The tenth installment of the long-running shooter franchise introduces a brand new storyline, where the United States is under threat from a coalition of South American nations, and must employ a special group of operatives known as "Ghosts" to survive.
@hunkulese: there's a big difference between reusing assets like a building model or a walking animation or something like that and reusing an entire scene that is part of the story.
Sigh. I believe that none of us know what updates to the engine they've made, so that's entirely irrelevant. I know from personal experience that copy/pasting keyframes onto a new IK skeleton, even if it's identical, can be a pain in the ass. And that to animate something as simple as the scene above, it would always take less time to just do it from scratch than to deal with the hassle of "reusing" old data.
Using geometry like buildings from older games just requires new textures/shaders, so that actually is a big time saver. Using old animation, not so much.
And please don't "LOL" at me, dude. You just sound like a dick.
The engine they are currently using is an iteration of what they have been using for the previous games. They marketed it as if it was a new engine early on, though they later clarified that they were calling it new when it in reality was not new at all. I can only assume their in-house tools are the largely the same and reusing animations for cutscenes must be a breeze, otherwise they would not have done it.
This isnt like assets, its the same fucking thing. Like they couldnt come up with something so they grabbed a different games ending and just put it there. SO FUCKING LAZY.
Remind me of when Star Trek: Generations reused the bird of prey explosion from The Undiscovered Country. In fact its exactly like that since that explosion was the climax of that movie.
Do you know how much you would pay someone to make 30 seconds of animation? It bet it is more money than you think.
Even if they were just using the movement data and attaching it to new skeleton/frame in the engine that is still a week of work. Otherwise it woudl be a few weeks to make from scratch. That means that could be $3,000 to $5,000 of work for just a lowly staff member to recycle the movement data a new movie in house.
If the developer ship it out to the 'animation studio' doing the other cuts scenes, it could even be thousands even to recycled that small cutscene. Or tens of thousands, to do it from scratch with a brand new cut scene.
So fucking yes they recycled it, to recycle it isn't lazy. The developer probably saving two weeks of work and thousands of dollars just lifing those animations. Time and money isn't something to waste on the production.
@monkeyking1969: If this were any other game, by any other game company, i would totally understand. But this is fucking COD. You're telling me they didn't want to spend some time not rehashing the same old shit in such a literal way? What else are they doing? Not revamping the gameplay or anything like that. And money really shouldn't be an issue for them considering the game will net them more than any of us will see in our life times
I don't know, it's just a moment. It could be a nod more than anything. If not, as long as this is it, who cares? Waking up from explosion or some shit and being dragged to a vehicle isn't exactly an original thought in the first place. And, really, if it's in first person, how different is it really going to look? If there were multiple scenes, it'd be a lot more egregious.
You guys are freaking me out with all these examples of this happening in other mediums. I guess it's more common than I thought, but it still comes off as lazy to me.
It could also just be a callback, given that this is the first non-MW game Infinity Ward has done for a while. Perhaps an easter egg or just a reference to their other games? I dunno. I just wouldn't be so quick to claim corner cutting.
Besides, even if it is just corner cutting they'd still claim it was a callback.
Hey, look. You've got two years to make a game. It's probably going to be very similar to an older game in the same series. Part of your story involves a scene similar to one of your older games. You still have the data from the old game. Do you
a) Waste your valuable time and man-hours on re-creating those animations
OR do you
b) Re-purpose existing animations for your scene?
They're being efficient, they're not being lazy. They have to be that way to get a new one of these blockbusters out in two years, and this one had the extra pressure of preparing a next-gen version on top of what they already had to do.
Its looks bad but it happens all the time reusing assets and animations for things in the media. I think its more funny that mw2 looks better in that comparison.
Hey, look. You've got two years to make a game. It's probably going to be very similar to an older game in the same series. Part of your story involves a scene similar to one of your older games. You still have the data from the old game. Do you
a) Waste your valuable time and man-hours on re-creating those animations
OR do you
b) Re-purpose existing animations for your scene?
They're being efficient, they're not being lazy. They have to be that way to get a new one of these blockbusters out in two years, and this one had the extra pressure of preparing a next-gen version on top of what they already had to do.
