Facial expresion on Witcher

[Geralt_and_Ciri]

Facial expresion on Witcher

Well, since the Witcher games are no only about fight to death, but about the interaction with others character for making a living story full of emotions. what kind of new level of emotion we can expected in the game ? i mean, no only the gestures on the face, but to the body language. Witcher 3 will be for sure the very first true NEXT GEN game since this don´t come to ps3/x360 to port on ps4/xone/PC ; but to squeeze our PC and CDRED is known by the high quality on graph terms.
What kind of tecnology we can expected for a game so big, for the dialogues ? I really have a big expectation about this.

Here is a couple of gif from games that have showed a high quality on the animation to exprese motion in-game, most motion capture.

"Beyond Two Soul" (2013)

"Mass Effect 3" (2012)

"La Noire" (2011)

"The Witcher 2" (2011)

 

[Beestonian]

Exactly this much.

 

[Thothistox]

IMO, facial expressions have always been a weak point for CDPR. They've always relied on very high quality writing instead. Their trailer earlier this year showed much better expressions though, so this might be one of their improvements in TW3. Let's hope so.

 

[Thothistox]

Exactly this much.

That looks good. It looks like he just found out he's in for a nasty situation.

By the way, I hope they don't overdo the frowning. As soon as Bioware got their facial expression engine to frown deeply they started doing it too much in their recent games. ME3 and DA2 are so full of sulking and frowning I almost want to turn it off. (Wouldn't that be an interesting game mechanic? Frown in real time to get a different reaction from the NPCs...)

 

[whiplash27]

LA Noire is pretty much set the standard for facial expressions in games. They also used a very interesting capturing technology to do it. Facial expressions shouldn't just be happiness, anger, sadness. There's definitely so much that can be done with them. I'm not saying we need to have Geralt be a detective and try to figure out when people are lying or telling the truth, but there's a lot of cool things that can be done to at least give feelings of people being unsure, insecure, anxious, telling lies, excitement, arrogance, etc.

 

[vivaxardas2015]

In LA Noire it was a bit exaggerated, in RL people's facial expressions are way more subtle.

In TW2 CDPR had a rather small number of facial expressions, and all NPCs, men and women, old and young, peasants and sorceresses, used the same ones. Often it was rather good or even great (worked very well in some dialogues), but not always. I would prefer to see more uniqueness and variation, not one-size-fits-all.

 

[sidspyker]

LA Noire is totally not how people behave in real life, atleast not at the same level.

I guess some characters could use more expressions(although it has never bothered me, even in TW1) but Geralt sure as hell doesn't need to be a walking emotional machine(a la Shepard while also chasing little kids in his dreams) the amount of emotions he showed when the village he was in earlier is burning is enough.

 

[Kinley]

Exactly this much.

Bad news for you then, the latest trailer shows even more facial expressions.

 

[TemerianGirl]

Bad news for you then, the latest trailer shows even more facial expressions.

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6QBqCNuB3g

 

[Kallelinski]

I don't think we should expect the same level as in Beyond or LA Noire, this isn't possible i think. They used real actors and spent huge loads of money (Ellen Page & Willem Dafoe) and time (just look at this list how many actors worked for LA Noire.) to do that. The name Sony probably helped a lot too and didn't the developers of LA Noire go bankrupt because they couldn't pay their bills anymore?

Anyway, CDPR has their own motion capturing studio now, so there's that and even though it looked to me that they are only using it to improve the animations in generally, "the main actors and cutscenes are recorded elsewhere" (from the gameinformer article), so i'll let myself be surprised.

Bad news for you then, the latest trailer shows even more facial expressions.

Totally.

Spoiler

 

[frynse]

They talked about in the demo behind closed doors (still mad at you, CDPR) that they were working on making expressions and reactions more believable, even for minor characters. So it's definitely on their agenda.

 

[tw3fanapp]

In some interview I read that they increased the count of facial bones dramaticly. The RED Engine is a modular system and as I understood CDPR builds some basic expressions like fear, anger, disgust, surprise, hate, joy, etc. Then they can attach a feeling to the scene and overall improve the facial expression and the emotional state wich helps create dramaturgy.

L.A. Noire filmed actors and implemented the footage to the characters, which also looked like the actors. I don't think that's the way of a RPG with a huge amount of NPCs.

If CDPR gets their facial animations as good as crytek, it would be a surprise for me. It's apparent they improved the system, but I didn't see any footage regarding lip sync, eye movement and exressions in a conversation.

 

[BlueOne]

Yes because Gerald often said a lot without saying a word. There is even an entire story in the Witcher book series which tell's us that not all can be said with words and just how important that is. (The story about the Flower Valley with a slyvian and elves)

CDR said already that that is why they find this important and will definitely improve it in regards to last Witcher.


We shall see what they will create.

 

[ezop]

Gerald

Gerald. GeralD? GERALD?

GeralT!!!

 

[Agent_Blue]

The WIcther 4, featuring Gerald of Ravia. Ravia, of course, is the land of raves. It's the Goa of medieval fantasyland.

Schedule:
Estimated release of TW3: Fall, say, October/November 2014.

GDC 2014 - Mid March
E3 2014 - Mid June
Eurogamer expo 2014 - Late September

So a dev diary detailing the story, main characters along with the improved facial animation system in March it is, another showing off the world in June and extensive gameplay presented by the end of September.

 

[Borch3Dohlen.380]

The WIcther 4, Gerald of Ravia.

gerald = geralt

ravia = riva

 

[sfinx]

gerald = geralt

ravia = riva

riva = Rivia ..

 

[Kinley]

gerald = geralt

ravia = riva

*cough*joke*cough*

 

[Borch3Dohlen.380]

riva = Rivia /> ..

in german its riva in the books and ingame

 

[EmperorZorn]

in german its riva in the books and ingame

Yup, I can confirm that.
But I have no clue why they chose to go with that translation.

In the Polish original it's "rivii", by the way.