Support NeoGAF

[geary]

"Which means Shadowheart's iconic head wiggles were Jen’s actual head wiggles."​

Baldur's Gate 3 drew on the expertise and motion-capture of 248 actors to bring its cast – including NPCs – to life.

That's according to performance director Aliona Baranova, who posted a lengthy thread to Xitter over the weekend to detail exactly how much work goes into making your favourite games feel "so alive".
"[For a]lmost ALL the dialogue we recorded, we ALSO captured the actors mocap data," Baranova explained. "That means all 248 actors, ALL the NPCs and not just the companions put on a mocap suit and their movements, gestures, and physical choices were recorded and sent along with the audio files for the animators to use in game. which is why the performances feels so alive."

The exceptions to the rule? Animals, of course, additional dialogue – Baranova gives the example of when you see a birds eye view of a character running while speaking – as well as cinematic cut scenes and, "occasionally", when an actor was injured or unavailable to record the mocap along with their voice lines.

​

"Which means the iconic head wiggles [Jennifer English] did as Shadowheart were Jen’s actual head wiggles," Baranova says. "The militaristic and alien like movements of Lae were Devora Wilde's physical choices for the character. Neil Newbon's theatrical flare as Astarion are all part of the actors choices."

"As a performance director, our job is to work with the voice director, and our focus is the actors body, their movements, how they physicalise, and embody their character and making sure that the body is connected to the voice," Baranova explains (thanks, PC Gamer).

"When you watch the in game dialogue you're not only hearing the actors voices but you're also seeing their physical performances as well as the beautiful work of the animators at Larian Studios, of course, who used the files we sent to create the finished product."

Larian has released its first "major" update for Baldur's Gate 3, with the developer stating it will target a rather substantial 1000 bugs, as well as "balancing, flow issues and much, much more". As Larian joked, it is so immense, the patch notes couldn't be detailed in their entirety on Steam, as they exceeded the platform's text limit.

https://www.eurogamer.net/baldurs-g...nd-248-actors-to-bring-its-characters-to-life

 

[Draugoth]

Insert the Starfield Comparassion meme here

 

[Deft Beck]

You really don't need all of that to make a believable character. There are characters without voice acting or mocap that are believable.

No matter how much money, time, or energy you put into high-fidelity graphics or professional voice actors, you need good writing to make a believable character.

Suggesting otherwise only further inflates the budgets of AAA games while exacerbating poor narrative and character craft work.

 

[The Cockatrice]

While I agree its insane, and every cutscene looks nice, I think sometimes less is better. Act 3 suffers a lot, because theres a million npcs that have 15 seconds cutscenes and you have no idea if its for a quest or just randon banter. They spent all that time on making a million useless cutscenes instead of making act 3 less buggy and more impactful in regards to story.

 

[ungalo]

It's incredible, mocap, in a game. Who's going to stop them ?

 

[ReBurn]

Insert the Starfield Comparassion meme here

Someone had to derail the conversation and start the warring I guess.

 

[yazenov]

Yes, and it definitely shows. The difference is like night and day between this game and Starfield. There are levels to this and BG3 is in a league of its own when it comes to western Rpgs.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

 

[Beer Baelly]

 

[Thaedolus]

I keep getting taken aback at how good the characters look tbh. It runs great on a 4080, though I’m waiting for the inevitable downfall when I get CPU bound later on

 

[Hugare]

You really don't need all of that to make a believable character. There are characters without voice acting or mocap that are believable.

No matter how much money, time, or energy you put into high-fidelity graphics or professional voice actors, you need good writing to make a believable character.

I mean sure for some games, but if you are making a game like BG 3 in 2023, it's absolutely necessary (if you want to make a 96 MC scored masterpiece, at least)

DOS 2 was an amazing game, with excellent writting, but no one cared because it didnt have BG 3's production values.

I talk about my own experience: BG 3 production values play a huge role in my enjoyment of the game. One of the reasons why I dropped DO 2 and not BG 3.

Play FF XVI, for example. Cutscenes look amazing, with excellent animation work.

Then you play a sidequest and it looks like a game from 2005.

It's jarring, takes you out of the experience.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

You really don't need all of that to make a believable character. There are characters without voice acting or mocap that are believable.

No matter how much money, time, or energy you put into high-fidelity graphics or professional voice actors, you need good writing to make a believable character.

Suggesting otherwise only further inflates the budgets of AAA games while exacerbating poor narrative and character craft work.

