This video follows the NPC in Red Dead Redemption 2...

Just think of the amount of mocap needed for all these scenes, not to mention dialogue and artwork for the characters and settings.

Here is the IMDB castlist for the game how many actors? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6161168/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast

Amazing level of detail needed to bring a world to 'life' in AAA.

 

It's not though. We were bringing worlds to life long before this. It's not like we just figured out how to make a game world feel real and lived in.

 

Unity's solution for this is https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/06/20/announcing-kinematica-animation-meets-machine-learning/

It doesn't require much effort from developers for the animation, and the core behaviours are very simple indeed. Suspect it's just the addition of a clock and the obviously lovely world that gives this impression of so much more life.

For actual source anims that you'd use for training or whatever, it seems Unity is building a selection of motion capture on asset store.

 

Wasted effort. The game's awful.

Metacritic user reviews reflect this. This kind of thing is impressive from a technical standpoint in the same way that if I ran a marathon by scooting on my ass would be impressive.

It wows for a couple hours, then player gets over it, and all that time spent building this stuff is time that wasn't spent fleshing out actual gameplay. Player gets bored and never touches the game again.

 

I feel this way about most open world AAA games. Cool at first then you figure out the systems, start min/maxing then boredom sets in.

 

I felt RDR2 is worse than most though. There are no systems. You just follow contextual prompt after contextual prompt. You literally don't make a single decision.

I think they were trying to make a modern day, western flavored Shenmue. Which is bizarre, because Shenmue flopped hard. But Shenmue did gain a rabid cult follwoing (myself being one of them), but the thing about Shenmue was it had charm and sooo much character.It was full of lovable characters.

RDR2 just has typical Rockstar assholes talking tough to talk tough. Why do I care about them? I don't.

 

I was interested to know what gameplay value NPCs provided, and its funny how for all their apparent complexity, you can apparently shoot one in the head and they come back with nothing more than a bandage on it.

All this stuff about NPCs and their everyday lives doesn't tell me anything that interests me. I didn't get into games to be a paparazzi for a commoner from the 18th century. Nor did I get into games to grind for XP. Both of which seem to form the basis for openworld game design these days. Instead, I want to know what the game world can do for me. I want to know what I can experience in it that will transform my perspective and my life. There aren't a lot of games that seem to have an answer for this.

 

As much as I hate to say it...

BIGTIMEMASTER is right. Red Dead Redemption 2 is an honest to god mess of a game. It has no idea what it wants to be after you leave the opening missions and decides to try and be everything to make up for it.

 

Open world isn't all that really. Certainly not a magic bullet.

 

You guys are all so jaded I thought that video was awesome.

 

Hope the NPCs don't work 100 hour weeks too.. /s

 

I am sorry but the bit about the player does not make a single decision is either an outright lie as you haven’t played the game or out of ignorance or envy on Rockstars success.

The game offers you many decisions throughout the game and the players decisions effects how the mission plays out. You can also play the game honourable or dishonourable which affects how the world reacts around you.

There are also general decisions which provides the player freedom allowing them to rob, interrogate or charm in different situations. So I have no idea how you came to the conclusion the player does not have any decision making capabilities which is untrue and false.

It is also strange you complained about contextual prompts yet Shemue is literally filled with those and some may say it created QTE or popularised them.

This is a masterpiece and Red Dead Redemption 2 and Breathe of the Wild are two of the best open world games I have played in recent times.

Rockstar outdid themselves.

 

I'm glad you enjoy it.

To me, stopping the action and offering player a binary choice is not the kind of decision making I am talking about. If you enjoy the game, awesome, I am not going to go in depth with my negative analysis and possibly sour the experience for you.

 

Rockstar didn't even outdo the first Red Dead Redemption game, slow your roll.