Paladins and First Person Shooter Aesthetics

I’ve been playing a lot of Paladin’s lately and it’s had me thinking. It’s a good game with strong mechanics, an excellent game feel, and addictive fast paced gameplay. I’ve had a lot of fun. Overwatch comparisons aside, it’s probably worth your time.

I’ve played the game with friends and while all of them enjoyed themselves, several mentioned that the visual style of the game was off putting. So off putting as to prevent them from playing more than a few round.

And I get that, the game looks like World of Warcraft with off brand pixar characters. I had a similar first impression – It’s silly, childish and not realistic looking at all.

But then I remembered a few years back when I was trying to get a competitive first person shooter to play with my 9 year old brother. We played team fortress 2 and I wanted something else with great fps mechanics that we could play online. The game also had to pass the mom test by not having a lot of realistic looking violence.
And that’s when I noticed that almost every competitive online shooter was violent, bloody and debatably not kid friendly. And I don’t mean most games, I mean nearly all of them. If they were not drenched in blood and gore, they had realistic graphics, real life weapons, and violence that felt genuine.