Since releasing last week, Injustice 2 has received plenty of praise from critics and fans alike for its story, fighting system, and depth, as well as more unexpected things like facial animations. With games like Mass Effect: Andromeda catching heavy flak for unsettling, robotic faces, Injustice 2 stands in stark contrast, delivering appealing characters capable of subtle, varied emotions. This is particularly true of the game’s female characters like Harley Quinn and Supergirl, which is somewhat surprising. Let’s just say NetherRealm hasn’t been known for their subtle depiction of the female form in the past.
Of course, Injustice 2‘s faces weren’t always so well received. In fact, the game was roundly criticized for its E3 2016 debut trailer that featured twisted visages similar to the ones that ended up in Mass Effect.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Thankfully, Injustice 2 character art designer Brendan George used the criticism as motivation to improve his game’s faces…
“The early reactions [to Injustice 2‘s faces] were not what we hoped for, but the passion of our fans helped the entire studio to focus on solving the problems. We determined that we needed to add new lighting features to achieve the softer look we were after. Facial animations were adjusted to become less exaggerated, which made them more appealing. All these changes combined with some small model and makeup adjustments gave us the look we were after.”
George also focused his efforts on making sure female characters, who are often ill-served in triple-A games, looked right. That required a unique approach, and lots of research…
“Fundamentally, the construction of female faces is similar to male faces. However, since female faces have more subtle forms than male faces, making the smallest changes has a dramatic impact on the final result. We added a measure of stylization; we made the faces a little more symmetrical and enhanced the features.
We reached out to our female artists for fashion advice when designing some of the female character costumes and we spent most weekends from June 2016 through September 2016 researching makeup techniques and applying them to all our scanned faces. Our lead user interface artist dressed as ‘casual’ Supergirl to model what she felt Supergirl should wear in that role.”
It’s always great to hear stories of game developers going the extra mile, particularly when their efforts end up paying off handsomely. Injustice 2 didn’t strictly need top-notch facial animations, the game’s basic brawling would have been fun without them, but they make the game just that much more immersive and entertaining. Take note other fighting game developers, the bar has been raised.
Injustice 2 is available now on Xbox One and PS4. You can check WWG’s latest coverage of Injustice 2 here, and our extensive back catalog of stories, right here.
[via Vice Motherboard]
