98 réponses à ce sujet

[Raiil]

I'll never understand how people compare games where every character is premade to those that aren't. Of course they look smoother. They don't have to account for different body types, heights, weights, etc. That scene doesn't have to account for multiple variables. And it costs money/time/etc to make it that smooth, and that's money/time/resources that can't be used elsewhere.

[llandwynwyn]

Maybe you need to rewatch those two scenes to see the differences.

 

DAI is not nearly fluid enough with the way the characters move, stand and interact with each other.

 

 

 

Weird to use this game, from what I seen in that video the animations are awkward.

 

Hair is also terrible. Just because it doesn't look playmobil plastic, unlike DAI's, doesn't make them good.

Recent good mocap animation: Far Cry 4. Better acted as well, especially  Sabal and Pagam.

[hoechlbear]

Weird to use this game, from what I seen in that video the animations are awkward.

 

Hair is also terrible. Just because it doesn't look playmobil plastic, unlike DAI's, doesn't make them good.

 

Meh. Opinions.

 

To me, AC's interactions look way more natural and fluid unlike DAI. And hair looks real and moves. DAI's hair is solid and if you don't have the best PC in the world to play this game on ultra, the hair looks pretty terrible (except some characters like Morrigan. I love that they give detail to some characters but our PC gets the worst hair, the worst armor, the worst personality, the worst... erm, I digress.)

[wolfhowwl]

Perhaps the scope of future projects should be narrower so we get a better polished game.

[Dinerenblanc]

Static environments look good in DA:I, but the animation leaves a bit to be desired. The characters look incredibly stilted, and their facial expressions are unconvincing. There was a point where my Inquistor laughed and it was just his jaw moving up and down like a creepy ventriloquist doll.

[hoechlbear]

There was a point where my Inquistor laughed and it was just his jaw moving up and down like a creepy ventriloquist doll.

 

 

Yep. Also this:

 

 

The Inquisitor's face stays the same throughout that whole conversation. This is one of the reasons why most of the times I see the Inquisitor as some NPC that has no emotions.

 

_{(Although, I have to say, I nearly pissed my pants at 00:20 when I first watched that video. I'm not even sure if they did that on purpose. Probably not. It's so ridiculous, it's actually hilarious.)}

[Dinerenblanc]

Yep. Also this:





The Inquisitor's face stays the same throughout that whole conversation.

_{(Although, I have to say, I nearly pissed my pants at 00:20 when I first watched that video. I'm not even sure if they did that on purpose. Probably not. It's so ridiculous it's actually hilarious.)}

Yeah that's pretty bad. Bioware will have to start using mocap of they want believable reactions. Hand animating alone will never reach the level of realism needed to be convincing. Adding mocap would take a lot more work though, something I doubt Bioware would do when the scope of their games is large.

[G00N3R7883]

I couldn't care less about graphics.

 

Will Bioware improve them for DA4? Yes. This is the games industry. The only thing developers care about is improving the graphics. Its sad, but sexy screenshots and trailers are what sell games, rather than actual gameplay elements.

 

But it would be nice if we'd get some improvements to other areas too - more "story" quests / less "fetch" quests, better AI, deep combat tactics, branching narratives / quest choices that actually have a meaningful impact on the world ...

[Nami_Tokiwa]

I really don't want to compare but even with The Witcher 3 from a smaller company (CD Project) have smoother animation than DAI:

[Panda]

I don't like DAI graphics. Environments are pretty nice looking, but characters? Nope, their textures don't even load half of time and Cass' face looks like mushy pixels all the time. And the clipping, everything clips all the time, armor, hats, weapons, body parts etc. The graphics are so inconsistent.

[Raiil]

I wonder how happy everyone would be when they got their smoother PCs and then found out they lost 70% of their dialogue choices and half of their customisation options.

[SwobyJ]

I find Bioware games (for a decade now) have always lagged behind in most areas by a couple years or more, compared to other games releasing around the same time.

 

Except for innovations like the 'cinematic conversations' or 'conversation wheel' or 'choice import between games', etc. That's what Bioware does that is both rather unique, and considered as advancements in gaming (whether its an advancement you enjoy or not).

 

But for graphics, soundtrack (yes really - you'll find many tracks in earlier games that are shoehorned in, especially Mass Effect and DA2; Suicide Mission itself I think was meant for something else entirely from ME), animations, combat, exploration, etc etc etc, its seemingly often noticeably 'behind'.

