98 réponses à ce sujet

[SwobyJ]

What if Dragon Age 4 looks like this,

 

 

Maybe maybe maybe on PC.

 

Impossible on consoles.

[Riven326]

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.

I wasn't talking about animations, I was talking about Frostbite in general. It was suggested that Frostbite was the reason why the faces in Inquisition don't look as good as other next-gen games. I used BF4 as an example to show that Frostbite is far superior to the older engines in every way, including scaling. Animations are something BioWare has never been great at. Even for the kinds of games they make, they could be better.

[SwobyJ]

I know a lot of people by this point want Bioware to 'fail', but I want Bioware games into the 2020s just to see how smooth they could possibly make their cutscenes, while still having player choice.

 

'Games' like Beyond: Two Souls might be a partial indication.

[littlebrightpanda]

Even if they go back to one protagonist (think Hawke), they would still need to mocap everything twice if they want proper animations for everything. And that's a lot of work.

 

I remember in the "Last of Us"-documentary they mentioned that they mocapped for more than two years for slightly less cutscenes than each Dragon Age game had and they only had a limited set of protagonists. Now imagine how long it would take to do all the mocapping not only for a DA cutscenes, but also for each gender and possible race? The game would never be released. And the thing is, if some scenes are incredibly well mocapped, it will only stand out if something is not. They should keep working on their cinematic angles, face animation and multiple-people-conversations, because those are easier to fix than animations. 

 

Not that I didn't want DA and ME to have better animations, but I think it shouldn't be a priority over other things that actually can be fixed. 

[BabyPuncher]

Damn, that is some nice looking hair in Assassin's Creed.

[Monoservo]

i like to see this kind of grafic for da4 

[pickleeatingcontest]

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

 

This. Like much of the rest of the game, DA:I's party roster has more filler than depth. I'd attribute their lack of substance to many things, animations, dialogue, acting, air time, writing, so many things. Graphics are fine for a game, but not very well implemented. You can tell at a glance that cinematography and art direction weren't as thoroughly thought through as one would expect from an AAA title; and almost all camera angles seem thoughtlessly orchestrated to present high resolution textures in lieu of good storytelling, which is what Bioware paints as their forte. Whether this is due to a restriction in time, or ability is rather up in the air, I'm afraid, but there is a significant lack of focus to DA:I that I find hard to ignore. 

 

Side note - I actually though ME1 had some quality art direction. Underwater-world underpinnings were well implemented, and I'm still wow'ed every time the citadel arms unfurl like a starfish in the depths of the sea when Sovereign comes a-landing. 

[Aren]

Said pretty much this when the game came out.   Clearly Frostbite is an excellent landscape engine...  people... not so much.     I think the old engine used for DA:O and DA2 displayed faces and lip-syncing far superior to Frostbite.    We won't talk about the hands though....

I honestly do not believe that people don't look well in-game because of the Frostbite engine.

Companions and many others characters are well done, but when it comes to the various Npc (random people) they look very similarly sometimes.

 During the scene in which you become Inquisitor, the people behind Cullen have the same faces with different hair, so i believe that is just the developers fault.

[Dinerenblanc]

 

I honestly do not believe that people don't look well in-game because of the Frostbite engine.

Companions and many others characters are well done, but when it comes to the various Npc (random people) they look very similarly sometimes.

 During the scene in which you become Inquisitor, the people behind Cullen have the same faces with different hair, so i believe that is just the developers fault.

 

Generic characters will always look generic. The features of those NPCs are randomized from their own pool. You can't expect the developers have the same attention to detail with every character model. 

[Aren]

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.)}

OMG look at the video from 0:18   the inquisitor looks like a Borg the Ultimate Blank state.

[Giantdeathrobot]

I wasn't talking about animations, I was talking about Frostbite in general. It was suggested that Frostbite was the reason why the faces in Inquisition don't look as good as other next-gen games. I used BF4 as an example to show that Frostbite is far superior to the older engines in every way, including scaling. Animations are something BioWare has never been great at. Even for the kinds of games they make, they could be better.

 

Battlefield is a franchise known for its amazing graphics, they certainly won't get one-upped by Bioware on that anytime soon.

 

Besides, animation quality is a bif factor in what makes a face look great, and a lot of that is down to mo-cap and having a small set number of faces. How many faces do you see animated and up-close in a cutscene in a Battlefield game, or similar titles? 10, maybe, accounting for a few villains and supporting characters? Compared to the number of NPCs who talk to you in cutscenes and otherwise in Dragon Age or other RPGs, that is minimal. AssCreed Unity had faces that look great in cutscenes, but that are visibly downscaled in gameplay (especially on NPCs who don't look anywhere near as good as main characters) and don't even lip-synch properly.

