Please don't make the game dark so it is impossible to see remember you can be dreary without being pitch black
I wouldn't use Doom 3 as a good example in pointing out the trend for muddy games tied to realism, I'd call it a good example of a reclusive highly talented programmer but very bad studio lead, trying to turn out a really nice tech demo of a game engine as a video game while attempting to make it not look like a tech demo of a game engine by having someone write a plot for it and hiring ex-modders as map designers. I instead blame it on trying to tie realism to aging hardware like the Xbox 360 and PS3. It's a lot easier to compress graphics with a screen set to a max resolution of 720p with tied in low resolution textures when most shades were various degrees of mono dull with mono mud. Textures were monotised because compression can result in smaller files, meaning less space taken up on the shockingly old RAM limits they set themselves to, remember the PS3 and Xbox 360 only have 256MBs of Graphics RAM to work with. Which is laughable by today's standards even for a budget PC (PC games have a minimal standard of 512MBs and recommended 1GB, most GPUs now operate with 1.5GBs). Unfortunately thanks to the wide sales of games which compressed everything down to a pinhole also being very successful games. People read too much into this and naturally thought "well obviously it's the graphics and the look" rather than the "popularity and gameplay" which was why people bought these games, so let's all do this! I mostly blame Silent Hill, Call of Duty for trying to do realism with limited hardware to do it with, as a result they had to use textures and environments which could be heavily compressed and easily render-able and (don't hurt me) the edgy "atmospheric" hip games of the previous 2 generations of consoles, where developers tried to artsy games which whereby the environment itself induced an emotional and psychological effect on the player, such as Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, Ico, Shadows of the Colossus, Silent Hill 1 and 2, etc. All of which were successful, all of which had their graphics done in a way which was dark, atmospheric and gritty not because it sold games, but because it was relevant to the message given by the developers and the feelings they wanted the player to feel playing it. These became unintentional trend setters, people stopped doing it because "they had to" and started doing because they thought "because it sold." Just like the Brown/Blue/Orange colour mix which went into extreme popularity because "marketing analysts" said it got peoples attention and higher ratings or sold more tickets etc. It's downright stupid. Oh and for the record all the BROWNS and GREYS in Space Marine was due to the settings, it was a Forge World, so expect a lot of concrete and metal and on top of that a Forge World on a Desert planet. So yes lot's of reds and browns; but with that said there was plenty of examples of changes of overall ambient colours. At night the natural lighting changed from being a pigment of overwhelming orange everywhere to being a pigment of light blue and the sky was a dark blue with stars. It wasn't bleak or black at all... With that said, I saw very little green outside of ork hides. Just from that screenshot, seeing green hills and omg white in the sky instead of grey!? Means that I am confident the game will have a nice wide variety of environments with different colour pallets. So that should put a lot of concerns to rest hopefully; Given if they decide to focus on that. In the 41st millenium, life is grim and dark... for the Eldar and the Imperium. But far from it for Chaos and the Orks, oh their having a ball... at their expense.
