New Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance Concept Art Gets In Touch With Its Inner Heavy Metal

Tuque Games creative art director Stefan Leblanc took to the PlayStation Blog to share some unique Dungeons & Dragons metal-inspired art. The key? Just don't care about the way the world looks, and that's a philosophy we can get behind. In the blog post, he shares never before seen Dark Alliance concept art and to him, it's every metal fan's dream. 

Leblanc shared concept art for Dark Alliance from Vincent, Victor, Stanimir, Jorge, Fred, Dimitri, and Even, and everything shown looks nothing short of gorgeous. "The concept of Dark Alliance is simple," he said. "It’s you and your friends versus this alliance between legions of monsters. The monsters really started to take on a life of their own as we developed the game. In a way, they’re the stars of the show. They’re what you are going to remember when you talk about Dark Alliance with your friends."

You can see a plethora of new images from the world of Dark Alliance in our gallery below: 

Leblanc mentioned that it was an interesting experience exploring what the team wanted the monsters to look like, and that as an artist he found it easy to find inspiration in various cultures. "To me," he said, "the best way to showcase a culture is through its music and dance." That pull is what inspired the game's overall style and the music that players can enjoy, but with a fresh fantasy spin. 

So where exactly does the heavy metal come into play? He mentioned that when one day he was abruptly asked to describe Dark Alliance's art style in two words, the first immediate thought was "heavy metal." He did clarify that he meant the art style that surrounds this musical genre, not necessarily the music itself. While the game sounds are orchestral in nature, he pulled from heavy metal albums like Apocalypto to draw inspiration from. 

"We also obviously take a lot of inspiration from Dungeons & Dragon art that has come before us," he added. "The cool thing about D&D is there have been so many unique interpretations of its art over the decades. There is no one set style. But it all still looks high fantasy at the end of the day."

For the characters seen in Dark Alliance, Leblanc took a step back away from heavy metal and leaned more into classic D&D inspiration with R.A. Salvatore's descriptions of certain characters in his novels. That character art can also be seen in the gallery above, especially with the two characters on the left side. Think boy band but then make it fantasy. 

Intrigued by the heavy metal? Naturally, you should be. You can learn more about what Dark Alliance will have to offer with our previous coverage here. 

[Source: PlayStation Blog]