Realism, Impressive Motion Capture to be Featured in DmC

13 Jan, 2012

We all know that Ninja Theory has a great track record with character development and story telling. 2010′s woefully under-appreciated Enslaved: Odyssey to the West demonstrated that not only did Ninja Theory put loving detail into their environments, but Monkey and Trip had some of the best motion capture and facial expressions.

Now, Ninja Theory is bringing that same level of care to their upcoming title DmC. You know, the one that fans have become incredibly divided over? Yeah, that one. Ninja Theory isn’t backing out of this challenge, and they’re going to do everything they can to deliver it with style.

Filming scenes of the game in the same studio where James Cameron’s Avatar was filmed, Ninja Theory aims to bring believability and realism to the game. With an incredible amount of markers on actors’ faces, the studio was able to capture accurate facial expressions, body language, gestures, and everything else that brings characters to life.

“We do this to ensure that we’re bringing the true performances of our actors through into the game,” said Ninja Theory’s Dominic Matthews. “It’s not so much about realism but believability. Real actors — real people — move their hands and their body when they speak. We track the exact movement of our actors. We have 60 markers on their faces alone — on their eyes, their eyebrows, their mouths, their noses, their lips, and so on.

“We are fortunate to have developed our own facial solver technology in house that allows us to track these movements and map them onto our models. Our technology is unique and something that we’ve been working on for several years, so we are ahead of the market in this regard.

“A hallmark of our games is the story-telling element. We want our users to become engrossed in a story; so we are not simply using the technology for technology’s sake. It really enriches the user experience and they become fully engaged.”

Hopefully the enrichment will be enough to have naysayers set aside their feelings for a moment and give the title a try.

No release date has been discussed for DmC yet, but we’re hoping it’s really soon.

Via Business Weekly, Rely on Horror.