Naughty Dog is attempting to set a new bar in animation with The Last of Us Part 2. The game's co-director, Anthony Newman, revealed in an interview a new technology they're using to make Ellie and the rest of the characters more realistic and believable.
Traditionally, game developers have two options when it comes to animating their characters: it's either manually creating animations by hand or go for motion capture. The former offers a more fluid feel, almost realistic, while the latter often results in stiff controls.
Naughty Dog is into motion capture, which is the reason why sometimes you feel like you can't control the character. But Newman said this is all going to change. In fact, they used both methods for The Last of Us Part 2.
The developer still did a lot motion capture for the upcoming game, but they've added a new "motion matching" technology that should make the game feel nearly as fluid as a traditionally-animated game.
"The way motion matching works is it takes this massive bucket of animation, just hundreds and hundreds of animations, and chops them into little tiny bits," Newman said when asked to explain what motion matching is.
"It's this technology for characters moving through a space like running, walking, jumping, and that kind of thing."
Instead of pulling from select animations based on your actions, Naughty Dog took loads of smaller motions and blended them into one fluid movement. This should allow for more complex on-the-spot animation that also looks more realistic. Newman added that this tech applies not just to human characters, but also dogs, horses, and other animals.
This motion matching tech may set the bar for video game animations in the future.
The implications of TLOS 2's motion matching technology cannot be understated, though it may not sound impressive on paper. But let's take at the gameplay released last week, in which we saw Ellie rolling on her back while prone in the grass and aiming a bow. Those movements are noticeably very fluid, lacking any weird stuttering or odd shifting movements.
Of course, until we see the whole game, we can't say for sure if the fluidity will last throughout its entirety. However, Naughty Dog seems extremely sure of what they're talking about and seems bent on pushing the tech into all of its works.
The Last of Us Part 2 will arrive Feb. 21 next year exclusively for the PlayStation 4. Dark Horse is also poised to release an art book featuring the technical illustrations of the game a few days after the game's release.