In this case you also have $100 million and 3 studios under your boot. This ain't no small team small budget situation, certain things get less of a pass the bigger you get.
Hey, look. You've got two years to make a game. It's probably going to be very similar to an older game in the same series. Part of your story involves a scene similar to one of your older games. You still have the data from the old game. Do you
a) Waste your valuable time and man-hours on re-creating those animations
OR do you
b) Re-purpose existing animations for your scene?
They're being efficient, they're not being lazy. They have to be that way to get a new one of these blockbusters out in two years, and this one had the extra pressure of preparing a next-gen version on top of what they already had to do.
In this case you also have $100 million and 3 studios under your boot. This ain't no small team small budget situation, certain things get less of a pass the bigger you get.
True, but part of the reason that Call of Duty has succeeded so well is efficient use of resources. I'd be willing to bet that most AAA games have re-purposed something from a past game, anyway, especially when it comes to games in the same genre and even the same series.
Hey, look. You've got two years to make a game. It's probably going to be very similar to an older game in the same series. Part of your story involves a scene similar to one of your older games. You still have the data from the old game. Do you
a) Waste your valuable time and man-hours on re-creating those animations
OR do you
b) Re-purpose existing animations for your scene?
They're being efficient, they're not being lazy. They have to be that way to get a new one of these blockbusters out in two years, and this one had the extra pressure of preparing a next-gen version on top of what they already had to do.
In this case you also have $100 million and 3 studios under your boot. This ain't no small team small budget situation, certain things get less of a pass the bigger you get.
True, but part of the reason that Call of Duty has succeeded so well is efficient use of resources. I'd be willing to bet that most AAA games have re-purposed something from a past game, anyway, especially when it comes to games in the same genre and even the same series.
I'm not saying there isn't room for recycling assets and what not (it's a good idea), but recycling the skeletal's and camera tracking from an entire cut scene sequence is pretty low.
As games become more and more expensive and more and more time and money is spent just on the engine and graphics, then there will be more and more copy and pasting. It's why Fallout 3 had like 3 different destroyed house models/interiors.
@korwin: Why is that specifically so low? It's efficient re-use. If we had to make a new piece of art/logic/camera work/rigging for every instance of a scene or level in a game we're essentially burning time, effort and budget that we could've used to do more interesting things.
@korwin: Why is that specifically so low? It's efficient re-use. If we had to make a new piece of art/logic/camera work/rigging for every instance of a scene or level in a game we're essentially burning time, effort and budget that we could've used to do more interesting things.
Except... from the sound of it, they didn't use any of that to actually do more interesting things. All of this just further feeds into the idea of CoD being a factory churned product. Why bother animating anything new when we have all these other games we can just pull from?
Reusing assets is one thing, using this scene as a throwback is even a likely theory, but doing a literal nearly identical scene in your new game that your studio put out four years ago with there not being much of an overlap in the universes or meaningful callbacks?
It's comes off as gross. It doesn't matter if it's efficient. Sweatshops are efficient. And they're still fuckin' gross.
@andorski: there's a "whoa, what, WHOA!" audio clip in Sword in the Stone that they use about seven or eight times throughout the movie, sometimes within 5 seconds of each other. I believe in one case the protagonist says it as he's about to fall, and then seconds later while actually falling.
Reusing assets. As old as artistic expression itself.
@korwin: Why is that specifically so low? It's efficient re-use. If we had to make a new piece of art/logic/camera work/rigging for every instance of a scene or level in a game we're essentially burning time, effort and budget that we could've used to do more interesting things.
Because it's a cut scene, what is meant to be a defining moment in the game/story. I've got zero against re-using assets and game play animations, not re-using those would be silly. But straight up grabbing a full story sequence and pasting new audio and models into it is a bridge too far, it's the line between clever time saving and blatant poorly hidden corner cutting.
@korwin: I guess I just don't see it. The only things re-used in the video are the animations for the characters and the camera. The context of story, the voice acting, the character and environment art are all not the same.
