I've always heard the version that he was trying to get between his parents during a fight, protecting Hera, and Zeus threw him down the mountain. He would have had to be able to walk at least for that version of events
@@Jallorn There are many versions of the story. The one i know is that Hera pushed him off olympus because he was "too ugly", he became lame because of the injuries and olympus married Aphrodite to him as compensation.
Aphrodite has a dove because they're a symbol of love, they mate with 1 partner for life and have an extensive courting ritual. That's also why they get used during some weddings.
@@JozsefPocsi quite literally every aspect is remastered beautifully and if you owned the original on steam you get a discount AND the game is 30 euros base, stop crying, it's a great remaster
The two wolves are Hati and Skoll, Children of fenrir. They are said to chase sun and moon and eventually catch up and eat them during Ragnarok. Loki in the norse legend is said to escape his imprisonment during Ragnarok.
I think the biggest problem with the art is that every piece feels like it was done by a different artist with a different style. The original all had the same style and therefore felt more cohesive. The new ones are all over the place, especially quality wise, some of the artists are just not performing well enough here compared to some of the others on the team it feels like
The "different artists" is likely because it was a last-minute decision due to backlash against the AI version. Lacking time, they had to choose between shipping the AI version, or split the work between many artist. Honestly, I would not have hated "1 artist/style per civilisation", but this is too heterogeneous for my taste.
I think that is actually the strength of the manmade Art. If you compare all the AI Art to one another they all look the same, especially the facial expressions. In comparision the man made stuff looks different every time. The AI ones are just "better" or "worse" in comparision to the manmade Art, not each other.
For me it is the opposite, different artists can bring different energy or points of view for the same idea. And rush but inconsistent art styles is better that homogenous slop (old Zeus use to have abs in it's abds, it was ridiculous)
Bastet looks fucking awesome. And something worth pointing out is that they switched the generic cat head with an actual Egyptian cat's head. Huge improvement that seems obvious now that I'm saying it.
You know? Atlas being angry is not off at all. He is not holding the skies willingly, it is a punishment by Zeus, and it is f-ing heavy. He even tried to trick Heracles (Hercules) to hold it and keep it, but Heracles tricks him back.
They need to STOP representing Gaia as a Lady Groot. There are several contemporaneous depictions of her and she looks like a regular Greek woman with curly hair and a white dress. She was the PERSONIFICATION of the Earth, emphasis on PERSON. She was never meant to look like a Dryad or something.
At least they didn't make Hades look like Satan which many media do... :( Also would have been better if Chronos was also more human-like than looking like a stone golem but oh well.
I guess the issue is that they went completely with like how they look a bit in-game in their story. Through Prometheus doesnt look like a dude on fire like he does in the campaign. A weird decision for sure, her original looks were okay.
Just a quick correction but Kronos is not the Titan of time, he is often confused with Chronos. Although the confusion somewhat existed during Antiquity already (mostly in the later parts) due to their similar names, it's mostly a Renaissance and onward mistake. Though I guess the game didn't know about that either since they gave him some time related power.
@@ChillyEmpireNeither did I. But after some googling it seems that they were originally separate entities, but because their names and characteristics are so close even in Ancient times people were confusing/conflating them and arguing they were the same being.
@@ChillyEmpire yeah Cronus/Κρόνος (Zeus Father who is usually associated with the Harvest & wields a Sickle) & Chronos/Χρόνος (Primordial of Time) are two separate entities.
Don't really understand Chilly's criticism about some Greek gods looking too perfect/beautiful. Well, other than Hephaestus. "Lorewise"/"Mythwise" that's exactly what they should look like. Olympic deities are famous for it.
The issue is that all look like gyms bros, but that doesn't make sense for several ones like Hephaestus and Dionisius. In other cases he says perfect as in symmetrical, like bad IA generated with Hera's face.
The "perfect/beautiful" can be done in different ways and I think what he meant is that too many are as such in the "sexy" sense, which doesn't feel like that fits all of God's themes and stuff. Like for example, if God is supposed to be an old man to represent age and wisdom, then making him look like a super model just feels odd. In that case the "perfect/beautiful" would be him being a perfect visage of an elderly person and the beauty behind that. Hopefully you get what I'm trying to get across.
@@FerPaleta They don't just look like gym bros, they look like they're on steroids. The idealistic depictions of the Greek gods from ancient work portray them as mostly extremely lean and muscular, not looking like balloons wrapped in skin. A lot of the god art in this looks like if Rob Liefeld tried to do a portrait of Ultimate Warrior. Although it's a Roman sculpture, the "Statue of Jupiter" in the Hermitage museum is a surviving depiction that falls in line with most other depictions of Greek gods that I've seen stylistically, and the physique shown is more like Hermes and Apollo in the new AoM art, and they're dramatically leaner than most of the other gods in the game.
They covered up Aphrodite in the new version with full clothes when every one of us know she was a shameless 304 They made Nephthys flat again. Great. Also, I think Anubis needs to have that judging stare without looking like he is trying jump into action. On Titans' side, Gia also should have had some motherly look. She is the freaking mother nature!
The new Anbuis art feels more appropriate for Wepwawet an Egyptian war god who was commonly depicted as an African wolf who was sometimes associated with Anubis
10:28 I mean...yu-gi-oh is set partially in Egypt haha I like that Bast's cat head is now designed to look like an Egyptian cat breed, and not a random cat like her original or Beta look. Much more on-theme and honestly pretty intimidating.
Niobe called him too 'feminine', while his sister was supposed to be 'too rough' for a woman. So Niobe got punished by them both and by their mother, Leto.
I really love the updated version of loki. It gives the appropriate trickster vibes and the wolves might be a reference to lokis shape-shifting as well as to Skalli and Hati, the two wolves who will eat sun and moon on ragnarok
About Dionysus, it's a bit plain but him being a young man is much more frequent in Ancient depictions of him. I think they should have added a few things though, like his thyrse and maybe Silenus or some Maenads and/or animals like leopards and dolphins which are all associated with him
Yeah, it honestly looks empty as hell for the god of parties and stuff. He should at least have been drinking or laying down eating a grape or something.
I love Dionysus being depicted younger... But they should have made him more twinkish and had him at a part or turning pirates into dolphins or even with his sacred animal... Something interesting for a god know to drive people insane.
