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{{trope}}
{{Video Game Examples Need Sorting}}
{{Needs Image}}
{{quote|You can almost see [the characters in ''[[Mass Effect]]''] going over their stage directions in their heads: "Hello Commander Shepard (wave hand), I heard you might show up today (nod head), how 'bout those freaky aliens, eh? (shake fist, grr grr, [[Fantastic Racism|slightly racist undercurrent]])"|Ben ''[[Zero Punctuation|'Yahtzee']]'' Croshaw, on [[BioWare]] and their abuse of this trope.}}
Animating [[Cutscene|Cut Scenes]] in a video game is not easy, and much of this is due to sheer volume. Even the shorter story-based games are longer than all but the most avant-garde of movies, and that's just for starters - depending on what the player does, they may see more cutscenes, or fewer cutscenes or different ones. It can be the equivalent of animating 4 [[Toy Story (franchise)|Toy Story]]-length movies.
And there's another problem with animating video games - technology. Up until recently, in-engine cutscenes had to use extremely simple models, often with no moveable mouths or visible eyes. It took until about the year 2000 before motion capture technology (recording an actor's movements with sensors) began to be seriously used (and seriously affordable). And even this must be processed by hand in some cases, because the sets at mo-cap record time may have changed in-game since the mo-cap was recorded (or no sets were used at all).
'''Going Through the Motions''' is the corner-cut measure designed to avoid all this hurt and pain in the most commercially viable and time-saving way possible, thus allowing game developers to spend their time on more interesting and important pursuits such as writing, debugging, smoothing out gameplay and increasing the [[Third
Related to [[Machinima]], it involves small clips of gesture animation being predefined for all the characters - for instance, Bob might have a sarcastic [[Face Palm]] gesture, while Alice might have a hand-on-hip gesture, a raise-gun gesture, a stretch gesture, a hair-toss gesture and a fold-arms gesture. These can then be strung together to make a coherent scene; something like:
{{quote|
'''Bob:''' ''Sarcastic facepalm gesture.'' Can't we just climb over it like normal human beings?
'''Alice:''' ''Hair-toss gesture.'' What next? 'Alice, [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|why don't we eat]]?' 'Alice, [[Everything Trying to Kill You|why is everything trying to kill us]]?' 'Alice, [[Bottomless Bladder|why don't we ever go to the toilet]]?' ''Hand-on-hip gesture.'' You're full of it. ''Points-gun gesture.'' Let's go! }}
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Of course, it doesn't take long to realize that the sequences will look unnatural and stilted. The characters will have to express every Tropeular emotion known to man in only a few stock motions. Scenes will look repetitive in the extreme.
As motion capture becomes less expensive and game engines become more powerful (and as game budgets increase), the practice of Going Through the Motions for the whole game seems to be almost dead. Nowadays it's a lot more common to use stock gestures for only low-ticket, talky scenes which aren't particularly plot important - [[Exposition Break
[[Visual Novel
Pretty much the only time it's completely avoided is when the director is convinced that they are not making a game, but making a movie. At that point, all they can really do is hire a large amount of motion actors and hand animators, caffeinate them, and walk up and down behind them with a large stick threatening violence to them and their extended family if they fail to portray your grand artistic vision. ([[Metal Gear Solid|Hideo Kojima]] favors this method.) That or work for Valve.
Not to be confused with stock sequences triggered by the player, as [[Victory Pose
▲Not to be confused with stock sequences triggered by the player, as [[Victory Pose|Victory Poses]], spell effects, etc. They're something different.
{{examples}}
* ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'' had altogether too few of these, with often comic
** Part of FFIV's problem was the use of very small sprites. 16x16 sprites don't have nearly the expressive power of the 24x16's used in FFVI.
*** The DS remake, which used 3D models, actually gave the characters access to every other character's movements, except in the high-quality cutscenes, likely so that each character has the proper movements necessary for the various abilities given by Augments. One particularly hilarious use of this is when a Dancing Girl asks Cecil to dance with her, and he, the newly reformed, [[Bishounen]], armor-clad Paladin, copies her movements perfectly, down to every wave, hop and ''hip thrust''.
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**** There's also the ladder climbing animation being used for dancing.
* ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' used "raise arm" in so many ways it's mind-boggling. Hitting switches, saluting, head scratching, cleaning boots...
* ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' had some very iconic gestures. Cloud's shrug, headscratch and hair-flip are very fondly recognized by fans, to the point of the last one being performed in a fully-animated scene in ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' as a [[Mythology Gag]].
* ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'' also had several iconic gestures, most notably Squall's [[Face Palm]], which also made it into ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' at least once.
** One that especially stands out is Cid peering through his glasses while giving an important speech. Oh, there's important exposition going on here? Sorry, I was mesmerized by the headmaster's ridiculous animation!
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* ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' uses this heavily, at least in the original game and earlier expansion packs. In Treasures of Aht Urhgan and especially Wings of the Goddess, though, the cutscenes are getting much better animated (although seemingly at the cost of quantity of story-related content).
* ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]'' does this for quite a few cutscenes... and it wouldn't be all that noticeable if it weren't for the fact that Terra strikes a pose at the end of her walk cycle like some runway model.
* There's one particularly iconic pose in the console games of ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'', as well as the GBA game ''[[Chain of Memories]]'' - a pose of Sora's where he crosses his legs over and puts his hands behind his head, relaxed. In a recent ''[[Birth By Sleep]]'' trailer, his [[Expy]] Ven also uses the pose. The game on the DS has to use
* ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'', widely regarded as one of the best 2D sprite RPGs, still had to resort to spinning around for certain emotes, though much more rarely than other SNES RPGs. The attentive player will find a number of emotes are reused in surprising ways, however.
** Parts of animation loops, whether cutscene or battle, sometimes get cut out and stuck in to be dancing or flirting etc.
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** For main characters, sure, but the vast majority of human NPCs, especially those who never fight, get no frames of animation whatsoever beyond walking in the four main directions. Every ounce of visible emotion from these characters comes in the form of jumping or spinning (made even weirder by the fact that the main characters almost never jump or spin.)
* The Playstation RPG ''[[Legend of Legaia]]'' has gestures for happiness, sadness, excitement, anger/defiance, and what have you for the three main characters. They're thankfully unique enough to reflect that character's personality.
* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' started including cutscenes in Issue 6, making use of the game's existing library of [[Emote Animation
** This was also used for the advertisement for the recently released Mac version, which parodied the Mac VS PC ads.
* ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'' is very guilty of this. From Colette's arm pump, Lloyd's wild arm gesture, Zelos waving his arm up and down as he speaks, to Kratos' quickdraw sword slashes, you see each motion SEVERAL times during the game.
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** There's one action in ''[[Jade Empire]]'' where the character sort of raises their right arm, as if in benediction, and wave it back and forth and up and down in front of them. This not only looks ridiculous, ''everybody does it'' at random points.
* Every character in the ''[[Pokémon Ranger]]'' series of games has a short animation that plays for a few seconds if they're standing around for long enough. This can get rather comical when, for example, a villain is hanging around, taunting you to go stop his master from executing his plans - and all he does is stand around, pausing every five seconds to put his hands behind his head in a laid-back manner.
* ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'', despite being sprite-based, avoided this, with sprites drawn for every conceivable situation. There was a notable scene where one character impaled another character on their sword, which was remarkable since a normal sword attack could have been used. And, at one point, a thief took off his hat and jumped on it, which is probably the only time a Final Fantasy character's clothes have actually budged.
** He doesn't just impale the other guy, he does a perfect parry and side step first, then stabs him. That 2 seconds is the most realistic fight scene in all of Final Fantasy.
** Orange Fluffy Sheep's LP actually notes this. He realized that Tactics had a separate sprite for grabbing a bottle of wine, pouring it into a glass, and downing the glass in one gulp, while Final Fantasy VI used the "downcast" look for nodding, looking at one's shoes, and ''suicidal depression.''
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* ''[[Drakengard]]'' averted this, surprisingly. Every cutscene is scripted, including the facial gestures and the characters talking. It was surprising for some to play the sequel and learn they had removed ''all motion'', going with select character portraits for the facial animation and stilled 3D shots for what used to be the cutscenes. They must have lost money or something.