You could have ended with saying fortunately BG3 has excellent writing as opposed to that other game that just came out…

 

[GymWolf]

It looks better than starfield (dah mass effect 1 probably beats starfield aswell) but the gold standard for npcs discussion stays firmly in the hands of horizon 2 and it's probably gonna be like this until horizon 3 or maybe witcher 4 (so horizon 3).

The writing and voice acting is what make them really alive more than the digital acting tech they have.

 

[T4keD0wN]

They spent all that time on making a million useless cutscenes instead of making act 3 less buggy and more impactful in regards to story.

Those things are so different they were likely handled by completely different team(s) with completely different competencies.

 

[The Cockatrice]

Those things are so different they were likely handled by completely different team(s) with completely different competencies.

Larian isnt a multi billion dollar company my guy. It's an indie team. Sure there are people doing different things but Im sure you get my point.

 

[Draugoth]

Someone had to derail the conversation and start the warring I guess.

 

[Represent.]

I wish Horizon Forbidden West got more praise for raising the bar (that still hasnt been surpassed) for NPC's in open world gaming. None of the media reviews mentioned how amazing that games NPC's are. As if it doesnt completely transform the liveliness of an open world game. shame

 

[Deft Beck]

I mean sure for some games, but if you are making a game like BG 3 in 2023, it's absolutely necessary (if you want to make a 96 MC scored masterpiece, at least)

DOS 2 was an amazing game, with excellent writting, but no one cared because it didnt have BG 3's production values.

I talk about my own experience: BG 3 production values play a huge role in my enjoyment of the game. One of the reasons why I dropped DO 2 and not BG 3.

Play FF XVI, for example. Cutscenes look amazing, with excellent animation work.

Then you play a sidequest and it looks like a game from 2005.

It's jarring, takes you out of the experience.

It is not fair to compare BGIII with FFXVI. It is a choices-matter CRPG with much different presentation and ludonarrative aims than a linear JRPG.

In the AAA games space, you have to know where to spend your time and money to make a product efficiently and on time. Along those lines, Larian had a much different development experience than Creative Business Unit III.

Larian had the benefit of an early access period and heavy feedback from the CRPG community before they launched to the masses. Therefore, they were able to spread their resources out over a longer span of time and give a high degree of polish to everything until it was ready to reach a mainstream audience. FFXVI, by comparison, is a traditional big budget JRPG developed in a five to six-year period and released to retail and digital with no preview period other than the single public demo and a month prior for reviewers.

Keep in mind that the team behind FFXVI is the same as the FFXIV team; an MMO has hundreds of quests between the main story and the sidequests. You have to keep the side quest narrative cutscenes modular and smaller in scope than the main quest to avoid scope issues and distribute team resources properly. They applied the same philosophy to FFXVI, hence why it may seem more lo-fi. If you want every single cutscene in Final Fantasy XVI to look like the main storyline cutscenes, then the game wouldn't come out until 2027.

You could have ended with saying fortunately BG3 has excellent writing as opposed to that other game that just came out…

I haven't played BGIII yet, so I am not going to judge it yet.

 

[T4keD0wN]

Larian isnt a multi billion dollar company my guy. It's an indie team. Sure there are people doing different things but Im sure you get my point.

I get your point that you would prefer less bugs over more detailed animations, thats perfectly valid request. What i was aming to contribute with is a possible explanation for why taking resources from 1 task and assigning them to another task might possible or optimal since those workload are pretty different and animations (especially animation capture which is done by actors) are probably handled by different people than coding along with quality assurance+control, right person for the right work and all that.

Despite being an indie the credits go on for 30minutes and have a lot of names (lot of it is outsourced translations and smaller contributions obviously)

 

[Spyxos]

Sometimes it looks really good, but just few seconds later it has goofy animations. Overall pretty good. Chapter 1.

 

[TheInfamousKira]

I don't play Baldur's Gate, but uh


What the fuck is an "iconic head wiggle," ? Sounds like some Harry Potter nonsense.

 

[The Cockatrice]

I get your point that you would prefer less bugs over more detailed animations, thats perfectly valid request. What i aming to contribute with is a possible explanation for why taking resources from 1 task and assigning them to another task might possible or optimal since those workload are pretty different and animations (especially animation capture which is done by actors) are probably handled by different people than coding along with quality assurance+control, right person for the right work and all that.

Despite being an indie the credits go on for 30minutes and have a lot of names (lot of it is outsourced translations and smaller contributions obviously)

Resources are limited. Do less mocap, hire a dedicated q&a team instead. You can tell they didnt have one, when they released a patch that basically screwed everyones progress who played with it in those two days and they announced they'll hire and test more thoroughly. Early access users was their Q&A judging by act 3. Game still lacks a ton of quality of life features, hell, even some animations are off. It's always about the budget, they dont have unlimited funds.

