I recently watch the video revealing Piper, and in the comment section there was so much negative criticism of how peoples faces look and behave during cutscenes. Just wondered how people on this forum felt, I personally don't think there is anything wrong with how they look

Truthfully there is nothing wrong with their facial structure, it's a very great improvement, and people on video sites just post negative things to make people skip games, you got to watch reviews to know if you want the game, but i seen enough at 3 i already bought 10 copies.

Looks fine to me, and character animations in general look a far improvement from what they were in Bethesda's prior games. Some people cry uncanny valley, but the only Bethesda game where that was a serious problem for me was Oblivion. Bethesda's faces since have been way better, and stylized enough that the faces don't make me feel weird looking at them.

Looks fine by me, most complains in my book are folks who assumes every "great" graphical detail should just magically exist on every game released, in this case it's games like until dawn and LA noir that's made folks unreasonable picky about facial animations.

If I don't like a characters face I can shoot them there. Todd said so.

Really the game just needs to come out... It's to small of a package right now so a lot of nitpicking going on.

True, saying the internet is full of negativity and entitlement is like saying a nuclear bomb makes a loud noise. Still surprises me tho - especially when the full extent of Bethesdas effort to make the game look great is on full display. I'm still playing Witcher 3, and even tho the facial animations look great there is still room for improvement, and yet it doesn't hamper the quality one bit. From what I've seen so far of F4, it looks to be at least on par with W3 (graphically) which is definitely a good thing

I think the faces look fine. The graphics are going to be great. Fallout has it's own artistic style and when you get into the game you won't care that it's different to main stream AAA titles.

It's an improvement from previous Bethesda games. The issue is that the facial animations don't hold up well when compared to other recent games like the Witcher 3. The NPC Piper facial animation looked very off, especially her mouth. I can't shake this feeling, as if Bethesda is purposely withholding game play video, for they don't want to show more of the dated engine, which could cause a loss of sales, negative word of mouth via the Internet. It's going to be released soon, yet not much has been shown. Strange behavior. I think Skyrim was constantly showed off leading up to release.

Piper http://i.imgur.com/CkDp5FP.png

And conciquently lots of folks complained that Skyrim was overexposed, overhyped and to much spoiled at launch, hence beths now more subtle approach.

My first computer games were entirely text based, or some rudimentary pixel art if one was lucky. Then I grew up through each generation of animation. I'm not saying that to suggest everyone else has unwarranted entitlement, but that experience has a way of hedging expectations.

And for all the talk of facial animations, I can't stop watching the body language and movement. So realistic I missed it completely the first time. Much more subtle and believable than Mass Effects.

It is the way they've envisioned their characters and the way they want them to look. I'm pretty sure if Todd Howard, Jeff *gardener, and Istvan Pely approved the way the characters look, then that will fine with me.

Edit: *Gardiner (auto correct corrected)

I don't have any issues with how characters look, it's with how the lip sync looks. It looks pretty bad which is a shame because the body animations during conversations look really good.

I think they're much improved over Skyrim so that's a win in my book.

Even IF they looked pretty bad the animations are still 5x better than the "wooden people" of Skyrim.

I was blown away to be honest. The the way characters emote is probably the best I've seen in any RPG. People focus on individual flaws, but missing the big picture. Look at how she points at the SS and switches the conversation over to him seamlessly. Also, if you look at the Preston Garvey conversation, see how as soon as you walk in he just starts talking to you while walking towards you. Again, that's unheard of in an RPG this size and scope. Even the Witcher 3 that people keep praising, used your typical ME/DA conversation where you're locked into this mode. And the animations repeat a lot.

I don't know what people are talking about, to be honest. Skyrim was fine with its animations but Fallout 4 looks...well...disappointing. Taking as an example that one conversation with Piper (since it's the one I remember the most) the facial animations looked like she had her mouth full of stuff and, in general, her face looked like it was made of clay.

I think it's a vast improvement over Skyrim. I'm very pleased.

Yeah, that's totally true. When I complain about some janky animations, I'm obviously just lying. It's not about criticism in the hopes that things can be improved. I just don't want people to buy the game.

It's true that the animations are greatly improved from Skyrim, but animations have never been Bethesda's strong suit, and I think their attempts to make Fallout 4 more cinematic are showing that they haven't quite got everything down yet. The close up camera angles help emphasize weirdness we probably wouldn't notice from further away, and the body animations for the dialogue scenes often seem to be wobbling back and forth between too stiff and too chaotic. It's a huge improvement over Fallout 3 and Oblivion's zoomed in talking head and Skyrim's rather lifeless system, but it still has a lot of noticeable flaws.

One thing in particular is that the camera angles don't seem to be predetermined, and can be different from play through to play through. While this might be to make the game feel more dynamic, it also creates some atrocious cinematography in some cases, like when the PC meets Dogmeat in the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3nYFn-aIno. At 2:35, there's an incredibly short shot in which Dogmeat is supposed to be the focus of the image, but not only is his face blocked off by the SS' body, much of his head is chopped off by the frame when you can finally see him. At 2:36, SS is looking camera left despite standing camera left, with this huge chunk of the screen being devoted to nothing. This wouldn't be too bad, but the next cut at 2:38 has Dogmeat on camera right looking at camera left, which makes it seem like both characters are looking in the same direction, rather than facing each other. Both shots also have an issue of chopping just a little bit of the subject's head off at the top of the frame. It's a combination of bad cinematography and bad editing, and seems to be the result of a computer deciding what the angles are going to be and when cuts are going to be made rather than professionals in those fields.

... what are you talking about? Was that your first impression of that video, or did you manage to find those flaws after looking for them? I thought it was fine, and I certainly didn't notice anything awkward the dozens of times I've watched it. And you'd have to completely ignore the context of that interaction to get the idea that the characters are looking in the same direction; that seems like a really nitpicky detail.

I assume the camera angles are dynamic based on the positions of the 2 NPCs. This isnt Mass Effect when it goes into a cutscene-esque dialog scene. So that whole bad cinematography and editing (though its not editing at all), is just due to the way the two characters were positioned when the dialog was initiated.

Yeah compared to Skyrim at least they are trying I guess. Compared to DAI they have a ways to go (not that DAI was great or anything).

Countering Piper's exuberant animations is the SS's very droll performance.

Animations are fine but my lord does that lip syncing need work. :/ Here's hoping it's fixed as we get to launch.

I noticed the bad framing and editing right away. I went to film school, so that kind of stuff is something I've learned to pay attention to and anolyze with first viewings. The first shot where half the dog's head is chopped off took me out right away, because it's such a badly framed shot and it's gone so quick you have to wonder why it's there at all.

As for your last comment, to me it's like seeing the following sentence: "What did you do today." Obviously that's a question, yet it ends in a period rather than a question mark. Looking at it, you know it's a question, but you can still see that there's something wrong with the way it's presented. I know that the two characters are looking at each other, but cutting between shots of them looking camera left doesn't properly convey that, just like a period doesn't properly convey that a question is being asked. In terms of the language of cinematography, those shots aren't as bad as say, violating the Rule of 180 Degrees, but it's still bad framing and looks incredibly sloppy.

Would still love to see that exact same scene in first person mode. Looking right at her it may look better.

I'm really interested in that too. I'm surprised we haven't seen anything contrasting things. Why not show us a dialogue scene with the same choices being read differently by the two voice actors, to show how the scenes play out slightly differently depending on which won you pick, and why not show how it looks in first person versus third?