 

This may have to do with the sheer size of the games, the development time (2 years is rushed, 4 years is a long cook while tech flies by, whereas something closer to 3 might work better otherwise), and the emphasis put on writing and huge scripts compared to most other video games still (though this is gradually changing).

 

DAI caught up to a lot of games from the 2010-2012 period. Sweet. Graphics were also polished to like 2013 level. Cool.

 

But the animations have been a sore spot for at least a few years now (DA2 and ME3 especially). What used to be a special thing (DAO and ME1 and ME2ish) is now just a lot of flaws sticking out. We have lots of other games now that have much smoother animations and its harder to forgive DAI's (just as it was often hard to forgive the weird animations at times and especially animation bugs of ME3).

 

 

DA4 needs to work on this. It'll be, like, 2016-2018, and the next push isn't realism in textures or whatever (its not like the consoles can even handle that anyway), but animations that are as lifelike as possible. Others have already posted the stuff from AC and W3, and those are good examples. By the end of the decade, a AAA game without realistic animations (even in a huge sized game like Bioware games are) will already be seen as old, and well, not AAA.

 

 

Though after all of this, I'm generally at peace with the concept that Bioware is always going to be 'behind' a bit. When I got ME1-2008, it felt like an early 2000s game (outside of the convo aspects). When I got ME2-2010, it felt like a late 2000s game. When I got ME3-2012, it felt like a more advanced but still late 2000s game. DAO is 'timeless', but still felt more like a mid 2000s game instead of late 2000s. DA2 was slicker but almost felt older than DAO in a bunch of ways (clearly 2000s game even though released in 2011).

Speaking in terms of 'AAA'ness though, of course.

 

DAI released in 2014, sure, but I went into it expecting 2012 standards tops for a lot of stuff. Same as if Mass Effect releases in 2016, I'll be looking at present (2014ish) shooter games to see what to expect. 

[SwobyJ]

I agree with those who think that with more experience with Frostbite, Bioware will be able to do more with it.

 

Maybe in DAI DLC, but much more likely for NME and DA4 and NewIP this decade. Maybe more ('ME5'? 'DA5?' lol).

[perfect_victime]

I am not sure why the hair styles were lost, but other than that I noticed the graphics were ok but the clipping issues are still there. DA: 2 isn't as bad as its made out to be, in my opinion anyway. Not Polished is what comes to mind for me. Hair moved, clothing moved, shadows were present. Didn't need to buy a 500 dollar graphics card. I agree with iamthedreadworf that wicked grace scene was eeew.

[Tarlonniel]

BioWare does use mocap. Check out this post by Owlfruit Potion reporting on yesterday morning's PAX panel.

[perfect_victime]

I really don't want to compare but even with The Witcher 3 from a smaller company (CD Project) have smoother animation than DAI:

I would also point out that there is more cinematic in that trailer than there is actual game play. As with the first two Witcher games you can knock out the main story is 10 hours, if you do all the side quest 20-30 hours. The protagonist in the first two games were the same guy, and not only did you have any control over what gender he is, you couldn't change his appearance. The Witcher offers you the choice of being a butthead, or a nice guy. Very little effects the world with any consequence.

As an RPG Dragon Age is lightyears better than Witcher. And add up all the things you can't change in Witcher, and the shortness of the story, is there any wonder why they can afford to make it looked more polished? Saying this you might think I don't like the Witcher. Wrong, played the first two games several times. Maybe put 200 hours into each. That's being generous.

Dragon Age: Origin 900 hours, Dragon Age: 2 500 hours, Dragon Age: Inquisition just passed 800 hours.

My close friends I game with, say those are fair periods of time in their game playthroughs as well.

Sorry OP, I shouldn't have flamed your post. Just felt I had to stick up for Bioware. Sorry

[SwobyJ]

All good points, Perfect.

[Dinerenblanc]

BioWare does use mocap. Check out this post by Owlfruit Potion reporting on yesterday morning's PAX panel.

Thanks for the clarification, but it does say that they use mocap for romance scenes only, which is only a small handful of scenes.

[hoechlbear]

Thanks for the clarification, but it does say that they use mocap for romance scenes only, which is only a small handful of scenes.

 

Wow, really? And here I thought the most awkward scenes were the romance scenes. You never see them actually kiss, it's always hidden by characters heads or shoulders. In this picture it even seems like Solas is kissing Lavellan's nose.

