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Emotional eyes


stebbinsd

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When I first fired up Fallout 4, I said to myself "Holy sh*t ... this is life action graphics right here!" The NPC models - at least for the human characters - looked like dead ringers for actual people! The environment, while having a definite 1950s vibe to it, nevertheless looked neigh indistinguishable from any other 1950s movie or TV show I've ever seen that was shot in live action.

 

It was like they finally reached the pinnacle of what graphics can be! Any improvement beyond that, and the naked eye wouldn't be able to detect it.

 

But after I played for a few hours, and after I met numerous NPCs in the game, the novelty of these "live action graphics" seemed to wear off. There was something definitively not realistic about the character animations when I spoke to people, but I could never quite put my finger on it.

 

Until now.

 

Their eyes are static!

 

You can manipulate the position of the eye brows and eyelids to simulate emotions such as anger and shock, but the eyes themselves are supposed to glitter with various emotions.

 

The eyes are SUPPOSED to be the most expressive part of the face ... nay, the entire body! So having the eyes be devoid of any emotion just makes the whole experience of interacting with NPCs feel cold and empty! I'd rather interact with 16-bit characters than have the rest of an NPC's body show emotion combined with mannequin eyes!

 

Even Skyrim has this problem, but it's slightly more forgiveable because their entire bodies weren't quite up to "live action graphics" levels.

 

I've seen the robots in this game show more emotion in their eyes than the characters who are supposed to be human!

 

And don't tell me that this is impossible, either. I understand that you can't exactly mo-cap eye emotions the way you can mo-cap arm and leg movements. But cartoon animators have been able to show emotion and expression in their characters eyes for decades! Take a look at 2:44-2:48 and then at 2:58-3:04 of this video for a perfect example of the eyes (as opposed to the eyelids or eyebrows) showing emotion!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0HKCxfwkmM

 

So can somebody please rectify this wrong? This game has enough nightmare fuel the way it was intentionally designed (with deathclaws and radscorpions and feral ghouls and all that crap) without me having to listen to Piper say how much she's on cloud nine while the most expressive part of her face is as black as void.

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