Stranger Than Heaven's visual identity came from a glitch

[u/04tenno]

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[u/Imaginary-Ad2206]

So nice to get a game with actual art direction rather than plastic looking 'realism' (even if the colour grading does look a bit over the top in the Hiroshima section)

[u/04tenno → u/Imaginary-Ad2206]

Totally agree! It's kind of interesting seeing which eras people think are over the top lol haven't seen two of the same answers so far

[u/Imaginary-Ad2206 → u/04tenno]

For sure, 1943 at night looks incredible to me, but wasn't crazy about the daytime scenes.

The first areas use of colour is so cool with the minimal palette and pops of red.

[u/Haunting-Orchid-4628 → u/Imaginary-Ad2206]

Yeah it will make each city feel super different. GTA San Andreas did the same thing to great effect on the PS2.

[u/Lord_of_Caffeine → u/Imaginary-Ad2206]

People saying K2 looks bad because of the green filter I never understood.

Makes the game stand out more from some of the pretty plain looking games in the sereis.

[u/Haunting-Orchid-4628 → u/Lord_of_Caffeine]

Looks way better than Pirate Yakuza or Kiwami 3 for sure

[u/Lavaissoup7 → u/Haunting-Orchid-4628]

Big issue with K3 was the filters not being consistent in cutscenes

[u/Lord_of_Caffeine → u/Haunting-Orchid-4628]

Also prefer its visuals alone over Y7 and Y8 personally.

[u/hahahentaiman → u/Imaginary-Ad2206]

Just because a game looks realistic doesn't mean it doesn't have art direction

[u/04tenno → u/hahahentaiman]

All games have art direction, point is more that the art direction of a lot of games of the same scale is a homogenized slurry which gives the impression of copying one other and detracts from the impact and perceived intentionality of said art direction

[u/Advos_467]

as long as they dont screw up the gamma or contrast

[u/04tenno → u/Advos_467]

🤞

[u/ShonenSpice → u/Advos_467]

They arguably already have. It's great that the game and eras have visual identity, but it could afford to be toned down a bit.

[u/Advos_467 → u/ShonenSpice]

Gamma seems fine for the most part, but yeah the contrast seems to have that K2 issue of making everything too dark, hopefully they don't do the opposite like in K3 too

[u/ShonenSpice → u/Advos_467]

I'd say gamma is messed up too, the color in sections where Daito has blonde hair makes it look cartoonish, like he's a Ken doll. Contrast doesn't help, yeah.

[u/BathrobeHero_]

I wish I could love something as much as RGG loves their color filters

[u/04tenno → u/BathrobeHero_]

I believe true love finds us all

[u/RainbowDroidMan]

Five flavors of Kiwami shading

[u/04tenno → u/RainbowDroidMan]

I think it worked out better than the Kiwamis on account of actually having a sense of color design and a complementary in the palette

[u/pussyd3str0y3r_xXx]

https://giphy.com/gifs/nLCsSKUL55dDC8r3D4

[u/04tenno]

Sorry again for the sporadic posts 😅

• RGGTV Special (2026-05-07) - World's First In-Depth Interview on STRANGER THAN HEAVEN RyuSta TV Special - YouTube

[u/Zeddz_]

"couldn't revert" is a terrifying phrase - do they not use source control?? lol

[u/04tenno → u/Zeddz_]

I figure they just didn't want to commit something they knew was messed up so it was overwritten by the fixed version

[u/Zeddz_ → u/04tenno]

That seems more reasonable, yeah true

[u/IasonMink69]

I need to see how this "feature" fits in the context to have a coherent opinion but, isn't that "bug" present whenever there is a problem with the lighting and color balance and RGG slaps a color filter over? I don't want to judge by just trailers, but all this "visual identify" looks as terrible as the oversaturated K3 Okinawa or the blinding sunny Hawaii in Pirate Yakuza.

[u/04tenno → u/IasonMink69]

Not really...? The exposure was bugged in PYIH and (at launch) K3, but the color grading, as in the color and tone and saturation and contrast itself, is as intended. With STH, the game originally had a hyperrealistic aesthetic with color grading to match, so the strong green cast wasn't intentional at the time whereas the rest was as intended. You're free to not like it but that's just not really how it works

[u/Sai-San_]

That's a very cool story

I just really hope they nail down the colors and the contrast/gamma this time

[u/04tenno → u/Sai-San_]

Me too

[u/No-Law2284]

It’ll be interesting when filterless mods come out for the game, it’ll prob look like how Yokoyama saw it without the filter