 

Spoiler

 

 

The thing is, DAI has completely new graphics, and yes, they are better from past games, but then things like face animations and body language seem worst than past games and it's more noticeable because of the good graphics. Like someone said, it's really inconsistent. I would rather have characters look good than environments look good. Personally, I couldn't care less about the worlds. And that's what annoys me the most. DA used to be a game about characters and story, and they sacrificed that in order to give us beautiful but empty and useless worlds.

[hoechlbear]

I would also point out that there is more cinematic in that trailer than there is actual game play. 

 

Hm, I didn't know Witcher 3 was out already.

 

 

 

 As with the first two Witcher games you can knock out the main story is 10 hours, if you do all the side quest 20-30 hours. 

 

I never tried it, but I'm almost sure you can finish DAI's main story in 10 hours too. Maybe even less if you didn't have to do some sidequests to gain power. And to be honest, gameplay hours is very subjective. I would rather have 10 hours of a main story that blows my mind with both ups and downs, intense moments, good moments, hard choices, consequences to those choices, conflicts, plot twists, etc. (which is not the case with DAI, and I'm not talking about TW either) than have a 50 hour main story that sucks lizard eggs. Quality > quantity. So when people say, "I did a playthrough with 256840 hours" I think "am I supposed to be impressed by that?" I finished my first playthrough in 70 hours and I managed to do almost everything in the game. And that's not a lot considering there are hundreds of fetch quests in this game that requires you to go to the other side of the map. But we're going into a different discussion here. I made this post to discuss the stiffness of DAI animations.

[Giantdeathrobot]

Nonsense. Have you played Battlefield 4? The people and their faces look amazing in that game. It's BioWare that is the problem, not a next-generation game engine with all the bells and whistles one could ask for.

 

Again, cutscenes with set actors vs cutscenes with various body types and races. Battlefield can mo-cap all their cutscenes, Bioware can't. That's why pretty much all single-player, cutscene-driven FPS or action game (other examples include Far Cry 4, The Order, even Call of Duty) has terrific animations in cutscenes. They mo-cap the hell out of them, which is doable with a bloated budget and 2-3 hours of cutscene in a game. Inquisition has far more hours of dialog and cutscenes than that, and non-set actors. It will inevitably look worse animation wise. But exit the pre-rendered cutscenes, and the animations in gameplay aren't any better.

 

I'm not saying Bioware shouldn't make an effort. The Wicked Grace scene in particular suffers from bad pacing and the laughting animation looking terrible. They should improve on that. But people should also temper their expectations methinks, in a game with 8 different body types for the PC alone you will never get perfectly mo-capped cutscenes with them. That's just not going to be a thing for now.

[Lukas Trevelyan]

I really don't want to compare but even with The Witcher 3 from a smaller company (CD Project) have smoother animation than DAI:

 

Witcher has a single protagonist. DA:I has 8 different protagonists with significantly different body shapes, and facial structure. That's not to mention Witcher is a next gen game whereas DA:I is a cross gen. 

[Lukas Trevelyan]

Wow, really? And here I thought the most awkward scenes were the romance scenes. You never see them actually kiss, it's always hidden by characters heads or shoulders. In this picture it even seems like Solas is kissing Lavellan's nose.

 

Spoiler

 

 

The thing is, DAI has completely new graphics, and yes, they are better from past games, but then things like face animations and body language seem worst than past games and it's more noticeable because of the good graphics. Like someone said, it's really inconsistent. I would rather have characters look good than environments look good. Personally, I couldn't care less about the worlds. And that's what annoys me the most. DA used to be a game about characters and story, and they sacrificed that in order to give us beautiful but empty and useless worlds.

 

Meh subjective. I find the worlds to be rather beautiful visually and extremely enjoyable to walk through and explore, plus there's always a reward behind every corner, and some secrets as well sooooo.

Tbh, your expectations are far too high. Bioware games, namely Dragon Age games, essentially have significant differences in it's characters and mechanics than other games. That includes various dialogue options with different tones and different races/facial structure/body shapes, hence animations are pretty much harder for Bioware's team.

[Neoideo]

What if Dragon Age 4 looks like this,

 

[Nine]

Throughout the game in cut scenes and sometimes during live action, characters/companions walk like they are puppets (rough, stuttering movements like they can only move one limb at a time similar to non bipedal animals trying to walk on only two limbs) - definitely not fluid like animations in most current games and it is distracting.