What is up with the face animation, AI? What?

[Bust-E-Pona]

I am watching a friend play and the facial animations... The way their mouths just sorta always hang open, and jitter. Is this AI animation or just bad? What is going on???

Edit: To anyone saying the dialog is also bad, it is lore accurate to an excessive degree from everyone but the star pilots, which has it's pros and cons obviously.

[40kTookMyName]

The animation isn't even the main problem. It's the unintentionally bad writing and voice acting. If it were trying to be campy and silly, like say, C&C Red Alerts, I could accept it with a silly grin on my face, but they are actually trying to be serious, and it is utterly cringe worthy and jarring.

And since this is a very lore-heavy, campaign-driven game that depends on the dialogue and cut-scenes so heavily, that is a serious issue.

JC, the pirate king's dialogue alone was delivered so horribly and written like a 12-year old throwing in a generic "gross fat bad guy". I turned it off when it got to the final mission of the first planet. Just bad.

[Ebins]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Spooky Mawile:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Pyro:

Their speech patterns being stilted and bizarre-sounding is lore accurate - The Clans were founded by a militaristic madman who remade the shattered, self-exiled remains of the Star League Defense Force (think Space NATO for broad strokes) in his own image. Rigid speech codes were only the tip of the iceberg in how much he screwed them up.

They're also not clones - not exactly. They're genetically-engineered test-tube babies, but each is a unique individual. They just whip them up in lots of 100 (generally from the same parents) with some random factors thrown in, and put them through a training regimen that the Spartans would have called insanely excessive.

As for the face animation, it didn't seem badly off on my end, but I agree that the teeth don't look quite right.

I wish other people posting understood this lore lol.

Unfortunately, most of the people playing don't have a clue about the lore. To them, it's just another CoD except in robots. They could care less that there is actually a story to the game.

[Bust-E-Pona]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Ebins:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Spooky Mawile:

I wish other people posting understood this lore lol.

Unfortunately, most of the people playing don't have a clue about the lore. To them, it's just another CoD except in robots. They could care less that there is actually a story to the game.

Sad.

[moyer4487]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Spooky Mawile:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Pyro:

Their speech patterns being stilted and bizarre-sounding is lore accurate - The Clans were founded by a militaristic madman who remade the shattered, self-exiled remains of the Star League Defense Force (think Space NATO for broad strokes) in his own image. Rigid speech codes were only the tip of the iceberg in how much he screwed them up.

They're also not clones - not exactly. They're genetically-engineered test-tube babies, but each is a unique individual. They just whip them up in lots of 100 (generally from the same parents) with some random factors thrown in, and put them through a training regimen that the Spartans would have called insanely excessive.

As for the face animation, it didn't seem badly off on my end, but I agree that the teeth don't look quite right.

I wish other people posting understood this lore lol.

i suspect that many of the gamers today have not played the table top and by proxy probably have no clue about the books. if gen z even reads books. or read on tablets i guess. when i was a kid i played table top first because these games were not out yet. we read the books so we understood the game world better for character interactions. but rpg elements are all in game now and most people dont seem to read to much these days. its all doom scrolling or tic tok or other things that the attention span only needs to be about 15 seconds.

[moyer4487]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Ebins:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Spooky Mawile:

I wish other people posting understood this lore lol.

Unfortunately, most of the people playing don't have a clue about the lore. To them, it's just another CoD except in robots. They could care less that there is actually a story to the game.

yep i tend to agree. assuming they read these days. its all tic tok and the gen z attention span is only a few seconds. long enough to get thru a tik tok video and thats about it. plus as kids they are fed prescriptions for everything. and are prescribed anti depressants and aderall like its candy. who knows the effect that has on a kids brain.

[Ferranis]

Should have been the POV of a Freebirth warrior. This way you could have eased the new audience in. This would require good writing though.

