I’ve been browsing artstation today, studying some sci-fi styles mostly from Titanfall/Apex, when I ended up stumbling across the work of Danny Gardner. Gardner works as an associate art director at Respawn, and his artstation showcases his work on Titanfall, Apex Legends, but most interestingly to me Highguard.
Its been nearly a year since Highguard was announced to the world at 2025’s Game Awards, and about 9 months since it went EOS. I never paid much attention to the game, like a lot of others I was confused about what kind of game it actually was. I found some of the designs interesting, but most of it just didn’t hit for me.
It came and went, and the gaming community began to call it the second coming of Concord. Another sign of the AAA gaming industry’s decay. The most notable thing about either titles is just how quickly both disappeared- Highguard was only online for about 45 days, and Concord only two weeks.
So it was to my surprise, scrolling through the concepts on Gardner’s artstation to find his work on highguard actually kind of inspiring. Inside these pieces I found something unlike anything the final game resembled. And it reminded me a lot of Concord- another game with some interesting ideas, all seemingly lost in translation. Gardner himself writes, under the description of the following piece:
“Again, not a character design over heeerreeee, but I kinda dug these creamed out dudes. Believe it or not they actually got modelled and fully fleshed out for our “beautiful corner” art test. Super cool. Overall, just another vibe experiment. Again, wish this direction stuck it out in the overall vision, but such is life.”
^ https://www.artstation.com/artwork/WXNGxQ
I’ve already had the opinion that these games failed for reasons outside of the staff’s control. The dozens to hundreds of employees helping produce these games have very little influence on the games final direction, let alone the pivotal choices that define what the game is. But the public doesn’t seem to understand that. Earlier this week I saw a tweet calling Concord a scarlet letter, and how anyone attached to this project should be blacklisted from the industry. Others remark how “these people” only fail upward.
I hope that its just a vocal minority. Its difficult to critique these games, or analyze them to any extent publicly, without falling into the gamergate-style culture war that it attracts. They argue its a case of “Go Woke, Go Broke”, rather than seeking out the real, systemic and deeprooted problems that result in failures such as these. Alas, the well has been thoroughly poisoned. Although what more should I expect when scrolling through twitter?
At least not every twitter user is caught up in that. A few others can give me hope.
I wanted to share a few of those concepts, from the hardworking artists behind the scenes that tried to give both games an interesting and unique identity. Something that got traded away for the generic, semi-realistic art style that the AAA gaming sphere is largely obsessed with. Hopefully we can appreciate what could have been, but ultimately was not. And remind ourselves that even within this industries biggest embarassments, there can be something worth falling in love with. I know that personally, I’ll be studying these works for my own projects.
^ left to right: (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rl8WBa, https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0lJBD8, https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QKeGJE)
^ https://www.artstation.com/artwork/L41a1v & https://www.artstation.com/artwork/wrROWO
^ https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3EqRrE
^ https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3EQZRB
^ https://www.artstation.com/artwork/6Lwv3x