@@momom6197 You are most likely somewhat conditioned to feel like that due to most modern depictions showing him as chubby happy guy, most likely due to his association with wine and parties. While not much is actually known about dionysus, we do know from the depictions we have and the few text that he was mostly quite young and twinkish looking
Dionysus is complicated to depict outside of his old berdead party persona. A younger one is more associated with madness and mystery, aspects of him that the majority of the lame person don't know about
I'm fairly certain that the AI portraits were just placeholders, or art references for the real portraits given how close (some of them) are to the final portraits. The reason they're all so high quality in such a short amount of time is because they weren't listening to the community, they just had these but were probably still working on them for the final release.
I don't believe that. That's not how placeholder art in early access is done. You don't use the placeholder art for promotional material and post it to twitter. You don't need to fix the placeholder art between playtests. And you could just tell people hey this is placeholder art when you notice them getting upset...
The fact that they try to claim that the center Ares pic isn't AI generated when the shadows and his face have zero consistency with the rest of the image gave me a sad chuckle. Even the new images look horrid.
Hades keys could be a reference on how the underworld is depicted in Titans Quest? Like Hades being the actual warden of a prison with souls trapped in cages
About what you asked in regards to Loki, Loki is often named as "The Father of The Wolf" is one of his many aliases such as "shapeshifter" or "serpent kin"
Interesting to see the new new God portraits. Apollo is even more gorgeous! And Aphrodite just gets more and more clothed with each iteration lol. Most of them are better though for some, like Hera, Oranos, Thea and most of the Norse gods, I preferred the beta portraits. I hope we'll be able to switch between the old and new portraits on an individual basis. Because for some gods I prefer the newer ones and for some I prefer the old. Nothing will ever beat OG Zeus, Isis, Ra and Thor for instance. Since everyone has their own taste, and we might prefer different iterations from each of the three portrait sets, I think the solution is to just let us switch between which of the three portraits we prefer for each individual god.
1:18 Hades' helm is known to render its wearer invisible, a gift from the elder cyclops who the brothers freed from Tartaros. 8:16 one of Aphrodite's sacred animals are doves. For Antlanteans titans, they should lean more on eldritch/monstrous form like Kronos and Gaea since they are primordial gods P.S. I love the new Egyptian god portraits. Also, my favorite god Hekate
No they were more human like entities. Just because they were called titans doesn't mean they were actual giants, they just were the 2nd generation of divinities. They get confused with the giants from the Gigantomarchy which did look like how we portray Titans in media. Then again Titan or Titanic does mean big so I wouldn't mind them appearing large but not monstrous.
Kronos Doesn't have a direct connection with the concept of time, it's a common misconception stemming from the existence of Chronos, who is the god of time in the Orphic version of Greek mythology - but the "main" myth doesn't have a single god of time, instead they had a plethora of divinities associated with all the different parts of the year, season, months, down to each hour of the day
Oh yeah, "Cronus" and "Chronos" are two entirely different Gods. The old king of gods who was usurped by Zeus vs the time that together with earth and water birthed all the gods.
29:50 dude, the new Rhea looks much better, the whole picture looks like a painting, and the light works so much better. I also noticed that you have a problem with every goddess who looks pretty and slim, except for Aphrodite, like what the fuck, they are goddesses for fuck's sake, they should look like that, not be ugly and fat.
Honestly the classical had some really iconic works but also a lot of bad ones, I would say we got an overall improvement in quality but we lost the soul of those portraits. Moreover what doesn t do it for me is the fact that there is no artistic unity between the gods of the same pantheon, I find this really disturbing. (Like try to do visualize an image with all the Greek gods together, it doesn t work at all)
I feel like all the Egyptians definitely share an art style, though unfortunately, that style just screams "League of Legends" for all of them, mostly due to the way their armor is depicted.
I'd like to believe that they went with AI generated art to have a draft of what their actual designs would look like in the final game, and not to actually roll them out in the final product. Personally I feel beta Prometheus was much better than the final Prometheus.
But they used this AI generated art in the first trailer for AoM Retold, and others promotional materials. Pretty weird to me to use so much something like art to sell a game if this art isn't going to be in the final product
The new ones are also made with AI, but I've learned to see that people don't notice if they're not used to using AI or dealing with it because they don't see the details, and even more so if you're not an artist.
I get that the game is rated "E" and that they have some weird issues with sexuality in America. But what was the problem with the old portrayal of Aphrodite? She is the goddess of prostitutes too, much more than of "idealized romantic love". I think some of the new illustrations have that same generic feeling that modern day MTG has
The new Forseti actually fits way better than the previous two because Forseti is basically the judge of Valhalla and that intimidating look is like him trying to judge and I guess maybe even intimidate you to deliver justice
The thing I like the most in new portraits is that they look like they are from the same universe. I mean, like there was a final unifying editing, they are so correlating each other, may even they look like from some moba-game😅. The old portraits instead look like every pantheon exists in a separated universe, and even some gods from the same culture are depicted in too different ways.
I would prefer it if Aphrodite and Theia showed a lot more skin, remember that the Greeks had a different view on the topic of showing skin than us, it wasn’t inherently sexual to them.
@@momom6197 aphrodite did that also iirc. Though mostly the transformations are of those who watched her bathe etc. As it still is indecent to watch gods naked. Artemis is on a different level though.
showing bare skin was accepted, for slave women maybe. athens was very conservative by today's standards. you would get a really mixed reaction depending on where on ancient greece you were and what period, but it seems cool to think that ancient people were all free love hippies
in general I'm sympathetic to "sexualised depictions of goddess for which that is The Point" the old Aphrodite had some charm, I don't miss the old Hekate. (On the male side of things, I feel like they've gone a bit overboard on the "physiques which are impossible without being a professional bodybuilder + very heavy steroid use" lol)
I definitely agree with wanting to be able to choose between the originals, the previous retold, & the new retold portraits on an *individual* basis; that'd be the absolute *best* way to ensure everyone's happy with them.
