Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Rainbow Brite]]''

* The [[Disney Princess|Disney princesses]].

** For purposes of illustration only. They rarely bathe. It doesn't look it, but clean was easier to draw.

* Most [[Pixar]] movies, until the first half of ''[[WALL-E]]'', tended towards the clean end (it helps that "clean" is generally easier to do in CG).

** More like {{spoiler|The Sliding Scale of [[Tastes Like Diabetes]] and [[Nightmare Fuel]].}}

** {{spoiler|And that is ''some'' sliding scale.}}

* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' CD has this as its theme. The present day levels for the most part are usually in the middle when it is bright and shiny. The past levels are the same way, just more primitive. If you're playing the good future levels, they are really bright and shiny. Though if you're playing in the bad future(the one ruled by Dr. Robotnik's/Eggman's)it is total hell. Everything's got a dark brown, rusty and muddy look, the skies have a crimson/purple look, the oceans are polluted, and so on. Those futures are so bad that even the Doc's robots are miserable and broken down. Yes it's just that bad.

* ''[[Starcraft]]'' features a war between the shiny Protoss, the gritty Terrans, and the even grittier Zerg.

* Ditto for ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines]]''. The LaCroix Tower explicitly stands out of the generally bleak and tarnished surroundings. As a matter of fact, the Downtown LA map where the Tower is situated features this in spades: the western half of the map features an [[Abandoned Hospital]], an awful lot of dingy-looking buildings and houses, a crackhouse, the Last Round bar, a derelict warehouse, and an underpass used by the local vagrants as shelter. The eastern half of the map, while still somewhat gritty, features the Confession Club (which used to be a cathedral), the Skyline Apartment Building, and the decidedly upmarket Empire Hotel.

* In one extent or another this is case in most of the strategy games, with the "good" fraction having shiny, or at least well-structured and regularly-shapped buildings while those of the "bad" one tend to be gritty, ominous-looking and/or battered or even cobbled together. The biggest offenders are, of course, Orcs (in ''[[Dawn of War]]'' they DO cobble their buildings together from junk), GDI/NOD are more into the Ordinary vs Ominous territory, and in ''[[Dark Reign 2]]'' the contrast was laid out with the subtlety of a battering ram: JDA, the global law-enforcers, have silvery high-tech premises and their enemies Sprawlers huddle in rusty and angular dwellings.

* ''[[Fallout]]'' contrasts the shininess of the Vaults and Brotherhood of Steel-related locations with the ultra-gritty Wasteland. In [[Fallout 1|the first game]] it is worth noting that the shinier a location, the more likely it was to be ultimately evil, while the gritter-looking places and people were usually mostly harmless. [[Fallout 2]] is ''much'' shinier than the original, with far more built-up cities and far more slick gangsters in the form of mafia-style families and even a porn cinema, while [[Fallout 3]] is more gritty, like the first game.

* ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' series varies it's locales quite a bit, from [[Shown Their Work|elaborately modeled]] palaces, churches, mosques and temples all the way to the run-down and dirty districts of the poor. In the second game, the protagonist can lift the town of Monteriggioni from [[The Dung Ages]] by investing in renovations and [[Fisher King|art]]. However, the shiniest and prettiest parts are invariably the "temples" and vaults of [[Precursors|Those Who Came Before.]]