** The facial expressions in the first game are actually pretty minor, and the in-game movements are rather undetailed. ''Drakengard'' doesn't have the best visuals in the world (and makes up for it with how ''twisted'' the script is).
* The ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' series makes full use of character portraits during dialogue to to show emotion. However, ''Magical Melody'' took this trope to extremes with the characters moving wildly to express emotions such as embarrassment, joy, or panic, turning the characters into [[Large Ham
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' gives the player-characters a limited amount of animations, which are often used and re-used to limited effect on Role Playing servers. Most can be seen (including the ridiculous dances) on the ''South Park'' episode set in the game.
** Unfortunately, alternative forms (from one of several gag items or druid forms) often have even less variety. One model of a birdlike humanoid, however, actually has a lot of animations, including a simple but unique dance, a sleep pose (instead of simply using the death pose) and several others that are never used normally on enemies. And the item that transforms your character into this for some minutes is pretty hard to obtain, too.
*** The large number of emotes in that NPC race led to rumors it was going to be a PC race in the next
** Almost every crafting ability uses the same 'rubbing an invisible grapefruit' animation, from cooking to tailoring to leatherworking. Alchemy uses the same animation but has the character holding two flasks. Blacksmithing and mining use a 'pounding on something' animation with a hammer or pickaxe.
* [[Psychonauts]] used this during less important exposition or dialogue cutscenes, but only sparingly. Some animations that stand out are Raz's "stand there in rage with gritted teeth" animation and Sasha's hair-flip and arm gesture animations. However, the facial expressions are not tied to the body movements. For example, Raz has a standard talking gesture that is basically moving forward a bit and shrugging. In one scene, when Raz is talking to Bobby about winning the levitation race, they play that animation halfway and make him smile, making it a hilarious blend between "I'm better than you" and "Please don't kill me". Also, the facial expressions Raz makes during Mr Pokeylope's reveal scene are ''hilarious''.
* Lt. Kirce James in ''[[Command
** Yeah, but she (Jennifer Morrison, better known as Dr. Allison Cameron on ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'') is a totally ''hot'' real actress. Forgiven!
* ''[[Valkyrie Profile]]'' has a truly impressive number of unique situational sprites. There weren't more than a couple scenes that were made with stock poses. You could tell when crap was going to hit the fan by the use of Valkyrie's more emotional reactions or more dramatic poses.
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** In the games that use the Squad System, certain ALL attacks invoke this when used on Squads that only have one or two units - it can easily lead to [[Narm]] watching a unit shoot or slash at targets that aren't even there.
* ''[[Hell a Cyberpunk Thriller]]'' is one of the worst abusers of this trope. During dialogue characters constantly put their hands on their hip, play with their hair, throw their hands up... the two main characters go through each and every motion several times in the first minutes. After several hours of this some players may get the urge to toss their computer out the window.
* Cutscenes in ''[[Gothic]]'' are very well animated, but everyday dialogue with [[NPC
* The first two ''[[Xenosaga]]'' games mostly avoided this, only using stock poses for unimportant scenes, and otherwise using nicely animated cutscenes... until the third game, at which point they changed the format over to oldschool textboxes-and-stock-animation for the most part, which was somewhat disappointing.
* ''[[Animal Crossing]]'' has a various amount of animations and effects that are used to display emotion when the characters are talking. In ''Animal Crossing: Wild World'', players can learn some of these emotions and set them off whenever they want.
* Every character portrait in ''[[
* [[
* ''[[Mega Man Powered Up]]'' has a stock set of emotive gestures for use in the short cutscenes preceding a boss fight - since most of the characters have the exact same body type, these animations are shared across all characters except Dr. Light, Dr. Wily, Roll, and Gutsman (Who has his own versions of the exact same animations).
* Non-video game example: ''[[Space Ghost Coast to Coast]]'', which deliberately reuses the same familiar animations over and over again throughout the series (in a deliberate [[So Bad It's Good]]). None of the characters have ever so much as moved their legs on screen.
** The spinoff show ''Cartoon Planet'' had even more fun with it, particularly with Brak's immunity to Space Ghost's laser. Apparently he simply doesn't have any "getting shot" animations, [[Medium Awareness|and knows it]], so of course it never happens to him, even when he taunts Space Ghost. At one point, when asked to perform a task that would have involved getting out from behind his podium and then asked why he wasn't doing it, he responds, "I'm not animated to do that."
** ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]'' also often reuse animations.
* The ''[[Disgaea]]'' series. Spoofed in ''[[Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories]]'' when [[No Fourth Wall|the characters realize that they FINALLY get a fully animated cutscene]] and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er1Q5qM6w-E&feature=related thoroughly abuse the hell out of it.] With [[More Dakka|a chaingun]]. (The video spoils only the good ending of the first game)
* Every character in ''[[American McGee's Alice]]'' has this little "vanishing" animation they use ''every goddamn time'' you meet them, whether it is Cheshire Cat's fading out or the gnome's "twirl and shrink into nothing".
* The cutscenes (besides the opening and ending ones, which are beautifully animated) in ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic V]]'' are painful to watch, as the only motions the characters have are their various spell casting ones. Every sentence is punctuated with a swirl of magic.
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*** This might be also be a case of [[Fridge Brilliance]]. {{spoiler|The main character is [[Cain and Abel|Abel]], and in one of the paths Cain mentions how he stabbed him in the heart. One would be a little careful with ones heart after that.}}
* Happens ''a lot'' in the first three ''[[Resident Evil]]'' games.
* ''[[The Movies]]'' is a movie studio simulation, but in fact can actually be used as a studio for Machinima. It puts the player in the seat of a cutscene director: You can actually write, direct and edit short cutscenes (or long ones if you have the patience) which can include many actors with a staggering array of backdrops, camera angles and costumes. The game has a very large assortment of possible character animations in each "scene", but most of the motions look extremely exaggerated or contrived, making it difficult to make anything which doesn't look like a satire of itself. Still, with the editing tools at your disposal, and a bit of talent it's quite possible to [https://web.archive.org/web/20070812024307/http://www.machinima.com/channel/view
* ''[[Banjo-Kazooie]]'' has several of these looping animations (particularly noticeable in Tooie). During cutscenes, Banjo will repeatedly put his hands on his hips, nod, put a hand to his chin, and repeat while Kazooie shakes her head in the background. This can get annoying quickly. However, the idle animations are actually fun to watch.
** One cutscene has him passively nodding right before getting sniffed and then eaten by a dinosaur!
** A classic includes Kazooie pecking Banjo on the back of his head and giggling. The second or third time around Banjo simply throttles her for a bit before letting her go.
* The original [[Shadow Hearts]] was pretty clever in it's use of stock motions, enhanced through emotion bubbles, but Covenant had Yuri put his hand on his hip ''every time he spoke''.
* In ''[[Harry Potter (video game)|Harry Potter]] and the Philosopher's Stone'' videogame, Hermione adopts a folded arms position in every cut scene. Even in one scene, immediately after having her life threatened by a rampaging troll moments before.
* [[Sprite Comic
* Not only is it averted in the usual cases in ''[[Half-Life 2]]'', the dev team goes out of their way to avoid this effect. At one point in Episode 2, the player can see squads of Combine infantry and support moving across a distant bridge. Apparently the effect of these half-inch-tall figures moving in lockstep was too "robotic" for the Combine (which is quite a trick for the transhuman troops, but okay), so they coded them to switch randomly between several walk cycles as they crossed. Details...
* [[Super Mario RPG]] had hardly any additional frames for the characters. However, during cutscenes they use the standard walking, jumping, waving, etc. motions combined with sound effects to great effect. Usually, this was in the form of [[Heroic Mime|re-enacting what had just happened, in an effort to explain it to someone else.]] Its [[Spiritual Successor|spiritual sequels]], the [[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]] and [[Mario & Luigi]] series, do the same thing.
** One creative bit is when the "mute" pose of a bowed head is used to show {{spoiler|Mario bowing to Mallow when he's revealed to be a prince.}}
* Every character in ''[[World Destruction|Sands of Destruction]]'' has one specific gesture to themselves which they go through when they speak. Yes, (nearly) every time they speak.
* Obviously present in most second-generation [[
** ''[[Monkey Island]]'' 2 has a few standard emotes for Guybrush, including scratching his head and proudly pointing at himself; and a few non-standard, such as jumping up in horror so that his hair flies off.