Yeah hermes was a little weird to me and then i remembered he is a rascal character, he is a god of messengers and merchants but he is also the god of thieves so it makes sense to me "It feels like he is trying to hit on me rather than just party with me" Well... He is famous for his orgies so not too far off I like most of the new new portraits tbh. There are some that feel a little lame. But i think the lighting, poses, references and proportions are better. The animal parts/animals no longer look photoshoped in afterwards, they look properly mixed in now. Outside of some nitpicking, and not liking the new new athena, rhea, gaia oranus and prometeus, I think what we got now is a huge improvement :D
Hermes was such a rascal that he commited theft in the first few hours after he was born. stole from another god. and got away with it because he made a cool instrument for said god.(which you can boil down to little brother stealing your stuff)
@@joedalton155 tbh i hated that gaia was literally just a giant woman in the campaign lol. it looked goofy with her face being static, all units have static faces but hers was big enough to notice
One complaint about Tyr is the sword guard. It's too high medieval, whereas Viking sword guards looked more akin to a Roman gladius, IE no guard at all.
The Loki one is pretty good IMO. He has a mischevious smile, perfect for his character. He should only have a single wolf to signal his relation with Fenrir though. The second one is like... yeah, Fenrir's long lost brother, Fonror or something
Aphrodite was given as a wife to Hephaestus (as a reward, Hephaestus himself was lame in one leg and presumed to be unappealing) who then cheated on Hephaestus with Ares. Hephaestus then caught them in the act (literally, with a net) and exposed them to the other Olympians. Little fun story!
Yes, and the other Olympians actually didn't take Hephaestus' side and told him that trying to publicly humilliate Ares and Aphrodite for a wrongdoing was also a wrongdoing in of itself, if I have the story right.
I don't know if it's an option, but I hope you can toggle between the portraits for each god... but I imagine it's just an overall toggle. Since while the new portraits are definitely an overall improvement, especially for some gods in particular. There are still a few where I think the original is the best. And even like 2-3 where the 2nd option was the best.
"You can clearly tell these have been hand drawn" "I don't know how they managed to do it in such a short amount of time" It's all AI generated, they simply used the AI better.
Not gonna lie, not a single one of these look better. Them trying so hard to deny that it was painfully obvious AI slop makes it even worse. A damn shame, the game itself looks promising, but most people who grew up with AoM will agree that a big part of why the game was so iconic was thanks to the amazing art direction. They were only portraits, but choosing which god to follow felt impactful because of how great heir portraits were. All I see now is your average shitty mobile art splash art.
New Uran honestly looks like a "alone dad with dad-bot, that suddenly has to go to do his Godly duties". Wish they atleast kept that symbol on the armor. . . . His pose is unneccesary weird.
Some these needed an overhaul, but some just needed some touching up. Hecate was perfectly done in touch up department. Where as Hermes and Ouranos probably just needed a touch up instead of complete remakes.
The new art still look like AI generated, look like they just generate the background and character individually and have better promt (And they know that they can click on the fix hand check box).
You may think that Apollo looks awkward, but this is how he often was interpreted. Unlike his sister, Artemis, who on the other hand was portrayed as more 'rough' than her brother. They both supposed to have switched their traditional gender roles (mentioned in the mythological story of Niobe).
I half think the previous portraits were AI-assisted placeholders. The art style now is far more consistent; I don't think there's a beta portrait I'd take over a release one. I'm also surprised by how I'd romanticised the original portraits in my head -- they really did need an update.
Yep, probably concept art that was used to test ideas so that the illustrators have something to go off on instead of having to come up with everything themselves.
Still AI, for example with Hermes, the muscles are wrong, but at least he doesn't have 5 fingers and a thumb lol. New Athena hand is hilarious though! And Aries helmet still above his head. Looks like they simplyre-ran their prompts with the newest version of Midjourney. And Aphrodite's hands in the new version are one million percent AI and totally hilarious. They didn't even bother to Photoshop that. PMSL!
Yes!!! They're all 100% AI still! Which is actually crazy that they still try to lie to everyone. Why not say it's AI? At least people could decide for themselves if they want to support this or not. Straight out lying to its playerbase is weird to me.
I like Loki's new design, he have the chldren of Fenrir with him (Skoll and Hati), and he looks a lot more like a manipualtor, scheemer, than a warrior per se, while still keeping him buff, cause he is still is a Norse Warrior God. I just wish he had some fiery stuff going on, since he is considered one of the Norse gods of fire.
I see several issues with the newer portraits, but I think the community is too harsh to them, because some original gods where quite uninspiring and trivial ("just cool guy" type) pretty often. When the major and totally justified complaint about the AI gone, I see three main points to improve. 1. Some gods (mostly Atlantean) are just generic strongmen. "Strongman in the sky", "Strongman in the night sky"... Meh. But it was their issue from the start. Anyway, since the portraits are reimagined, they should pay attention. 2. Several works have too different style. Marvel Oceanus and JoJo Helios are the most picturesque examples. 3. Some gods have an idea and a nice style, but went to the weird direction. For example, Aphrodite is less sexualized, but Gaya (who's an abstract Mother Earth figure) is more. What?
@@ChillyEmpire That's not even the weirdest. I still don't understand what's their idea with Forseti. Forseti is a god of justice, fair judgement and negotiation, who "stills all strives" in the best court in his "palace of gold and silver". The initial portrait was very bland, but still captured the idea of the deity a bit. The current one is... just what?
I love most of the new god portraits. I personally am a bit disappointed that the symbol on Oranos's armor was removed for some reason. Does anyone know what that symbol means? I can't find any information about it.
So the dove is Aphrodite's bird. Just like the Owl for Athena and the peacock for Here. (Though I feel it's still weird the peacock cape they gave Here, like she cares a lot for animals in mythology, so it comes across as someone who would be fine with unfeathering her own bird, which is kinda weird. Like potraying Bastet in cat-furs. It just comes across weirdly.) For anyone who don't know, the only reason Here is married to Zeus is because he disguised himself as a wounded bird, so she took him into her room to mend his wings, for him to then do his thing, and since she's the goddess of marriage she kind of had to marry the son of a B. Either way I would've rather they embroidered the feathers or something, the other thing makes it seem more like she killed the birds to get the cape.
@ChillyEmpire that was the coolest thing in AoM for me when it first released. My kid ass was getting so pumped!!! Also troops in original were shouting when attacking on Fortress, citadel or town center, that also doesn't exist.
Don't they really!? I remember when you ordered a sizeable army to siege a town center or a fortress they would let out a big warcry as the battle music started. If this doesn't happen anymore in Retold I'm kinda disappointed.
