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God of War: Ascension in the Mocap Studio

L

Loudninja

Member
Spoilers btw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X9f7qd7HueE#!

No one can argue that Kratos is angry. With everything that’s happened to him over the years, he has every right to be. He’s killed — either accidentally or intentionally — everyone he’s ever cared about. He’s been lied to, chained up, run through, tortured, and cast into the depths of Hades several times. If I was him, I’d be angry too. Our aim in this installment of Kratos’ story is to try and show a bit more of his humanity. To do this, we incorporated voice over motion capture, or “vo-mocap”, into our cinematic pipeline.

The really exciting part of “vo-mocap” is that it gives our voice actors an opportunity to work together in a scene. Delivery, timing, and efforts all come more naturally because the actors are able to play off of each other. They see how far apart they are from each other physically. They can watch emotions play out on each other’s faces and respond appropriately. They can whisper. The technology we have now is awesome. On the first God of War, we might have been able to show the actors concept art, and possibly a playblast of animation that was in progress. Now we can load up the game environment and the character’s model and rig, and show a rough solve of the actor’s own performance in real time between takes.
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http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/02/12/god-of-war-ascension-in-the-mocap-studio/
 
Neat, didn't know they were doing voice and motion capture at the same time on this. I hope the end product (and story) justify that approach, I'd love a little more meat on Kratos' bones.

Yup.
 
Looks great. I like the potential for this better than LA Noires tech since that basically requires you to model the actors exact face. The animation looks even better than it was in GoW3 this time.
 
It shows like 2 scenes, both probably at the beginning of the game, just dialog between two characters, and it's rather quick. I didn't think it was spoilery.
 
Okay, just because someone said it contained spoilers. Then again, in GoW setpiece/boss spoilers would be far worse than story spoilers.
 
By the time that Kratos is fully under the player's command, it's apparent that this Ascension offers perhaps the biggest leap forward in combat mechanics that the series has taken to date. "After the first three, we just couldn't do all that again," says combat designer Jason McDonald, a longtime member of the God of War team immortalised by a trophy named in his honour in the HD remakes. "We had to change it up, and we did."
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By the time that Kratos is fully under the player's command, it's apparent that this Ascension offers perhaps the biggest leap forward in combat mechanics that the series has taken to date. "After the first three, we just couldn't do all that again," says combat designer Jason McDonald, a longtime member of the God of War team immortalised by a trophy named in his honour in the HD remakes. "We had to change it up, and we did."


You'll feel it first in the fundamentals, such as the slightly springier blades, their subtly weaker attack attributed to the fact that this is a prequel that starts a less empowered Kratos. Beyond that, there's a broader set of systems that are new to God of War, and they're ones that help freshen up combat that, by the time of 2010's third instalment, was in serious danger of getting stale.

Countering the weaker blades is a new rage system, although it's elsewhere that the real changes have taken place. "One of the first ideas we had that Kratos was a Spartan warrior - he didn't have the chain blades until he picked them up from Aeres," explains McDonald. "Allowing him to pick weapons up in the world show that he's still a Spartan warrior, and he can pick up any weapon."
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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-12-god-of-war-ascension-preview-kratos-combat-evolved
 
It's good that they're taking characterization seriously, but they certainly have their work cut out for them as far as pulling off tender moments. It's hard enough to do in a game where your protagonist isn't a savage killing machine.

I also hope they don't go overboard now that they're finally doing VO+mocap. Just because you can now produce state-of-the-art cutscenes doesn't mean the game should be filled with them.
 
hey_it's_that_dog said:
It's good that they're taking characterization seriously, but they certainly have their work cut out for them as far as pulling off tender moments. It's hard enough to do in a game where your protagonist isn't a savage killing machine.

I also hope they don't go overboard now that they're finally doing VO+mocap. Just because you can now produce state-of-the-art cutscenes doesn't mean the game should be filled with them.
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After 3 games from them I dont mind how overboard they go with in telling the story.
 
