Every single screen was made from a pre-rendered environment then touched up in Photoshop. The first bit gives the backgrounds their weighty, physical geometry. The second bit gives them their detail, both grime and polish.
It's a trade-off. Realtime requires lower polycounts and modular assets, but nothing that can't be made beautiful with AA, shaders and clever design. Conversely you get parallax, dynamic lighting, smooth scrolling, animation… If you want the most seamless, plausible and inhabited environments in the game (which we do), 3D is the only sensible choice.
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