8 réponses à ce sujet

[John Epler]

Finishing moves are very, very expensive content to create - even the Legacy finishing moves, which all used existing combat animations, took a total of about three weeks to produce (and that's 12 hour days, plus weekends). If I had the choice between reflecting the player's class/weapon or reflecting their personality, I'd choose the former - it's a better application of limited resources.

[John Epler]

I should also add that, if we do choose to do finishing moves again, we would probably only do it for the absolute last creature of a group or for very specific situations where it makes sense. Having your character dramatically stab an ogre in the face was swell, right up until all of his buddies made mincemeat of your party because the guy you rely on to tank was busy being dramatic.

[John Epler]

nightcobra8928 wrote...

John Epler wrote...

I should also add that, if we do choose to do finishing moves again, we would probably only do it for the absolute last creature of a group or for very specific situations where it makes sense. Having your character dramatically stab an ogre in the face was swell, right up until all of his buddies made mincemeat of your party because the guy you rely on to tank was busy being dramatic.

unrelated to the topic but i just would like to ask Mr.Epler



for both DA:O and DA2 the animations for conversations were a bit limited from what i can tell as after a while one could see the repeating motions making the characters seem more like puppets rather than active participants in the conversation with few exceptions (such as riordan's explanation of the blights and grey wardens as walks around the room and looks into the inside of a cage).
For DA3 with the frostbite engine, are any of the conversation animations being ported to the new engine or are you tackling those in a different way? such as mo-cap acting like in "the last of us" or "uncharted" for important characters and scenes? or would that approach be too costly or rather make the quality between the animations of major and minor npcs too disparate from each other breaking the suspension of disbelief? 

Mocapping entire scenes is a great idea - but it's not really practical in our case. Where Uncharted and Last of Us have a big advantage is, simply, in quantity. The entirety of their cinematics/conversations (at least in the Uncharted games - I can't speak to Last of Us in quite the same way) total around, maybe, an hour and a bit? Thereabouts, anyways. Whereas the entire cinematic content of an average BioWare game (post-KOTOR) is much closer to the 50-60 hour mark. That's including branching, minority content, etc, which is why you only see a fraction of that per playthrough.

Mocap is not cheap. Animator time is also not cheap - and as such, we have to use the same animations in multiple places in order to finish the massive amount of content we have on a game-by-game basis in anything approaching A) a reasonable amount of time and without blowing our budget (and, for that matter, the budget of our next six projects) completely out of the water.

Now! That being said, we have a goal of replacing a lot of our more common animations with new ones, and mocapping some new basic gestures. But, just as a result of how much content we're building per game, you are always going to see some animations repeat. Yeah, that means that we take a bit of a hit to the cinematic quality of our games, but the only real 'solution' would be to shift to completely linear experiences with minimal conversations/dialogue, and that's not really a trade off we're going to make.

[John Epler]

Cerberus Commando wrote...

John Epler wrote...

I should also add that, if we do choose to do finishing moves again, we would probably only do it for the absolute last creature of a group or for very specific situations where it makes sense. Having your character dramatically stab an ogre in the face was swell, right up until all of his buddies made mincemeat of your party because the guy you rely on to tank was busy being dramatic.

dude, a finisher during a "cut scene" cut scene! Not during actual combat! Oh and will you guys please take the nudity suggestion into consideration? I mean come on, we're never gonna climax wearing boxers.... U know what I mean.

That comes with its own problems, though - I didn't like doing the finishers in cutscene because it completely pulls the player out of the experience. Honestly, the less often a player ends up in a conversation or cutscene, the better. Not only from a purely player experience point of view (not wanting to feel like you're 'watching a movie' is a criticism that we see, and fair enough), but also from a designer standpoint - the more often you're pulled out of gameplay, the less impactful those moments become.

There's also a logical weirdness that comes up when we play finishers on mooks - if I can use my two daggers like scissors and cut off this guy's head, why haven't I been doing it all along? Seems like it worked really, really well, so why am I using any other ability?

[John Epler]

Yrkoon wrote...

Yeah, spend less money please. We'd much rather see the same perfectly animated slash, slash, poke poke, over and over and over and over for 50 hours,  Instead of, you know, neat  rare stuff to look forward to that keeps combat feeling fresh and visceral, like chopping an enemy's head off every once in a while, or thrusting your sword into their stomach and then pulling it out as they fall to the ground, lifeless.

Just keep it nice and cheap, in the DA2 way.   Give us more of those  exploding lego pieces for our dagger-wielding rogues.

<sigh>

DA2 v2.0, here we come!

