Pyrian on 25/7/2012 at 20:42
What strikes me about your post, Phatose, is that these are all things that have been problems for a very long time, mostly could've been addressed almost as long ago, and yet have rarely managed to be a priority.
Should I expect that any of the factors which prevent these issues from having been addressed so far (with occasional exceptions for some of them), are going away?
Phatose on 25/7/2012 at 22:14
I would think so. We are seeing steps towards it, aren't we? Euphoria might not have been perfect - but it was a deliberate attempt to deal with those behavior issues in the form of a middleware, equivalent to Havok physics. That is deliberate attempt to make that kind of tech not only possible, but to package it in a form where it's relatively low cost.
DDL on 26/7/2012 at 08:04
Phatose: you touch upon what is probably a fairly important factor holding that sort of stuff back: the current system "pulls the horror out of violence".
You don't really want (I don't think) to make wargames super realistic, because..war is fucking horrible. You're making entertainment, first and foremost, and personally I think that as we progress toward something realistic like:
"shoot dude in the leg, cause compound fracture, dude clutches leg and screams, drops behind cover, you move forward, follow the blood trail and dragmarks in the dust where he's tried to crawl away, catch up with him as he turns and pleads for his life, you shoot him in the face, bits of brain go everywhere"
...it stops being entertainment and starts being really, really harrowing. Hell, I think I'd feel bad killing an alien crab monster that way.
It would be a breakthrough, but I'm not sure it's a hugely desirable one.
I mean, I could be wrong, but generally I feel the whole shooter genre is more about deriving satisfaction from exerting skill, accuracy and judgement, than it is about genuinely trying to simulate killing people.
I think it would be a lovely experiment, just to really hit home a message about the horrors of war, but I don't think it would really sell very well.
...
Er, or perhaps I just like to think it wouldn't sell very well. Probably it'd sell like hotcakes and "hyper-real face-asploder" would replace the CoD series as this x-mases must-buy. :p
demagogue on 26/7/2012 at 08:18
I think it'd be a good direction to move in (as one genre of games), but then I think The Battle of Algiers is a vastly better movie than something like Transformers could ever aspire to be. Edit: But I'm really thinking about art direction and attitude more than mechanics per se.
Thirith on 26/7/2012 at 08:39
I dunno - for me the more interesting reaction to aim for wouldn't be shock and disgust so much as empathy. All Quiet on the Western Front (or indeed Battle of Algiers) isn't harrowing so much because of graphic details, so I don't think this is an issue so much of graphic fidelity than of design and writing.
Phatose on 26/7/2012 at 16:19
DDL, you know that scenario kind of sounds like something that would fit in "Last of Us", if the trailers are anything to go by.
It certainly wouldn't be appropriate for every game. But it's not like there is a shortage of games where that kind of graphic violence is already a major part of the game - It's pretty much Kratos's MO for example. Dead Space, Resident Evil. Fallout. There's more to gaming then gore porn, but there's certainly plenty of games that lean heavily that way.
Actually, even if you're not going for gore porn, there are places where that kind of detail would help. Zombie games - if you've got models of people's insides like that, turning models into zombies because easier. Mutants. Cyborgs...hell, would've made the already pretty harrowing Stroggification scene from Quake 4 into outright nightmare fuel. I think there's a market for that.
heywood on 27/7/2012 at 01:43
Quote Posted by Pyrian
What strikes me about your post, Phatose, is that these are all things that have been problems for a very long time, mostly could've been addressed almost as long ago, and yet have rarely managed to be a priority.
Should I expect that any of the factors which prevent these issues from having been addressed so far (with occasional exceptions for some of them), are going away?
Is it really an issue of priority, or is it simply easier to improve the visual rendering of NPCs than AI and animation? The hardware industry depends on perpetuating the upgrade cycle, and they push game developers. Motion capture remains laborious and expensive, and it's quite difficult to find good AI programmers.
Sg3 on 27/7/2012 at 07:32
Quote Posted by DDL
Phatose: you touch upon what is probably a fairly important factor holding that sort of stuff back: the current system "pulls the horror out of violence". You don't really want (I don't think) to make wargames super realistic, because..war is fucking horrible.
This side-steps the issue: you have reasonably believable wounds and such in cutscenes, but nothing of the sort in gameplay. The issue isn't that people don't want to see "reasonably believable" wounds (read: "movie realism," not Real Life realism)--the fact that they're present in cutscenes is proof of this.
Rather, it's laziness on the part of both developer and player. The developer doesn't want to spent resources making wound graphics & animations in-game look like the cutscenes, and the player doesn't want the more difficult gameplay which would result from having said reasonably-realistic wound animations.
Classic example of this is the hero who, in gameplay, eats bullets for breakfast and can be set on fire without more than a few manly grunts, but is who is severely wounded and effectively disabled by a single bullet during a cutscene. If you could be taken down during the game as realistically as in cutscenes, players would be pissed, because they're too lazy to become good at a game which is that difficult.
faetal on 30/7/2012 at 14:04
I'd be a little happier if only games more consistently showed the gun I last had equipped in cut-scenes. In some of the games which make you choose between e.g. 3 weapons, the cut-scenes sometimes show you holding one (usually the one you start the game with) you threw away 3 levels back.
DDL on 30/7/2012 at 15:59
Hah. Yes. Fucking mass effect. "I can't even fucking USE an assault rifle, cutscene peeps!"
:p
Sg3: I don't think there's any real problem with having realistic wounds on enemies while the player remains a meat-tank: that's been done all over the place (see any game that features dismemberment, for instance). It's clearly a gameplay conceit, yes, but suspension of disbelief is super easy when you're busy shooting dudez and trying to avoid being shot.
Plus what phatose was mostly referring to (i think) was primarily NPC behaviour and movement anyway (since in your average FPS you see very little of yourself). And that's where I think the harrowing element would come into it. The more lifelike and humanised the other characters are, the harder it would be (for me at least) to kill them. The more realistically it models the horrific damage you are capable of dealing to enemies, the harder it would be to stomach actually doing that. Watching enemies get injured and respond realistically: limping because you shot them in the leg, watching another enemy run out and take their arm to help them into cover and then you shoot him too, so on.
Basically if AI and body rigging/animation gets good enough to allow you to be the sniper in (
http://www.gustavhasford.com/ST2.htm) grunts, then holy fucking shit I am not going to play that.
Though as noted, some people would probably LOVE that shit.