 

Another good example is Far Cry 4. Main NPCs have detailled faces, with great animations thanks to quality work and mo-cap. The rest? Just as wooden as any face in Inquisition, or worse, when they spout their generic dialog, and they don't look too good either.

 

It's always a matter of how much work you are willing to put into such things. When you only have a handful of faces appearing in cutscenes, it's easier to up their quality and invest in mo-cap to make them look good. Inquisition by contrast has the same overall face quality across the game in both gameplay and cutscenes. Could they do better, certainly, I hope they do. But I don't think that faces that are player-modifiable and whose quality is shared across hundreds of NPCs will ever best faces created specifically for cutscenes with dedicated mo-cap work.

[Dinerenblanc]

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.

The world is just as important as the characters. How are you suppose to believe the struggles of the characters are real when the world they live in isn't believable, especially when the whole game is about saving that very world.

[ThreeF]

It's always a matter of how much work you are willing to put into such things. When you only have a handful of faces appearing in cutscenes, it's easier to up their quality and invest in mo-cap to make them look good. Inquisition by contrast has the same overall face quality across the game in both gameplay and cutscenes. Could they do better, certainly, I hope they do. But I don't think that faces that are player-modifiable and whose quality is shared across hundreds of NPCs will ever best faces created specifically for cutscenes with dedicated mo-cap work.

There is also  another matter here, in DA2 the same sort of thing worked better because the faces and textures were much more simplified making things less noticeable and more acceptable. In DAI they went for realism with faces and that alone backfired.

[SnakeCode]

Even if they go back to one protagonist (think Hawke), they would still need to mocap everything twice if they want proper animations for everything. And that's a lot of work.

 

I remember in the "Last of Us"-documentary they mentioned that they mocapped for more than two years for slightly less cutscenes than each Dragon Age game had and they only had a limited set of protagonists. Now imagine how long it would take to do all the mocapping not only for a DA cutscenes, but also for each gender and possible race? The game would never be released. And the thing is, if some scenes are incredibly well mocapped, it will only stand out if something is not. They should keep working on their cinematic angles, face animation and multiple-people-conversations, because those are easier to fix than animations. 

 

Not that I didn't want DA and ME to have better animations, but I think it shouldn't be a priority over other things that actually can be fixed. 

Naughty Dog don't use mocap for facial expressions or lip syncing though, and yet these were years ahead of anything Bioware had done. DA doesn't just look outdated due to the lack of mocap, it looks a good few years behind most AAA games in general. Uncharted 2 has better facial animations and it was released in 2009...

[Raiil]

Naughty Dog don't use mocap for facial expressions or lip syncing though, and yet these were years ahead of anything Bioware had done. DA doesn't just look outdated due to the lack of mocap, it looks a good few years behind most AAA games in general. Uncharted 2 has better facial animations and it was released in 2009...

 

I loved The Last of Us- I actually just bought and played it last month. It's a gorgeous game, it tugs at the heart strings, it's just really amazing.

 

It also offers a fraction of the content available in Inquisition, I can't choose who to play as, and my choices are 'go in guns blazing' or 'be a sneak ninja'.

 

This isn't to downplay Naughty Dog's awesome games, but perspective needs to be given. I feel like I'm repeating myself over and over, but, resources, people. Naughty Dog pumped theirs into graphic design, mo capping, animation, etc. The result was a beautiful... and short... game. Dragon Age tends to spread their resources all over creation, but they pump a lot more money/time into voice acting, with a huge cast, much larger levels, much more stuff to do, and so on.

 

 

Same thing goes for any other game. I've been playing Farcry4. Another awesome game. It's great. There's also tons of reused faces, not a huge amount of dialogue, nobody changes their clothes and customisation is 'what colour should this flamethrower be'? 

 

It works great for that series, but Dragon Age is a rather sprawling game and would suffer from the RP elements should it be as closed off as many of the games mentioned.

[Nami_Tokiwa]

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

 

I have to amit that I never finish any games of CD Project (TW1 and 2). I never finish them.
But all I show you in the trailer is the facial expressions and the animations. There are some small CGI and In-game cinematic and look at the face of the girl in: 1:46. She looks amazing, doesn't she? And look at DAI, even in the In-game cinematic, they looked weird.
And look at the face of Leliana in DAI, something wrong with her. But I love the facial of Cassandra in DAI, somehow I like how she react and her voice so good. I love the facial of DA2 more than DAI. 
 

