Clement Rage
Pro Adventurer
You mean TKAA? Where?
Ff7 Racism & Ethnicity: if the effects of unintentional racial nuances or diversity appreciation offends you, dont read this
- Thread starter Noble0ne
- Start date
Obsidian Fire
Ahk Morn!
- AKA
- The Engineer
I would more chalk this up to being a consequence of limited dev resources. Once you get past the "Main Character NPCs" you start seeing repeats of the same NPCs in similar places.
One of the reasons mooks in identical armor is a trope in video-games (and lots of CGI movies) is because it make putting lots of people on a screen at very little dev cost something that can be done. Making several different body types (and the animations that go with them) costs teams time and resources that could be spent elsewhere. One of the things that looks like happened with the Remake is that there is no "character creator", but all the models are made by hand, including the NPC models. So this is a... pretty common result when you get a system like that.
You have an easier time making a diverse cast of NPCs when there is very few custom modeled characters and a lot more "generic NPC factory made characters". Having some kind of character creator with lots of body parts helps immensely as does having lots of clothing options all the NPCs can wear regardless of body type. However, this also results in a system with less "graphic fidelity" most of the time, which is something Remake relies a lot on. Instead of having lots of NPC models that aren't perfect, it has fewer ones that are perfect.
Clement Rage
Pro Adventurer
Don't change the model. Just have some of your voice actresses record extra dialogue. You can't see body shape behind armour anyway.
ForceStealer
Double Growth
I feel like if the Remake added female Shinra troopers by giving them exposed legs, we'd have a different set of complaints
LicoriceAllsorts
Donator
I'm disappointed they didn't even give them different skins tones. I don't know anything about making a game, but how hard can that be?
LicoriceAllsorts
Donator
It just really bugged me that every single Shinra soldier had the same face. Well, lower half of a face. They might as well have come from the clone factory.
Obsidian Fire
Ahk Morn!
- AKA
- The Engineer
So this is stuff I've picked up from modding games like Skyrim. It probably works slightly differently in Remake, but this should at least give you some idea of the amount of work going into things like "I want more diverse enemy models in my games". And why a game company might go "Screw that, the amount of work going into it isn't worth the pay-off".
So there's really two things going on here. First is the amount of work that would go into making different models/textures and how they link up. Which is linked to how character creation works (or doesn't work in the case of the Remake) and how 3D modeling in games is handled. Which linked to how the game engine handles texture data. Some game engines/creation suites are more flexible than others are.
The second issue is how is enemy generation in the game handled, and how RNG based it is or not. This is more dependent what kind of game is getting made than anything else.
When it comes to modeling/texture data and the character creation system... there's really two system working here... or not working. In a lot of games "creatures" are the mob models. The entire "creature" is created all as one model and with one texture. (For people who don't work with 3D assests a lot, a "model" is the 3D shape, a "texture" is the 2D image that gets wrapped around the model so it looks "real"). A lot of the time, which texture a model uses is baked into the model itself in some way. You'll have a 3D artist make the model and create a map for another 2D artist that has information about where the different parts of the 3D model are.
So you have all that. And this brings up the issue of how you change the color of a texture. Because it's not so simple as playing around with a colorization slider. Before that can happen, the area of the texture to be colorzied has to be defined. Oftentimes, the entire texuture shouldn't be colorized, only a small part of it. And that area has to be difined in the game somehow... for every texture that needs a variable color. A game could figure out how to point to different colored textures, but that would mean it would need to have two textures... which would increase the size of the game. Also, doing that is less flexible in the long run...
This is... a lot simpler in some ways for games that end up needing to developing a modular character creator that is very robust. Usually for games with a customizable character. On the one hand, it is way more work in the short term to develop a character creator than to just use custom models for everything. Mainly because all the models the character creator uses have to be able to work together... as do the customizable textures that can be swapped in and out. On the other hand, appearance data for such a character creator is all usually stored in the game itself (or on save files for the PC). So instead of having to store a ton of individual models, it's just a bunch of data in a table that the computer can load up when an area of the game is zoned into. This also tends to mesh in really well with a robust loot system that has lots of clothing options as most clothing is modeled with all the body parts it is "attached" to. So this ends up killing lots of birds with one stone so speak. The player gets a lot of options on how to customize their character's looks and the NPCs that are the same "type" of model as the player character already have a lot of body part models to draw from. In other words, this has a lot more flexibility than just doing models of things with no swappable parts... but it also takes way longer to implement.
