The new grpahics look great, btw!

Hm, I always run highest graphics settings myself, so I find this odd ... arh well, thats why we have options!

~ K

IMO, it looks like you guys might have went a bit overboard with sharpening filters...

Certainly on some things (that deserves focus like units/buildings), it does look better. But on other things, like trees and ground, it doesn't seem that great (and I'm not sure they deserve the detail). I much prefer the blurry lush green trees of FE to the super sharp forest of LH especially when it's right next to the fallen trees. The two just looks strangely out of place. I think the mountains also fall into this category as well (although the textures are certainly better)... there's no need to see every ridge line... it just seems out of place from the rest of the landscape. Also, on the topic of the mountains... maybe the blending at the base deserves a bit more work... everything near the mountains is looking really brown and you may recall what many people say about that in WOM.

The lack of any ground covering also makes the ground looks ... well... really empty. I understand the need for performance, but maybe this needs to be an optional thing for those who can handle it. On larger map with sparce resources... it's going to look very bland.

The rivers definitely looks better without the ridges... but no more river head? Not so sure about that.

My personal wish: I just wish the map wasn't so... flat. A bit more realistic topology would make things look a lot better. For example, hills should be... hills (areas where the terrain height differs/changes), not just some bumps on the map (seems like something from decades ago)... etc. I'm a bit surprised that you guys haven't done it with such a powerful terrain deformation system already in place.

I agree with the trees. They look a bit like... icons instead of trees.

I had to turn off all special effects in fallen enchantress because game was too blurred for me and caused excessive strain on eyes. Now it looks like with LH there wont be problem anymore

Overall it looks better because its much clearer.

This game needs more robots.

And steam tanks... can never go wrong with some steam-punk.
(Or "Steam-Punkers"... )

~ Kongdej

Well they already have the art assets from the GC2 news robots, so that should be fairly easy to implement.

You know, I always loved the idea of an ancient race of robots who were created by some ancient civilization now long destroyed, but the few immortal robots linger on.  Old JRPG games like 7th Saga and Shinning Force had some really cool examples.  Then I think I hated the idea after the D&D Eberon campaign setting, looked stupid then.  But then again, there are many things that one brand of fiction does that I think is really cool, then I see the D&D version and think...lame.  Shadowrun vs d20 Urban Arcana is one too...Shadowrun version = awesome, d20 version = lame.

I see what you mean about the brown around the mountains.  Frankly, I think if you can walk on it, it should be the color of the grass.

You're thinking about the screenshot like it's a piece of art.  That's fine, but keep in mind that LH is not art, it's a game.  And the first consideration has to be that it's playable as a game.

The trees and mountains look like icons because they are icons.  The icons describe their tile in an intuitive way.  The old design obfuscated the borders between tiles, and it made some pretty pictures, but it resulted in a decrease of reliable information to the user.

Adding more topography to the game would be a beautiful change, but likely brings up whole new problems in because the user is using a 2D plane to interact in a 3D space.  So now, behind your pretty map is an arduous struggle for the developer as he tries to prevent user's clicks from going astray.

There's already too much "Steam" in the game.

Well, the only thing I hope is worked on is the stretches texture of the mountain actually, someone pointed it out, and now I cannot "Un-see" it...
I also do hope I am able to re-activate ground cover... without ground cover, the earth does look rather leathery.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

You guys need, need, need to revisit the races in FE and the world of FE. 

You're making some serious improvements and I really think that this will go a long way towards righting the few "wrongs" with FE, but without true racial uniqueness, it still feels like it falls....short. Give us a unique twist on Orcs, hobbits, dwarves, lizard people, etc. FE suffers for this. 

Please do something about this. 

The biggest difference I notice is that the hazy bloom is gone from the second image which allows things to "pop".

... Oh don't bring that in here to a heartless joke...
By no means did I mean steam-punk seriously as it is not part of the current atmosphere.

~ K