Six year old game has better facial/body animations than Mass Effect

Thoth_Moshe · May 2017

Octagon7711 · May 2017

LA Noire is a great game. Love playing it. I may never figure out why they dropped the Shepard series. Maybe they didn't want to pay the same actors more money, maybe they got tired of doing the same thing all those years, who knows? They could have made Shepard the Pathfinder in the new series, came up with some reason to validate him being alive still, kept some of the old crew and added some new ones. They had a pretty solid foundation built up over the years, why end all of that? Edi could have easily been in it. Oh well... life goes on.

Scorchien · May 2017

yea , that is just awesome stuff they did back then ... Very very cool

Thoth_Moshe · May 2017

Octagon7711 said:

LA Noire is a great game. Love playing it. I may never figure out why they dropped the Shepard series. Maybe they didn't want to pay the same actors more money, maybe they got tired of doing the same thing all those years, who knows? They could have made Shepard the Pathfinder in the new series, came up with some reason to validate him being alive still, kept some of the old crew and added some new ones. They had a pretty solid foundation built up over the years, why end all of that? Edi could have easily been in it. Oh well... life goes on.

Hundreds of years later something bad happens and then they decide to clone shepherd back because of his heroic record. Jennifer Hale went on strike or something demanding higher pay I think.

SlyLoK · May 2017

Heavenly Sword also had way better facial animations.

MaxBacon · May 2017

LA Noire had indeed a lot of work put on that area, even as old as it is it still shows how powerful the tech they had then is.

Sovrath · May 2017

MaxBacon said:

LA Noire had indeed a lot of work put on that area, even as old as it is it still shows how powerful the tech they had then is.

It's also important to note, if memory serves, that they had to have very realistic animations as it was part of the game play. I think the player had to make decisions based upon their interviews with the characters. They really wanted to have the player "interview" the characters and assess when they were lying, telling the truth, looked like they were hiding something, etc.

Without that need I could understand why a company wouldn't go "all out" in the animation department if it wasn't necessary.

MaxBacon · May 2017

Sovrath said:
It's also important to note, if memory serves, that they had to have very realistic animations as it was part of the game play. I think the player had to make decisions based upon their interviews with the characters. They really wanted to have the player "interview" the characters and assess when they were lying, telling the truth, looked like they were hiding something, etc.

Without that need I could understand why a company wouldn't go "all out" in the animation department if it wasn't necessary.

Yeah they cheapened too much the animation department on MA: E until the point it was subpar with the rest of the game.

This depends on title per title, and what they do decide to focus on. Animation is not directly gameplay but it is fundamental to the gameplay experience, so is stuff like Audio, no matter how great the gameplay mechanics are those things will degrade the entire experience.

Sovrath · May 2017

MaxBacon said:

Sovrath said:
It's also important to note, if memory serves, that they had to have very realistic animations as it was part of the game play. I think the player had to make decisions based upon their interviews with the characters. They really wanted to have the player "interview" the characters and assess when they were lying, telling the truth, looked like they were hiding something, etc.

Without that need I could understand why a company wouldn't go "all out" in the animation department if it wasn't necessary.

Yeah they cheapened too much the animation department on MA: E until the point it was subpar with the rest of the game.

This depends on title per title, and what they do decide to focus on. Animation is not directly gameplay but it is fundamental to the gameplay experience, so is stuff like Audio, no matter how great the gameplay mechanics are those things will degrade the entire experience.

That's true, and I don't necessarily disagree with you. However, I imagine that there are levels of fidelity when it comes to such things.

Maybe it costs more money to make that happen over a giant game like Mass Effect. Looking up the length of L.A. Noir it's 20+ hours for the main story and 40+ for the completionist. Mass Effect Andromeda is 20+ hours main story and 90 hours completionist.

I can easily see them allotting a certain amount of time for such animations and depending on the scope of the project and the budget it might be prohibitive (or maybe they just don't think it necessary) to bring that level of fidelity.

Of course, the more realistic the better (uncanny valley aside) but I wonder how developers look at it from a design/business point of view?

Distopia · May 2017

Sovrath said:

MaxBacon said:

LA Noire had indeed a lot of work put on that area, even as old as it is it still shows how powerful the tech they had then is.

It's also important to note, if memory serves, that they had to have very realistic animations as it was part of the game play. I think the player had to make decisions based upon their interviews with the characters. They really wanted to have the player "interview" the characters and assess when they were lying, telling the truth, looked like they were hiding something, etc.

Without that need I could understand why a company wouldn't go "all out" in the animation department if it wasn't necessary.

Yep LA noire was all about the animation and facial expression. The entire premise would have fallen flat without it.

Wizardry · May 2017

Well we just had a game advertised everywhere an all over this site that did the same thing ...great facial animations or supposedly so.The problem as i noticed right away was every single cut scene was a closeup up faces,it got to look real bad after a few cs's.
I want to see wide view open cs's not closeup facials.

