The evolution of video games has always been defined in terms of the constraints and limitations imposed upon them by the hardware that they run on- hence the necessity for ever evolving hardware, which manifests itself in new consoles, handhelds, and CPUs and GPUs. As game hardware gets more and more powerful, games get more and more realistic. In fact, given just how beautiful and gorgeous some of our games look, you might think we are close to reaching the point where every single action can be truly uniquely animated in each game, which is what would be entirely realistic anyway.
But, Naughty Dog’s lead animator Jeremy Yates tells us that is far from the case- we are too far out from the point where that will happen. Amusingly enough, however, the hardware is no longer the limiting factor for this.
He said in an interview with French Blog Parlons Jeux Video (translation provided by our friends at DualShockers):
“The future of realistic interactive animation in games really depends on how the budget grows. It takes a lot of talented people to generate all the content needed. After what we accomplished on the PS3 and now the PS4, I would say we usually run out of time and animator and programmer resources before we run out of memory. We build on the knowledge we have and are able to create things more and more efficiently. We are also constantly creating animation tools to help us reduce time. We may be able to have 12 hours of unique animation someday, but that will be a long time from now!”
Yeah, guys, given that this guy is one of the people who gave me games such as Uncharted and The Last of Us, I think I will listen to what he has to say.