I'm being completely earnest when I say: these largely look better than modern game faces Realistic faces don't read as directly. Past a point going back (and these are well past), these are functionally cartoons, which means they can go way more expressive. Even if they aren't actually toon. - ThreadSky

glassbottommeg.bsky.social • 52 days ago

I'm being completely earnest when I say: these largely look better than modern game faces

Realistic faces don't read as directly. Past a point going back (and these are well past), these are functionally cartoons, which means they can go way more expressive. Even if they aren't actually toon.

Reposted from Chris Ⓥ WhyGameDev.com

all this talk of faces in games fails to highlight the most expressive faces in computer gaming, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines from 21 years ago has too many good ones to fit in one post. see post 2 for 4 more

I still play idle fearful, angry glare, and ashamed wait animations when masking 😁

Comments

muhkat.bsky.social•50 days ago

Of course, there are extremes even then, such as Sonic Adventure’s facial animation

goldenaxedoom.bsky.social•52 days ago

yaaaass! One of my favorite things about VTMB was seeing how even the most unimportant minor NPCs had so much life and emotion in their faces.

unabridgedgamer.bsky.social•52 days ago

100%! You can see it in the PS2 Silent Hill games too. They look more believable and expressive than faces in a bunch of games from as little as a couple years later with more "realistic" fidelity.

syx98.bsky.social•50 days ago

Its fun to see when game developers have industry animator types on staff and the results are incredible: https://youtu.be/N0pcConCYls

glairedaggers.bsky.social•52 days ago

I've always felt that the facial animation in games like Half Life 2 and Left 4 Dead was also superior for much the same reason - it seems clear to me that there's a lot of hand animated facial expressions, in many cases a bit exaggerated, which makes them *feel* much more alive.

glairedaggers.bsky.social•52 days ago

Despite the arguably pretty realism-leaning art styles of those games, I think the subtle exaggeration of stuff like that really sells the emotions a lot better than pure mocap'd would

ykantbobreed.bsky.social•52 days ago

I strongly suspect most recent bad facial work is by people who didn’t do their homework. If you shoot for photo real, be ready to put in a ton of work, and if you don’t… still a real effort to make the faces read.

Look up your FACS shapes or another comprehensive facial model, or it WILL look bad.

glassbottommeg.bsky.social•52 days ago

Could you do this with modern faces? Well. Yes. But it'd look like gmod but worse. You're fucking with uncanny valley when you distort realistic faces.

These, by contrast, aren't (and generally weren't even at the time) "realistic". Just a bit stylized. Way handler for storytelling than realism.

rowan.monster•52 days ago

this is part of why the Veilguard faces, while initially kind of a shock to me, pretty quickly read as "really good" to me.

(also why people adore their Final Fantasy XIV blank slate faces)

joewintergreen.com•52 days ago

yeah but scoria

glassbottommeg.bsky.social•52 days ago

That does vibe

glassbottommeg.bsky.social•52 days ago

I wonder if you could actually ship a game like that though without being tagged as They Fucked The Faces Up

Like how you'd balance the aesthetic to make that read as intentional

Maybe go taller and spindly on everyone / everything?

devil.zone•51 days ago

give it a few years, we're only now hitting "PS2 graphics as an aesthetic choice" so the Pentium IV era PC graphics can't be far behind

joewintergreen.com•52 days ago

i think as long as everyone was a bit weird that would be ok. as soon as there's one conventional metahuman in there it's wrong

glassbottommeg.bsky.social•52 days ago

The goofy thing is that Metahuman and other high end face tech Can do this. We mostly just... don't. There's a ton of systems and market inertia right now that drags people to realism for realism's sake.

So it isn't the fault of UE5 etc, it's just zeitgeist- and fuck it. Get that shit outta here.

glassbottommeg.bsky.social•52 days ago

Zeitgeist needs to zeitgeet outta here

Zeitgoest somewhere else

Zeitguests like fish smell after 3 days

glassbottommeg.bsky.social•52 days ago

Yeah! I really liked Veilguard!

(which naturally got shat on because those folks have bad taste) https://bsky.app/profile/rowan.monster/post/3lf722wnew22g

rowan.monster•52 days ago

I mean I understand the initial bad reactions, if you think of it as a normal character creator the default faces look AWFUL. but when you start mixing stuff in it becomes extremely effective

glassbottommeg.bsky.social•52 days ago

I mean I spent an hour making a super cool Qunari, yeah- seemed rad to me

glassbottommeg.bsky.social•52 days ago

Also, this doesn't remotely mean cheap.

Dishonored 1 and then especially 2 were heavily stylized and looked amazing aaaaand so fuckin expensive that the studio is seemingly teetering on the brink after a major office closure?

Anyways, stylized doesn't mean cheap, that's just zeitgeist shit again.

andychalk.bsky.social•52 days ago

Was gonna mention Dishonored as another great example of this. Powerful, memorable, just a perfect look for the setting. "Realism" is fine to a point but it doesn't make for a better game and the effort pushing that envelope would almost always be better spent elsewhere.

livyraven.bsky.social•52 days ago

It’s exhausting to constantly have to push for realism in every aspect of art development. Stylization is seen as a lack of skill, when really, limitation, and creativity innovates incredible works of art.

sekhithefops.bsky.social•52 days ago

Yanno, now that you mention it all my favorite expressions in modern games come from more stylized or cartoony ones. Some recent examples from my Steam library being Bakeru (which is a very cartoony spiritual successor to Mystical Ninja Goemon) and Dave the Diver (which likely needs no introduction)

sekhithefops.bsky.social•52 days ago

The only one I can think of from the Triple-A sphere that did well with that was Resident Evil Village, and thats because their villains were so cartoony to begin with (I will never not be able to think of Hesinberg as 'Hillbilly Magneto.')

sekhithefops.bsky.social•52 days ago

As for the other games I've played lately... Space Marine 2 was fun enough but Titus is just a big slab of beef in power armor and just as expressive, and God of War Ragnarok... well Kratos expresses himself certainly, but not in his face. More in throwing mountains at people who tick him off.

sekhithefops.bsky.social•52 days ago

Actually would like to add one addendum to this that I kinda can't believe I didn't think of earlier (I blame being at work when I posted these.) WoW does good expressions because of it's cartoony art style.

nykathedog.bsky.social•50 days ago

I've been of the mentality that...the more "technically impressive" graphics are supposedly getting...the more we're actually losing some stuff in the process. People will look at me like I grew an extra head if I say that games havent gotten "better" looking since ps3 but I mean...kinda!

giwake.bsky.social•52 days ago

i think hl2 faces still work pretty well, they're a combo of cartoony and photosourced that still holds up, plus the eyes are really well done, and the animations are (by modern standards) basic but readable.

zarikov.bsky.social•52 days ago

I recently played Shenmue II, then went to III, and holy shit the dreamcast faces were so much better. stylized, sometimes weird, and expressive. shenmue III looks so, for lack of a better term, UE. also these people are remote villagers and they look so clean, it's absurd

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