It ends up being the same old song and dance,is a gimmick or two better than a complete game?
Obviously Rockstar has a lot of money,they can afford big marketing campaigns and invest into a game knowing they usually get big returns.
Still all in all,yeah it looks better when graphics are top notch with great facials as well but nothing like that will ever make a bad game good.Weather La Noire is good is up to the individual,i never played it to know how good it is.

YashaX · May 2017

MaxBacon said:

Sovrath said:
It's also important to note, if memory serves, that they had to have very realistic animations as it was part of the game play. I think the player had to make decisions based upon their interviews with the characters. They really wanted to have the player "interview" the characters and assess when they were lying, telling the truth, looked like they were hiding something, etc.

Without that need I could understand why a company wouldn't go "all out" in the animation department if it wasn't necessary.

Yeah they cheapened too much the animation department on MA: E until the point it was subpar with the rest of the game.

This depends on title per title, and what they do decide to focus on. Animation is not directly gameplay but it is fundamental to the gameplay experience, so is stuff like Audio, no matter how great the gameplay mechanics are those things will degrade the entire experience.

I thought some of the gameplay mechanics were just as bad if not worse than the animations/graphics. Indeed, when I was actually playing the game is was the poor gameplay that made me cringe/bored/frustrated more than the animations.

Thoth_Moshe · May 2017

Sovrath said:

MaxBacon said:

LA Noire had indeed a lot of work put on that area, even as old as it is it still shows how powerful the tech they had then is.

It's also important to note, if memory serves, that they had to have very realistic animations as it was part of the game play. I think the player had to make decisions based upon their interviews with the characters. They really wanted to have the player "interview" the characters and assess when they were lying, telling the truth, looked like they were hiding something, etc.

Without that need I could understand why a company wouldn't go "all out" in the animation department if it wasn't necessary.

But the quality went below Mass Effect 2-3 imo.

Thoth_Moshe · May 2017

Witcher 3 is a long game and its got better animations as well. Better a lot of stuff. I think they just had animators that didnt know how to use the Frostbite engine properly.

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Cleffy · May 2017

Bioware was too busy setting up safe places to be concerned about using decade old technology to motion capture facial animations.

Distopia · May 2017

Thoth_Moshe said:

Witcher 3 is a long game and its got better animations as well. Better a lot of stuff. I think they just had animators that didnt know how to use the Frostbite engine properly.

Games with a single character option almost always have better animations than those that do not. It's not like there aren't decent games with worst animation than ME:A.

So I don't really see the point in bringing up a single game and being like hey this has better animations than this or that game, hell LA NOIRE has better animations than most games that come along today. This entire premise is like going after Dragon's Dogma for it's bland landscape, and trying to bring the whole game down because of it. Or being like SKyrim sucks becuase La Noire has better animations.

Cleffy hit at the point I think most fuels this spectacle surrounding ME:A, people's outrage over their own political views being infringed on.

Thoth_Moshe · May 2017

Distopia said:

Thoth_Moshe said:

Witcher 3 is a long game and its got better animations as well. Better a lot of stuff. I think they just had animators that didnt know how to use the Frostbite engine properly.

Games with a single character option almost always have better animations than those that do not. It's not like there aren't decent games with worst animation than ME:A.

So I don't really see the point in bringing up a single game and being like hey this has better animations than this or that game, hell LA NOIRE has better animations than most games that come along today. This entire premise is like going after Dragon's Dogma for it's bland landscape, and trying to bring the whole game down because of it. Or being like SKyrim sucks becuase La Noire has better animations.

Cleffy hit at the point I think most fuels this spectacle surrounding ME:A, people's outrage over their own political views being infringed on.

There were game breaking bugs that support how lazy they were with the development and selling half ass product for the same price as most games. Cant let them go that easily. There was a mission that I couldnt progress because the npc bugged out on the frozen planet and I couldnt do other missions because of that. The loading screen froze whenever I loaded a save where I was inside the vehicle. I restarted Draks mission because the objective npc wouldnt spawn at the very end of the mission. Characters were invisible on several cutscenes. These were all on just my game.

Not to mention bad game design where they valued quantity of missions over quality. You spend more time in the game doing shitty side missions than the mediocre main story. Why do we need all these tasks on top of the normal side missions for?

Distopia · May 2017

Thoth_Moshe said:

Distopia said:

Thoth_Moshe said:

Witcher 3 is a long game and its got better animations as well. Better a lot of stuff. I think they just had animators that didnt know how to use the Frostbite engine properly.

Games with a single character option almost always have better animations than those that do not. It's not like there aren't decent games with worst animation than ME:A.

So I don't really see the point in bringing up a single game and being like hey this has better animations than this or that game, hell LA NOIRE has better animations than most games that come along today. This entire premise is like going after Dragon's Dogma for it's bland landscape, and trying to bring the whole game down because of it. Or being like SKyrim sucks becuase La Noire has better animations.

Cleffy hit at the point I think most fuels this spectacle surrounding ME:A, people's outrage over their own political views being infringed on.

