Karateka, Prince of Persia, Another World, Flashback - these are all huge achievements in naturalistic animation and all direct antecedents to something like Ico, with the latter two serving as particular inspiration. Despite its uncertain legacy, what Core managed with Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider 2 is equally important on that front - and judging by Ico's early PSX build, equally as influential to games that strive for natural, reactive animation without the use of motion capture.
If you can ignore polycounts and head-bob lip-sync, many real-time cutscenes in TR and TR2 are fluid like the best hand-drawn 2D animation. It's the work of people who have studied human locomotion formally and informally and are dedicated to reproducing it on screen with the gentlest of their own touch and it looks fantastic. I mean, and this is crucial, when that stuff is on, it betters the work done by their CG team. In-game that fluidity is near identical, which was a huge thing in 1996.
What you could do with Lara then was also huge. Had they looked to other third person 3D action-adventure success stories (Mario 64, Ocarina, etc) and got a grip on their control issues, the original series run might be held as a true classic today, instead of a sometimes fondly remembered but also floundering experience offset by gimmicks and Lara's public image. When they did correct those issues with Project Eden, people largely didn't care. And when they failed to follow through with Angel of Darkness, that was the end.
But even then, they had a hell of animation team. I don't mean to turn this into my musings on Core's fate or an insult to any devs that might be lurking. Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider 2 are classics in my mind. 3 and 4 have their charms. And Project Eden, flawed and unknown as it is, is also one of the best adventure games ever made. Really, I'm more interested in their working process then, especially as it comes to animation and tools. Is there any insight into their character rigs? Did they use true IK rigs flushed with simulated weights and physics? I've been trying to dig up any Gamasutra postmortems without much luck.
If you can ignore polycounts and head-bob lip-sync, many real-time cutscenes in TR and TR2 are fluid like the best hand-drawn 2D animation. It's the work of people who have studied human locomotion formally and informally and are dedicated to reproducing it on screen with the gentlest of their own touch and it looks fantastic. I mean, and this is crucial, when that stuff is on, it betters the work done by their CG team. In-game that fluidity is near identical, which was a huge thing in 1996.
What you could do with Lara then was also huge. Had they looked to other third person 3D action-adventure success stories (Mario 64, Ocarina, etc) and got a grip on their control issues, the original series run might be held as a true classic today, instead of a sometimes fondly remembered but also floundering experience offset by gimmicks and Lara's public image. When they did correct those issues with Project Eden, people largely didn't care. And when they failed to follow through with Angel of Darkness, that was the end.
But even then, they had a hell of animation team. I don't mean to turn this into my musings on Core's fate or an insult to any devs that might be lurking. Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider 2 are classics in my mind. 3 and 4 have their charms. And Project Eden, flawed and unknown as it is, is also one of the best adventure games ever made. Really, I'm more interested in their working process then, especially as it comes to animation and tools. Is there any insight into their character rigs? Did they use true IK rigs flushed with simulated weights and physics? I've been trying to dig up any Gamasutra postmortems without much luck.
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