POTENTIAL HOT TAKES - I'm presenting my case in defense of the New DoG resprite
Firstly I want to say that especially in this case when it comes to art and sprites, our opinions can be very subjective so keep that in mind. You have a right to dislike or like the sprite just as much as I have the right to love it and want to defend it. With that out of the way, in this post I will be tackling various arguments against the new sprite, I am completely open to any new arguments in the comments as long as they are sensical and thought out.
For context and reference, here are the current two and the WIP versions of the two future DoG sprites by HeartPlusUp (Not to scale)
Current:
WIP Resprites:
Phase 1 (What we can see of it)
With that out of the way, let's start presenting the arguments and my responses to them shall we.
"The new sprite doesn't feel like Terraria, there's too many pixels and the resolution is too high"
This argument states that the sprites don't match the simplistic pixelized style of classic Terraria or even most of Calamity for that matter
- Let's take the Empress of Light, Leviathan and Ares as an example of relatively new and large sprites
Defense:
Personally i don't understand why now the community thinks the DoG is too high res because looking at these, Leviathan is almost as detailed and high res as the DoG yet it was received well
Here's my biggest piece of evidence, https://x.com/i/status/1688985631504945153 this is a planned resprite of the Moon Lord himself and dare I say it's as detailed as the DoG, if soon this becomes the standard of Terraria itself soon than the DoG won't feel out of place.
Let's look at Infernum for a second, now this is where I start to get confused, why did the community just now collectively decide that the DoG was "not Terraria-like" if Infernum has been pulling cool shit like THIS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S4hpDtkHgoand and not getting the slightest bit of criticism for being "not Terraria-like" for so long (Not saying that it's bad, in fact it's one of my favorite boss fights in Terraria), then why is the DoG being criticised now? And to this some may argue, "That fight used shaders and effects, there is big difference between high quality in that aspect and in sprites" and to that i say, if the sole reason for the argument is that "it's not Terraria's style" than it doesn't matter if it's caused by sprites or shaders, if it doesn't feel like Terraria then it doesn't, that's all there is to it, which is why it doesn't make sense to me why the DoG is getting criticized because of it so much.
"The body segments seem bland"
The answer to this one is simple the sprite is still a WIP and until it's ingame we won't know how detailed it is
Even setting that aside, the resprite's segments still to me look more detailed than the old one's phase 2 which quite frankly had a boring repetitive pattern whereas the new one seems more interesting
The only exception i see to this is the tail segment where i did prefer the old one in which there was a galaxy on the tail, but again, it's WIP, I'm guessing the tail will be improved over time.
"The first phase looks weird"
Another argument is that the sprite for the first phase of the DoG resprite looks grotesque or off just because it's plain skin.
Personally i love this sprite to death because in my opinion it finally solved a very big flaw for me with all the previous DoG sprites. Canonically, once the DoG is weakened after getting too cocky and fighting without it's armor, it goes back to it's dimension, suits up, and comes back stronger than ever. However, to me this always felt badly executed as the first and second phases never had too much of a difference, if anything, it was just a little more armor and slightly bigger body. But the new sprites are very different, they clearly show the huge difference in the DoG's demeanor which i always thought was never done to justice.
Some also say that the bony structure of the body segments looks weird. Now this I actually agree with, the body looks very bland and boring but there's reason that the main focus was on the head in the leaks we got, I'm willing to bet that the tail and body segments of the first phase are still far from done.
With all that's been said, now I'll just give you a few reasons why you SHOULD like the new sprites
Gave the DoG a cool ass battle scar
Actually looks like and does justice to the Tale of A Cruel World Album's picture
Put's emphasis on the name "Devourer of Gods"
And perhaps most importantly, IT GIVES UNIVERSAL COLLAPSE THE HYPE AND INTENSITY THAT IT DESERVES
The end :)