I've been eagerly awaiting the release of Ghost of Tsushima for years since its initial reveal. At times the wait has been painful as my excitement was too much to contain. I'm someone who has been pining for a grounded, ninja-stealth game with AAA production values since forever, and GoT was looking to be the closest thing to that ideal that I was likely to ever get. With each little nugget of information or the occasional trailer my anticipation continually rose to the point of nearly boiling over going into last week's State of Play gameplay demonstration. I watched it and mostly loved what I saw.
But then I came across this thread.
In that thread, the OP points out that GoT appeared to be eschewing the use of procedural death animations altogether. I remember the bow-and-arrow kills in the State of Play video looking pretty wonky, but at the time I assumed it was just some physics playing out in an unintended way. When I first saw the footage, it looked to me like the game was using a blend of keyframed/canned animations that transition smoothly into a ragdoll or procedural animation finish as enemies slump to the ground.
But then I kept reading that thread. People were pointing out how Sucker Punch's previous Infamous game completely lacked any sort of procedural death/impact animations for enemies. It looked pretty bad and wholly at odds with that game's otherwise stellar presentation. Then I went back and watched the State of Play footage again.
I'll be god damned. They've done it again. Ghost of Tsushima appears to rely completely on a handful of canned death animations with little in the way of even inverse kinematics kicking in after the enemy falls to the ground.
Get used to seeing that death animation over and over. Notice the crude re-alignment of the second corpse with the ground after the animation cycle ends.
This... is hard for my brain to compute. Why. Why on earth would they make this design decision in a game all about stylishly dispatching enemies as a badass samurai/ninja protagonist? I'm not saying that I'll be boycotting the game or anything, but this one seemingly small decision has severely deflated my excitement for this game. Maybe that sounds extreme to some of you, but I mean it. It's incredibly disappointing.
Has this happened to any of you with other games?
But then I came across this thread.
In that thread, the OP points out that GoT appeared to be eschewing the use of procedural death animations altogether. I remember the bow-and-arrow kills in the State of Play video looking pretty wonky, but at the time I assumed it was just some physics playing out in an unintended way. When I first saw the footage, it looked to me like the game was using a blend of keyframed/canned animations that transition smoothly into a ragdoll or procedural animation finish as enemies slump to the ground.
But then I kept reading that thread. People were pointing out how Sucker Punch's previous Infamous game completely lacked any sort of procedural death/impact animations for enemies. It looked pretty bad and wholly at odds with that game's otherwise stellar presentation. Then I went back and watched the State of Play footage again.
I'll be god damned. They've done it again. Ghost of Tsushima appears to rely completely on a handful of canned death animations with little in the way of even inverse kinematics kicking in after the enemy falls to the ground.
Get used to seeing that death animation over and over. Notice the crude re-alignment of the second corpse with the ground after the animation cycle ends.
This... is hard for my brain to compute. Why. Why on earth would they make this design decision in a game all about stylishly dispatching enemies as a badass samurai/ninja protagonist? I'm not saying that I'll be boycotting the game or anything, but this one seemingly small decision has severely deflated my excitement for this game. Maybe that sounds extreme to some of you, but I mean it. It's incredibly disappointing.
Has this happened to any of you with other games?
