Making Faces - A Bioware Story

[Evonisia]

I think the likes of TES/FO kinda get away with it on account of those games being nowhere near as dedicated to the story and characterisation as the Bioware games. I think it's hilarious that the jaw just goes in circles in Oblivion, but those NPCs are just exposition dumps for the most part anyway. It only really gets grating when they actually try to put a story in.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

Facial animations are a forgivable sin if the voice acting is good, the characters are likable, and character designs are well-done.

The problem is that all three of these fell short of the bar set in previous games. Even though she eventually grew on me, Sera's accent is still pretty quick to get on my nerves, Vivienne is a stone-cold ***** throughout the whole game for no good reason, and they would've been better off making Cassandra look more like her incarnation in DA II, instead of just making her look dour and severe all of the time. I know she's supposed to look that way, but they could've done it without making her so...ugly.

(Also, I don't care for bald women, at least give Vivienne some hair.)

There's simply not a character in this game that I really, really like. In the first game, it was Shale. In the second game, it was Merill. But there simply isn't a comparable character in Inquisition, and with Bioware's efforts falling short of past successes, I started noticing things like the facial animations a lot more than I would otherwise. It's never truly bothered me before now, and I think it's because I'm seeing more of poorly or lazily-designed characters that I don't like.

Making good, interesting, likable characters will make up for a lot of shortcomings.

 

[Doom972]

Their methods are much better suited to a more comic-book aesthetic like the one in Telltale's The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us. I recently played TWD Season 2 and I've never been as immersed in dialogue as I've been in this game. I think that it would be better than switching to mo-cap, which would probably result in cutting funds to more important stuff.

 

[Thanatos2k]

I have also not really ever seen animators make a good animation of someone rolling their eyes, which is a crucially needed animation, especially when you can *hear* the voice actor doing it.

 

[NaelokQ]

There's a lot of goofy animation shit in DAI.

When I was first talking to Dorian, a lady walked in front of the camera and walked back and forth (occasionally clipping into a barrel) shamelessly as I went through a good five minutes of dialogue. This was pretty egregious, but similar things happen all the time. When Josephine introduced me to her sister at the ball, I didn't even see the girl.

But there's a big thing in western RPGs that goes unaddressed: Long hair.

No matter how much anti-aliasing a game has, you never have a game that doesn't have long hair clip through the model's body. And that's why you never get anything beyond shoulder length hair in almost any RPG with character customization. And it happens to beards too! How many Dwarf players in these games have seen their beards clip into their chests, regardless of what you do to the AA settings? We're living in a world where this supposedly next gen cutting edge game had about 4 flavours of baldness and no option to have long hair.

How many damn next-next-gens and fancy processors is it going to take to get us long hair? I remember complaining about this on the Bioware board back in Dragon Age Origins. I want to give my Elf Sorcerer long Sephiroth hair, damn it. Is that so much to ask?

 

[Darth_Payn]

I remember the "BioWare face" from playing KOTOR, and that one body animation they do when they say something that troubles them. And maybe some dramatic finger-pointing, and definitely slowly sweeping their head back and forth. I thought the voice acting was excellent.

 

[Thanatos2k]

"For example, a lot of visual novels, or games with visual-novel like dialogue, will just accompany each line with a still image of whoever's speaking, with a number of variants for different emotions. Somehow, that manages to be a hell of a lot less wooden."

I've even come to prefer this. Static portraits seem to portray far more of the emotional state of characters than fully 3D models. Grandia is always my go-to example. Even without voice acting all the little different face icons that they use in dialogue have a huge range of emotional states and work just fine.

Also, without voice acting, having a character go "........" can mean a bunch of things. With voice acting and 3D models and facial expressions, it's just massively awkward to have characters stare at each other in silence.

 

[Somebloke]

I just can't keep myself from noticing how everybody in DAI are awkwardly wringing their hands all the time, without cause; Nor the good old nod, which, like in every previous title it has densly frequented, seems altogether disconnected from anything any character is ever saying at the time -- it kind of looks like they are quietly affirming to themselves that: "Yes; Words are coming out of my mouth *nods*". :7

(EDIT: I have yet to spot the old squirming animation that, like clockwork, used to follow flattery in dialogue, but I'm not that far into the game. )

 

[ZodiacBraves]

I can't help feeling they'd have been better off keeping everyone's faces rock solid and claiming that they're just feeling really stoic

You heard it here folks, Yahtzee's idea for the next Bioware game is an Elcor spin-off.

 

[sumanoskae]

I never know what the hell he's talking about when he brings this topic up. The only game I can think of, off the top of my head, that has mocap voice acting is The Force Unleashed, and honestly, I usually didn't even fucking notice. I don't know what kind of sci-fi future games Yahtzee has been playing, but I sure as hell have yet to find a game with facial animations leaps and bounds ahead of Bioware.

In fact, I think that Bioware manage to get emotions out of characters like Wrex, Garrus, and Tali is pretty impressive, considering that their faces are totally concealed or completely inhuman.

