Character Study: The Curious Case of Concord

I reacted negatively to the character designs in Concord the first time I saw them in an extremely expensive-looking Sony State of Play trailer. 

    It wasn't just the beat-by-beat Guardians of the Galaxy also-ran presentation of the characters themselves to blame, they also "read a little wrong" from a stylistic perspective that I would go on to have trouble placing for months... until I saw the Official Freegunner Adventures animations.

These two-and-a-half minute shorts snapped a number of things into place for me; they're not rendered in the same style as the game and they look like something that would've had to be commissioned FAR in advance of the launch window rollout.

Now, I'm not a character designer or artist by trade, so a lot of the following observations and speculation should be taken with EXTREME amounts of salt; my career may have glanced back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and this post is an attempt to sift that into some sort of salty take mandala!

    I suspect that Concord was originally pitched and greenlit with a very different art direction than it launched with. Let's dig into some examples by comparing what's in the animations to what's in the game.

The character Duchess, in what I believe to be her original design, exhibits some art-nouveau influences in the river-whorling lines of her hair, clothing, and techno-magical golden tattoos.
Notice how even though there's general feature parity, lots of details change in ways that don't read to me, (who again, did not attend art school!) like animators simplifying the higher-fidelity design. Those gold stripes on her jumpsuit especially stick out as having been made more angular and tech-y.

Many of the decisions seem like lateral increases in realism or detail that ironically don't make her look more real or cohesive. Those arm patterns gain a raised bracelet that pulls them away from skin-level ink or implants and toward gold leaf sleeves or cosplay. A golden SMG that once reinforced Duchess' opulence is now more realistic, (or perhaps got called out for prematurely saying "prestige" in Overwatch-ese!)

Emari's bubble-based armor design makes her look a bit like a Michelin mascot, and I think you're getting a picture of how this ethos is built to be as light on straight lines and tangents as possible.
That's an aspect the HD-ifi-cation can't really address, since shape and silhouette are so important to character readability in a competitive shooter. Strong shape language often hinges on contrasts between the regular & irregular; angular & rounded elements, so I can't say this "oops all curves" approach appeals to me at all, beyond the gameplay visibility trick of making the curvy characters stand out against mostly hard-edged environments. I never played Concord to see if that's a real trick that's employed or a theoretical excuse. Regardless, the addition of realistic weathering serves only to draw attention to how strange some of the material choices are, and adding more tertiary colors confuses which parts are hard shell and which are flexible padding. This situation combines with the shape language to trick your eye into seeing it ALL as soft unrealistic foam; a heavy-duty pistachio dessert suit.

Many of these shifts toward higher fidelities are semi-zero-sum in that they serve only to invert which parts of the model communicate that a character like Kyps is a robot. Mod fashion inspirations that used to blend into the simple, flat-shaded art direction now read like eclectic skins even though they are the "base" looks.

Did Roka's helmet get even BIGGER?
If you're going to give a character a third mechanical arm, I am begging you to make it wield that rocket launcher in a more creative way than an equivalent to balancing it on your shoulder!

Okay, the fact that I've stopped breaking down the actual changes and am becoming infuriated with the designs in general is a sign that I need to get to the point about what might've happened toward the end of development.

These character designs might've been approved and sent off to be animated into character shorts that differ from the "weekly" ones that use in-game assets. There's no way to be certain about the development timelines, but back in 2022 a Left-4-Dead style shooter called The Anacrusis was released with a somewhat mixed reception and a potentially relevant sense of style...

I could be completely off-base here, but is it possible that superficial alignments like a culturally diverse cast, retro fashion, pulp sci-fi, and the prevalence of bold, flat colors caused someone high up at Sony to worry?
    What if they delayed the game a couple of years to "polish up" its art direction in an attempt to make the game visually more "expensive looking?" In hindsight, rather than helping to justify the $40 up-front price tag on a live-service product, it would've been like throwing a creative monkey wrench into a development cycle that was overly long.

If any of my wild guesses contain salty grains of truth, I hope some beleaguered art director at Firewalk Studios gets to say "I frikkin' told you so!"

    As of today, Sony is delisting and refunding a game that reportedly took over one hundred million dollars to develop; an eye-watering, six-year called shot that they are supposedly going to re-release in the hopes of a "Realm Reborn" or "No-Man's-Sky-esque" critical turnabout.
Can it return with meaningfully different character designs if that would mean re-animating promotional shorts and revising cutscenes? Will it be free-to-play?

Concord might've been, if nothing else, a fascinating case study in how big mid-development changes in detail, fidelity, and realism can require you completely rethink character designs from the ground-up.