[Ardail]

this is the first post of someone else noticing that the faces look AI
The portraits especially look exactly like Bone Totem's uncanny AI portraits which is what made me suspect they cut corners using AI or at least AI assistance to do most of the work

Weird shimmering, the odd robotic way they bob their heads. The terrible lip syncing
It just all looked too much like Totem and I know that game uses AI

Seeing those signs on the first trailers made me worried what corners were being cut at production and seeing the game on release ya it feels that way :/

[Ardail]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Broke:

Opprinnelig skrevet av FroBodine:

Yep, it's really bad, and these things usually don't bother me. Also, the voice acting is so stiff , and they enunciate their words like nobody really talks.

Can you please stop knowing nothing about Battletech
♥♥♥♥'s sake

I know about battletech lore, but sometimes things need to change for adaptation because what works in a book sounds terrible in game. A lot of battletech games didn't strictly stick to clanners no using contracts or weird words. Even the MW2 intro they use a contraction or don't say weird words non lore nerds know like "Aft"
also hiding behind "lore" is a poor excuse for just bad voice acting quality from several characters. Others sound fine which is why it's easy to point out that some sound terrible

Being faithful to lore is great, but at the cost of being uncanny makes this a forever niche game and won't get as much funding since non battletech versed people hopping in to try out with friends will get repulsed away by how annoying everything sounds

[!d10cr4cy]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Ardail:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Broke:

Can you please stop knowing nothing about Battletech
♥♥♥♥'s sake

.... Even the MW2 intro they use a contraction or don't say weird words non lore nerds know like "Aft"

AFT? Oh the irony

[Power and Wealth]

The facial animations are a bit wonky, especially the lip and mouth movements. The animation is not outright horrible but it could have used a bit more time in the dev-oven.

[Nats]

Shame but the previous game had terrible animations as well. I guess they couldnt take a risk on spending more money to get it right with this sort of niche game but it is a great shame because BG3 showed what can be done when devs decide to do things properly. I am sure this game could be really popular if it had a decent investment in the design. But obviously this dev is not going to be doing that. So yeah shame. Maybe another one to try on Gamepass if it comes to it.

[Bust-E-Pona]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Nats:

Shame but the previous game had terrible animations as well. I guess they couldnt take a risk on spending more money to get it right with this sort of niche game but it is a great shame because BG3 showed what can be done when devs decide to do things properly. I am sure this game could be really popular if it had a decent investment in the design. But obviously this dev is not going to be doing that. So yeah shame. Maybe another one to try on Gamepass if it comes to it.

It wasn't great but it was serviceable. Upon playing that game I could look past the roughness here it just sticks out so badly, and is so uncanny I cannot look away. It's distracting.

[Bakala]

Dialogue is fine. These animations though are utter uncanny jank

[Bust-E-Pona]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Bakala:

Dialogue is fine. These animations though are utter uncanny jank

I agree.

[Bust-E-Pona]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Ardail:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Broke:

Can you please stop knowing nothing about Battletech
♥♥♥♥'s sake

I know about battletech lore, but sometimes things need to change for adaptation because what works in a book sounds terrible in game. A lot of battletech games didn't strictly stick to clanners no using contracts or weird words. Even the MW2 intro they use a contraction or don't say weird words non lore nerds know like "Aft"
also hiding behind "lore" is a poor excuse for just bad voice acting quality from several characters. Others sound fine which is why it's easy to point out that some sound terrible

Being faithful to lore is great, but at the cost of being uncanny makes this a forever niche game and won't get as much funding since non battletech versed people hopping in to try out with friends will get repulsed away by how annoying everything sounds

I would normally agree with you but in this case maybe not. The thing is, BattleTech for the most part has become so niche compared to the heights of it's popular back in the 2000s there really isn't a lot of people left to appeal to outside of people who are already deeply entrenched. Tex Talks BattleTech has done more to attract new folks to this series than all of PGI has done since their entire existance and I don't think anyone on this form would argue against that outside of Internet Terrorists.