An interesting mod idea would imho be to apply cel - like effect to the background objects (sky is left as is, but non-use objects become entirely black, while characters become white/grey'ish with just very few bits of color and spells become tinted complementary to that effect (without additive blending, for one)
Essentially we could reduce the game to clean contrasts and strong (few) fitting colors with a fake simple-shade cel kind of effect while toning down everything that would glow (we obviously do not want glow in that mod ,p). Not sure whether it would be playable or doable (particularly redoing the spells not to glow), but I'd guess done right it might look very nice. Obviously LIMBO inspired idea, yet it seems like it could be potentially "easy" to do.
In a sense, what I am saying is to reduce the detail down to the bare basics of colors and shapes, contrasts and strong artsy feel.
Anyone feel like mocking that up?
By the way, since original post is about the aesthetics i feel like this discussion is drifting in a wrong way, just doing smart-blurring does not change the aesthetics as much as it changes the look. But it's still the same aesthetic when you get down to it. Hence why my idea is maybe a bit "drastic" to some, but it'd likely be very aesthetic indeed when done right ;P
I really like the visual style, actually; I think it fits together nicely. I'd call it an improvement on Tidalis.
I disagree on that, Tidalis is over all the only game so far that had an entirely COMPLETE art-style that flowed together nicely. Many of the scenes in Tidalis are even quite beautiful thanks to dynamic animation of elements everywhere. Something that particularly the grass in AVWW could benefit greatly from, it would also make the grass very distracting... ;p
