Perfect Dark Zero – The Possibility of HD Cel Shaded Beauty

May 16th, 2008

As I have mentioned before I am not particularly interested in the Xbox or Xbox 360. That is of course with a few exceptions and one of those exceptions is Perfect Dark Zero. I throughly enjoyed the original and even though Rare have been butchering themselves lately I would still be interested in giving this game a go.

What I wanted to look at are some of the character designs for a cel shadded Perfect Dark. These were put out by Rare while the Xbox was still in business and were created by Wil Overton. I personally would have prefered a cel shaded Perfect Dark over what ended up being a realistic final result. Just recently I have been playing XIII; the cel shaded FPS by Ubisoft. Fortunately on the PC version you can play this game in native high definition and I must stay that this game is visually stunning. Much like other successful cel shaded games (Okami, Zelda:WW) this game looks tremendous in it’s own right.

So I thought that I would just post up these shots of the cel-shaded Joanna leaving with you an idea of how magic this could have been. Full Size Images.

joanna dark cel shaded xbox

joana dark perfect dark xbox

joanna dark perfect dark xbox

joanna dark perfect dark cel shaded xbox

Just imagine how fantastic this style of game could have been?

Posted in Visual Connection | Comments (7)
Tags: joanna dark, perfect dark, rare, xbox

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7 Comments

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Very nice! Kinda like the whole Link debate
Just posted it on my forum!
Comment by racketboy on Friday, May 16th 2008
It’s a shame Rare are only a glimmer of there former selves. They used to be one of my favourite developers in the early days of Rare and of course when they were “Ultimate”. Perfect Dark Zero was OK, but a let down compared to the original, best played on co-op with a mate.
Comment by QuizzicalDemon on Saturday, May 17th 2008
I’m not too fond of the Jonanna’s face in the cell shaded version but it certainly would have been an interesting step. I think that since Perfect Dark Zero would have been better off going the cell shaded route. It is a first generation Xbox 360 game and if you look at it now compared to current generation 360 games it doesn’t hold up as well. Cell shading would have also made it more distinct compared to the massive ammount of gritty, realistic shooters on the Xbox 360.
Comment by Chris Johnson on Saturday, May 17th 2008
True, I think that even in the worst case scenario this would have caught people’s attention. I agree though the face is extremely off putting.
Comment by Daniel on Monday, May 19th 2008
I was working on a Joanna Dark layout for the next version of GDG, which is very funny considering this topic.

I really love these, but I like realistic for FPS far more. Although TF2 is wonderful.
Comment by Monique on Wednesday, May 21st 2008
I always enjoyed Wil Overton’s designs for N64 Magazine and I remember those cel-shaded Perfect Dark Zero designs resemble the Perfect Dark cover design he did, which was the same manga design! I can’t find the magazines now or I’d scan them.
Comment by Supa on Friday, June 6th 2008
The reason this version never saw the light of day is because fans complained that this cel shaded Joanna looked too anime-like and a cel shaded version of the game would have been a farce in relation to its serious plot and tone. I guess it would not have been such a good game after all if the developers actually switched boats midstream due to negative feedback. :/

Cel shading was just fluke, a flashy trend, and I’m glad it never became popular among the gaming industry. It totally ruined one LoZ game, God knows what it would have done to Perfect Dark.
Comment by Sauce on Saturday, November 22nd 2008

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