Going Through the Motions: Difference between revisions

 

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 results -- particularly when a character spun around for lack of anything better to express their emotions with. This may be why ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'' was the first FF game to have a reasonable selection of these (The lighthearted mood that makes the exaggerated movements not break the mood also plays a part).

**** 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 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!

** 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.

** 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.''

** 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 expansion-- it wasn't.

* [[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''.

** 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.

* ''[[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 ''[[Starcraft]]'' has a few different motions they do while talking. This leads to people nodding about once every third word they say.

* ''[[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.

** 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''.

* 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.

** ''[[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.

** 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.

* 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/TAG/Recap/E01 Cityofthe Daleks|Doctor Who]] [[Doctor Who/TAG/Recap/E02 Blood of the Cybermen|Adventure]] [[Doctor Who/TAG/Recap/E03 TARDIS|Games]] suffer from this to a ridiculous degree. The characters never stop making the same four or five movements, making them all appear like weird, hyperactive drug-addicts.

* ''[[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.

 

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