I wish his turret had a more traditional design. I love turrets in games, but I'm not a fan of his ball-ring turret. Not to mention, they look like they could move, almost like drones. It would be better if they had a more grounded and stationary design
35:55 "Cronus" who is shown in the game and "Chronos" whose name you speak of are two different entities. Cronus is the King of the Titans and Father of the Gods. Chronos is time itself personified; he's a primordial deity that existed before the Titans. They usually represent an aspect or grand force of the universe, like Nyx (Night).
Athena is great, the previous art depicted her like some sort of war goddess, which is true in a sense of course, but really she is also the Goddess of wisdom and craft and the new one is much more fitting for that.
This AI/LoL slop sucks even more when you know previous AoE developer teams had Craig Mullins do some incredible concept art and illustrations for AoE DE, II:DE, III and IV.
New loki looks amazimg The wolf are refences to fenrir children who will eat the sun and moon during ranknarok And of course Him having a fuckimg smug grin is perfect
Yeaaah I don't know about all of that, I'm cautiously optimistic. Sure most of the new ones look greatly better and make the gods the more central part of the composition, but sometimes it REALLY feel like they kept with AI generation and simply passed through inpainting with a different art style. The Hecate one being the biggest giveaway to me: exactly the same poses, the same composition, the same expressions, but with a slightly different style. I know many talented artists are perfectly capable of transposing an art piece to another by keeping as close to the original as possible, but right there It just looks like they've been more attentive to inaccuracies such as hand positioning and finger count and could easily have edited them out with inpainting. In the end it still kinda feels like AI generated stuff to me, admitedly with a better model.
Mostly not a fan of all the gods being buff, but one of the gods it makes absolute sense for is Atlas. Also so much of this art still looks super AI-generated and I don't like it if this is the future for artists. Edit: 34:26 WHAT'S WRONG WITH HYPERION'S LEFT PINKY FINGER?!
They’re better than the previous new ones for the most part, but I really hope there’s an option for the original portraits, or at least an upscaled version of the originals.
I just sat through 39 minutes of my childhood getting butchered. Though the newest Bastet portrait was definitely 10/10. But totally heartbroken at the newest Apollo portrait, how could they do this to my boy?! His original design was my homosexual awakening T_T
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
"Atlas's thighs! This man does not skip leg day!"
Well yeah, he's eternally deadlifting the fuckin' firmament!"
Ackshually ☝🏽🤓 Atlas would be technically squatting the firmament not deadlifting
@@lifelessuser99shut up gymbro
I was hoping he would look less human and have 4 or 6 arms, like its GoW version
he looks like he's going to throw that planet at me hot damn, and his face looks like Eugenio Derbez
Always on the grind...literally
There's no "pre-lame" Hephaistos, he got that way at birth when his mother dropped him down a mountain Heihachi Mishima style.
in b4 Hephaestus's picture is in utero
I've always heard the version that he was trying to get between his parents during a fight, protecting Hera, and Zeus threw him down the mountain. He would have had to be able to walk at least for that version of events
@@Jallorn There are many versions of the story. The one i know is that Hera pushed him off olympus because he was "too ugly", he became lame because of the injuries and olympus married Aphrodite to him as compensation.
The new heimdall is like he denied you to cross the bifrost but you pulled out two mugs of beers to share with him.
LOLL so true
Greek here, Atlas holds the sky, not the world, it's a common mistake.
I have always seen it as atlas punishment was to split the lovers, gaia and ouranos from eachother
@@Emiltat Not that the Sky could love given that Kronos castrated him.
Atlas shrugged at this comment
It is said in his story inside the game, but take the art as a representation.
That means he's technically doing a handstand here.
Aphrodite has a dove because they're a symbol of love, they mate with 1 partner for life and have an extensive courting ritual. That's also why they get used during some weddings.
Of course! She's the goddess of love!
But she got covered up! Don't spend your hard earn money on that trash remake
Doesn't it also have anything to do with her god power in-game?
@@wampyrelli she turns people into pigs, I don't see a connection with doves
@@JozsefPocsi quite literally every aspect is remastered beautifully and if you owned the original on steam you get a discount AND the game is 30 euros base, stop crying, it's a great remaster
The egyptian portraits Absolutely destroy all the older portraits
New catgirl is BAD-ASS
The two wolves are Hati and Skoll, Children of fenrir. They are said to chase sun and moon and eventually catch up and eat them during Ragnarok. Loki in the norse legend is said to escape his imprisonment during Ragnarok.
Guy talks like he's a cathedratic of sorts. "IF I don't know it or can't Google it, it doesn't exist. LoL
I think the biggest problem with the art is that every piece feels like it was done by a different artist with a different style. The original all had the same style and therefore felt more cohesive. The new ones are all over the place, especially quality wise, some of the artists are just not performing well enough here compared to some of the others on the team it feels like
The "different artists" is likely because it was a last-minute decision due to backlash against the AI version. Lacking time, they had to choose between shipping the AI version, or split the work between many artist.
Honestly, I would not have hated "1 artist/style per civilisation", but this is too heterogeneous for my taste.
Did they have all the same style? Because I remember certain god portraits being of differing quality to others
@@poyloos4834 There are definitely some very different styles even in the originals and huge changes in quality
I think that is actually the strength of the manmade Art. If you compare all the AI Art to one another they all look the same, especially the facial expressions. In comparision the man made stuff looks different every time. The AI ones are just "better" or "worse" in comparision to the manmade Art, not each other.
For me it is the opposite, different artists can bring different energy or points of view for the same idea.
And rush but inconsistent art styles is better that homogenous slop (old Zeus use to have abs in it's abds, it was ridiculous)
Bastet looks fucking awesome. And something worth pointing out is that they switched the generic cat head with an actual Egyptian cat's head. Huge improvement that seems obvious now that I'm saying it.
I think the idea was that it was a sand cat.
the generic cat is actually an African/Egyptian cat
she thicc
@@Stonehengoo he really thought that sphinx cat breed was bred in ancient egypt lol...
You know? Atlas being angry is not off at all.
He is not holding the skies willingly, it is a punishment by Zeus, and it is f-ing heavy.
He even tried to trick Heracles (Hercules) to hold it and keep it, but Heracles tricks him back.
They need to STOP representing Gaia as a Lady Groot. There are several contemporaneous depictions of her and she looks like a regular Greek woman with curly hair and a white dress. She was the PERSONIFICATION of the Earth, emphasis on PERSON. She was never meant to look like a Dryad or something.
