I was watching Zero Punctuation and Yahtzee gave mention on how in Max Payne 3, the detail of Max holding whatever gun the player was using in a gunfight is still visible in the following cutscene. Little details like that are what can make a good game great, and I got to thinking of what other little details I'd like to see in games / are unaware are already in some games.

- The players body language changes in cut scenes depending how much health they have remaining when the scene starts, character will limp or clutch at their side if the cutscene starts with low HP.

What about you? Can be anything really; doesn't need to relate to cutscenes etc...

I think both Gears of War and Halo do the "carry gun through to cutscene" thing.

InvisibleShadow wrote: I think both Gears of War and Halo do the "carry gun through to cutscene" thing.

You're kidding, right? Halo is reknown for Master Chief always holding an Assault Rifle in every single cut-scene. This is completely the opposite of what BlightedArt mentioned, but I do feel Halo pull it off rather well.

friskeN wrote: You're kidding, right? Halo is reknown for Master Chief always holding an Assault Rifle in every single cut-scene. This is completely the opposite of what BlightedArt mentioned, but I do feel Halo pull it off rather well.

I know MC does it in Halo 2 (ie. if you enter a cutscene with an energy sword or shotgun he will carry it throughout the cutscene). I'm not sure about the other Halo games though, I can't remember.

Oh my apologies, playing through Halo 4 I noticed it quite badly and my friend noted that the Halo series has always kept Master Chief with an assault rifle throughout all cut-scenes etc. After a while I came to quite enjoy it, it was like a motif throughout the game.

Yeah I just googled it and it was only done in Halo 2 & 3, all the other games he has a default weapon that Bungie/343 selected for that cutscene.

http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Cutscene

Quote: In all Halo: Combat Evolved cutscenes, John-117 is always holding an Assault Rifle, even in the level Two Betrayals, where the player starts with an M90 Shotgun and a Plasma Pistol. In Halo 2, the cutscene shows the player's primary weapon or, if the primary isn't available, the secondary weapon. This also applies in Halo 3, but certain levels such as The Ark has a wide variety of weapons, creating difficulty for Bungie Studios to create multiple cutscene variants, so the cutscenes in these levels usually depict John-117 wielding the MA5C Assault Rifle and the Arbiter the Covenant Carbine. Also, levels like The Covenant, in which weapons held by the character play a major role in the cutscene, cause the cutscene to ignore what weapon the player is wielding. In Halo 3: ODST, the main characters are always holding their preferred "signature weapon", no matter what weapon the player has traded with them. In Halo: Reach, the cutscenes depict Noble Six wielding the MA37 Assault Rifle, the Designated Marksman Rifle, or the M6G Pistol, no matter what the player is wielding in gameplay.

BlightedArt wrote: I was watching Zero Punctuation and Yahtzee gave mention on how in Max Payne 3, the detail of Max holding whatever gun the player was using in a gunfight is still visible in the following cutscene. Little details like that are what can make a good game great, and I got to thinking of what other little details I'd like to see in games / are unaware are already in some games. - The players body language changes in cut scenes depending how much health they have remaining when the scene starts, character will limp or clutch at their side if the cutscene starts with low HP.

Quote: What about you? Can be anything really; doesn't need to relate to cutscenes etc...

BlightedArt wrote:

haha, ok then. I would love to see more games using Nvidia's Physx, and to also use it for more things ingame. Some example being dynamic hair & clothing, more destructible enviroments, more destructible objects, physics-bound water and rain ect.

Actually, I would really love to see a game that allowed puddles and running water to form whenever it rained, and to have the physics-based mud to form in areas where the ground was wet and then churned up.

SORRY BLIGHT!!

I personally would love to see dynamic environments interact with character models. I haven't played too many games, so I can't say if this has ever been done before, but a game I have in mind for this would be something similar to Skyrim, where dynamic environments are plentiful yet your model appears unaffected.

What I'm meaning here is simple things like; walking through snow, your boots get covered and snow piles up around your shoulders/hood etc. Mud get carried with you, dust covers your body, water makes you appear wet etc and takes a while to dry due to sunlight.

There are a few games with effects like that in them but their names aren't coming to me... iirc Max Payne 3 was pretty good for things like this?

All goods, I should have realised that Max Payne 3 wasn't the first to do that. Puddles and things would be great; maybe they could form and cause opponents to slip etc too.

friskeN: That'd be really good too; Assassins Creed 3 has some nice steps into some of those areas (trudging through deep snow) but that only effects the animation really, it doesn't "pile onto" the character like you suggest from what I recall.

Definitely more ways of incorporating weather patterns dynamically would be great for immersion.

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While I didn't like Fable III's 'hand holding' mechanic to get people to follow you (it worked better for Ico, because the character you are leading felt timid and frail and in need of that kind of incentive); I'd still like to see more games that go along the idea of physically interacting with other characters to get them to do things.