Glad they took up what Naughty Dog has been doing. Although, where is the full single player trailer and demo? Give me that now!
 
hey_it's_that_dog said:
If cutscenes are skippable, then I don't mind, either. They never have been before, but GOWA is all about changes, right?
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if they are still loading things in background, that still might not be possible. the previous games were loaded with QTE ( for battle and story ) and i don't think they changed that part ( i might be wrong but still )...
 
This is the mo cap studio that can't do women because the multiplayer animation puppets won't allow it, right? Oh just multiplayer...
 
jennifer hale as kratos wife? she seems to play a big part in the story, even though she should have been dead for 6 months when the game start. I guess there will be a lot of flashback scene.

Troy Baker character looks boss, remind me of dr Manhattan lol
 
Just to put a little perspective on it...Troy and Jennifer are two of the first voices you hear in Bioshock Infinite, with Troy as the lead. He's also the lead in The Last of Us which releases a few months from now. Jennifer is the voice of Heavenly Sword's Nariko in Playstation All-stars where she can fight Kratos although she plays his wife in Ascension, which releases the same month as Bioshock Infinite. It's the second God of War character she's played along with the Daughter of Death in Ghost of Sparta. Troy is also two separate Arkham City characters, Ryu in Ninja Gaiden, Alec Mason in Red Faction, Snow in Final Fantasy XIII and was the replacement James in Silent Hill 2 HD. He's Espio opposite Roger Craig Smith's Sonic in Sonic Generations, and then is opposite him again in Resident Evil 6 where they are Jake Muller and Chris Redfield respectively. Hale is Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect trilogy and he's Kai Leng in ME3. In MvC3 he's Nova, and she's Phoenix. She's played Samus Aran, and two separate crucial characters (Naomi and E.E) in the Metal Gear Solid series whilst he's voiced several enemies in both of those. They've both been in Halo 4, Black Ops II, Guild Wars II, Star Wars TOR, SOCOM 4 and Diablo III. He's also six characters in Darksiders II.

Clearly there's been a secret massive videogame voice-actor genocide leaving only a handful of them left to represent their entire industry. ;)
 
holy shit, someone needs to make a gif of the new scene, it looks spectacular, i feel bad for kratos now, man, that line he spoke really showed the pain hes in
 
Damn! Troy Baker again. I really dislike him since his SH comments. And Jennifer Hale really is in every game too lol But she is pretty good, so I don't mind her...
 
Itchy//Tasty said:
Just to put a little perspective on it...Troy and Jennifer are two of the first voices you hear in Bioshock Infinite, with Troy as the lead. He's also the lead in The Last of Us which releases a few months from now. Jennifer is the voice of Heavenly Sword's Nariko in Playstation All-stars where she can fight Kratos although she plays his wife in Ascension, which releases the same month as Bioshock Infinite. It's the second God of War character she's played along with the Daughter of Death in Ghost of Sparta. Troy is also two separate Arkham City characters, Ryu in Ninja Gaiden, Alec Mason in Red Faction, Snow in Final Fantasy XIII and was the replacement James in Silent Hill 2 HD. He's Espio opposite Roger Craig Smith's Sonic in Sonic Generations, and then is opposite him again in Resident Evil 6 where they are Jake Muller and Chris Redfield respectively. Hale is Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect trilogy and he's Kai Leng in ME3. In MvC3 he's Nova, and she's Phoenix. She's played Samus Aran, and two separate crucial characters (Naomi and E.E) in the Metal Gear Solid series whilst he's voiced several enemies in both of those. They've both been in Halo 4, Black Ops II, Guild Wars II, Star Wars TOR, SOCOM 4 and Diablo III. He's also six characters in Darksiders II.

Clearly there's been a secret massive videogame voice-actor genocide leaving only a handful of them left to represent their entire industry. ;)
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Jennifer Hale doesn't voice Elizabeth if thats what you mean.
 
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