[2021] The Journey to Finding Old School - A thorough analysis of the “Old School” art style as well as the current and historical challenges of catching that Runescape magic

Hi there! I rarely appear on reddit to make posts, but as this fall right into my alley I felt obligated to at the very least acknowledge your analysis.

First off, well done! There are some good points made in your very long doc (I did not read it all to be frank).

The Old School Art style is very difficult to understand and explain yes. It has been my focus in the past year to deep dive in and figure out. I've come to roadblocks, done 180's midway through, taken a complete different direction to it until I have come to some conclusions.

The style of Old School is created by the hands of many different inputs, in the very early ages many of the art assets where in fact done by content developers.

Imagine this – You have planned to do a painting, you have not really decided the motif yet, but you are thinking it should be a medieval fantasy castle on a grass plain. Now you leave that painting not even half finished. In fact, you the person who started this painting do not have time to finish it any longer, so you hand it over to the person next to you who is very eager to dip their fingers in paint. This person comes along and has a completely different taste for art, but also does not have time to finish the painting and hands it over to the next person. Fast forward about 20 years. The painting is not done yet. Because you realize that the canvas has ever grown and for every growth there has been new takes on the visual style.

This kind of organic approach of visualising the world of Gielinor is something that I call an Eclectic style. The world of Old School RuneScape is Eclectic and we the developers love and are proud of the visuals of Old School, and we know that our fans love it too.

These conclusions are put together into a “Vision”, one that I have gained much support from the Art Team but most importantly one that I believe the community will support as well.

We have plans to reveal this in some streams in the near future™. I cannot tell you much about it, but I can tell you this. We are doing our best to retain the DNA of Old School, we have no ambitions to become something that does not ‘feel’ Old School.

Stay tuned for some awesome stuff!

Mod Deagle

Responded :)