 

[Revolutionary]

Meanwhile, a conversation between two people in FFXVI:

 

[ClanOfNone]

They DID mocap everything? I was just bitching in the ot about how the models looked great but the animations looked so canned and repetitive.

 

[GrayChild]

So... did they actually get someone to fuck a real bear for that animation?

 

[docchicken]

Lengths like this demonstrate that their heart is with their creation.

 

[Dr.brain64]

Very impressive.

 

[Markio128]

I’ve just witnessed the first sex scene between my hot blonde Druid elf and Lae’zel. I may have felt a slight twinge.

 

[Hugare]

It is not fair to compare BGIII with FFXVI. It is a choices-matter CRPG with much different presentation and ludonarrative aims than a linear JRPG.

In the AAA games space, you have to know where to spend your time and money to make a product efficiently and on time. Along those lines, Larian had a much different development experience than Creative Business Unit III.

Larian had the benefit of an early access period and heavy feedback from the CRPG community before they launched to the masses. Therefore, they were able to spread their resources out over a longer span of time and give a high degree of polish to everything until it was ready to reach a mainstream audience. FFXVI, by comparison, is a traditional big budget JRPG developed in a five to six-year period and released to retail and digital with no preview period other than the single public demo and a month prior for reviewers.

Keep in mind that the team behind FFXVI is the same as the FFXIV team; an MMO has hundreds of quests between the main story and the sidequests. You have to keep the side quest narrative cutscenes modular and smaller in scope than the main quest to avoid scope issues and distribute team resources properly. They applied the same philosophy to FFXVI, hence why it may seem more lo-fi. If you want every single cutscene in Final Fantasy XVI to look like the main storyline cutscenes, then the game wouldn't come out until 2027.



I haven't played BGIII yet, so I am not going to judge it yet.

I dont see how your first sentence contradicts what I'm saying

In fact, a linear big budget JRPG like FF XVI should focus even more on its presentation than BG 3, considering how BG 3 have tons of permutations and unique scenes that players may never see during a playthrough

The early access argument doesn't fly, imo. I've played the early access version, and cutscene direction was there since day one. They just polished graphics and scene transitions, added even more with the final release and etc. But the choice to have unique mocaped scenes for pretty much every dialogue was there since EA.

FF XVI is a big game, but so was BG 3 (even bigger). So that's no excuse.

The reason is simple: budget, mostly.

Larian can self publish their own game, and they had a lot of devs and budget. Western devs cant compete with what Larian did, imagine then Japanese devs that tends to have smaller teams and budget.

None of this is excusable, tho. If you can't make a 50h game with high production values like Larian did, then use your budget smartly.

FF XVI started with high production values that were diminishing more and more as the game went by. It had way more cutscenes with mocap during the first 1/4 the game. They were dumb and blew their budget early on.

Instead of a bloated 50h game full of mindless quests during the main quest, with stilted animations and poor pacing, make a 20h with a better pacing and mocap

FF VII Remake was also long and had a more consistent presentation throughout. It's on the devs.

 

[docchicken]

In fact, a linear big budget JRPG like FF XVI

Lemme chime in here really quick: FF16 is not an RPG. It's an action game.

 

[Hugare]

Lemme chime in here really quick: FF16 is not an RPG. It's an action game.

This is a rabbit whole that I would rather not go into

Not really important for the point that I was trying to make

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

You really don't need all of that to make a believable character. There are characters without voice acting or mocap that are believable.

No matter how much money, time, or energy you put into high-fidelity graphics or professional voice actors, you need good writing to make a believable character.

Suggesting otherwise only further inflates the budgets of AAA games while exacerbating poor narrative and character craft work.

Lol what?

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

I wish Horizon Forbidden West got more praise for raising the bar (that still hasnt been surpassed) for NPC's in open world gaming. None of the media reviews mentioned how amazing that games NPC's are. As if it doesnt completely transform the liveliness of an open world game. shame

Because the media is biased...

 

[semiconscious]

You really don't need all of that to make a believable character. There are characters without voice acting or mocap that are believable.

No matter how much money, time, or energy you put into high-fidelity graphics or professional voice actors, you need good writing to make a believable character.

Suggesting otherwise only further inflates the budgets of AAA games while exacerbating poor narrative and character craft work.

/thread...