- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I absolutely LOVE halo, don't get me wrong, but here is an observation that I never stop making. Whenever you kill someone with an explosion, be it Elite, Grunt, Marine or Jackal (and even the Chief himself) they go flying through the air, spinning their arms around in circles and kicking their legs. Now, i'm sure that when people are sent flying through the air, and they are alive to experience it, they fling their arms and legs wildly to stablize themselves, try to land on their feet, or whatever. But when an elite dies from a Sticky grenade to the head, is he fully concious and has complete control over his body? I certainly wouldn't.
And what about the pile of dead grunts that have been laying their dead for 20 min? should they re-animate and swing their arms and legs when their corpses are caught in the blast and sent flying?
I wouldn't even notice this if not for the "ragdoll" effects that set in after the bodies of more articulated models have been laying still for a few seconds. While not the best ragdoll physics I've seen, they still would be better than the current flying "animation" that they used.
I'm really curious as to why they didn't fully support the ragdoll physics, especially after they themselves said "The original game engine had some cool features too, like way-before-their-time and occasionally hilarious ragdoll effects for falling Marines."
If they had these ragdoll effects up and running back in '98, why leave them out of the finished product? Anyone who's played Max Payne 2, Painkiller, or UT2003 knows what a HUGE addition ragdoll physics are to the overall gameplay experience. The feeling of realism is enhanced ten-fold when you shoot an enemy in the chest with a shotgun and he goes flying back and falls over a table with exactly how he should, instead of falling TOWARD you, like elites and other chiefs sometimes do.
I wouldn't even be writing this if I thought Ragdoll was to be included in Halo 2. But, if you examine the screens, especially those in the new Game Informer, you can see that every airborne Master Chief is flailing wildly in the same exact pose as in the original. And every dying MC is doing so with an animation, instead of with physics pulling him to the ground.
That's all. Let me know if anyone else has noticed the windmill effect.
P.S. check out the Jackals doing their same old "running for cover with my hands up covering my head" even though they are running towards the chief.