As far as the Remake goes... I don't think they are using a character creator (in fact, given what people have found by loading up models in Unreal Engine, I'm 99% sure they are not). All of the player characters are too different from each other for them to not be doing a ton of custom work on them. The same thing goes for a lot of the "Main Character" NPCs. We also see a lot of "repeat" NPCs in certain areas of the game which suggets swapping around facial features and clothing options is difficult and not modular in nature.
And now we get to the second issue... implementing all those different models into the game as enemies... This applies no matter how the models of enemies are handled. The big difference here is what kind of game is being made, one with enemy RNG or one without. In a sandbox game like Skyrim, having a lot of variation is... really needed. The player is going to go by the same areas a bunch of times and there needs to be a way to vary what enemies/NPCs they come across. In a game like Remake which is more linear... they kinda need to have the same enemies every time. There's not a lot of room for RNG and therefor not a lot of room for varying the enemies the player comes across.
I don't know how the Remake does it, but in Skyrim... you essentially have a list of possible enemies that can spawn that are all some variation on an enemy type. And then the game will "roll" for what enemy from that list it should spawn. So like... if you come across a bandit camp, the game might roll fives times on the list "Lvl.1-5Bandits" and spawn all those enemies. On the list would be a whole list of pre-configured NPCs with gear and loot and also their appearance data. And that appearance data isn't randomized either. Someone had to go through and pick all the NPC appearance data by hand... for each NPC. This gives the illusion of having a lot of diverse enemies in a game. Often because that "Lvl.1-5Bandits" list would have one male and female enemy of each race in the game. And each of those races only has so many features they can have.
In a game like the Remake though, having a ton of randomized encounters isn't part of the game design, especially given the very tight combat system the game has. So it has very fixed encounters when it comes to enemy numbers and types. Which means... all the enemy encountrs have almost no RNG in them and are heavily scripted. FF games in general are not sandbox games.
This combined with a very high graphic fidelity and game models that probably take a lot of time an effort to get animated correctly. From things we've seen in the game, it's rather obvious that the devs were running out of time to finish the game and were cutting anything not needed from game development. So we have things like Cloud's Wall Market outfits having no combat animations because the devs knew when they were making the models there would be no combat in Wall Market. Things like having enemy "variations" that are essentially just recolors is... not needed to get the game out and would drain resources from other areas that needed to get done.
And yeah... this is why robots, faceless mooks, clones... and anything else that isn't visually diverse is so common in video games. It saves the devs a lot of work!
So there's really two things going on here. First is the amount of work that would go into making different models/textures and how they link up. Which is linked to how character creation works (or doesn't work in the case of the Remake) and how 3D modeling in games is handled. Which linked to how the game engine handles texture data. Some game engines/creation suites are more flexible than others are.
The second issue is how is enemy generation in the game handled, and how RNG based it is or not. This is more dependent what kind of game is getting made than anything else.
When it comes to modeling/texture data and the character creation system... there's really two system working here... or not working. In a lot of games "creatures" are the mob models. The entire "creature" is created all as one model and with one texture. (For people who don't work with 3D assests a lot, a "model" is the 3D shape, a "texture" is the 2D image that gets wrapped around the model so it looks "real"). A lot of the time, which texture a model uses is baked into the model itself in some way. You'll have a 3D artist make the model and create a map for another 2D artist that has information about where the different parts of the 3D model are.
