Black Elk
Habitué
- Messages
- 181
Yeah I mean I don't want to be too harsh, looking 'over their shoulder' while they're still in the kitchen, but there are only so many ways one can animate a knife or a broadsword slashing across the screen. This is the paradox with the 1st Person POV in this type of game, because they'll do all this stuff to make the view seem naturalistic, complete with head bob to make sure people get sufficiently dizzy when watching someone else play, but then sorta ruin it by using that same convention that the earliest 3d games adopted from the earliest attempts at this sort of thing. Aiming down the barrel, like Turok in 1997. Sure the overall look is much cleaner now, but it's got that same thing going on, of always needing to see the weapon so the player knows what's currently equipped. I don't know what to call it, since it's so ubiquitous now, but I guess we can just call it Jazz hands melee? heheh
I mean if this was our actual view, in order to achieve it we would have to walk around with our elbows at the same height as our shoulders, totally off balance with our weapons held way out in front of us, at such a distance that they could actually been seen by our eyes this way. This is why it cannot be animated to look any more realistic than it already does, because human beings don't ever move like this in reality. Now I'm thinking back to some flash in the pan games for comparison at the other end of the spectrum - anyone remember Demon Stone? The game kinda sucked, and I only picked it up because they got Patrick Stewart to narrate and it was based on a Salvatore story, but for all it's flaws it had some very beautiful early 3rd person animation that I see everywhere now. For example, the sorts of movements the half-drow rogue Zhai would do when she was sneaking or backstabbing. It was impressive for the time, despite the low poly by todays standards, because it was keying of a figure we could see.
If she did a backflip slice to go for the jugular, it looked like a choreographed Ballet or olympic gymnastics, whereas the same thing in a 1st person POV would probably just look as if someone tossed their shaky hand-held cam end over end - like a tomahawk, cause that's literally all you can do. They have to suggest the movement somehow though, by what's happening to all the other things in frame, so they do the GoPro thing. If I watched someone snowboarding down a half-pipe like that, I'm not really seeing the 1080 in full glory as a spectator, instead I'd see a whirl and spin in a flash, but without the benefit of my inner ear or a track/return for the eye's focal point, so that I could actually stick the landing without instant death from over-rotation or whatever lol.
Doing the POV/FOV like what we see promo'd, you can't rotoscope that, mocap or animate that stuff frame for frame using an actor, because people don't hold their hands like that in reality, like ever. It's an invented convention going back to the early shooters or the run and guns.
Try to do it in your living room with a broomstick and a butterknife, and see how weird it feels, like how high you have to crane your neck and shoulders, or how awkwardly you'd have to swing your weapons, to even approach this sort of camera view. Then compare that to the Fighting games, and how insane those looks now compared to Street Fighter II. I mean it's insane how much room there is to grow, when you can see the full figure. But then of course I'm super biased I suppose, cause I love figurative art! I like to see the figure. There's a reason why nobody ever does cover art in first person, why films adopt the 1st person sort of view only very sparingly, cause it makes a pretty poor illustration and a disorienting experience, we want to see the stuff that's going on. I even dream in 3rd person half the time now, cause the conventions are just that deeply engrained haha
ps. Random aside, so among the ancients, many thought the seat of consciousness was located in the chest rather than the head. So in Greek for example, the Thumos was where the spirit resided, the heart over the head. In order for the view to work, this is where the camera would have to be - body cam. Which is fine I suppose, except that we know how shit works now. It did alright for me in Morrowind though, and Skyrim. I enjoyed Bioshock, don't get me wrong! I can suspend disbelief as much as the next dude, but it's just that issue of not having a yardstick to properly measure against, for when something looks good vs whack. I can tell the difference between say an Iron Fist on netflix vs a Daredevil where they actually took the time, but if they were both shot fisheye lens mounted on the chest, would I ever be able to tell the difference there? Probably not, it would just be a blur lol. Hundred Eyes in Marco Polo was 100 times cooler, even though he was blind, cause we could still see him do all that badass Kung Fu! lol. Or I don't know, say we're watching Ali vs Frazier, but the whole time we only see Frazier hehe. Is it really still a rumble at that point? If they're going to save on animating the main figure, which I'm sure is the principle motivation more than anything in the mood or ambiance of the FOV, then that needs to be compensated for elsewhere. Skyrim did this quite well I think, where it's like OK not exactly my top choice for a view, but then the game made up for that in the environments and such, and also by just providing a 3rd person option too, even if it was a bit bare bones there. Anytime I found a new Thuum, I'd chest bump a bit and pretend that my soul was right there, in the core, rather than how I sometimes imagine it, as being sorta exactly where the camera sits in a typical 3rd person view and hovering in that position. I don't know, just the things that come to mind.