** ''[[Fate of Atlantis]]'' has Indy crossing his arms and angrily pointing at someone, as well as Sophia's hand-through-her-hair motion.
** ''[[Zak McKracken]]'' is one of the oldest games to do this: even at low resolution and few sprites per character, it gets a lot of mileage out of the 'smile' and 'frown' emotes.
** Notably absent in every single Sierra adventure game, though.
* Present in ''[[Fallout]] 3''. Being a Bethesda game it has a lot in common with Oblivion and the like. This is mostly dealt with by characters not moving when you talk to them, though they can continue a few things like smoking or eating.
** The few rare instances of humanoid NPCs not all using the same stock motions in conversation are almost jarring thanks to their novelty. The first one that comes to mind is in ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'', where the Courier can speak to a Hispanic Ghoul mechanic, who has some unique response animations when spoken to about certain subjects, most notably an exaggerated head-hanging slump that basically seems to convey "I don't know, but I'll say something anyway."
* ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'' has a mixed bag when it comes to emotions and animations. Survivors have several idle animations, such as rolling their head and shoulders, wiping their faces, or picking their nose, plus their facial expression changes whether they are responding to another survivor or are trying to de-stress after an intense fight with zombies. However, every survivor character share these animations without any variation. The zombies themselves also have various idle animations, but when it comes to movement, they all move exactly the same (which the developers say they done on purpose since they consider the zombies to be like feral animals). The zombies also lack any facial animations other than their mouths sometimes moving.
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* [[The You Testament]] has characters often repeating the "checking the wind" animation.
* [[Xtra Normal]] videos, at least the ones made on the website, either don't let characters talk and gesture at the same time and use stock gestures, or the creators are [[They Just Didn't Care|too lazy]] to bother fixing their creation. Either way, any gestures made will be made after a comment is made, looking incredibly awkward.
* This effect is not limited to games. In ''[[Beast Wars]] Transformers,'' the robots' various transformation sequences were stock
* ''[[Legend of Dragoon]]'''s use of this was most painfully evident during the "battle" with Shirley. Every time one of the illusions she summons says anything, they do the same exact over-the-top animation, from Shana's hands-over-her-heart-before-bending-over-and-gesturing-beseechingly to Albert's waving-his-spear-around-and-pointing-it-at-you-imperiously.
* One really noticeable instance in ''[[Sonic Adventure]]'': During Amy's ending, she performs her boss victory animation, then abruptly snaps back to her standing animation once it's over.
** Also, Sonic's idle animation has his eyebrows bouncing all over the place, and it seems that the person responsible thought nobody would notice. They were right that it's hard to tell during gameplay, but it's used in many a cutscene as well.
* To the point of ridiculousness in ''[[Dragon Ball|Dragon Ball Z]]: Burst Limit''. There's some scenes which are faithful reproductions of scenes from the cartoon, but for a lot of the side scraps they use a small amount of generic animations, merely replacing the characters. Characters will fall over in the same way, they'll be taken aback in the same way, and get beat up/beat someone up in the same way. It's not just limited to the cutscenes though - there's also the Drama Pieces, which use a lot of the same animations.
* The [[Doctor Who
* An attempt at an aversion occurred in ''[[Tech Romancer]]''. That game had NO artificial atmospheric actions, somewhat justified by the fact that most characters are in giant robots, thus they wouldn't make idle motions. Thus, in cutscenes, no actions are made that are not already in the game. As such, one character tends to "disappear" at the end of cutscenes by using an attack that surrounds him in electricity, then jumping and letting the camera ([[Special Effects Failure|usually]]) pan away before he begins the descent of his jump.
* ''[[Skies of Arcadia]]'', big time, and often accompanied by a matching bit of stock voice (the dialogue was not fully voiced).
* ''[[Deadly Premonition]]'' did this quite often; the same animation was often recycled by different characters. One of the most prominent examples is an indignant/belligerent hand-on-hip, fist-shaking motion, shared by [[The Sheriff|George]], [[Supreme Chef|Nick]], and at least one other male character, if not more.
* ''[[Wild
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