[littlebrightpanda]

Naughty Dog don't use mocap for facial expressions or lip syncing though, and yet these were years ahead of anything Bioware had done. DA doesn't just look outdated due to the lack of mocap, it looks a good few years behind most AAA games in general. Uncharted 2 has better facial animations and it was released in 2009...

 

But Naughty Dog mocaps their body animation, that was my point. If they would mocap all of the animations in Inquisition, for every single conversation and cutscenes, the game would never be released because it takes too much time (2 sexes x 4 races). If they would start to mocap the faces as well, yeah, that would be even worse regarding the time aspect.

 

Not that BioWare shouldn't update their movement library, but if we keep on having facial customization and different races it will always look a bit off. I don't know any game with character customization that doesn't look stiff. 

 

Naughty Dog is amazing with their facial animations and that's because they can focus to get one scene down the way they want it with certain characters. And they can work on it until it's perfect. BioWare will always have a certain amount of uncertainty which makes it difficult to polish something to perfection. Do you want them to get rid of customization for better facial and body animation? 

[keesio74]

Bioware games never had the best graphics or animation. It was always about story.

[In Exile]

Generic characters will always look generic. The features of those NPCs are randomized from their own pool. You can't expect the developers have the same attention to detail with every character model.

There is a comically easy answer. Release an early CC and let fans submit faces. There are hundreds of people who'd love to play around with the CC and give you lots of high fidelity faces.

[Nami_Tokiwa]

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

 

I didn't play through The Witcher series at all. I didn't even play them at all.
There are only 2 series I play through all is: Mass Effect series and Dragon age series.
But I have to say about DAI is the facial expression is the worst if I should compare to ME or DA2.
And the romance scenes is a little bit better than DAO and DA2 but nothing close to the romance scenes in ME3. 

I love the way they did in ME3 about the romance scenes, look mature, but still very "art" on its way.
.
And back to the trailer, there are some very small CGI in the trailer, and most of what you saw is "in-game engine cutscenes" with some gameplay. 

And I have to say again that the facial of TW3 is much better than DAI. There are more than 5 characters have a different facial expression and they all look amazing lifelike. And also in the cutscenes of in-game engine, the way Geralt walk and talking and how his eyes look around still very lifelike. 

If back to when TW2, I have to say TW3 is a huge improvement from TW2 from animation to facial expressions.
.
Back to DAI, although the gameplay was improve and enjoyable, the graphic overall is amazing (lanscape, environment, characters, etc.), story is okay (I still prefer DAO and DA2 story much better), the customize (face, craft, etc) was impressive but the only thing that need to improve is the animations and facial expressions. But I love how the character walk in the higher ground or on the slopes, they will walk slower and slip when they can not walk on a higher ground.
.
And I have to say that although the animations in DA series is somehow not good but MUCH MUCH better than Skyrim   

[Rpgfantasyplayer]

The only thing I really have a problem with is the horrible hair.  The styles are not good, even though we have some better choices then the last two games, in my opinion they still look like they are plastic hair stuck on your head.  That to be honest is the only gripe I have. 

[hoechlbear]

The world is just as important as the characters. How are you suppose to believe the struggles of the characters are real when the world they live in isn't believable, especially when the whole game is about saving that very world.

 

I'm sorry, but in my opinion the worlds are just there to look pretty and nothing else. They are completely empty. Every single world you visit you see almost no NPCs. Except the hinterlands and even then you only have a few houses here and there with a couple of villagers. The prettiness of the worlds didn't contribute anything to the way I feel about the story or NPCs. This is actually the first game where I don't care about them and where it feels like they aren't real people and their only purpose is to give you a fetch quest and nothing else. I never see any danger to these characters or any struggle for that matter. You don't get to save them once, either from demons from the rifts or bandits or even bears. If you don't get them food or supplies they will still be completely fine so I'm not sure what you're talking about really.

 

DAO's graphics aren't the best and the environments are simple and small but I actually care for the NPCs there. When you have to save refugees from darkspawn I was actually more worried about the refugees than I was about my companions. I often had my healers heal them so they wouldn't die because I wanted to save them all. Nothing like that happened in DAI for me.

[Elfyoth]

i like to see this kind of grafic for da4 

Wait was that red Lyrium ? 

[Hair Serious Business]

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.

Well I think we will have to agree to disagree because ACU may be flawed as hell but hair is one biggest thing they've done more then right.

[Rannik]

You're comparing an average looking game to probably the best looking one on the market (I'd argue RYSE is a decent contender, but also much simpler).
 
Expecting cutting-edge visuals from Bioware is pointless, that is simply not one of their focus.
 

What if Dragon Age 4 looks like this,
 

I don't think the average consumer would be willing to buy 3 or 4 consoles to run it.