In an ideal world, we could put absolutely everything that could make the game absolutely completely perfect into the game. The world we live in and work in, however, means that games have budgets and constraints, both in terms of money and in terms of time.

If you want to bemoan this fact, that's certainly your prerogative, but if you're not willing to frame the discussion in terms of reality and resources which are not unlimited, well, I don't really see how I'm going to be able to engage with you.

There are many useful discussions happening in this thread in regards to gameplay finishers versus cutscene finishers, as well as when the appropriate time to use these finishers is, but if you'd rather jump onto a single point regarding the realities of game development so you can hold it dramatically in the air and shout 'LOOK, THEY'RE NOT LISTENING TO US, WE'RE JUST GETTING DA2!' I suppose there's not much I can say to you.

Modifié par John Epler, 26 septembre 2012 - 10:07 .

[John Epler]

Yrkoon wrote...

John Epler wrote...

Yrkoon wrote...

Yeah, spend less money please. We'd much rather see the same perfectly animated slash, slash, poke poke, over and over and over and over for 50 hours,  Instead of, you know, neat  rare stuff to look forward to that keeps combat feeling fresh and visceral, like chopping an enemy's head off every once in a while, or thrusting your sword into their stomach and then pulling it out as they fall to the ground, lifeless.

Just keep it nice and cheap, in the DA2 way.   Give us more of those  exploding lego pieces for our dagger-wielding rogues.

<sigh>

DA2 v2.0, here we come!

In an ideal world, we could put absolutely everything that could make the game absolutely completely perfect into the game. The world we live in and work in, however, means that games have budgets and constraints, both in terms of money and in terms of time.

If you want to bemoan this fact, that's certainly your prerogative, but if you're not willing to frame the discussion in terms of reality and resources which are not unlimited, well, I don't really see how I'm going to be able to engage with you.

There are many useful discussions happening in this thread in regards to gameplay finishers versus cutscene finishers, as well as when the appropriate time to use these finishers is, but if you'd rather jump onto a single point regarding the realities of game development so you can hold it dramatically in the air and shout 'LOOK, THEY'RE NOT LISTENING TO US, WE'RE JUST GETTING DA2!' I suppose there's not much I can say to you.

  There isn't much that can be said, no.   Well, at least until the time comes where you can show us something you've actually added to the game, that wasn't in DA2.

I totally understand  cost/budget limitations.  But, just how  much are you guys willing to cut from the game in order to deliver that perfect cinematic experience?   Don't you think  enough of the basic gameplay has already been removed, here? 

I'm confused. Are you suggesting that 'killing blows' are anything other than cinematic? They serve no gameplay purpose, they aren't controlled or initiated by the player, they don't advance the plot - all they really are is eye candy to say 'look how awesome your character is!'. Literally the only difference between that and a cutscene is that we only take away control of a single character and it's usually poorly framed.

If you want to use us saying 'well, cinematic killing blows are very expensive and they pull you out of gameplay - those are marks against it, as much as they are pretty neat' as ammunition for your anti-cinematic crusade, I suppose I can't prevent you from doing so. But you seem to be barking up the wrong tree entirely.

[John Epler]

Sylvianus wrote...

So, maybe no finishing moves either ? * sigh *

Me pointing out the costs associated with finishing moves is not me saying 'HAHA SUCKERS NO FINISHING MOVES FOR YOU', it's attempting to give folks all the relevant background information so, whatever our eventual decision is (and I really have no idea, as this falls under the auspice of combat), you'll have some background as to why we arrived at that particular decision.

Do I like finishing moves? Yes, I do - they're neat, and they add a little extra to the game. Do I know the costs associated with them? Yes, I do - they're expensive, particularly if you want them to sync up and look good (see - the invisible ogre problem). Do I have anything to do with the decision to include them or not? I don't - but, you know, if you'd like to argue that every time we bring up the costs associated with any feature request or content request we're clearly sacrificing everything to turn the game into an on-rails cinematic masterpiece, like Yrkoon, that is entirely up to you.

Modifié par John Epler, 27 septembre 2012 - 01:15 .

[John Epler]

WahookaTheGreat wrote...

John Epler wrote...
 Honestly, the less often a player ends up in a conversation or cutscene, the better.

I have a little problem with this. I think conversations don't take you out of the game play the same way than cutscenes, where player doesn't participate. For me the more conversations the player enter the better. I don't want always to be ambushed by mobs who just start swinging swords. Bring back coersion and more situations to use good coersion skill! You know, avoiding fights and that kind of rpg things...

Yeah, I misspoke. Better way of putting it would be - the less the player loses control (and you're correct in that a conversation is user-controlled), the better.

Modifié par John Epler, 27 septembre 2012 - 08:45 .