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.

[jargus45]

The personification of clanner Sibkos from the Battletech novels feel incongruent to their characterization in this game, either my memory or reading comprehension is garbage or these whiny teens are completely out of place in this genre, even if they were IS mech cadets they completely lack the grit that would be expected of them.

[Slap Happy Pappy]

Yeah focusing on teens was a weird choice.

[Keksut]

Originally posted by Cacodemon Slut:

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 which has it's pros and cons obviously.

i've noticed this too and i honestly think its just a side effect of the horridness of motion capture over, yknow, just rigging and making and animatring faces manually. Whats funnier is mocap in practice is more expensive and labor intensive than just making the characters from scratch

[Bust-E-Pona]

Originally posted by Keksut:

Originally posted by Cacodemon Slut:

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 which has it's pros and cons obviously.

i've noticed this too and i honestly think its just a side effect of the horridness of motion capture over, yknow, just rigging and making and animatring faces manually. Whats funnier is mocap in practice is more expensive and labor intensive than just making the characters from scratch

I've never understood why modern games have decided to go down this route. It also causes problems if you ever want to make characters / things that aren't humans lol.

[Keksut]

Originally posted by Cacodemon Slut:

Originally posted by Keksut:

i've noticed this too and i honestly think its just a side effect of the horridness of motion capture over, yknow, just rigging and making and animatring faces manually. Whats funnier is mocap in practice is more expensive and labor intensive than just making the characters from scratch

I've never understood why modern games have decided to go down this route. It also causes problems if you ever want to make characters / things that aren't humans lol.

Yea. Non standard humanoid aliens these days are either animated weird or theyre still not moving right due to motion capture.

[Bust-E-Pona]

Originally posted by Keksut:

Originally posted by Cacodemon Slut:

I've never understood why modern games have decided to go down this route. It also causes problems if you ever want to make characters / things that aren't humans lol.

Yea. Non standard humanoid aliens these days are either animated weird or theyre still not moving right due to motion capture.

I think we should return to form, bring back weirdo monsters, mutants, and aliens.

[Wojtek the Bear]

I started the game yesterday (I know I'm late to the party but I only found out about it yesterday, as someone w/400+ hrs in Mechwarrior 5 this was weird, like, good job marketing the game wtf?) and the facial animations were so bad it really messes with the immersion. The dialog is exactly what I would expect from Clanners but the whole horse mouth thing is terrible. Like, did their geneticist not care about it? Is the horse mouth part of the Clan Smoke Jaguar bloodline???

[Keksut]

Originally posted by Wojtek the Bear:

I started the game yesterday (I know I'm late to the party but I only found out about it yesterday, as someone w/400+ hrs in Mechwarrior 5 this was weird, like, good job marketing the game wtf?) and the facial animations were so bad it really messes with the immersion. The dialog is exactly what I would expect from Clanners but the whole horse mouth thing is terrible. Like, did their geneticist not care about it? Is the horse mouth part of the Clan Smoke Jaguar bloodline???

[Bust-E-Pona]

I mean it's true.

[Keksut]

Originally posted by Shopkeeper:

I mean it's true.

You are not keeping in mind that they have a strict behavioral code of conduct that the clanners keep to, especially in smoke jaguar. Yes this too wouild translate into facial expressions

[Bust-E-Pona]

Originally posted by Keksut:

Originally posted by Shopkeeper:

I mean it's true.

You are not keeping in mind that they have a strict behavioral code of conduct that the clanners keep to, especially in smoke jaguar. Yes this too wouild translate into facial expressions

Okay funny joke man.

[Keksut]

Originally posted by Shopkeeper:

Originally posted by Keksut:

You are not keeping in mind that they have a strict behavioral code of conduct that the clanners keep to, especially in smoke jaguar. Yes this too wouild translate into facial expressions

Okay funny joke man.

It fits the lore rather well. Go and read the books.

[Bust-E-Pona]

Originally posted by Keksut:

Originally posted by Shopkeeper:

Okay funny joke man.

It fits the lore rather well. Go and read the books.

I have, and you are totally wrong lol. I know this is bait at this point but for anyone wondering who reads this:

Yes, it is very lightly spoken about that your expressions must be as serious as your tone of voice. Lore wise the idea of being stern like this is sorta correct. Speech is much more referenced than expression, body language is more so too. The joke or bait of this post is suggesting the horrid, genuinely horrible animations are somehow cannon which they absolutely aren't.

The explanation for the horrible expressions is simple: the dev team bit off more than they can chew.

[Keksut]

Originally posted by Shopkeeper:

Originally posted by Keksut:

It fits the lore rather well. Go and read the books.

I have, and you are totally wrong lol. I know this is bait at this point but for anyone wondering who reads this:

Yes, it is very lightly spoken about that your expressions must be as serious as your tone of voice. Lore wise the idea of being stern like this is sorta correct. Speech is much more referenced than expression, body language is more so too. The joke or bait of this post is suggesting the horrid, genuinely horrible animations are somehow cannon which they absolutely aren't.

The explanation for the horrible expressions is simple: the dev team bit off more than they can chew.

Honestly whats more eggregious, is the map design more than anything. Facial animations are less important than the map design on the urban levels. And that one mission where you first face off against a dropship, where the enemy immedietly is dropped on top of your objective to destroy it, that you wouldnt know this unless youve learned to immedietly go there after the prior enemy assault on a prior objective and prevent them from smashing it up because the game gives you no time to play that mission any other way otherwise.

[Bust-E-Pona]

Originally posted by Keksut:

Originally posted by Shopkeeper:

I have, and you are totally wrong lol. I know this is bait at this point but for anyone wondering who reads this:

Yes, it is very lightly spoken about that your expressions must be as serious as your tone of voice. Lore wise the idea of being stern like this is sorta correct. Speech is much more referenced than expression, body language is more so too. The joke or bait of this post is suggesting the horrid, genuinely horrible animations are somehow cannon which they absolutely aren't.

The explanation for the horrible expressions is simple: the dev team bit off more than they can chew.

Honestly whats more eggregious, is the map design more than anything. Facial animations are less important than the map design on the urban levels. And that one mission where you first face off against a dropship, where the enemy immedietly is dropped on top of your objective to destroy it, that you wouldnt know this unless youve learned to immedietly go there after the prior enemy assault on a prior objective and prevent them from smashing it up because the game gives you no time to play that mission any other way otherwise.

Mechanically speaking we could just get voice acting over static screens and it would be about as good as what we actually got lol. I agree that the actual gameplay has a lotta issues. The map design is bad, but then again it wasn't great in any of this dev's previous titles either.