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Indy seems dead inside? 15 May, 2006, 21:47 / 17 comments


Penny Arcade have given some thoughts on the games at e3, including the new Indiana Jones. Here?s what they thought:
This was the year of procedurally generated content. Every other developer was telling me how instead of having artists and animators create a game for me they figured out a way to make a computer do it. They seem to think this is better but Indiana Jones is a great example of why it?s not. Instead of animating Indy they essentially taught him how to behave and react to his surroundings. They said this was better because it means you?ll never see the same canned animation over and over. What it means is that I see different stupid looking animations all the time though. I?m not sure that?s an improvement. I?ll take God of Wars beautifully animated special moves over Indy looking like some kind of retarded marionette any day.

To be honest, I'm finding myself agree with them. I don?t want to judge Indy before it's released, but I just hope that enough thought has gone into the characters, plot, style, dialogue, music and atmosphere than have gone into the physics engine. I guess we'll just have to wait and see!
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17 Comments

  • Shmargin on 17 May, 2006, 05:26…
    Well I'm glad people agree with me. At least some.

    AND HOLY CRAP I GOT MY NAME POSTED AS THE SOURCE!

    I've only been coming to this site for years and years now...bout time... ;P
  • Gabez on 17 May, 2006, 11:02…
    Oops, just realised that the URL was pooed up... did you want any personal link, btw? I saw www.shmargin.com on your Lucasforums profile but it doesn't work for me.
  • Shmargin on 17 May, 2006, 17:06…
    haha, nah, shmargin.com hasnt worked in years, and when it did, it sucked.

    I'm just happy to be see my name on the main page. You know, in some super nerdy hardcore fan sorta way.
  • Laserschwert on 16 May, 2006, 18:06…
    Basically Euphoria gives the NPCs the abilty to "keep balance", or when losing it at least LOOKING like they're TRYING to keep it. Anyway, the trailer is one of the best examples for the modern LucasArts: Focussing on technology not content. And even the technology doesn't impress, since it looks almost like "Emperor's Tomb". So what exactly is "next gen" about this game? The lack of details and shadows? The low res polygon models? Gravity equal to the moon's? I think LucasArts is yet again up for another "quick buck" here... sad it is.
  • Cheeseness on 17 May, 2006, 08:56…
    It's so hard to say from the trailer.

    And from a gamer's point of view, the Indy franchise could be defined in many different ways: in the pre-Atlantis days, they were all action shooters/platformers, and in the post-Atlantis present, they've all been action shooters/3D platformers (al la toombraider)/with a vague puzzle theme.

    I would hazard to say that most of the fans of this site would probably see Indy as being a point and click adventure genre with a bit of fighting as a side distraction.

    As far as the movies go, the fighting and action has been what it's all about, with I guess a moderate amount of clever thinking/problem solving.

    So if an Indy game is nothing but tooling around with hand to hand combat showing off the nifty stuff you can do with Euphoria, it could be considered to be "true to the Indy spirit".

    Personally though, I'd more prefer another Atlantis style game.
  • Thrik on 16 May, 2006, 21:00…
    Well, at least they recognise the effectiveness of buzzwords and hype. I found it kind of awkward in that Jim Ward interview when he was going on for ages about how that Star Wars game (I think) will have surfaces react different depending on their material.

    I mean, even the Half-Life 1 engine had that ? there's nothing remotely innovative or particularly gameplay improving about it.
  • Udvarnoky on 16 May, 2006, 15:46…
    My problem is not really with the physics or how it looks, it's the fact that it seems to be the game's emphasis. I'm sure it will be a fun game but will it live up to the Indiana Jones name?
  • Shanty on 16 May, 2006, 15:06…
    The trailer makes the game look absolute rubbish. Having people bump into cars in new and improved ways is all well and good, but the way it's presented makes it look like it's purely some kind of car/dude physics sim.
    Is that exciting to ANYONE?
  • Cheeseness on 16 May, 2006, 05:22…
    Oh, and the "oof" animation can play while they're in the middle of something else (say, climbing a ladder, or kicking Indy in the kneecaps, or driving a car, and it'll nicely blend everything together.
  • Cheeseness on 16 May, 2006, 05:20…
    Euphoria is like adding a little bit of life to ragdoll effects. It doesn't affect the "look for Indy and shoot him" AI. It's more like "Argh, I'm falling off a balcony and I want to land on my feet".

    Rather than have an animator make a special scripted animation that only plays when bad guys get knocked off a balcony in the right way, they've got sort of sub-level AI that makes it look like they're real people trying to control the way they fall, and that's what Euphoria is all about.

    It also means that say, if somebody gets hit, they don't necessarily play an "oof" type animation with the NPC's head doing backwards, instead, the NPC's head is given velocity and direction of the punch, and the Euphoria system works out the rest (whether they fall over, what direction they fall in, how they land, how they get up, etc. etc. etc.)

    In terms of a) meaning games can be created with less hand crafted content, and b) creating a more dynamic experience, it's a good idea (particularly when the amount of expected content in a game is growing - something that's likely to push independant developers out of business).

    I'll admit, it does look a bit funny, but how funny did the first 3D games look compared to state of the art 2D games at that time? It's a question of experience and exposure.
  • jp-30 on 16 May, 2006, 06:20…
    Hi, you're obviously pretty familiar with the technology - is the playable character influenced by euphoria? ie. if Indy is pushed at the top of a staircase, will he try and grab the handrail to stop himself falling, and does that sort of take the control of the character away from the player for moments at a time?
  • Cheeseness on 17 May, 2006, 08:28…
    My understanding is yeah, that sort of stuff will happen (with NPCs at least - what the go is as far as controlling Indy goes, I don't know)

    The videos in this articles are Euphoria tech demos (so while obviously not Indy content, they show the sorts of stuff that this technology can do - how much of that sort of thing LucasArts chose to implement is another story).
    http://ps3.ign.com/articles/702/702423p1.html

    I'm hoping that the interface will be a little different to your standard first person shooter, with the addition of things like a grab button that's independant of your shoot button, which would give you the ability to say fall off a breaking rope bridge, hold onto the remnants and swing around a bit so you can kick some guy in the face. The sort of blending and adaptive nature of the Euphoria technology would make this sort of thing possible, but again, it's down to how the game's designed.

    Unfortunately the E3 trailer's pretty horrible as far as being any sort of source to judge gameplay from (though there was a cool bit which made it seem that if somebody had you from behind, you could duck a punch and have them hit, and that sort of dynamic fighting would make Indy pretty sweet)
  • QueZTone on 16 May, 2006, 13:09…
    no its not at all like that as far as i can gather...

    its just like he said, ragdoll effects to characters, live-calculated physics motion results
  • jp-30 on 16 May, 2006, 02:05…
    I don't really understand ho "euphoria" is supposed to influence the playable character (ie Indy). It's an AI thing isn't it?

    So maybe if the Indy in the demo is a bot, I can understand it looking odd, but surely in the finished game the playable character will have some sort of predetermined animation sequences (even if they are altered by the character's skeleton on the fly in some ways)?
  • elTee on 16 May, 2006, 01:58…
    I completely agree. Unique moves doesn't equate to a great game. Still, the physics is cool.
  • QueZTone on 16 May, 2006, 00:15…
    the problem is that even though 'every throw of a baddie's body' results in a different animation looks cool is that in reality people have muscles to counter-act certain motions which i don't see in these animations...

    they indeed look like marrionettes
  • Diduz on 15 May, 2006, 22:24…
    He may be right about the way the game LOOKS, but I'm still curious to verify how the game PLAYS. If they manage to implement Euphoria in smart level designs, the game could turn up a funny experience.