; combined with the detailed 3D characters and the skeletal animation we mentioned earlier, the living background does much to immerse the player into the story.