I dont really think this is a big deal. It's, from what I can tell(I haven't and wont play the game), a very small scene in the over all game. If they were copying and pasting a level scenario or something then I would give them shit. This is just reusing an animation set, which is done ALL the time in movies, games, and other media. Making this shit is hard, and if reusing an 18 second clip saves you some time and money, then you fucking do it.
@korwin: I guess I just don't see it. The only things re-used in the video are the animations for the characters and the camera. The context of story, the voice acting, the character and environment art are all not the same.
Sooo... hypothetically if JJ Abrams were to re use the Volcano sequence from Into Darkness shot for shot in the next Star Trek movie, only change the environment to some weird Ice Volcano and swap out all the dialogue so they aren't saving Aliens they're sabotaging a Klingon outpost... you would be fine with that?
@korwin: Why is that specifically so low? It's efficient re-use. If we had to make a new piece of art/logic/camera work/rigging for every instance of a scene or level in a game we're essentially burning time, effort and budget that we could've used to do more interesting things.
Because it's a cut scene, what is meant to be a defining moment in the game/story. I've got zero against re-using assets and game play animations, not re-using those would be silly. But straight up grabbing a full story sequence and pasting new audio and models into it is a bridge too far, it's the line between clever time saving and blatant poorly hidden corner cutting.
Did you even watch the clip people are talking about? It's not a full story sequence. It's not a defining moment. It's dude getting helped up and walking to a car.
@korwin: Why is that specifically so low? It's efficient re-use. If we had to make a new piece of art/logic/camera work/rigging for every instance of a scene or level in a game we're essentially burning time, effort and budget that we could've used to do more interesting things.
Because it's a cut scene, what is meant to be a defining moment in the game/story. I've got zero against re-using assets and game play animations, not re-using those would be silly. But straight up grabbing a full story sequence and pasting new audio and models into it is a bridge too far, it's the line between clever time saving and blatant poorly hidden corner cutting.
Did you even watch the clip people are talking about? It's not a full story sequence. It's not a defining moment. It's dude getting helped up and walking to a car.
Considering the nature of most Cod games and their length I'd call it a story sequence :P. It certainly looks like the end of a mission to me, it's still none the less a cut scene as the player has no agency in that space.
Why would animation studios do this, considering there ain't no copy/paste quick fix benefit to be had here..... Maybe paying tribute but it's weird seeing Naruto pay tribute to Bebop. lol
@gnatsol: Because it's significantly easier to find something that moves well and copy its positioning/timing than to try and animate something that moves well from scratch.
@korwin: The false equivalences aside (movie vs game, length, amount of copying), yes. Reusing 2 elements (the animation for characters and camera) in that 20 second scene in Call of Duty does not constitute anything to get worked up about even remotely as much as you seem to be. Frankly, it's a smart move to re-use that animation stuff. Probably saved an animator about a week or 2 worth of work that is instead spent on more important things to animate.
So... this isn't like a callback? I figured it was a callback.
I wouldn't call it lazy, but I wouldn't call it a callback, either. It's the recycling of a previously created asset with new graphics and sound. It's an obvious shortcut, but not one that I think it really worth getting up in arms about.
Though, judging from the story as presented in the quick look, it doesn't seem particularly special, anyway. The writing seems particularly bad, even for a Call of Duty game.
Sword in the Stone and Robin Hood both came from the extremely crappy, lazy, cash-in Disney era when they all but stopped doing animated films as a major part of business so that makes sense. Everything looked the same and was bland and boring. Doesn't surprise me that they copied and pasted old animations from good Disney films.
Yup, that's the whole game right there, in that cutscene. They copied EVERYTHING from MW2 to Ghosts, every single detail of it.
...or at least that's what I seem to gather from some of the worst comments. But eh, I shouldn't really care, I haven't played any CoD games since the first Black Ops and this definetly isn't raising my interest either. Black Ops 2 I would've liked to try because of the story, but since it takes millions of years for those games to go on sale (I think even the first Modern Warfare hasn't gone below 19.99 euros in a Steam sale...) I've given them a pass. Hopefully around 2015 we'll get a somewhat innovative CoD, that only gets released on next-gen consoles and PC.
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