At least they didn't make Hades look like Satan which many media do... :( Also would have been better if Chronos was also more human-like than looking like a stone golem but oh well.
I guess the issue is that they went completely with like how they look a bit in-game in their story. Through Prometheus doesnt look like a dude on fire like he does in the campaign. A weird decision for sure, her original looks were okay.
Just a quick correction but Kronos is not the Titan of time, he is often confused with Chronos. Although the confusion somewhat existed during Antiquity already (mostly in the later parts) due to their similar names, it's mostly a Renaissance and onward mistake.
Though I guess the game didn't know about that either since they gave him some time related power.
Hades 2 also makes him Titan of time
Wait. What the fuck? For real? I had no idea.
@@ChillyEmpireNeither did I. But after some googling it seems that they were originally separate entities, but because their names and characteristics are so close even in Ancient times people were confusing/conflating them and arguing they were the same being.
Yeah Kronos or Cronus, is a deity of harvest and seasons.
@@ChillyEmpire yeah Cronus/Κρόνος (Zeus Father who is usually associated with the Harvest & wields a Sickle) & Chronos/Χρόνος (Primordial of Time) are two separate entities.
Don't really understand Chilly's criticism about some Greek gods looking too perfect/beautiful. Well, other than Hephaestus. "Lorewise"/"Mythwise" that's exactly what they should look like. Olympic deities are famous for it.
@@horium2501 I agree. They’re supposed to be unrealistically beautiful
ChillyEmpire lives in the USA, their view of the world is shaped by a feminist agenda
The issue is that all look like gyms bros, but that doesn't make sense for several ones like Hephaestus and Dionisius. In other cases he says perfect as in symmetrical, like bad IA generated with Hera's face.
The "perfect/beautiful" can be done in different ways and I think what he meant is that too many are as such in the "sexy" sense, which doesn't feel like that fits all of God's themes and stuff. Like for example, if God is supposed to be an old man to represent age and wisdom, then making him look like a super model just feels odd. In that case the "perfect/beautiful" would be him being a perfect visage of an elderly person and the beauty behind that. Hopefully you get what I'm trying to get across.
@@FerPaleta They don't just look like gym bros, they look like they're on steroids. The idealistic depictions of the Greek gods from ancient work portray them as mostly extremely lean and muscular, not looking like balloons wrapped in skin. A lot of the god art in this looks like if Rob Liefeld tried to do a portrait of Ultimate Warrior.
Although it's a Roman sculpture, the "Statue of Jupiter" in the Hermitage museum is a surviving depiction that falls in line with most other depictions of Greek gods that I've seen stylistically, and the physique shown is more like Hermes and Apollo in the new AoM art, and they're dramatically leaner than most of the other gods in the game.
They covered up Aphrodite in the new version with full clothes when every one of us know she was a shameless 304
They made Nephthys flat again. Great. Also, I think Anubis needs to have that judging stare without looking like he is trying jump into action.
On Titans' side, Gia also should have had some motherly look. She is the freaking mother nature!
The new Anbuis art feels more appropriate for Wepwawet an Egyptian war god who was commonly depicted as an African wolf who was sometimes associated with Anubis
he has Stargate vibes
In some stories/mythology, Wepwawet and Anubis were appatently believed to be brothers, yeah.
10:28 I mean...yu-gi-oh is set partially in Egypt haha
I like that Bast's cat head is now designed to look like an Egyptian cat breed, and not a random cat like her original or Beta look. Much more on-theme and honestly pretty intimidating.
Apollo makes sense - he’s the ultimate male figure in appeal and sensuality. Apollo does that by embracing both his masculine and feminine sides.
Niobe called him too 'feminine', while his sister was supposed to be 'too rough' for a woman. So Niobe got punished by them both and by their mother, Leto.
Do you like it or do you not?
Apollo art is so beautiful 🤩
Anubis went from judging the dead to bench pressing the dead lmao
LOL
He is also a Guardian of Du'at, the egyptian afterlife....so he'd probably need to be a warrior, by necessity?
I really love the updated version of loki. It gives the appropriate trickster vibes and the wolves might be a reference to lokis shape-shifting as well as to Skalli and Hati, the two wolves who will eat sun and moon on ragnarok
About Dionysus, it's a bit plain but him being a young man is much more frequent in Ancient depictions of him.
I think they should have added a few things though, like his thyrse and maybe Silenus or some Maenads and/or animals like leopards and dolphins which are all associated with him
Honestly all he'd need is a smoking jacket and a few maenads raving in the background and he'd be a playboy.
The young look could've worked just as well if only they'd kept the goofy grape bandana
I think he looks like a buffed up Tom Holland tbh
Yeah, it honestly looks empty as hell for the god of parties and stuff. He should at least have been drinking or laying down eating a grape or something.
Behold the AI generated party boy Dionysus
personally, I wish they reverted Gaia back to a more human appearance - though they could keep the nature background.
I agree. I am much more in favor of the traditional Mother Nature depiction of her.
I love Dionysus being depicted younger... But they should have made him more twinkish and had him at a part or turning pirates into dolphins or even with his sacred animal... Something interesting for a god know to drive people insane.
Dionysus really should be chubby. It just feels right to me.
@@momom6197 You are most likely somewhat conditioned to feel like that due to most modern depictions showing him as chubby happy guy, most likely due to his association with wine and parties. While not much is actually known about dionysus, we do know from the depictions we have and the few text that he was mostly quite young and twinkish looking
Dionysus is complicated to depict outside of his old berdead party persona.
A younger one is more associated with madness and mystery, aspects of him that the majority of the lame person don't know about
I'm fairly certain that the AI portraits were just placeholders, or art references for the real portraits given how close (some of them) are to the final portraits. The reason they're all so high quality in such a short amount of time is because they weren't listening to the community, they just had these but were probably still working on them for the final release.
An egyptian god artist in the comments said they had to work weekends to get their art done in time.
I don't believe that. That's not how placeholder art in early access is done. You don't use the placeholder art for promotional material and post it to twitter.
You don't need to fix the placeholder art between playtests.
And you could just tell people hey this is placeholder art when you notice them getting upset...