So you have all that. And this brings up the issue of how you change the color of a texture. Because it's not so simple as playing around with a colorization slider. Before that can happen, the area of the texture to be colorzied has to be defined. Oftentimes, the entire texuture shouldn't be colorized, only a small part of it. And that area has to be difined in the game somehow... for every texture that needs a variable color. A game could figure out how to point to different colored textures, but that would mean it would need to have two textures... which would increase the size of the game. Also, doing that is less flexible in the long run...
This is... a lot simpler in some ways for games that end up needing to developing a modular character creator that is very robust. Usually for games with a customizable character. On the one hand, it is way more work in the short term to develop a character creator than to just use custom models for everything. Mainly because all the models the character creator uses have to be able to work together... as do the customizable textures that can be swapped in and out. On the other hand, appearance data for such a character creator is all usually stored in the game itself (or on save files for the PC). So instead of having to store a ton of individual models, it's just a bunch of data in a table that the computer can load up when an area of the game is zoned into. This also tends to mesh in really well with a robust loot system that has lots of clothing options as most clothing is modeled with all the body parts it is "attached" to. So this ends up killing lots of birds with one stone so speak. The player gets a lot of options on how to customize their character's looks and the NPCs that are the same "type" of model as the player character already have a lot of body part models to draw from. In other words, this has a lot more flexibility than just doing models of things with no swappable parts... but it also takes way longer to implement.
As far as the Remake goes... I don't think they are using a character creator (in fact, given what people have found by loading up models in Unreal Engine, I'm 99% sure they are not). All of the player characters are too different from each other for them to not be doing a ton of custom work on them. The same thing goes for a lot of the "Main Character" NPCs. We also see a lot of "repeat" NPCs in certain areas of the game which suggets swapping around facial features and clothing options is difficult and not modular in nature.
And now we get to the second issue... implementing all those different models into the game as enemies... This applies no matter how the models of enemies are handled. The big difference here is what kind of game is being made, one with enemy RNG or one without. In a sandbox game like Skyrim, having a lot of variation is... really needed. The player is going to go by the same areas a bunch of times and there needs to be a way to vary what enemies/NPCs they come across. In a game like Remake which is more linear... they kinda need to have the same enemies every time. There's not a lot of room for RNG and therefor not a lot of room for varying the enemies the player comes across.
I don't know how the Remake does it, but in Skyrim... you essentially have a list of possible enemies that can spawn that are all some variation on an enemy type. And then the game will "roll" for what enemy from that list it should spawn. So like... if you come across a bandit camp, the game might roll fives times on the list "Lvl.1-5Bandits" and spawn all those enemies. On the list would be a whole list of pre-configured NPCs with gear and loot and also their appearance data. And that appearance data isn't randomized either. Someone had to go through and pick all the NPC appearance data by hand... for each NPC. This gives the illusion of having a lot of diverse enemies in a game. Often because that "Lvl.1-5Bandits" list would have one male and female enemy of each race in the game. And each of those races only has so many features they can have.
In a game like the Remake though, having a ton of randomized encounters isn't part of the game design, especially given the very tight combat system the game has. So it has very fixed encounters when it comes to enemy numbers and types. Which means... all the enemy encountrs have almost no RNG in them and are heavily scripted. FF games in general are not sandbox games.
This combined with a very high graphic fidelity and game models that probably take a lot of time an effort to get animated correctly. From things we've seen in the game, it's rather obvious that the devs were running out of time to finish the game and were cutting anything not needed from game development. So we have things like Cloud's Wall Market outfits having no combat animations because the devs knew when they were making the models there would be no combat in Wall Market. Things like having enemy "variations" that are essentially just recolors is... not needed to get the game out and would drain resources from other areas that needed to get done.
And yeah... this is why robots, faceless mooks, clones... and anything else that isn't visually diverse is so common in video games. It saves the devs a lot of work!
Clement Rage
Pro Adventurer
What novella do you mean,Licorice?
Hey, equality's gotta go all the way down if it means something.
I mean, this wouldn't stop me from playing a game, but it does matter to me, and I notice the lack especially in games like The Last of Us or Borderlands.
Considering a PS2 game can manage it, I don't think it would be particularly difficult to achieve if the devs wanted to. But they have a lot of other things to do, and this requires someone to think about this and put in the effort to achieve it.
