Why is Bethesda so bad at making faces?

Recommended Videos

LilithSlave

New member
Sep 1, 2011
2,462
0
0
Despite the fact I'm no big wRPG fan, I did certainly get yelled at enough for not playing Oblivion that I gave it a go. And there's definitely some good and bad to the game.

One of the good things is that the areas you do explore really are quite gorgeous.

The downside is, they look like they didn't even spend a tiny portion of the time on faces. It's no wonder everyone mods Oblivion, when they made every single NPC look like they have Down's Syndrome or some other disorder that makes people have facial deformities. They're quite possibly, some of the worst CG facial designs I've ever seen in my entire life.

And what's sad is, that everything else is insanely well designed. There are gorgeous areas to explore in the game. I don't understand it at all. And if you care about making gorgeous trees and things, shouldn't you, I dunno, not do so embarrassingly bad on the faces? They don't even look very human. It's an embarrassment to CG and it's an embarrassment to their other work.

Do you know why they let this happen? And why they released the game like this, in this condition, with horribly designed faces that just show an utter lack of knowing what you're doing in terms of designing faces with CG? Releasing the game, knowing that a part of their product in terms of the graphics/aesthetics department is subpar? When they spent all that time making their landscapes beautiful?

Because I have to know. Because it's embarrassing to the rest of the game. This better not exist in Skyrim. It shouldn't have existed to begin with.
 

Knight Captain Kerr

New member
May 27, 2011
1,283
0
0
They have been getting better.
http://www.emgn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Oblivion-and-Morrowind-vs.-Skyrim-Characters.jpg
 

orangeban

New member
Nov 27, 2009
1,442
0
0
Bethesda's always been shitty faces, a problem that has (weirdly) got worse as tech has progressed. I think the problem is they just didn't really try with the faces. I'm sure I read somewhere that a rock has 1000s of polygons, but the faces only have a few hundred.

Presumably they're scared of making them complicated, because if you give Bethesda something more complicated than a potato (which all the faces look like) then they'll figure out a way to make it glitchy as hell, and the company had to make the difficult choice between Pretty and Broken or Ugly but Working (mostly).
 
Apr 28, 2008
14,634
0
0
Oblivion was poorly optimized and threw resources and large textures at things that don't need them at all. Much like forks, plates, and crap like that which leaves everything else with low-res/crappy textures, like faces.

And for some reason they gave each blade of grass 24 polygons. THERE IS NO REASON FOR GRASS TO HAVE THAT MANY POLYGONS!! A mod reduced that number to 4, there was no noticable visual loss, and the game ran MUCH smoother outdoors.

Sorry, went off a bit there...


Anyway, it's basically a combination of the crappy Gamebryo engine, and Bethesda's poor decisions about what to give the most attention to detail.
 

Gorilla Gunk

New member
May 21, 2011
1,234
0
0
Weird how some of the faces in Morrowind actually look better then Oblivions, especially the Orcs.
 

Hungry Donner

Henchman
Mar 19, 2009
1,369
0
0
Oblivion tried a large number of new technologies and some of them, like FaceGen and voice acting, were a bit rough around the edges. Both of these were noticeably improved in Fallout 3, and I suspect they'll be much better in Skyrim.
 

revjor

New member
Sep 30, 2011
289
0
0
I remember usually only being dark elf in morrowind because everything else looked poopy
 

LilithSlave

New member
Sep 1, 2011
2,462
0
0
Ryan Kerr said:
They have been getting better.
http://www.emgn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Oblivion-and-Morrowind-vs.-Skyrim-Characters.jpg
Yep, that does honestly look a heck of a lot better. Thank goodness.
 

veloper

New member
Jan 20, 2009
4,597
0
0
The problem wasn't the tech. It's just very poor design.
HL2 and VTM came before Oblivion and had much better faces and animation.
 

CharlesBronson

New member
Jun 12, 2010
46
0
0
Its not an excuse by any means, but I think it adds character to their games. Awful potato faces are their calling card/signature. They should do a better job on it yes, but I find it almost endearing.

Just consider it an art choice, or put a helmet on. Hehe
 

Pandabearparade

New member
Mar 23, 2011
962
0
0
I defy anyone to look at the beautiful carrots in Oblivion and claim that Bethesda doesn't know where people want their polygons!

Hot damn, those are some beautiful carrots. Who really cares about 'faces'?
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
Legacy
Jul 18, 2009
20,519
5,335
118
It might be because every face needs to fit the same facial animation frame. Meaning they can't look very unique or charismatic or else it might not mesh with the animation tools.

I'm just guessing though.
 

MammothBlade

It's not that I LIKE you b-baka!
Oct 12, 2011
5,246
0
0
I saw no problem with Oblivion's faces except that they all had massive cheekbones or sickly complexions, and not enough variation. After seeing Skyrim's faces, that's definitely an improvement, and it gives characters alot more personality and variance.

Casual Shinji said:
It might be because every face needs to fit the same facial animation frame. Meaning they can't look very unique or charismatic or else it might not mesh with the animation tools.

I'm just guessing though.
That would explain it.
 

Twilight_guy

Sight, Sound, and Mind
Nov 24, 2008
7,131
0
0
I don't see the problem. Looks like a fairly average low-poly face for the time. Maybe they tried to crunch the polys too much but do you have any idea how many polys there are in faces in games?
 

Vendayn

New member
Aug 18, 2003
193
0
0
Samurai Silhouette said:
This thread reminded me of this! Thanks OP!
A forever alone!

For the topic itself...I think Skyrim looks like a huge improvement, especially from Oblivion. But, I'll have to see in-game and the different customization options.
 

Fbuh

New member
Feb 3, 2009
1,233
0
0
Oblivion came out years ago, and that technology has significantly progressed since then. Of course the faces are going to look bad. You may as well ask why the characters in the original Mortal Kombat aren't photo-realistic. Fallout 3 more than made up for it, and Skyrim looks simply orgasmic in it's design. Simply put, the graphics sucked back then. Also, they probably already knew that people were going to mod it anyway, so they didn't waste the effort.