I've wanted to share this for a while, though I'm sure most of you have read it. This was a post by Gabe on Penny-Arcade back on May 15th regarding what he saw with the new Indiana Jones game at E3:
"Instead of animating Indy they essentially taught him how to behave and react to his surroundings. They said this was better because it means youll never see the same canned animation over and over. What it means is that I see different stupid looking animations all the time though. Im not sure thats an improvement. Ill take God of Wars beautifully animated special moves over Indy looking like some kind of retarded marionette any day."
This is something I feel very strongly about, regardless of its ramifications on my life as a game artist. I like my games like I like my cg movies and animated features: with style. This is the same problem I have with motion capture animation. I'd rather see over the top, far beyond believable animation than animation that looks like somebody having trouble walking in a rubber suit. I HATE it when they try to recreate reality and all I can think the entire time I'm supposed to be enjoying myself is how wrong it looks, and how much money they wasted! I WANT to see fictional creations and things that are impossible (or nearly) to duplicate in reality. That's what I paid for. Plus, the closer and closer CG or even hand drawn animation comes to reality, the more exponentially expensive it ends up getting, and the more expensive the end product. Notice which 360 games are $60 or higher?
Case in point: Can anyone out there honestly say that Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was better than The Incredibles?
To which Will replied:
ReplyDeleteThis is something I've been arguing forever... except I take it several steps further.
I've always admitted to being a hater, so it comes as no surprise that few are willing to pay me any heed when I decry the failings of FPSs.
Still... you really have to wonder what that says when all these "realistic" games are being made and sold almost entirely in America. No one else seems to care.
To which Adrian replied:
ReplyDeleteI think Final Fantasy wasn't bad. The Incredibles was definitely a better movie on many fronts. In games however, I unequivocally agree. Motion capture just doesn't have what it takes (you want to store how much data in memory!?) and pure procedural motion is lightyears away (you want to spend how much processing time on that!?). There are compromises that are possible (e.g. animation blending), but really, it's nasty for the most part. The big trick will be to come up with good compromises that makes things look good. Now if only the rest of the world thought that way or could convince the executives of that.