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Originally Posted by orient
I agree that in most 2.5D/3D adventure games - where your character is a 3D model - animations do tend to be too slow and it can become frustrating after 10+ hours of playing the game. There are probably a few explanations for this.
An obvious one being dated technology or general bad practice - animations that were created using old methods or a dated skill set. It's not uncommon for games to reuse old animations from previous games, as well.
Another could be the readability of the animations - making sure the player understands what his/her character is doing. A simple way to do this is to make it s l o w e r.
It could also be due a simple aesthetic clash...let me try and explain. Adventure games are generally slow paced. Levels are very static and occasionally pretty lifeless, with some movement every now and again from birds in the sky or a person casually strolling by. Everything's so leisurely - unlike in real life. I can only imagine that realistic animation would seem really out of place in such a situation. Running through one of these environments with determination and urgency, when everything around you is so sterile...it would seem kind of odd, don't you think? The same goes for picking up items really quickly. Sometimes I pick up my mobile phone pretty fast...if my character picked up his/her phone as quickly as I do, I'd probably jump out of my seat and wonder what's going on. Is something important going to happen!?  Just a thought.
Speaking of character animation, Assassin's Creed is still mesmerizing to me. |
You make good points, but my thinking is that the environments ought to catch up as well. The thought of my character moving with urgency and determination gets me excited. Often times with adventure games, there's an incredibly urgent situation unfolding and yet the character is taking his/her sweet ass time just the same as before the emergency started happening. Still Life 2 is the worst example of this syndrome I've seen in years. "OMG I NEED TO FIND THE ANTIDOTE IN ONE MINUTE OR I'M GOING TO DIE!!!" and then she casually strolls along. It makes the drama almost a non-starter.
Even without the environments though, it doesn't hurt to have good speed to it. Secret Files 2, as I'm playing now, would be an example. It's far from perfect though. Like I said above, there will be dire moments and the character is moving and commenting as if nothing is different. I understand the complexity of progressing from that from a developer's point of view, but if they want a great game, if we ever want the genre to come out of the underground again, they should put in that effort.
Assassin's Creed is a great example of human movement and environments. What if an adventure game was in an open world environment like that? It would be so exciting. There are so many unexplored ideas that really seem obvious when you think about them.
