Holy Uncanny Valley

[SiW]

The new Indiana Jones game apparently uses procedural character animation during gameplay (the so called "biomechanical AI" ). But everyone has been slamming that for looking a bit rubbish.

It's fun as hell to play with though. The Indy stuff is basically a runtime player for endorphin, the procedural animation package that has already been used a lot for non-dynamic stuff. Best part is you can grab the learning edition for free and have a grand old time playing with digital stuntpeople. Remember the Porrasturvat (Stair Dismount) game? It's like that, turned to 11.

http://www.naturalmotion.com/pages/le.htm

[Thrik]

Well sure, you can use motion capture for non-cutscene animation, but in almost all cases that requires quite a bit of work from a traditional animator anyway for it to work properly in a game context. Using motion capture probably speeds things up (assuming you have a place to do it), but it still boils down to an animator sitting there and tweaking it for ages until it looks perfect — especially when animations merge and the player is in there interacting with stuff.

The point I was really driving towards is that using motion capture to make animation in games more realistic is all well and good, but it's nothing remotely new and Heavy Rain doesn't look like it's even using it as well as games that've already been released; it just looks like a cutscene, and really serves no purpose in a gameplay context. I would have thought that cutscenes would be lessened now we're moving into yet another generation, but here they are using one to demonstrate a console's ability. The only difference is that it's supposedly in real time. Well, wow, I guess?

If this is supposed to make me desire a PS3, I don't think they could have been any less effective. Now, if they'd used a video that shows equally good animation and visuals but in a fully interactive context — and possibly not-shit facial animation — then I'd probably be impressed. But as it stands, I'd rather go and watch one of the Metal Gear Solid 2 cutscenes or something, because that's the era in which Heavy Rain belongs.

And yes, I'm grumbling, but I'm just growing so tired of games endlessly trying to be realistic but failing to deliver in actual gameplay. It's looking like the PS3 is going to be yet another fest of graphics over gameplay, and I've heard so many people both on the internet and in the real world say that they're going to get a PS3 purely because of its graphics that I almost want to go find the tallest tree in Sherwood Forest and hang myself off it.

I want fun games, not shit motion captured cutscenes with horse-faced women.

[SpiderMonkey]

Using mocap can be compared to using photo sources to make textures with. It'll save you hassle in some respects, it'll cause you more hassle in others, but au fin du jour, it's largely a question of style. If you want realistic results, you will probably go with mocap, in the same way that if you want a photorealistic texture style, you will probably use photo sources.

I would have thought that cutscenes would be lessened now we're moving into yet another generation,

It's a big mistake to try and prescribe a one-size-fits-all template to what games must be and what they must become. Cutscenes are an abomination in some games because they are used the same way film makers used to use intertitles. That doesn't mean they have no place in other types of games.

Have you played Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy? These guys are very openly pursuing an "Interactive Cinema" agenda. It's not something for everyone, but it's genuinely unique and worthwhile. Their cutscenes aren't crowding out their "real gameplay", because they are trying to bring cutscenes and gameplay together in ways that no (/few?) other developers are pursuing. Think of it as starting with a cutscene and adding gameplay, rather than doing what most developers do which is starting with gameplay and taking it away by adding cutscenes.

I don't know what "actual gameplay" means in this context, because different people prefer different things from their games, but to accuse them of doing something that is not interesting and is instead generic and lazy is very inaccurate.

[brkl]

Such a terrible game :frusty:

[Thrik]

I know what Quantic Dream strive for, and I've also played Fahrenheit — I rated it very highly. Sure, the “Dance Dance Revolution” type gameplay was shit, and the rest of the gameplay wasn't that great either, but the ability to slightly influence the storyline's unfolding was good.

There's a difference between that and this, though: Heavy Rain has zero demonstrated interactivity. I'm not even quite sure what's it supposed to be demonstrating at all, other than the brute force of simulating realism I guess, which brings us back to my main critique: too much focus on graphics. And hell, this level of graphics and believability of reality has already been surpassed by PCs and/or existing games.

I appreciate that the emotion bundled into the video is fairly well done, but as it stands now that's all they've achieved: creating a movie that's completely scripted but rendered in real time. It's not a game. Until they can crack the art of intertwining this type of cinematic presentation with gameplay that isn't shit (see: paragraph 1), Quantic Dream have a long way to go as game developers.

Crafting their own genre is no excuse for making games that just aren't fun. The novelty of cinematic presentations being rendered in real time will soon run thin, and I don't think Fahrenheit even did that well did it? I could be wrong, but I've not come across many people who actually bought it.

I want Quantic Dream to do well as their mantra is sound, but unless they can make their games more engaging as opposed to making the player feel like a spectator as with Fahrenheit, they're just going to fall flat onto their faces — it won't fly with the masses. It's not even flying with me, and I'm more open and go out of way to play new gaming experiences than most.

[SpiderMonkey]

I agree with all your sentiments, but I think you're misinterpreting what this video is about. When you start on a big project, it's common practice to make some tech demos/prototypes that focus in on some of the critical aspects of the title, to make sure what you are striving for is feasible and to determine early on what the challenges and difficulties are.

That's all this video is. Critical to the success of this game will presumably be how expressive the characters and their camera language is. So they built something to test both those things out. Along the way, they presumably decided it would be fun to add some humour to it by making it a casting video and that it wouldn't hurt to show it at E3 either.