Maybe putting a hand on the shoulder of a partner to quietly tell them to wait up before walking into a trap... or being able to drink half a health potion and give the other half of it to a teammate.

I like the little details but most games this gen just don't pay attention enough. I remember when we got to the DC/PS2 era and some devs began focusing more on the small items they could begin to build. I remember people being obssessed with the MGS2 demo because you could knock over the ice bucket in the bar on the ship, and the cubes would slowly melt and shoot the alcohol bottles at top middle or bottom and get different results, or a few years later when Black came out and had realistically modeled guns with moving parts including belt clip holders and that well thought out. But as games became larger once more in that scale, especially this gen with events driven scripted mega moments a lot more of that sort of fine details gone away because budgets got bigger but the time to allow for that sort of smaller things went out the window. Also, kill me for saying it, but when we had pre-rendered background more thought went into atmopshere design even with real time work. Look at Capcom's remake of Resident Evil from over a decade ago for touches that mix the pre-render with real-time lighting effects that some games released now can't even do.

Personally I always like nice real world touches in visual design, like floating dust illuminated through light in windows, dripping water, and nice simple puddle effects etc. Companies like Naughty Dog do a lot of this along with the set piece moments in their games, which I like, and I think it's what helps sell their games. But ironically after saying that I believe they have the "always has basic handgun/assault rifle in cutscene" thing talked about above when it came to Uncharted and the game is filled with heavily scripted events. Go figure.

Dead Rising was hilarious for that reason

Breathing, and not just an end of sprint "im out of breath animation", I mean consistent and dynamic breathing that's just subtle enough to make me believe my character is actually alive all the time.

seanhinton wrote: Breathing, and not just an end of sprint "im out of breath animation", I mean consistent and dynamic breathing that's just subtle enough to make me believe my character is actually alive all the time.

Somebody made a mod for that in Skyrim and it's amazing the difference it makes.

MGS4 is probably my favourite game. I thought it was cool how your current octocamo was visible in cutscenes, but your gun always went back to either the pistol or the M4 regardless of what you had equipped

Actually the Max Payne 3 comment isn't entirely true for every cutscene. If he's holding a large weapon or dual pistols and the cutscene requires him to use his hand for something (even if it's just steadying himself against a wall) then he will go back to using the default pistol. Still, better than nothing.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 has this cool feature where they do a 'last time, on Final Fantasy XIII-2' montage of all the previous cut-scenes when the game loads. That would be cool for other games with heavy story modes. They also have a quick recap of the events that happened in FFXIII via an encyclopedia, which is nice if you ragequit on the second-to-last boss, like I did

NPCs reacting differently to your actions in story-driven sequences. I.e. Some characters in Alpha Protocol will react completely differently to say Michael wearing a sneaking suit to him rocking a ridiculous ZZ Top beard. In Deus Ex games, NPCs usually react to your play style in previous missions (eg lethality, if you were undetected). In some titles characters will react depending on how much time you spend stuffing around getting to them.

BODY AWARENESS in First Person games. I.e. If I look down then I see my torso and feet, I'm not just a floating camera.

Stripped down HUDs and using said body awareness as part of the HUD. I.e. In Far Cry 2 and Metro 2033 if you did certain things, like check your map, the player character would physically pull out a map and hold it in their hands.

Bullets come in funtional, discrete magazines rather then the 'bullet pool' we are currently given in almost every game. For example:

You have 8 magazines of 30 bullets.
Load the gun. Gun has 30 bullets, you have 7 magazines of 30 bullets remaining on your body.
You fire 15 bullets, and reload.
You now have 6 magazines with 30 bullets and 1 magazine with 14 bullets on your body, and the gun has a fresh magazine of 30 bullets + 1 in the chamber from the last magazine (where relevant).

Eventually you are going to have to come back to that magazine you reloaded when half empty and it will still only have 14 rounds left. None of this magic magazine filling. If you want to sit out and spend the couple minutes to transfer rounds from one magazine to another thats cool, but it irritates me when you can shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, shoot a burst, reload, and still be loading up full magazines you pull out of your ass just because you have more then 30 total shots left.

I always think it's weird that your model doesn't look wet after swimming in 3rd person games. I was pleasantly surprised when twilight princess had this done fairly well, but a lot of even more modern games don't have this little thing that I think adds just that extra bit of impact from the environment.

Nakor wrote:

This would be awesome for SP, but a pain in the ass for twitch based MP shooters. FPS MP 101 is you always reload your gun asap so you have a full clip.

InvisibleShadow wrote: This would be awesome for SP, but a pain in the ass for twitch based MP shooters. FPS MP 101 is you always reload your gun asap so you have a full clip.

False, the number of times i have seen people get smoked because they twitch reload is over 9000

You would think that your character or the main NPCs would change clothes every now and again...

I wish they'd just react properly to dead bodies. If AI finds a body it should be on permanent search and destroy, rather than some "countdown to passive" that most FPS/RPG hybrids have.