14:47 now THAT'S the god of protection
They almost made my girl look like a fursona😭😭😭
So glad they changed her
Between new Bast and new Anubis, they heavily went with full anthro/furryism, lol. Anubis even has digi legs.
@@cosmicfox5671 good.
UwU im okay with this
2@@ExValeFor
The fact that they try to claim that the center Ares pic isn't AI generated when the shadows and his face have zero consistency with the rest of the image gave me a sad chuckle. Even the new images look horrid.
I like the old original ones from extended edition because they feel like they are straight out of myth and legends or old paintings
Hades keys could be a reference on how the underworld is depicted in Titans Quest? Like Hades being the actual warden of a prison with souls trapped in cages
About what you asked in regards to Loki, Loki is often named as "The Father of The Wolf" is one of his many aliases such as "shapeshifter" or "serpent kin"
Interesting to see the new new God portraits. Apollo is even more gorgeous! And Aphrodite just gets more and more clothed with each iteration lol. Most of them are better though for some, like Hera, Oranos, Thea and most of the Norse gods, I preferred the beta portraits. I hope we'll be able to switch between the old and new portraits on an individual basis. Because for some gods I prefer the newer ones and for some I prefer the old. Nothing will ever beat OG Zeus, Isis, Ra and Thor for instance. Since everyone has their own taste, and we might prefer different iterations from each of the three portrait sets, I think the solution is to just let us switch between which of the three portraits we prefer for each individual god.
I would say Hades' keychain references that he holds all the wealth of the earth and has a treasury that he keeps locked.
Otherwise known as Erebus the realm of gold. Not to be confused with Erebus the primordial of Darkness.
Doves were one of aphrodite’s most common symbols in classical greek myth along with sparrows and various water fowl.
1:18 Hades' helm is known to render its wearer invisible, a gift from the elder cyclops who the brothers freed from Tartaros.
8:16 one of Aphrodite's sacred animals are doves.
For Antlanteans titans, they should lean more on eldritch/monstrous form like Kronos and Gaea since they are primordial gods
P.S. I love the new Egyptian god portraits. Also, my favorite god Hekate
Now that I think about it, Kronos is the odd one out for the 3 atlantean gods.
on the contrary. Titans were portrayed in history as more human-like. It should stay this way in the game.
No they were more human like entities. Just because they were called titans doesn't mean they were actual giants, they just were the 2nd generation of divinities.
They get confused with the giants from the Gigantomarchy which did look like how we portray Titans in media. Then again Titan or Titanic does mean big so I wouldn't mind them appearing large but not monstrous.
I think the old freya was much better :(
Indeed she was alright
Kronos Doesn't have a direct connection with the concept of time, it's a common misconception stemming from the existence of Chronos, who is the god of time in the Orphic version of Greek mythology - but the "main" myth doesn't have a single god of time, instead they had a plethora of divinities associated with all the different parts of the year, season, months, down to each hour of the day
Oh yeah, "Cronus" and "Chronos" are two entirely different Gods. The old king of gods who was usurped by Zeus vs the time that together with earth and water birthed all the gods.
Also has no Kronos Scythe, which Demeter inherits.
@@tyranidswarmlord9722 Its a sickle actually.
29:50 dude, the new Rhea looks much better, the whole picture looks like a painting, and the light works so much better. I also noticed that you have a problem with every goddess who looks pretty and slim, except for Aphrodite, like what the fuck, they are goddesses for fuck's sake, they should look like that, not be ugly and fat.
HORUS the golf player... man I laughed hard!
Did Anubis hit the Gym? He is JACKED!
15:33 i just realize that Horus god not really hold the golf club 🤣🤣🤣
23:24 - Freyja does look a bit like an aggressive Philomena Cunk, when you put it that way.
Hahahahaha
Honestly the classical had some really iconic works but also a lot of bad ones, I would say we got an overall improvement in quality but we lost the soul of those portraits. Moreover what doesn t do it for me is the fact that there is no artistic unity between the gods of the same pantheon, I find this really disturbing. (Like try to do visualize an image with all the Greek gods together, it doesn t work at all)
I feel like all the Egyptians definitely share an art style, though unfortunately, that style just screams "League of Legends" for all of them, mostly due to the way their armor is depicted.
I'd like to believe that they went with AI generated art to have a draft of what their actual designs would look like in the final game, and not to actually roll them out in the final product.
Personally I feel beta Prometheus was much better than the final Prometheus.
But they used this AI generated art in the first trailer for AoM Retold, and others promotional materials. Pretty weird to me to use so much something like art to sell a game if this art isn't going to be in the final product
@@dovahkhornettoh2355 My guess is they were testing the waters and changed it because they got backlash
The new ones are also made with AI, but I've learned to see that people don't notice if they're not used to using AI or dealing with it because they don't see the details, and even more so if you're not an artist.
@@AlexiosTheSixth Could be that they had the illustrated ones already done and waited to see fan reaction to the ai-generated ones.
@@imperius6004the cope is powerful in this one
I get that the game is rated "E" and that they have some weird issues with sexuality in America. But what was the problem with the old portrayal of Aphrodite? She is the goddess of prostitutes too, much more than of "idealized romantic love". I think some of the new illustrations have that same generic feeling that modern day MTG has
I didn't know this was being done until your video was fed to me by RUclips. I look forward to it.
The new Forseti actually fits way better than the previous two because Forseti is basically the judge of Valhalla and that intimidating look is like him trying to judge and I guess maybe even intimidate you to deliver justice
With Freya, I think they were trying to symbolize with the leg, that she's a godess of both war and beauty...
Is it possible the previous Retold versions were placeholders made with less effort plus AI, before the new ones came out?
The thing I like the most in new portraits is that they look like they are from the same universe. I mean, like there was a final unifying editing, they are so correlating each other, may even they look like from some moba-game😅.
The old portraits instead look like every pantheon exists in a separated universe, and even some gods from the same culture are depicted in too different ways.
I would prefer it if Aphrodite and Theia showed a lot more skin, remember that the Greeks had a different view on the topic of showing skin than us, it wasn’t inherently sexual to them.
And yet Aphrodite severely punished those that watched her. But yeah I think the dress couldve been more revealing.
@@jirdan4870 You're thinking of Artemis maybe (due to being the goddess of virginity)? I don't remember Aphrodite punishing people for looking at her.
@@momom6197 aphrodite did that also iirc. Though mostly the transformations are of those who watched her bathe etc. As it still is indecent to watch gods naked.
