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[H4ze]

The per pixel motion blur looks way better now, nice.

 

[mrpeabody]

This looks hilarious. Her arm is as big as her head.

Maybe there's a minigame where you arm-wrestle NPCs. Or would that be too over the top?

 

[Exodia]

Yes, the difference may be because of context related: stomping with the car, position of the legs when starting the animaiton, moving with the stick into a certain direction after the evade movement, or even the position of the body that has in the previous animation when the evade was activated.

The camera makes a better job in the old video, matching better the animations. But again, it may be related to the context of the environment.

Nah pro the e3 demo had movie grade / cinematic animations. No hitch, micro jutter, jump or stops of ANY kind. The animations we currently see are different. NXGamer glosses over things like that

Lighting and shadowing changes can be explained because one it's outdoors and the other one indoors. Animations, animation blur, plus change in focus due to having an object close to the camera and being the camera at a different distance from the characters may explain the supposed complexity change. And well, one can be a better quality screenshot than the other one, both from a better source or because one is from a stopped moment while the other may be in movement.

We'd need to compare more similar scenes.

Nah bro the bro had outdoor scenes aswell, heck its where my second picture was taken. It didn't have the obvious lighting and shadowing problem.

 

[prinz_valium]

Upgrade?
The left looks a lot better.

 

[Exodia]

Here in the timestamp, the animations of the new gameplay are compared to the original reveal that you refer too, and it's pretty similar. The car animation might still be in and triggered near walls, it wouldn't be out of the realm of what ND made with TLoU1, there are a lot of contextual animations triggered by near objetcs or specific situations.
For example in TLoU1, if you attempt to hit an enemie that is in a more elevated ground than you, Joel grabs him by the legs instead of punching the knees. Or punching enemies close to walls makes you pin them against it.

Its not even close. To break it down:
Look at the transitions between----> Ellie_move-right, Ellie_throw, Ellie_sprint, Ellie_Stab

However if you watch the demo, you would notice the animations flows so perfectly that it has to be completely and fully scripted. You never find a broken flow. There's no perceivable jump or judder to another animation. Everything flows like its one big cinematic animation.

 

[REE Machine]

Theres a clear downgrade in everything compared to the first "gameplay" they showed. You must be blind not to see it

Nx gamer says other wise, that there was an upgrade, someone who actually looks and analyses footage etc. What your seeing is a different night-day cycle with different lighting etc. Also the whole dpuble dodge thing will peob be proven once we get the game and engage more than one enemy at a time in hand to hand combat

 

[Blond]

Where's the "Huge" upgrades. I just see some changes, barely upgrades and in some ways looks better in 2017.

 

[Keihart]

Its not even close. To break it down:
Look at the transitions between----> Ellie_move-right, Ellie_throw, Ellie_sprint, Ellie_Stab

However if you watch the demo, you would notice the animations flows so perfectly that it has to be completely and fully scripted. You never find a broken flow. There's no perceivable jump or judder to another animation. Everything flows like its one big cinematic animation.

I bet you can make this in the final game, we are only weeks from launch, wanna eat crow when it launches?
The action after the bottle is a grab not a stab.

Edit: Here, 2 very similar sequences.

 

[Dodkrake]

New strategy

Spread FUD on the game being downgraded, when it has clearly been upgraded. Freeze frame analysis show that the animations are the same, and same scene comparison shows clear upgrades across the board.

This gets tiring. Feel free to hate the game, but don't blatantly lie.

 

[Rikkori]

Major kudos to them for not gutting their game with checkerboard rendering. Can't tell you how much I hate the artifacting that causes. Honestly their technical team is doing everything right, and then some.

 

[Vroadstar]

The motion matching animation the ND uses here is top-notch, it just shows ND truly is unmatched. Looking forward to discovering those minor animation details they
always put in their games.

 

[Vroadstar]

New strategy

Spread FUD on the game being downgraded, when it has clearly been upgraded. Freeze frame analysis show that the animations are the same, and same scene comparison shows clear upgrades across the board.

This gets tiring. Feel free to hate the game, but don't blatantly lie.

You just have to recognize the poster's name and their post history, that tells you all why they are in PS thread blatantly lying and spreading FUD about PS exclusive game.

 

[Vroadstar]

It's quite sad that you actually find time to go in every PS thread and contribute nothing but drive-bys and garbo post console warrior BS. Reported.

Theres a clear downgrade in everything compared to the first "gameplay" they showed. You must be blind not to see it

God of War is a shitty by the numbers western game, i wish they stole anything from DS maybe it would have been a better game

I predict this game will be one of those forgettable Sony experiences and i dont have an xbox

Yep, looks generic as expected. Pity there's only one Kojipro in the AAA industry, everybody else seems to be content with making the SAME fucking game over and over.

"Lets make waypoint arrows into animals. Completely organic exploration!" Facepalm.

Oh and Rdr 2 completely destroys it visually and technically(world design wise too most likely) no contest here

Journos being brain dead for the most part i predict the game gets 90 at least

Is it ps 3 footage?

 

[REE Machine]

I bet you can make this in the final game, we are only weeks from launch, wanna eat crow when it launches?
The action after the bottle is a grab not a stab.

Edit: Here, 2 very similar sequences.

Waiting for sunhi legend to put all the doubters to shame.

 

[REE Machine]

It's actually quite sad that you actually find time to go in every PS thread and contribute nothing but drive-bys and garbo post console warrior BS. Reported.

Exclusives esp sony always get this level of hate near launch, but when your at the top of the industry, people will try to bring you down. Tell that to michael jordan, tom brady, floyd mayweather, conor mcgregor, khabib nurmagomedov etc

people want greatness but when you have been great for too long in the publics eye, people tend to turn on you and get jealous.

 

[carlosrox]

Not only that but they also made a few male characters smaller. There’s a reddit thread discussing it.

That is a dumb change though. Abby looked fine before.

 

[REE Machine]

Not only that but they also made a few male characters smaller. There’s a reddit thread discussing it.

What male characters did they make smaller?

 

[Vroadstar]

Exclusives esp sony always get this level of hate near launch, but when your at the top of the industry, people will try to bring you down. Tell that to michael jordan, tom brady, floyd mayweather, conor mcgregor, khabib nurmagomedov etc

people want greatness but when you have been great for too long in the publics eye, people tend to turn on you and get jealous.

I agree, it's one thing to be jealous but it's been 7 years and it seems like some fans of another console just can't get over that denial and anger stage of grief

 

[Iamborghini]

I think visualy they made some changes with refinements before launch, so it's a little bit of an upgrade.

BUT for the animations part, we now can see the blend between animations, we can see when an animation switch to the other. Which was unnoticeable in the trailer from 2018 (it was unbeleavable) . In that sense it's a little downgrade for me. (but far ahead from what we have seen in other games)

 

[GymWolf]

so good.

 

[Woggleman]

I sort of wish we had the option for 2160 P checkerboarding but it's not a big deal. My TV upscales nicely and most likely it will have good HDR. I hope there is a Patch on PS5 for native 4K

 

[Exodia]

I bet you can make this in the final game, we are only weeks from launch, wanna eat crow when it launches?
The action after the bottle is a grab not a stab.

Edit: Here, 2 very similar sequences.

• There is clearly a transition when she lands from the jump and then goes into running.
• At the end there is a transition from crawling to diving.

Notice in the right, she jumps, lands/stumbles and runs simultaneously. It wasn't jump, stop, then run.

Again not saying that the animation in the left isn't good. What people are saying is that its no where near the fluidity of the one in the right.

 

[yurinka]

Nah pro the e3 demo had movie grade / cinematic animations. No hitch, micro jutter, jump or stops of ANY kind. The animations we currently see are different. NXGamer glosses over things like that

Nah bro the bro had outdoor scenes aswell, heck its where my second picture was taken. It didn't have the obvious lighting and shadowing problem.

Na, you are just lying and spreading FUD. NXGamer says that there are some changes and tweaks, with overall improvements and no downgrade. The animations almost always slightly change because they use motion matching to adapt the animations to the environment they touch, and on top of that they even merge animations or transition to the next one, and also the characters move to look each other with the eyes and so on.



NXGamer tells that on his video, praises the game and even has this in his video for people like you:

 

[Iamborghini]

Na, you are just lying and spreading FUD. NXGamer says that there are some changes and tweaks, with overall improvements and no downgrade. The animations almost always slightly change because they use motion matching to adapt the animations to the environment they touch, and on top of that they even merge animations or transition to the next one, and also the characters move to look each other with the eyes and so on.



NXGamer tells that on his video, praises the game and even has this in his video for people like you:

The difference between video game animations and film animations is that you can have perfect transitions beetween mouvements in movies because they can tweak it indefinitely, but in video game it’s a little tricky, you have a fraction of a second to make a plausible blend between mouvements.

So you can do it the Rockstar approche with very smooth blends and realistic animations (RDR2) but you have to sacrifice the responsiveness, or use some kind of very advanced technology (or with AI deep learning). But in the last video of TLoU2 this is unfortunately not the case. The animations are very very good but not perfect like they were in the first presentation.

 

[makaveli60]

The difference between video game animations and film animations is that you can have perfect transitions beetween mouvements in movies because they can tweak it indefinitely, but in video game it’s a little tricky, you have a fraction of a second to make a plausible blend between mouvements.

So you can do it the Rockstar approche with very smooth blends and realistic animations (RDR2) but you have to sacrifice the responsiveness, or use some kind of very advanced technology (or with AI deep learning). But in the last video of TLoU2 this is unfortunately not the case. The animations are very very good but not perfect like they were in the first presentation.

I would take the RDR2 approach, but I understand that many people don't like it. The solution is not to show us the first option when you will only deliver the second. False marketing.

 

[Danjin44]

I would take the RDR2 approach, but I understand that many people don't like it. The solution is not to show us the first option when you will only deliver the second. False marketing.

No offence but fuck that! At end of the day I'm playing video game and I want it feel good to control my character.

 

[makaveli60]

No offence but fuck that! At end of the day I'm playing video game and I want it feel good to control my character.

I disagree but I get your point. The real problem is described in the second part of my post.

 

[Danjin44]

I disagree but I get your point. The real problem is described in the second part of my post.

Things change between demo and and final game, they always do. maybe the old animation got in the way of the gameplay so they fix it.

Here from Platinum Games developers Blog

Meet PlatinumGames’ NieR:Automata team! | PlatinumGames Official Blog

PG game designer Takahisa Taura here. It was my pleasure to share some new information and footage from NieR:A […]

www.platinumgames.com

Here’s a common situation: You’re patting yourself on the back for making an animation that looks super-cool and flows really nicely. Then, you put your perfect animation into the game engine and try controlling it, and it dawns on you that it’s too slow, too clunky. With tears in your eyes, you go back and cut away huge parts of your magnificent creation until it finally feels good.

As an animator first and foremost, there’s a lot you can’t help but want to leave in. But you’re not making a movie here – you’re making a game, and it has to be tight and responsive. The truest sign of a skilled game animator is their ability to make something great with the number of frames they’re given.

 

[Iamborghini]

No offence but fuck that! At end of the day I'm playing video game and I want it feel good to control my character.

Perfect looking animations AND a good feeling.
I really thought it was the two of them, the perfect match, that they had managed a micracle.

 

[Danjin44]

Perfect looking animations AND a good feeling.
I really thought it was the two of them, the perfect match, that they had managed a micracle.

Think about this, when you play a fighting game you want able to punch as soon as you press the button, you don't want to wait see your character going trough all that animation before punching. So developers have to cut animation in order to make it more responsive, the key is to make them look good while being responsive and that when good key poses comes in.

Same thing here, in recent demo in TLOU Part 2 the animation was good enough to sell me the action while responsive enough so it won't make the experience frustrating.

 

[yurinka]

The difference between video game animations and film animations is that you can have perfect transitions beetween mouvements in movies because they can tweak it indefinitely, but in video game it’s a little tricky, you have a fraction of a second to make a plausible blend between mouvements.

So you can do it the Rockstar approche with very smooth blends and realistic animations (RDR2) but you have to sacrifice the responsiveness, or use some kind of very advanced technology (or with AI deep learning). But in the last video of TLoU2 this is unfortunately not the case. The animations are very very good but not perfect like they were in the first presentation.

For what we saw TLOU2 has better animations and transitions than the ones seen in RDR2. I mean, look at this fight after watching one from TLOU2:

In things like facial expressions, animation transitions, motion matching and animation blending Naughty Dog is in another level.

 

[makaveli60]

Things change between demo and and final game, they always do. maybe the old animation got in the way of the gameplay so they fix it.

Here from Platinum Games developers Blog

Meet PlatinumGames’ NieR:Automata team! | PlatinumGames Official Blog

PG game designer Takahisa Taura here. It was my pleasure to share some new information and footage from NieR:A […]

www.platinumgames.com

You seriously think that Naughty Dog, one of the best of this industry who is always making technical masterpieces is not aware of this? Gimme a break. They do, but they still intentionally false market their game. Fuck this practice and their apologists.

 

[noise36]

everything not shiny to everything shiny?

 

[Danjin44]

You seriously think that Naughty Dog, one of the best of this industry who is always making technical masterpieces is not aware of this?

They are and so do other developers like FROM (remember Dark Souls 2?) and Ubisoft and they still do it. This is why I never fully trust what I see from E3 or other show unless the game is gone gold.

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

everything not shiny to everything shiny?

Getting you ready for those shiny trees that next gen RT is gonna give us

honestly I think it looks better. I know I keep saying that. Maybe I am wrong, who knows, but it seems sharper and more detailed in the newer footage to me

 

[makaveli60]

They are and so do other developers like FROM (remember Dark Souls 2?) and Ubisoft and they still do it. This is why I never fully trust what I see from E3 or other show unless the game is gone gold.

Yep, and I'm mad at those too. At everyone who does this. I'm fucking tired of it. I know I'm guilty because I should know better and not fall for it, but the hope is always there until the last moment. And currently the last moment was this gameplay video where I had to accept the fact that I was lied again to. I get that it's not a big deal for you because you automatically assume that the E3 videos are smoke and mirrors but if you think objectively this should not be accepted by us, paying customers.

Edit: and I will protest against it (among other things) by buying only a used copy.

 

[Danjin44]

Edit: and I will protest against it (among other things) by buying only a used copy.

Do what you have to, it’s your money but I personally still really like the animation and loved the gameplay from what I saw so I’m buying it day one.

 

[makaveli60]

Do what you have to, it’s your money but I personally still really like the animation and loved the gameplay from what I saw so I’m buying it day one.

I like it too, because it's still among the best the industry can offer atm, but it's missing that special something that made me utterly amazed in the E3 gameplay. Anyway, even if we may disagree in this I wish you a good time playing the game.

 

[Iamborghini]

Just look at the fluidity of this fight scene:

 

[IbizaPocholo]

 

[THEAP99]

Quite impressive the managed to get close to pre-rendered CGI this gen. That being said, I've already seen a certain crowd cry about joel's shoulders being "softer" LOL

 

[Vick]

Perfect looking animations AND a good feeling.
I really thought it was the two of them, the perfect match, that they had managed a micracle.

Because it’s impossible.

Why not perfect feeling AND almost perfect looking animations? Good, that’s every ND game for you.

Plus Digital Foundry literally stated in their preview that they totally delivered on animations compared to the E3 demo.

 

[ColonialRaptor]

I like it too, because it's still among the best the industry can offer atm, but it's missing that special something that made me utterly amazed in the E3 gameplay. Anyway, even if we may disagree in this I wish you a good time playing the game.

If I’m 100% honest with myself I think I agree with you. I have lost about 5 - 10% of my wow since the first demo they showed because you’re right there is a little something missing from the way the first trailer looked and felt. So perfect. I’m having this internal back and forth though thinking shit we can’t really know for sure until we get it in our hands.

I’m not convinced it’s not going to live up to that yet or not and I think that’s where I’m holding my excitement with baited breath. I mean they’re still showing cuts from that gameplay segment running on the latest build so if anything is ridiculously close but maybe not quite there, maybe only 95% and because everything is SO damn polished those tiny little problems become visible (has anyone else noticed the crappy snow deformation when Ellie jumps onto the top of the truck has been fixed since one of the earlier trailers? It looked better to me but I haven’t compared both side by side).

Anyway, rather than being deliberately deceptive I think it maybe goes something like this.

The original gameplay reveal demo is being built and while the game is close to how the game will play it may still have hitches when you put a person behind the wheel and so they record a section of gameplay with someone playing. Then they tune the inputs that happened during the run to give us a best case scenario look at what can happen during that game section (which essentially makes it a scripted demo) rather than a true showing of what a players experience is going to be like because they’re still working on things right? But if it’s possible for the engine to run like that with a perfect input run is it really misleading if someone good enough behind the controller can make it look the same on the final build?

I look forward to seeing people play that section with actual copies of the game and see just how close it comes. I still think it’s going to be pretty close but I’m not sure I ever really allowed myself to 100% believe it would be as good as the original showing.

To me it is still incredibly awesome that the game animation tech for TLoU2 is so good that we’re able to nit pick about that 5% at all I mean just think about what the top games are doing these days it’s fkn amazing! We want perfect and we’re not quite there but still this is going to have to run on a base PS4!!

Exciting times though imagine what they’re going to be able to do with the PS5 by the end of next gen! Wow

 

[Danjin44]

To me it is still incredibly awesome that the game animation tech for TLoU2 is so good that we’re able to nit pick about that 5% at all I mean just think about what the top games are doing these days it’s fkn amazing! We want perfect and we’re not quite there but still this is going to have to run on a base PS4!!

To me ND got nice balance of making animation look good while make the game responsive, that balance is what makes animating for video games so challenging. In CGI movies the animators never have to worry about that, heck they don't even have to worry about their animation looking good in every angle.

 

[ColonialRaptor]

To me ND got nice balance of making animation look good while make the game responsive, that balance is what makes animating for video games so challenging. In CGI movies the animators never have to worry about that, heck they don't even have to worry about their animation looking good in every angle.

I believe it should be possible with enough iteration for the system to become perfect. It will just take time and more animations recorded to get it done but that means with every game ND create their motion matching AI will just get better and better and it will be perfectly responsive and animative in the way of the original trailer. There is no reason they can't have it both ways.

 

[Danjin44]

I believe it should be possible with enough iteration for the system to become perfect. It will just take time and more animations recorded to get it done but that means with every game ND create their motion matching AI will just get better and better and it will be perfectly responsive and animative in the way of the original trailer. There is no reason they can't have it both ways.

In order for animation to be as responsive as pressing button in your controller, some animation needs to be cut, there is no way around it. It all comes down to how smooth you can make transition between each animation.

 

[Stooky]

I would take the RDR2 approach, but I understand that many people don't like it. The solution is not to show us the first option when you will only deliver the second. False marketing.

RDR2 animation system works well for that game. TLOU2 system works for it game.

Every E3 gamely footage you see from any developer is a best case scenario. Its why it looks flawless. To say animation degrade because of a blend hitch amount to .2 seconds, when over 1000 blended animations is idiotic. It happens in every game.

 

[Stooky]

I believe it should be possible with enough iteration for the system to become perfect. It will just take time and more animations recorded to get it done but that means with every game ND create their motion matching AI will just get better and better and it will be perfectly responsive and animative in the way of the original trailer. There is no reason they can't have it both ways.

Developers always err on the side of responsiveness, thats usually what breaks the fluidity of animation. More animation samples would help that out in some cases. Theres a dance between the player and AI to get AI/enemy lined up so the animations can connect and flow. It is really hard to get the responsiveness and quality of animation to look good at all times, every game struggles with this at some point.

 

[ColonialRaptor]

Developers always err on the side of responsiveness, thats usually what breaks the fluidity of animation. More animation samples would help that out in some cases. Theres a dance between the player and AI to get AI/enemy lined up so the animations can connect and flow. It is really hard to get the responsiveness and quality of animation to look good at all times, every game struggles with this at some point.

In order for animation to be as responsive as pressing button in your controller, some animation needs to be cut, there is no way around it. It all comes down to how smooth you can make transition between each animation.

And yeah it's really very difficult to see this stuff until you slow it down and run the footage at half speed or less. I expect when we're playing the actual game and focusing more on surviving when we're in close quarters battles it will be impossible to even see the tiny animation frame hitches and I'm all for the feeling of responsiveness I just believe that with enough time and effort and learning they will eventually be able to figure out what is needed to get it perfect.

Next two weeks cannot pass fast enough!

 

[makaveli60]

RDR2 animation system works well for that game. TLOU2 system works for it game.

Every E3 gamely footage you see from any developer is a best case scenario. Its why it looks flawless. To say animation degrade because of a blend hitch amount to .2 seconds, when over 1000 blended animations is idiotic. It happens in every game.

If it's possible to do those things in the final game then I will be the first to admit that I was wrong. I sincerely hope I am wrong but 99% sure now that I am not.