 

[prismaticcrow]

Didn't they have motion-capture voice acting in LA Noire? For like the entire game, pretty much? I'm sure it can be done, at least with all major characters in the game. Minor/nameless NPC's can be relegated to a generic animation.

 

[ComicsAreWeird]

The last game I remember to get hyper relistic mocap animations was L.A.Noire and - though we got a brilliant game out of it - got Team Bondi liquidated! It is a way too expensive and time consuming process, specially if applied to a Bioware RPG with so many NPC's.

Now with regards to the criticism about the music continuing while the player waits to select an answer, I actually feel like Bioware should use the same system as Alpha Protocol and have a time limit to select a reply on in-game conversations.

It would make the role-playing more tense and interesting.

 

[Nixou]

Stuff is WAY too shiny and overdesigned. Its like a japanese rpg invasion.

Bioware IS a JRPG studio: their games are more centered on telling a tale than on making a sandbox, the interactions between the protagonist's entourage are central to the experience, the player-customized protagonist often have a personality and history of their own which does not come from the player, gameplay-wise they tend to be very linear with only lip service given to freedom of movement (sure, you can try to start with Orzammar, but you'll end doing the Tower-Redcliffe-Forest-Dwarves routine anyway)

***

I think it may also have something to do with the fact that almost all Bioware conversations are presented in shot-reverse-shot, a method of shooting conversations where you just cut back and forth between static over-the-shoulder shots of each person from the other's POV

Indeed, and the best thing to do is to avoid using closeups as much as possible: when Cullen wave his sword shouting panicked orders at his men in Haven, you don't notice his wooden face nor his plastic blond (formerly red, formerly brown) hair because millions of years of evolution and millennia of cultures wire your brain to focus on the "Authority figure openly displays febrility therefore Huge Shit Incoming" aspect of the scene; When Solas talks about giving the Inquisition a new home, his speech flows much more easily during the cutscene showing the survivors traveling that while the camera is fixed on his playmobil's face and Cassandra's anger at the world sounds a lot more credible when she's show throwing furniture at Varric than when the camera zoom on her lipstick-scarface combo.

Of course, the less over-the-shoulder shots you use, the more effort must be put in scripting the scenes, and you eventually reach a point where even the largest and more ambitious studios don't have the time, resources and manpower to make every conversation dynamic.

***

Yahtzee's idea for the next Bioware game is an Elcor spin-off.

Insincere endorsement: You have not really experienced a Bioware RPG until you've spent 90 hours playing Dragon Age: Tranquil.

 

[J Tyran]

There's a lot of goofy animation shit in DAI.

When I was first talking to Dorian, a lady walked in front of the camera and walked back and forth (occasionally clipping into a barrel) shamelessly as I went through a good five minutes of dialogue. This was pretty egregious, but similar things happen all the time. When Josephine introduced me to her sister at the ball, I didn't even see the girl.

But there's a big thing in western RPGs that goes unaddressed: Long hair.

No matter how much anti-aliasing a game has, you never have a game that doesn't have long hair clip through the model's body. And that's why you never get anything beyond shoulder length hair in almost any RPG with character customization. And it happens to beards too! How many Dwarf players in these games have seen their beards clip into their chests, regardless of what you do to the AA settings? We're living in a world where this supposedly next gen cutting edge game had about 4 flavours of baldness and no option to have long hair.

How many damn next-next-gens and fancy processors is it going to take to get us long hair? I remember complaining about this on the Bioware board back in Dragon Age Origins. I want to give my Elf Sorcerer long Sephiroth hair, damn it. Is that so much to ask?

We are no where near seeing realistic hair in many RPGs this generation, hair physics can bring a higher end PC to its knees with far simpler games. Without dedicated physics processors and with those weak CPUs the current gen consoles will never handle it, so outside of the few developers that do it for PCs "just because" it isn't happening.

 

[Nimcha]

Have you accidentally been playing DA:O?

This seems complete nonsense to me, granted the lip synching sucks but characters in cutscenes actually do move around and gesture according to what they're saying. There's no standard repertoire of gestures like in KOTOR.

I don't really get this column.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Didn't they have motion-capture voice acting in LA Noire? For like the entire game, pretty much? I'm sure it can be done, at least with all major characters in the game. Minor/nameless NPC's can be relegated to a generic animation.

Yeah but all their budget went to that. If you put in the work it can look really good, just don't forget about the rest of the game.

 

[blackrave]

I don't know about others, but I would prefer if most characters would have faces covered (helmets or masks)
BUT
In those cases when faces do appear they are mocaped

I also recently thought about stepping even further and modulating most voices
Any ideas what are best examples of voice modulation?

 

[iller3]

Making Faces - A Bioware Story

The solution of assigning an angry animation to play when someone says an angry line is also predicated on the idea that a single dialogue line can only convey a single emotion, and that people can only express one emotion at a time.

There's a technique in animation called Blend-Shapes which tackles this issue. Even SFM has a variation on it just by using some slider dials which the Short "Expiration Day" proved can be effective and "Pixar'y". If they're Mocapping and things still look more woodey than toystory tom hanks, then it's more likely a problem is with their actors or the director or the sensor distribution.