In an interview at gamescom, Ion was asked about the heavy criticism of the Midnight cinematic and it’s handling of facial features and eyes for the elves - primarily that they seemed to toss away 25+ years of style to make them more “human” instead of being elves.
Ion responded to this saying it was intentionally done in order to convey emotions with the eyes better because it’s difficult to show emotion with eyes that glow or with elven facial features so the decision was made to make changes where needed to show the emotions better.
This is what I assumed but it’s kind of dumb, imo. They’ve got giant eyebrows and even giant ears to help convey emotion. I still liked the cinematic overall though and it’s ultimately not that big of a deal since the in game models aren’t changing.
Reminds me of that old animated Dreamworks movie with the horses… it was called “Spirit Stallion” or something? I remember people were laughing at the animators choice of giving the horses eyebrows but they said they had too to show emotions of the horses properly and it kind of made sense.
I’ve seen animations/cinematics/actors where they were able to make faceless/inanimate objects convey and express tons of emotion, I’m kind of confused why they would intentionally choose to compromise iconic features of a fantasy race just for the sake of “making it easier”
we cannot actually do any proper emotional drama with anything but square jawed ugly women with a face that not even close to in-game model and old wrinkly skin.
Literally their own in-game cinematics with in-game models prove him wrong.
The Locus walker is a literal pile of bandages with no face, and we DO understand his emotions when he speaks with Valeera or grasps at their waving friendship. People aren’t stupid, they don’t need the eye pupils to comprehend the emotional drive of a character on a screen.
God, I hate these people and their inability to own the mistakes they are making in favor of some sort of “progressive” agenda.
It’s simple just to say: “well, we wanted to tell story from a perspective of regular default woman that you can see on the streets, you know that women with tired dead eyes that is a victim of patriarchy, fighting for her life literally every day, not a magical forever young creature full of magic in her eyes, because feminisms or something”. At least it would be truthful.