On the subject of feeling like a spectator: Yes this is the ever present risk associated with almost any kind of large volume of pure storytelling. It doesn't have to be a strict cutscene to suffer from that - Valve were fighting the same problem in HL2. I think it's to be expected that if you start with cutscene and start adding gameplay, the first few drafts will have too much cutscene and too little gameplay. I'd expect that they have another internal tech demo focusing on getting this aspect right.

[Thrik]

I hope so. I truly admired Fahrenheit, but the weird gameplay design decisions resulted in it falling onto the wrong side of “too much cutscene”. Some parts were good, but those dreaded DDR bits were really very poor. I didn't realise when I started that the whole game would be full of them, and I'd rather that they just weren't there at all if given the choice.

[brkl]

Fahrenheit didn't give the player the option to influence the storyline into not being terrible :/ Dragon's Lair- type merging of cinema and games hasn't been innovative in 15 years.

[loonyboi]

I'm playing Indigo Prophecy now (well not now, but it's the game I'm currently playing through when I'm not working or posting on forums), and I'm enjoying it, but I feel like I'm not doing a whole lot, just watching.

Sid Meier defines gaming as "a series of interesting choices", and I guess that's what Indigo Prophecy is...but it's an adventure game that doesn't seem to have any puzzles whatsoever, and I feel like all I'm doing is triggering cutscene after cutscene instead of actually playing the game.

[brkl]

How far into it are you?

[SiW]

The thing that really killed it for me (other than a showstopping bug that left me with a savegame in the girlfriend's apartment with the clock running down but nobody ever comes to the door so I can't continue) is that the Simon/DDR games forced me to concentrate on the colors, completely missing what was going on in the background.

[SpiderMonkey]

Dragon's Lair- type merging of cinema and games hasn't been innovative in 15 years.

Comparing one line summaries of a game is a pretty dangerous way of determining whether a title offers something new or not. Next up, perhaps you can point out how MGS1 brings nothing new to the table because it's just Pacman, and how HL2 brings nothing new to the table because it's just Wolfenstein 3D?

[loonyboi]

How far into it are you?

Barely, I think. Probably two hours, maybe three at most.

I just did the bugs-at-work and composite sketch sequences

[brkl]

Well, prepare yourself. Don't expect great things from the latter half of the game.

[brkl]

Comparing one line summaries of a game is a pretty dangerous way of determining whether a title offers something new or not.

Nah, I determined whether Fahrenheit has something new to offer by playing it through. No, it does not.

[miffy495]

Well, I liked it, but I gotta say it does start to go downhill after that bit on the military base. The bugs at work was definitely the moment that made the game worth it for me. I don't know why that made me like it so much, but it did. It made me want to figure out what the hell was going on. Once I did, I wasn't very impressed, but the game still had its moments.

[nsps]

I want less games that try to recreate reality and more that have fun, stylized animation that doesn't look creepy. Is that too much to ask?

[Thrik]

The thing that still makes me look back at Fahrenheit fondly despite the lesser later half was the atmosphere. They really nailed the feel of things going downhill, even if the reasons for doing so were ultimately a bit daft.

I guess it was a good effort though, and certainly shows promise of things to come. I just sincerely hope that their storyline and gameplay abilities are sharpened up, else it'll be another “so close but so far” success.

[loonyboi]

I played it some more over the weekend, and holy crap, this game sucks ass.

I mean, I'm going to finish it (I think I'm at the end now), but it's just awful.

Someone needs to tell David Cage that he needs to either make a movie or make a better game. Don't make a bad movie-like game. There are enough lousy action movies out there without creating a game that wants really badly to be a lousy action movie.

And the plot! My god, this is ludicrous! The leaps in logic here are astounding.

And then there's his treatment of New York city...I'm very touchy about the city I love, but man, this is just terrible. I mean, Atari has an office here. You would think someone would have changed some of the baffling flaws in its depiction of new york.

Some of the gems:

- None of the streets, apartments or parks has any resemblance to anything in NYC in the last hundred years. This is the least significant, because plenty of games/movies set here but made/filmed elsewhere have this problem. I'm fine with that.

- "American University"? How much effort does it take to look up NYC on Wikipedia and get the name of a real institution in the city? Not to mention the fact that we have the Museum of Natural History here, which would have made a lot more sense.

- "Police University"? Another baffling localization screwup. I wonder if you can get an acredited degree from P.U.?

- The bathrooms are all european. All of them. I don't think I've ever seen a bathroom in this country with the flush button on the wall. Pull chains, yes, but they're very rare.

And there are lots more. Taxis don't look like NY taxis, subways don't either, there's an above-the-ground subway line conveniently running right past the police station (in fairness, Spider-Man 2 did this as well) and so on.

If you're going to set a game in an existing city, do at least some research. You'd never see this kind of laziness in a Broken Sword game, that's for sure.

[MrChlorophyll]

I was totally into the game and digging all of it until the end. When I got the final act, I think I actually said out loud: What the... fuck?

I'd like to think that they ran out of time/money and just had to pull something out of their ass. Because if someone wrote that down on paper in total seriousness... I weep for the species.

[DanJW]

Same here, I really enjoyed the first 3/4 of the game. Then it went off at a right angle. They were doing so well with a believeable sense of mystery and low key menace up to that point.

Being by a European developer I can see that the New York setting lacked a bit (not to mention the hopefully ironic blaxpoitation type scenes), but I can forgive that.

[loonyboi]

I finished it last night...dear lord what a mess that game was.

Hopefully Dreamfall's much, much better. Otherwise I'm going to be really depressed until the next Broken Sword comes out.