There were game breaking bugs that support how lazy they were with the development and selling half ass product for the same price as most games. Cant let them go that easily. There was a mission that I couldnt progress because the npc bugged out on the frozen planet and I couldnt do other missions because of that. The loading screen froze whenever I loaded a save where I was inside the vehicle. I restarted Draks mission because the objective npc wouldnt spawn at the very end of the mission. Characters were invisible on several cutscenes. These were all on just my game.

Not to mention bad game design where they valued quantity of missions over quality. You spend more time in the game doing shitty side missions than the mediocre main story. Why do we need all these tasks on top of the normal side missions for?

Game breaking bugs? Both my wife and I never ran into anything like that? I don't recall many "bugs at all TBH. I never had an NPC disappear either. Nor any saves that failed to load or froze.. What were you playing on? PC here. My wife had one crash, that I recall.

The worst thing that happened to me was some severe slowdown when loading certain worlds (after landing) it usually caught up in about 30 secs. I got that in DA:I as well.

Sovrath · May 2017

Thoth_Moshe said:

Sovrath said:

MaxBacon said:

LA Noire had indeed a lot of work put on that area, even as old as it is it still shows how powerful the tech they had then is.

It's also important to note, if memory serves, that they had to have very realistic animations as it was part of the game play. I think the player had to make decisions based upon their interviews with the characters. They really wanted to have the player "interview" the characters and assess when they were lying, telling the truth, looked like they were hiding something, etc.

Without that need I could understand why a company wouldn't go "all out" in the animation department if it wasn't necessary.

But the quality went below Mass Effect 2-3 imo.

I appreciate that.

However, That's a different thing. The developers of the L.A. Noir game really went out of their way to make the facial animations as realistic as possible. That was sort of the point of the game. So the comparison doesn't quite hold up other than it's possible to make better facial animations.

BeansnBread · May 2017

You might as well lay waste to all games with facial animations compared to LA Noire. Especially for the time. That game had some great stuff back then that still holds strong today amongst the best.

Thoth_Moshe · May 2017

BeansnBread said:

You might as well lay waste to all games with facial animations compared to LA Noire. Especially for the time. That game had some great stuff back then that still holds strong today amongst the best.

I never said it has to be exactly as good as LA Noire, but it sure as hell is not acceptable for the quality to be lesser than its previous installments.

MaxBacon · May 2017

Sovrath said:

That's true, and I don't necessarily disagree with you. However, I imagine that there are levels of fidelity when it comes to such things.

Maybe it costs more money to make that happen over a giant game like Mass Effect. Looking up the length of L.A. Noir it's 20+ hours for the main story and 40+ for the completionist. Mass Effect Andromeda is 20+ hours main story and 90 hours completionist.

I can easily see them allotting a certain amount of time for such animations and depending on the scope of the project and the budget it might be prohibitive (or maybe they just don't think it necessary) to bring that level of fidelity.

Of course, the more realistic the better (uncanny valley aside) but I wonder how developers look at it from a design/business point of view?

It's certainly a balance of the cost the level of fidelity through the entire game will have by trying to get everything on the same quality level. That reflects itself not only on the budget and time it takes in dev, but on the game itself, it gets more complex.

There are many degrees of this, you want to have the best possible graphics, textures and character models for your game, then when it comes to tackling something like VFX you'll start having to negotiate a balance otherwise VFX will look subpar or cost too much.

The business point of view that defines where will most of your efforts go is simple: Whatever is more appealing to sales (visuals & feature/mechanic highlights).

Thoth_Moshe · May 2017

Sovrath said:

MaxBacon said:

LA Noire had indeed a lot of work put on that area, even as old as it is it still shows how powerful the tech they had then is.

Without that need I could understand why a company wouldn't go "all out" in the animation department if it wasn't necessary.

They didnt go all out but it doesnt seem like they even reached the drive way. They just cracked the door open and had one foot out.

MaxBacon · May 2017

YashaX said:
I thought some of the gameplay mechanics were just as bad if not worse than the animations/graphics. Indeed, when I was actually playing the game is was the poor gameplay that made me cringe/bored/frustrated more than the animations.

The gameplay mechanics are okay, nothing of Mass Effect Andromeda feels like a big quality jump from the rest.

I had more derps at the unnecessary complexity of several UI Menus than its gameplay.

Sovrath · May 2017

Thoth_Moshe said:

Sovrath said:

MaxBacon said:

LA Noire had indeed a lot of work put on that area, even as old as it is it still shows how powerful the tech they had then is.

Without that need I could understand why a company wouldn't go "all out" in the animation department if it wasn't necessary.

They didnt go all out but it doesnt seem like they even reached the drive way. They just cracked the door open and had one foot out.

I'm not going to say that Mass Effect Andromeda did a good job on that front. Clearly they didn't.

However, the example wasn't really the right example other than to show what can be done with facial animations.

A better example could have been Witcher 3.

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Six year old game has better facial/body animations than Mass Effect

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Six year old game has better facial/body animations than Mass Effect

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"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey