Specced for “Awesome Blue Smolder”
In the wake of Dragon Age Cate and I were having a giggle over how those people in the rendered trailers and TV spots have nothing to do with the in-game characters, save unnervingly emitting the same voices. This turned to wondering why, when that Warden’s eyes are always smoldering supernatural blue in these things, Gray Wardens in-game don’t display any clear differences from normal dudes. In turn this had us thinking there ought to be a Gray Warden-specific talent string you could invest in with the Warden and with Alistair, one of which ought to be “Awesome Blue Eye Smolder.” Doesn’t even have to do anything else; we’d spend a point there, regardless, just to differentiate.
But the disconnect between that prerendered ad material and the actual game got me thinking again about how irritating that kind of thing is.
When games looked like FFVII and everyone’s in-game models had inscrutable juggling clubs for hands it made sense to cut to a prerendered sequence to nail the action and emotion of an important turn in the story. Anymore, the stuff is unnecessary — character models have expressive, articulate faces these days, and seeing an in-game model react believably to a situation just feels more “alive” than notchily cutting to a prerendered sequence handled by a different team with characters, lighting and environments that look similar, but different. FFXII was a stunning example of this; the in-game models were phenomenal-looking for a PS2 game and featured some of the broadest emotive capability I’ve ever seen, and yet the game frequently jumped to wooden-looking FMV where Balthier was suddenly Asian and bleached his hair.
Going out of your way to create things that rupture suspension of disbelief is stupid.
Categories: games
