Going Through the Motions: Difference between revisions
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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
{{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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* ''[[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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* ''[[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''.
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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.
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* 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.
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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.
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