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From Sketch to Screen: The Evolution of Game Art Pipelines 

iXie gaming

Rigging and Animation : Equipping models with bones and controls for movement, then animating interactions, cycles, and cutscenes. Ubisoft – Ghostwriter and Beyond Beyond narrative AI, Ubisoft is leveraging AI to generate modular NPC visuals, using tagged prompts aligned with art direction guidelines.

Art 52
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Indie game capsule reviews: Immortality, Wayward Strand, Cult of the Lamb, Betrayal at Club Low, Atuel

Radiator Blog

This isn't a big apocalyptic video game betrayal cutscene where a villain reveals himself and destroys a castle, instead it's a smaller deeper betrayal that instantly brought me back to being a teenager. Gradually all these advancements and upgrades add up to a NPC-driven town that can maintain and feed itself automatically.

Indy 130
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The Lost Ark Has Found its Way

Deconstructor of Fun

Animation: Two perspectives, the separation of cloud and mud Lost Ark has a sincere visual performance, among which are various cutscenes from a top-down perspective. Despite the game’s powerful use of top-down view, the live cutscenes of Lost Ark are full of bugs. The rough cutscene). The grand scene).

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Sandbox vs themepark

Raph Koster

It was like resetting a little stage-play; the NPC actors hit their marks and reappeared at their start location. Breadcrumbs, dialogue trees, cutscenes, progression paths. Earlier in MUD design, these zones even “repopped” all at once. It was actually seen as a notable innovation when individual mobs repopped on their own timers.

Sandbox 59
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The three most important qualities in an RPG

Keith Burgun

Specifically in the case of RPGs, though, I think it’s really important that the player finds themselves asking, “I wonder if I can X” That X might be, “get to the top of that mountain”, or “combine this class with that class”, or “steal a precious quest item back from the NPC I gave it to” JRPGs (..)

Fantasy 52
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The joys of the anti-farm sim: "Before the Green Moon" by turnfollow

Radiator Blog

But the game doesn't tutorialize this or dispatch an NPC to spell it out. The game never says "each NPC has a favorite type of gift item type, and you should equip it and talk to them", you have to guess that this mechanic exists from playing previous farming games or just out of sheer luck. You're just an NPC in their story.

NPC 147
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Open world RPG design notes from Enderal, a big long Skyrim mod

Radiator Blog

Whenever an NPC is about to dump backstory and exposition on you, they'll ask you to take a seat. This is a convenient diegetic way of locking the player in-place for a cutscene, while also priming the player for an extended cutscene. Diegetically, the NPC has to prepare a machine or potion, or get supplies, or whatever.