Going Through the Motions: Difference between revisions

{{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.}}

 

 

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).

* 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.

* ''[[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.

** 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.

[[Category:Examples Need Sorting]]

[[Category:Video Game Tropes]]