Artemis is on a different level though.
showing bare skin was accepted, for slave women maybe. athens was very conservative by today's standards. you would get a really mixed reaction depending on where on ancient greece you were and what period, but it seems cool to think that ancient people were all free love hippies
in general I'm sympathetic to "sexualised depictions of goddess for which that is The Point"
the old Aphrodite had some charm, I don't miss the old Hekate.
(On the male side of things, I feel like they've gone a bit overboard on the "physiques which are impossible without being a professional bodybuilder + very heavy steroid use" lol)
the 2 ghost wolfs next to Loki may and that is a HARD MAY be refransing Sköll and Hati. Fenrir's sons and Loki's grandsons
I definitely agree with wanting to be able to choose between the originals, the previous retold, & the new retold portraits on an *individual* basis; that'd be the absolute *best* way to ensure everyone's happy with them.
28:10 You though it was weird that Loki had a ghost wolf? Well, we gave him a second ghost wolf!
Yeah hermes was a little weird to me and then i remembered he is a rascal character, he is a god of messengers and merchants but he is also the god of thieves so it makes sense to me
"It feels like he is trying to hit on me rather than just party with me"
Well... He is famous for his orgies so not too far off
I like most of the new new portraits tbh. There are some that feel a little lame. But i think the lighting, poses, references and proportions are better. The animal parts/animals no longer look photoshoped in afterwards, they look properly mixed in now.
Outside of some nitpicking, and not liking the new new athena, rhea, gaia oranus and prometeus, I think what we got now is a huge improvement :D
Hermes was such a rascal that he commited theft in the first few hours after he was born. stole from another god. and got away with it because he made a cool instrument for said god.(which you can boil down to little brother stealing your stuff)
Me being me i wanna pick and choose between all three styles of portraits, for my gameplay
Wow, they reworked the reworked portraits.
I really hate that Kronos and Gaia are stuck with those monster designs because of the Campaing. They stick out so much!
Gaia never had a "monster design" in the first place, whether on her portrait or her titan form in game
@@joedalton155 tbh i hated that gaia was literally just a giant woman in the campaign lol. it looked goofy with her face being static, all units have static faces but hers was big enough to notice
10:07 I believe the word you're looking for here is M.I.L.F.
I think you've missed a detail in Poseidon's art: As he is also the god of horses, the waves behind him are shaped like horses
The new art is SOOOO much better. Glad they listened. edit: I still hate this Gaia design soooooooo much.
How can you think the new Gaia depiction is ok? 😭 she just looks so bad now
One complaint about Tyr is the sword guard. It's too high medieval, whereas Viking sword guards looked more akin to a Roman gladius, IE no guard at all.
The Loki one is pretty good IMO. He has a mischevious smile, perfect for his character. He should only have a single wolf to signal his relation with Fenrir though. The second one is like... yeah, Fenrir's long lost brother, Fonror or something
My petpeeve with Helios: the horses are chonky.
Not a fan of the new Gaia. Her previous retold looked like mother Earth. The new one makes me wanna go down to town with a tree.
@@twinsen1949 Might be his grandchildren, Skoll and Hati.
Aphrodite was given as a wife to Hephaestus (as a reward, Hephaestus himself was lame in one leg and presumed to be unappealing) who then cheated on Hephaestus with Ares. Hephaestus then caught them in the act (literally, with a net) and exposed them to the other Olympians. Little fun story!
Yes, and the other Olympians actually didn't take Hephaestus' side and told him that trying to publicly humilliate Ares and Aphrodite for a wrongdoing was also a wrongdoing in of itself, if I have the story right.
I don't know if it's an option, but I hope you can toggle between the portraits for each god... but I imagine it's just an overall toggle. Since while the new portraits are definitely an overall improvement, especially for some gods in particular. There are still a few where I think the original is the best. And even like 2-3 where the 2nd option was the best.
"You can clearly tell these have been hand drawn"
"I don't know how they managed to do it in such a short amount of time"
It's all AI generated, they simply used the AI better.
Not gonna lie, not a single one of these look better. Them trying so hard to deny that it was painfully obvious AI slop makes it even worse. A damn shame, the game itself looks promising, but most people who grew up with AoM will agree that a big part of why the game was so iconic was thanks to the amazing art direction. They were only portraits, but choosing which god to follow felt impactful because of how great heir portraits were. All I see now is your average shitty mobile art splash art.
Other devs should take notes. This is how you use feedback!
man unlocked my buried memory of seeing evanescence in OG skadi
New Uran honestly looks like a "alone dad with dad-bot, that suddenly has to go to do his Godly duties". Wish they atleast kept that symbol on the armor.
.
.
.
His pose is unneccesary weird.
Also, the fixation on the eyes has been comically high since we grew up playing AoM with single pixels that made up the eyes.
Thinking back, I do believe doves were seen as SOMETHING of aprhordite, I just don't remember what.
Some these needed an overhaul, but some just needed some touching up. Hecate was perfectly done in touch up department. Where as Hermes and Ouranos probably just needed a touch up instead of complete remakes.
The new art still look like AI generated, look like they just generate the background and character individually and have better promt (And they know that they can click on the fix hand check box).
Egyptians gods are very nicely done
You may think that Apollo looks awkward, but this is how he often was interpreted. Unlike his sister, Artemis, who on the other hand was portrayed as more 'rough' than her brother. They both supposed to have switched their traditional gender roles (mentioned in the mythological story of Niobe).
I half think the previous portraits were AI-assisted placeholders. The art style now is far more consistent; I don't think there's a beta portrait I'd take over a release one. I'm also surprised by how I'd romanticised the original portraits in my head -- they really did need an update.
Yep, probably concept art that was used to test ideas so that the illustrators have something to go off on instead of having to come up with everything themselves.
the theory sounds plausible when considering the minimal adaptation of Hekate's portrait, which already had a 10/10 composition
Still AI, for example with Hermes, the muscles are wrong, but at least he doesn't have 5 fingers and a thumb lol. New Athena hand is hilarious though! And Aries helmet still above his head. Looks like they simplyre-ran their prompts with the newest version of Midjourney. And Aphrodite's hands in the new version are one million percent AI and totally hilarious. They didn't even bother to Photoshop that. PMSL!
