Sora's soulless facial expression, anyone else worried?

[BOT 101]

So far, within the snipits of Sora that we have seen within the trailers, Sora's facial expression always seems to be neutral, slightly happy or slightly upset.

Even in combat! His mostly just stock still when talking to others. Mouth opening and closing and nothing else.
No movement in his eyes or scrunch up of his eyebrows, mouth or hand gestures.
Its almost like he has to make sure he looks pretty for the camera.

The worst of it was in the big hero 6 trailer in my opinion.
Moments where i would expect a certain movement or expression were replaced with a static dull one that relies on the voice acting to show how happy or angry etc he is.

It reminded me of a thread that was discussing residents evil 2 remake and how soulless the characters faces were.


Each time i replay kh games i would notice more of these details.
KH2 did this the best using gestures and a complex facial expression that brought him to life.
Especially for those feel scenes (when sora finds riku) and this level of detail was still captured even in DDD (when sora meets roxas).

Im still excited for khIII but i feel that square is going to forget to bring out the soul of these characters if you will,
and instead wants us to focus on the whole "look at these graphics/textures arent they amazing"
Which are great... but not at the expense for bringing these characters to life.


Does anyone else notice or care about it this?

 

[MATGSY]

That's just because he's dead on the inside.

 

[Luminary]

I’m not worried. From the leaked Toy Box scenes, Sora looks more consistently expressive than ever, especially considering fish faces are gone. Even in the Pirates trailer, he has great expressions when he’s cheerfully singing A Pirate’s Life and then switches to being disappointed about not having a bigger ship. Then we see his attitude come out when they’re confronting Luxord, which shifts into surprise when Jack tells him to stand down. So they’re definitely still making him expressive. But it seems he’ll be more subtle at times, which is a good thing to me.

Also, I don’t know about active combat, but I know he has a great idle animation during fights where he grits his teeth and looks around for potential threats.

 

[BOT 101]

While he does have expression like the points you have made.
If they are trying to be more subtle about it, i wouldnt understand why would they want to downgrade from that?
Considering that there were no problems about the expression in previous titles. If anything, it gave kh series its "standard look"


Example, when sora is confronting Luxord he looks like his more pouting than angry(kh3) if you compare that too his confrontation with Saix in kh2(or any of the other organization members) and getting angry when they refer to him as Roxas.
He shows more frustration, annoyance, anger and i guess for me the animation is more fluid.

I would share an image for comparisons sake but apparently you need a URL to do it?
(i made this image myself capturing the differences in expression so im not sure why i would need a URL??)

Also that part where sora's singing a pirate life, that was all good until he says "again" and all of a sudden his eyebrows and eyes grow bigger for like a second and then go back to their normal size. I see what they were trying to do but i dont know the animation seems really off to me :/


oh! i did notice the idle animation and i was pretty happy with that! I hope there's more animation the longer you leave him idle. Would cool to see sora getting impatient or bored.

 

[BOT 101]

Arent they all dead in the inside? i mean they have been fighting heartless and nobodies none stop all this time.
Sora's only holiday was when he fell asleep on the job for a year -_-


MESSAGE TO STAFF: please delete the post.

 

[Luminary]

While he does have expression like the points you have made.

If they are trying to be more subtle about it, i wouldnt understand why would they want to downgrade from that?
Considering that there were no problems about the expression in previous titles. If anything, it gave kh series its "standard look"




Example, when sora is confronting Luxord he looks like his more pouting than angry(kh3) if you compare that too his confrontation with Saix in kh2(or any of the other organization members) and getting angry when they refer to him as Roxas.
He shows more frustration, annoyance, anger and i guess for me the animation is more fluid.


I would share an image for comparisons sake but apparently you need a URL to do it?
(i made this image myself capturing the differences in expression so im not sure why i would need a URL??)


Also that part where sora's singing a pirate life, that was all good until he says "again" and all of a sudden his eyebrows and eyes grow bigger for like a second and then go back to their normal size. I see what they were trying to do but i dont know the animation seems really off to me :/




oh! i did notice the idle animation and i was pretty happy with that! I hope there's more animation the longer you leave him idle. Would cool to see sora getting impatient or bored.

No problems in previous titles?

Spoiler Show

Subtle expressions aren’t a downgrade. It just means they aren’t as over the top, which is a good thing in my opinion. Sora not being as campy shows his maturity. With the technology they have now, they can give the characters many more diverse expressions. I’m sure we’ll still have plenty of campy expressions in the game; we just haven’t seen that many of those moments yet. But overall, Sora is going to have a much wider range this time around.


