Today I talk about what I find to be two of the most critical pieces of game design for the player.
I’m no developer. I don’t know how to code, design or draw. This means that the only thing I can base ideas for game design around are the experiences I have while enjoying finished products, and two things are always at the forefront, whether they are exceptional, terrible or bland. They can single handedly make or break a title’s success for me personally and entirely govern the atmosphere and success of a scene. I am talking of animation and script.
Both of these things are so utterly vital because they are so common. Every movement of a character or object is “animation”, every piece of text – whether voice acted or simply a character’s text-only journal – comes under the heading of script. If a common animation is off, in any way, it can be disastrous to the enjoyment of the player. Equally, voice actors phoning it in or terrible dialogue can utterly destroy any suspension of disbelief.
In the case of animation, it’s pretty shocking how poorly this can be done by even the most professional development studios. Bethesda’s Oblivion and Fallout 3 stand testament to just how much this vital piece of design can drag a game down if implemented poorly. The constantly clunky feeling to characters movements, as well as being generally ugly, really highlighted the bugs in game AI. This was not helped by voice acting which seemed no better than bored at times – not to mention the ridiculous changes in accent due to some lines only being recorded by some voice actors.
An amazing experience I had was, having played Fallout 3 for a day beforehand, I booted up Dead Space. The introduction sequence was like some sort of devine intervention:
Oh, so that’s how it’s meant to be done. The slickness of human movement, the real emotion in the voices. Dead Space is a game where atmosphere is vitally important and the movement of the monstrous beings you encounter perfectly transmit this. Clawing along the walls, popping from vents, some slither – it all combines to create a feeling of something utterly alien, unknowable and uncommunicable with. A direct helper to this is the brilliant voice acting of various characters: They sound realistic, actually scared, panicy in that introduction as they careen towards possible destruction. Dead Space being one of many games to exploit the “log” system (whereby unseen characters leave behind video/audio recordings for the player to find), voice acting was especially important while constructing the plot of the surroundings and past events. The fear in the voice of hunted men who’ve worked out a key fact was a component that added so much to the experience.
An extension of this is live action videos, as employed mostly by the Command and Conquer series. Let’s make one thing very clear – if we’re too busy laughing (or staring at breasts) to take in cutscenes, you’ve probably done something wrong. I’m looking at you, Red Alert 3. The interesting thing about this medium is it’s almost entirely down to the actor, at least for me. Whereas in audio, it can seem that if half a coversation is poor, everything is dragged down, in video I find that (for example) Joe Kucan portraying Kane is something I will never get tired of. Particularly in dance remixes.
On the subject of dialogue and VAs, I also want to mention Republic Commando which (nearly) gets a certain aspect spot on. This is the random speech triggered by events dialogues that occur frequently throughout the game. They are nailed by their VAs, but most importantly they are either short or are said extremely rarely. There are a couple of exceptions (usually relating to health pick ups), but overall their execution is preferable to other ways I have seen it done. Valve also comes close with Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 – but these suffer from either being so rare as to never be heard by most players, or being so common as to become memes.
Why is it that so many companies don’t seem to see the value in decent animation and voice acting particularly? What’s the point in a super-sexy Unreal 3 rendered Crysis-level awesomesauce graphics engine when there’s nothing good to look at? Why include sound software that can accurately reproduce the sound of a gunshot, when your dialogue isn’t actually worth hearing? These things are important, they can ruin games.
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Something I would be interested to know about is the exploits of indie gamers. How do they do in the region of animation and, particularly, voice acting? Many don’t even have something that would classify, I suppose. Most being 2Dish games without much talking (or, with text). Do comment if there are any that did anything particularly impressively (or hay, really, really badly).
Even the wackiest and most basic of plots can be made so much better with animation. I think if devs need a prime example, it’s Half Life 2 facial animation. There’s few games which match up to the actual emotion that the game manages to convey through the voice acting and faces.
(curse you lack of edit function)
And on the topic of indie games, while the voice acting isn’t great, it’s the animation in Zeno Clash which helped make it awesome.
Oh yeah, I didn’t even think of Zeno Clash. I never played it (curse you lack of money) but from everything I heard and videos I saw the punching was amazing.
Oblivion’s and FO3s biggest mistake was that they provided you with a 3rd person camera. Hadn’t it been there you wouldn’t have noticed half the horrible animations that you usually would have seen. I mean many FPS don’t even bother animating jumps and such.
Deus Ex for instance doesn’t since you’re usually locked in first person unless in a dialogue sequence. So they didn’t really bother animating any jump sequence there which is noticeable if you cheat yourself into a 3rd person mode.
In RA3’s defense it is supposed to be campy as hell. Even if they did sorta overdo it at part. But RA2 did have its share of cleavage shots. (And not to mention ladies on cocktail dresses. :d) ‘
The best part though is watching the RA3 bonus material and instantly realize that Peter Stormare knew the whole thing was campy as hell and therefore overplayed his role so much that it became memorable instead of playing it straight.
But some of the best FMV scenes are still the ones in Tiberian Sun. The tone and the useage of good actors really made those scenes look good and not campy or anything.
System Shock 2 stands out for me as a game that uses atmosphere to the point of excellency. No matter how many times I play it I still feel scared shitless at parts. And then the graphics for that game is outdated by now. But it still remains that atmosphere of oppression and fright that makes it such an excellent game. Not to mention that the voice acting is very convincing. The big scene in the middle of the game is still such a classic.
Great read! I agree with Cooked Auto: some game are meant to be terribly campy, and more power to them for being as over-the-top as they can be. On the other hand, most game developers genuinely seem to think the mediocre animations and acting they’ve conjured up are acceptable. This makes me sad.
Aw, you changed the ending.
Also, here’s how not to do it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaDoJiTrIsU&feature=related
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One thing I find troubling with this: I actually think more clearly when I’m in the middle of an adrenaline rush. It happens all the time when I’m at work… I’m a cashier at a grocery store, and I can sometimes trigger an adrenaline rush by increasing the rate of my breathing and starting to move faster. After just a minute or so, I feel it kicking in, and the described effects take place. (Although, reading on Wikipedia, it seems this effect of mine is caused by norepinephrine, not epinephrine. The difference: Norepinephrine also affects the person mentally, affecting the brain by accelerating it. Both are caused by stress, which is easily triggered by increasing the rate of breathing and moving faster through a normal routine… So noradrenaline is better than adrenaline!)
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