Yes!!! They're all 100% AI still! Which is actually crazy that they still try to lie to everyone. Why not say it's AI? At least people could decide for themselves if they want to support this or not. Straight out lying to its playerbase is weird to me.
I like Loki's new design, he have the chldren of Fenrir with him (Skoll and Hati), and he looks a lot more like a manipualtor, scheemer, than a warrior per se, while still keeping him buff, cause he is still is a Norse Warrior God. I just wish he had some fiery stuff going on, since he is considered one of the Norse gods of fire.
Please do a review of the reworked units compared to the originals.
In heimdall's new one you can even crearly see the multi-colour of his eyes.
they got better ai prompt writer
I see several issues with the newer portraits, but I think the community is too harsh to them, because some original gods where quite uninspiring and trivial ("just cool guy" type) pretty often.
When the major and totally justified complaint about the AI gone, I see three main points to improve.
1. Some gods (mostly Atlantean) are just generic strongmen. "Strongman in the sky", "Strongman in the night sky"... Meh. But it was their issue from the start. Anyway, since the portraits are reimagined, they should pay attention.
2. Several works have too different style. Marvel Oceanus and JoJo Helios are the most picturesque examples.
3. Some gods have an idea and a nice style, but went to the weird direction. For example, Aphrodite is less sexualized, but Gaya (who's an abstract Mother Earth figure) is more. What?
The tree is too sexy?
@@TheEneccayes tree too sexy
@@ChillyEmpire That's not even the weirdest. I still don't understand what's their idea with Forseti. Forseti is a god of justice, fair judgement and negotiation, who "stills all strives" in the best court in his "palace of gold and silver". The initial portrait was very bland, but still captured the idea of the deity a bit. The current one is... just what?
@@Artem-yk7ig Yea it's a bit weird
And it's odd, because if any of the gods or goddesses should have been overly sexualized, it's Aphrodite.
The new Bast is making me go wild! I love it!!!
I love most of the new god portraits. I personally am a bit disappointed that the symbol on Oranos's armor was removed for some reason. Does anyone know what that symbol means? I can't find any information about it.
Apollo's first one was better. I hope they change him back
So the dove is Aphrodite's bird. Just like the Owl for Athena and the peacock for Here. (Though I feel it's still weird the peacock cape they gave Here, like she cares a lot for animals in mythology, so it comes across as someone who would be fine with unfeathering her own bird, which is kinda weird. Like potraying Bastet in cat-furs. It just comes across weirdly.)
For anyone who don't know, the only reason Here is married to Zeus is because he disguised himself as a wounded bird, so she took him into her room to mend his wings, for him to then do his thing, and since she's the goddess of marriage she kind of had to marry the son of a B. Either way I would've rather they embroidered the feathers or something, the other thing makes it seem more like she killed the birds to get the cape.
Game 1/10
Reason: When Arkantos does the warcry the troops around him don't warcry as well anymore
Oh what woah how did you even notice that
@ChillyEmpire that was the coolest thing in AoM for me when it first released. My kid ass was getting so pumped!!! Also troops in original were shouting when attacking on Fortress, citadel or town center, that also doesn't exist.
Don't they really!? I remember when you ordered a sizeable army to siege a town center or a fortress they would let out a big warcry as the battle music started. If this doesn't happen anymore in Retold I'm kinda disappointed.
And the women got downgraded as well.
@@JozsefPocsi women? What do you mean?
28:36 That's Hati and Skoll. Hati tries to eat the moon and Skool tries to eat the sun.
They chase them around the world, making the day/night cycle.
I wish his turret had a more traditional design. I love turrets in games, but I'm not a fan of his ball-ring turret. Not to mention, they look like they could move, almost like drones. It would be better if they had a more grounded and stationary design
35:55 "Cronus" who is shown in the game and "Chronos" whose name you speak of are two different entities.
Cronus is the King of the Titans and Father of the Gods. Chronos is time itself personified; he's a primordial deity that existed before the Titans. They usually represent an aspect or grand force of the universe, like Nyx (Night).
Athena is great, the previous art depicted her like some sort of war goddess, which is true in a sense of course, but really she is also the Goddess of wisdom and craft and the new one is much more fitting for that.
This AI/LoL slop sucks even more when you know previous AoE developer teams had Craig Mullins do some incredible concept art and illustrations for AoE DE, II:DE, III and IV.
Old art: Bad AI art.
New art: better AI art.
individual portrait selection would be great feature
New loki looks amazimg
The wolf are refences to fenrir children who will eat the sun and moon during ranknarok
And of course
Him having a fuckimg smug grin is perfect
"Don't know how they managed to do this in such a short time"
They just reran the same prompts just put "high definition" at the end
😂
Yeaaah I don't know about all of that, I'm cautiously optimistic. Sure most of the new ones look greatly better and make the gods the more central part of the composition, but sometimes it REALLY feel like they kept with AI generation and simply passed through inpainting with a different art style. The Hecate one being the biggest giveaway to me: exactly the same poses, the same composition, the same expressions, but with a slightly different style. I know many talented artists are perfectly capable of transposing an art piece to another by keeping as close to the original as possible, but right there It just looks like they've been more attentive to inaccuracies such as hand positioning and finger count and could easily have edited them out with inpainting. In the end it still kinda feels like AI generated stuff to me, admitedly with a better model.
Prometheus's stare is so intense cause the guy knows he's about to spend eternity suffering but is still willing to sacrifice for us.
Mostly not a fan of all the gods being buff, but one of the gods it makes absolute sense for is Atlas. Also so much of this art still looks super AI-generated and I don't like it if this is the future for artists.
Edit: 34:26 WHAT'S WRONG WITH HYPERION'S LEFT PINKY FINGER?!
22:20 I'd prefer if he actually held a Viking Sword (very short hilt) rather than a later medieval arming sword
They’re better than the previous new ones for the most part, but I really hope there’s an option for the original portraits, or at least an upscaled version of the originals.
A fat hairy dude with a prosthetic leg in a wheelchair (idk for what since the prosthetic is mechanical) is a better representation for hephestus?
lol
Just saying it’s creative mate. All Hades gods have an original look.
I just sat through 39 minutes of my childhood getting butchered.
Though the newest Bastet portrait was definitely 10/10. But totally heartbroken at the newest Apollo portrait, how could they do this to my boy?! His original design was my homosexual awakening T_T