Hey, equality's gotta go all the way down if it means something.
I mean, this wouldn't stop me from playing a game, but it does matter to me, and I notice the lack especially in games like The Last of Us or Borderlands.
Considering a PS2 game can manage it, I don't think it would be particularly difficult to achieve if the devs wanted to. But they have a lot of other things to do, and this requires someone to think about this and put in the effort to achieve it.
ForceStealer
Double Growth
Not having to make more than one model/sprite is the whole reason mooks in Final Fantasy armies wear masks in the first place
The Twilight Mexican
Ex-SeeD-ingly good
- AKA
- TresDias
Thank Beelzebub they took the time to make an exception for Roche ...Not having to make more than one model/sprite is the whole reason mooks in Final Fantasy armies wear masks in the first place
LicoriceAllsorts
Donator
Not having to make more than one model/sprite is the whole reason mooks in Final Fantasy armies wear masks in the first place
That worked fine when the graphics were 1997 level. It works fine if the mask covers the whole face. In the Remake, it's very noticeable that every single Shinra squaddy is the same person.
Master Bates
Do you enjoy your life?
- AKA
- Mr. Koiwai
Shinra grunts could just be clones. I'm imagining a similar scene with Obi-wan from Attack of the Clones. Then Shinra puts them in uniforms like a bunch of Stormtroopers. Explains why their aims are bad, too.
LicoriceAllsorts
Donator
They're not clones, though, according to all the novellas. And Cloud was a Shinra squaddy.
Master Bates
Do you enjoy your life?
- AKA
- Mr. Koiwai
They destroy my headcanon for a possible Star Wars crossover. The novellas are dead to me.
LicoriceAllsorts
Donator
Is Cloud dead too?
Master Bates
Do you enjoy your life?
- AKA
- Mr. Koiwai
In my crossover? Yes. He's now a permanent resident in the clouds.
AllGoodInMyHood
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- TomTom
I'm sorry, but this is TL:RD.
Why are we trying to cast shade of current global racial issues on a video game that dosen't even remotely trying to tackle the topic? OP really think that back in 1997 Sakaguchi-san and respectively in 2015 or later Kitase-san sat and thought how to depict other races than white and make them look bad or something?
I think this is a bit too much... Focus, please, on something more substantial, like how can you help and make people around you feel good rather than trying to dig into a video game that tells a story about loss of life.
Why are we trying to cast shade of current global racial issues on a video game that dosen't even remotely trying to tackle the topic? OP really think that back in 1997 Sakaguchi-san and respectively in 2015 or later Kitase-san sat and thought how to depict other races than white and make them look bad or something?
I think this is a bit too much... Focus, please, on something more substantial, like how can you help and make people around you feel good rather than trying to dig into a video game that tells a story about loss of life.
LicoriceAllsorts
Donator
But the Remake came out three months ago. They put effort into making Midgar racially diverse. Of course FFVII doesn't try to "tackle the topic"; Barret's race or Tseng's race are only issues to the fans. In their world, there are no race issues.
LicoriceAllsorts
Donator
I don't understand that statement, Ody.
The Twilight Mexican
Ex-SeeD-ingly good
- AKA
- TresDias
It's a triple entendre. There's a chocobo race depicted there, and the colors of the chocobos were also significant for FFVII players, both inside (i.e. Teioh) and outside (e.g. green for mountain chocobos) the races.
RhinoKart
Pro Adventurer
I actually thought this was intentional because of the later reveal that Cloud was just a regular infantry person. When you portray them all as identical/interchangeable NPCs then the reveal that our hero is actually just one of them hits harder.
Or maybe I'm giving too much credit...
But realizing in the OG that Cloud as just one of those faceless grunts hanging around in the background of the flashbacks was amazing to me, and I don't think it would have personally hit so hard if the infantry people had all be designed differently. Kind of like how even though all the people in OG sector 7 are just NPCs, they stand out as unique people with potential stories, but the infantry squads don't because they are just repeats of the same model.