{"id":14109,"date":"2011-11-08T04:40:19","date_gmt":"2011-11-08T09:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=14109"},"modified":"2011-11-08T05:58:57","modified_gmt":"2011-11-08T10:58:57","slug":"the-sound-of-skyrim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=14109","title":{"rendered":"The Sound of Skyrim"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always said that one of the most unhealthy things about videogame journalism is the fixation on previews.  Critics are always gazing at stuff on the horizon, furiously plowing through current releases, and rarely looking back.  This means there is very little thoughtful analysis, and a great deal of hype-mongering.  (After all, in a preview you can comment on what marketing chooses to show you.) I&#8217;ve always tried to avoid doing a lot of previews on my site, for this very reason.  However, I hope you will forgive me for doing another preview today.  I&#8217;ll try to make up for it by combining it with analysis of Oblivion.  <\/p>\n<p>Bethesda has put out a promotional video, showing off the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XJ7lmWc14uo\">Sounds of Skyrim<\/a>. Let&#8217;s have a look:<\/p>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XJ7lmWc14uo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XJ7lmWc14uo'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->The first half of this video shows off the epic environmental music.  It&#8217;s very impressive, but I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ll shut it off after an hour. After a while it feels sort of silly wandering around lost, shopping for gear, and sorting inventory with something akin to Flight of the Valkyries is swelling in the background. The problem with epic music is that most moments aren&#8217;t epic.  <\/p>\n<p>Still, that music is incredible.  The fact that it makes sense in a made-up language and also rhymes is also really cool.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>Timestamp 3:23<\/strong>: One of the big complaints with previous Elder Scrolls games is that their characters are robotic and dead-eyed.  It looks like they will not fix this problem in Skyrim, but they are taking some steps in the right direction.  This character is folding her arms and moving about as she delivers her dialog. The guy at 3:57 looks even better. <\/p>\n<p>One of the things that messes this up is that the voice acting is so tremendous. Check out the side-by-side of Christopher Plummer at 6:32.  That guy is delivering his lines masterfully.  You can close your eyes and feel the weight of his performance.  Then you look at his character on the right and the whole thing suddenly comes off as kind of wooden because his in-game character just doesn&#8217;t seem to be into it.   <\/p>\n<p>Just a bit of facial emotion would help a lot in situations like these, along with some eye and head movement. It&#8217;s just a bit strange to have everyone lock eyes with you and stare throughout the entire conversation. Have them look down when they&#8217;re reflecting on the past, to the side when they&#8217;re being evasive or sly, and up when they&#8217;re trying to remember.  Just an occasional bit of movement can help a lot. <\/p>\n<p>Another possible route is to take the Ubisoft \/ Bioware shortcut of moving the camera to third-person and AWAY from the faces of the characters. Then we can focus on body language instead of facial expressions. Assassin&#8217;s Creed 1 and 2 features a lot of deadpan performances, but we don&#8217;t notice because the characters are walking around and the camera is a couple of meters away. The Bethesda method of FOCUSING on faces only highlights the weakest aspect of the entire scene. Dead Island had the same problem. (Yes, you could go the LA Noire route and try to face capture everyone, but that&#8217;s still an expensive new technology.  I don&#8217;t expect to see that enter common use for quite some time, and it might never be feasible for a game with a huge cast like Skyrim.  I&#8217;d much rather solve a problem with tricks and shortcuts than throw money and technology at it.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Timestamp 3:33<\/strong>: So the camera switches to third-person when you do a stealth kill?  I guess that&#8217;s the thing now. (Deus Ex: Human Revolution did the same thing.) I wonder is this only happens in certain scripted places, or if this is how all stealth kills will work.  If it&#8217;s still possible to enchant yourself a 100% invisible suit, then I could see this getting to be a little tedious. If these moments aren&#8217;t scripted, then I wonder how they&#8217;re solving the problem of camera position.  It&#8217;s hard for the AI to know where to put a &#8220;cinematic&#8221; camera when clutter, shelving, walls, or other characters might be standing in the way or moving through the shot. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Timestamp 4:20<\/strong>: 70 actors for 100 roles?  That&#8217;s really amazing.  The first number has increased by an order of magnitude.  However, that second number sounds kind of low for an Elder Scrolls game.  I know Morrowwind and Oblivion had thousands of characters.  However, he might mean &#8220;characters with whom you have meaningful interactions&#8221;.  That is: Not generic street traffic. I like this approach.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>Timestamp 4:30<\/strong>: Three voice studios working at the same time? Amazing. I would LOVE to see the budget breakdown of a AAA game these days.  Just a simple bar graph of how much money was spent on textures, animations, writing, voice, music, environments, and programming.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always said that one of the most unhealthy things about videogame journalism is the fixation on previews. Critics are always gazing at stuff on the horizon, furiously plowing through current releases, and rarely looking back. This means there is very little thoughtful analysis, and a great deal of hype-mongering. (After all, in a preview [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-videogames"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}