[REQz] PC head tracking and expressions

[vometia]

One of the less welcome hold-overs from the work done on Bethesda's game engine via the recent Fallouts is that for some reason, they've removed any interaction between the player character and their environment: whereas in Oblivion their expression would often change based on how much they liked someone (or not!) or just how irked they were in general, and the PC would also look at people and creatures as they were passing, in Skyrim there's nothing at all. Absolutely no response to anything.

Although it's a minor thing in itself, I actually find it slightly immersion breaking as well as being a bit creepy. I feel it stops me developing a connection with my character, and if I don't have a connection there, I don't really get much of a connection with anything else either.

It would be nice if this could be changed. I guess prior to the release of the CK next year it's going to be hard to guess whether it's even possible, but does anyone have any thoughts?

For that matter, it would be nice to broaden the scope of the other characters' facial expressions too, since they're also very static: I mean does Lydia really need to look slightly irked at all times? I know Skyrim is tough, but I would expect people to smile at least occasionally: I don't think I've seen a single person smiling.

So I guess that's my request: a broader range of facial expressions for everyone, and both them and head-tracking to be applied to the player character. Possible, do you think?

[Khettienna]

I also miss the PC head tracking and disposition-related expressions... oh, the faces Aya made...

This is nothing I have any idea how to do, however. Perhaps this Script Dragon toy would facilitate an interested grown-up coder to implement it?

[SonixBlade]

Ive seen my character react to its environment a few time (when there was danger around) and he would curl his lips or crease his eyebrow. Otherwise I agree with you, its just lifeless without the tracking.

[darthsloth74]

I too would like to see a little more life from characters in game. Expressions seem almost non-existant. Regarding head tracking though that could be annoying I remember having companions that my character constantly kept turning his head to see while running through the wilderness. Always looked a little silly to me.

Of course any future mod that promotes more activity from NPC's and characters would be a welcome addition and increase immersion a great deal.

[Carah]

I'm glad you brought this matter up. I was worried that I was the only one that felt this way. I have no complaints about the game, but having a lifeless character is disappointing.

[MalachiDelacot]

Not having any idle animations nor expressions, makes my character feel like she's a mime with no act....

[TardisChan]

I agree - it's not only immersion breaking, but as someone who enjoys screenshooting and video work, this is an issue to me as well.

What's the point of having a "living breathing world" as a main part of a game if the character doesn't pay attention to it? I've seen posts in the past on different forums complaining about this, but no one knows how to fix it. Or, why Beth decided to make PCs into zombies.

If this was something that could be fixed/modded, I think modders would have figured it out by now. I suspect it might be hardcoded and only Bethesda can enable things.

Question is - are there enough people willing to voice their displeasure to get Beth to at least comment on it/and maybe fix it?

[vometia]

And if there are, will they listen? I don't wish to be pessimistic, but they do have a bit of a tendency to fix stuff in the next game...

But that said, the optimistic part of me thinks it is do-able, it's just not obvious. FO3 & NV had the same problem with the zombie-PC but there were mods to give the PC facial expressions, albeit in a very static sort of way; but I'm thinking if a fixed expression can be done, maybe proper animated and reactive expressions may also be possible.

[Carah]

I'm in for a petition to Bethesda on this topic. I would start it, but don't know how.

[Munin]

Only explaining - regarding the impressions on NPCs - without saying toooo much to that....

Nearly all NPCs in game have no expression. The values are set Neutral - 50 what is exactly "no impression", standard value, if you put in a line of dialog.

Could they have "expressions"? Sure. Just choose the emotion type of your choice and play around with the value, BUT be aware

the new face-system is not so "moveable" like it was in Oblivion. Depending on the face you might not notice any changes.

A good value for an expression (like surprise or anger) is 70 in Beth games or up. But like it is in-game now - they just have not set for some reason the values.

Note: Because of the new heads you are still on a good side, if you go up to 100 - so anger can look like "deep-thinking"/serious look etc. ...

And there is another thing concerning the scenes. As you might know - there is another expression value coming with a phase of a scene. I don't know if

it overwrites the value in the dialog-tab, but I can tell you that idle-animations hooked onto a line are played even during a scene - so my guess is that

even the expression-value of the dialog is taken into the scene-graph. <- Just in case, somebody is playing around with that. I always set both... but I don't

think I have to.

Edited April 25, 2012 by Munin

[vometia]

Hmm, that doesn't sound so encouraging, though after the direction FO3/NV took with character appearances, I'm not entirely surprised.

Even if the characters are quite expressionless, PC head-tracking would still be nice. I do play in third-person a fair bit and seeing my character seeming almost completely inert is a little off-putting...

[vometia]

I did actually see some characters smiling, which I was surprised to see: at the end of my wanderings in Sovngaarde the people I was with smiled. Shame there's not more of it, and that my character was as usual entirely unresponsive!

I even saw my Kingdoms of Amalur character smile, though it only happened once.