The Next Gen of Gaming Is Taking Immersion to the Next Level
While there’s definitely a graphical jump coming to us, the next gen of gaming is taking big leaps with making us feel involved in the game. Just think about the haptic feedback and reactive triggers on the PS5 Controller, or the system’s revolutionary use of 3D sound which will be implemented after launch. The graphics may be a smaller improvement than, say, the jump from PS2 to PS5, or Xbox 360 to the Xbox One, but we’re getting a lot more technology devoted to making us feel involved in the game.
Cyberpunk 2077 has full lip-sync for every character in all 10 dubbed languages
Presentation: https://t.co/8r7rq570VM
Nuts – and awesome to see for languages that often times get much less support. Great work by everyone involved. pic.twitter.com/hwvaTWb9ei
— Shinobi602 (@shinobi602) October 20, 2020
Cyberpunk 2077 is implementing a new AI system specifically to alleviate one of the biggest issues with gaming – lip sync. Historically a game has been animated with one language in mind, so in other languages gamers have had to contend with either the characters mouths moving separately to their voices, or the voice actors using unusual cadence to match the lip movements. Both break immersion for different ways; either we’re taken out because we can’t not notice the lip movement, or we see a character speaking too fast, or too slow, for the sake of a better lip sync.
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CD Projekt Red are aware of this, and have developed an AI purely to help the facial and lip movements match up to the dialogue in the selected language. Given the fact that Cyberpunk 2077 is set to be a huge game it was impractical to utilize facial capture to do this, so instead the developers are procedurally generating the faces. You can see the results in the above video, where four of those languages are displayed, each with great lipsyncing and appropriate facial movement.
In other Cyberpunk news we also got a recent look at the fashion of Night City, with a look at four distinct styles and an explanation of how each will develop. It’s a safe bet, given that street cred is a key stat in the upcoming game, that you’ll get to dress V however you want, and while the flamboyant Kitsch style might be helpful if your mission calls on you to infiltrate a night club, it’s unlikely to go over well if you have to meet with any of the game’s corporate factions, who prefer the neomilitaristic style.
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