Also, keep in mind that facial animations are one of the last things that happen in the development process. They’re still working on them, so if some frames are a bit wonky, they’ll likely improve in the final release. Even the ones that seem complete in the Japanese trailers will likely change for the English version due to different dialogue structure and timing. But as shown even in the Toy Box scenes where the fluidity of Sora’s expressions are limited by being a toy, his animations are far from “soulless.”

P.S. Just a heads up since you’re new, double posting is against forum rules.

 

[BOT 101]

No problems in previous titles?

Spoiler Show

Thats just the standard fish face.
Im referring to specifically when face fish is NOT present in the cutscene like the examples i have stated above.
If i didnt make that clear thats my bad.
Also kh1 is a terrible since they used and abused fish face hardcore.

Subtle expressions aren’t a downgrade. It just means they aren’t as over the top, which is a good thing in my opinion. Sora not being as campy shows his maturity. With the technology they have now, they can give the characters many more diverse expressions. I’m sure we’ll still have plenty of campy expressions in the game; we just haven’t seen that many of those moments yet. But overall, Sora is going to have a much wider range this time around.

hmm i guess its just a difference in opinion then. I didnt think the scenes i referred too were campy or over the top.

Could you give an example of what you think was over the top? (no fish face! haha)

See thats the thing! Its exactly because they are using the unreal engine that i expected awesome facial animation!
At first i gave the benefit of the doubt because of course things aren't going to be perfect in the trailer and early development.
However now that were getting closer to its release and now that ive seen the big hero trailer im like "this is great! *sees sora's face when doing a special at 2:37* Wait... whats wrong with sora's face!"

But yeah like you said they will probably fix it but i cant help but worry.
I didnt really take into account the toy box scenes since well...his meant to be a toy it would be weird if he did have a lot of expression. Doesn't fit with the whole plastic toy look.

P.S. Just a heads up since you’re new, double posting is against forum rules

Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Luminary]

Thats just the standard fish face.
Im referring to specifically when face fish is NOT present in the cutscene like the examples i have stated above.
If i didnt make that clear thats my bad.
Also kh1 is a terrible since they used and abused fish face hardcore.





hmm i guess its just a difference in opinion then. I didnt think the scenes i referred too were campy or over the top.

Could you give an example of what you think was over the top? (no fish face! haha)

See thats the thing! Its exactly because they are using the unreal engine that i expected awesome facial animation!
At first i gave the benefit of the doubt because of course things aren't going to be perfect in the trailer and early development.
However now that were getting closer to its release and now that ive seen the big hero trailer im like "this is great! *sees sora's face when doing a special at 2:37* Wait... whats wrong with sora's face!"

But yeah like you said they will probably fix it but i cant help but worry.
I didnt really take into account the toy box scenes since well...his meant to be a toy it would be weird if he did have a lot of expression. Doesn't fit with the whole plastic toy look.



Thanks for the heads up.

Sora’s incredibly awkward expression when Roxas awakens his memories in DDD in the scene you mentioned, just for one example. The fact is, while the past games had great facial animations, there were times when they weren’t so great either. Also, it isn’t fair to say fish face doesn’t count because they were just as much part of the cutscenes as the fully rendered animations. Those moments when it jumps back and forth between static and dynamic faces are jarring and have a negative impact on the scenes. KH3’s lack of fish face is an incredible improvement that is relevant to the argument of whether KH3 has better facial animations or not.

We have seen plenty of incredible facial expressions throughout the KH3 trailers that show off what the engine can do, such as Jack’s twitch when talking to Luxord and how the Disney characters facials match their films perfectly. Sora is animated beautifully, in my opinion. Whether his facials are appropriate for a situation, we can’t know until we see the scenes in full context. That’s why I used the Toy Box scenes as an example since we can see the full context. The facials and gestures there are great, in line with past games if not better. We also haven’t seen Sora at the most extreme ends of his range of emotion that we’re likely to see in this game. They don’t want Sora to react exactly the same every time he’s sad or happy. There has to be levels.

 

[That_one_Sora]

do you have photographic proof of this?

 

[Leaferian]

I feel like he's had a decent range of facial expressions. He looks happy when he's singing in the raft, he looks genuinely surprised when he sees Elsa running across the lake. The anger in his face shows pretty well when he's talking to Xemnas and Ansem Seeker of Darkness, plus a distinct impression when he's telling Jack Sparrow to ignore Luxord. Perhaps a few vacant expressions here and there, but honestly I wouldn't go so far as to say "soulless".

 

[Recon]

Next gen fish face is welcomed...and the game isn't gold yet. Nomura & Team has until the end of this month. I'm sure Nomura is stressed as hell right now.

 

[Raz]

Nothing can be as bad as Sora's weird-square-vacuum-face in KHII. There's a particular shot in Beast's Castle I've been looking for, but I can't seem to find it.