I mean if this was our actual view, in order to achieve it we would have to walk around with our elbows at the same height as our shoulders, totally off balance with our weapons held way out in front of us, at such a distance that they could actually been seen by our eyes this way. This is why it cannot be animated to look any more realistic than it already does, because human beings don't ever move like this in reality. Now I'm thinking back to some flash in the pan games for comparison at the other end of the spectrum - anyone remember Demon Stone? The game kinda sucked, and I only picked it up because they got Patrick Stewart to narrate and it was based on a Salvatore story, but for all it's flaws it had some very beautiful early 3rd person animation that I see everywhere now. For example, the sorts of movements the half-drow rogue Zhai would do when she was sneaking or backstabbing. It was impressive for the time, despite the low poly by todays standards, because it was keying of a figure we could see.
If she did a backflip slice to go for the jugular, it looked like a choreographed Ballet or olympic gymnastics, whereas the same thing in a 1st person POV would probably just look as if someone tossed their shaky hand-held cam end over end - like a tomahawk, cause that's literally all you can do. They have to suggest the movement somehow though, by what's happening to all the other things in frame, so they do the GoPro thing. If I watched someone snowboarding down a half-pipe like that, I'm not really seeing the 1080 in full glory as a spectator, instead I'd see a whirl and spin in a flash, but without the benefit of my inner ear or a track/return for the eye's focal point, so that I could actually stick the landing without instant death from over-rotation or whatever lol.
Doing the POV/FOV like what we see promo'd, you can't rotoscope that, mocap or animate that stuff frame for frame using an actor, because people don't hold their hands like that in reality, like ever. It's an invented convention going back to the early shooters or the run and guns.
Try to do it in your living room with a broomstick and a butterknife, and see how weird it feels, like how high you have to crane your neck and shoulders, or how awkwardly you'd have to swing your weapons, to even approach this sort of camera view. Then compare that to the Fighting games, and how insane those looks now compared to Street Fighter II. I mean it's insane how much room there is to grow, when you can see the full figure. But then of course I'm super biased I suppose, cause I love figurative art! I like to see the figure. There's a reason why nobody ever does cover art in first person, why films adopt the 1st person sort of view only very sparingly, cause it makes a pretty poor illustration and a disorienting experience, we want to see the stuff that's going on. I even dream in 3rd person half the time now, cause the conventions are just that deeply engrained haha
ps. Random aside, so among the ancients, many thought the seat of consciousness was located in the chest rather than the head. So in Greek for example, the Thumos was where the spirit resided, the heart over the head. In order for the view to work, this is where the camera would have to be - body cam. Which is fine I suppose, except that we know how shit works now. It did alright for me in Morrowind though, and Skyrim. I enjoyed Bioshock, don't get me wrong! I can suspend disbelief as much as the next dude, but it's just that issue of not having a yardstick to properly measure against, for when something looks good vs whack. I can tell the difference between say an Iron Fist on netflix vs a Daredevil where they actually took the time, but if they were both shot fisheye lens mounted on the chest, would I ever be able to tell the difference there? Probably not, it would just be a blur lol. Hundred Eyes in Marco Polo was 100 times cooler, even though he was blind, cause we could still see him do all that badass Kung Fu! lol. Or I don't know, say we're watching Ali vs Frazier, but the whole time we only see Frazier hehe. Is it really still a rumble at that point? If they're going to save on animating the main figure, which I'm sure is the principle motivation more than anything in the mood or ambiance of the FOV, then that needs to be compensated for elsewhere. Skyrim did this quite well I think, where it's like OK not exactly my top choice for a view, but then the game made up for that in the environments and such, and also by just providing a 3rd person option too, even if it was a bit bare bones there. Anytime I found a new Thuum, I'd chest bump a bit and pretend that my soul was right there, in the core, rather than how I sometimes imagine it, as being sorta exactly where the camera sits in a typical 3rd person view and hovering in that position. I don't know, just the things that come to mind.
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