Skyrim: To Headlook or not to Headlook?

While playing my initial few hours of Skyrim this week, I’ve noticed an interesting disparity in the way headlook is used by characters. While I enjoy headlook in games for the most part, there are times when it can either be overused (“why is everyone in town staring at me all the time?”) or used in such a way that it looks unnatural to the character. Here’s a video with a few examples. Watch it first because the commentary addresses the scenes within.

Look at Me When I’m Petting You!

First, the dog in Riverwood doesn’t seem to care that I’m there. With nothing else going on in the middle of the night, you would think that he would at least be interested in me. Instead, he just sits there staring at nothing. While that is perfectly acceptable for a dog to do (ours do it rather often), the problem arose when I actually “talked” to the dog. He barked in reponse — but wasn’t looking at me at all when he did so. He looked around randomly — but not towards me.

If you are going to make it so that the dog responds to being addressed, at least make him stand up and face you or turn his head to see you (if possible). You do this with enough other agents in the world, it shouldn’t have been hard to include a line or two of code to do it with the dog. (I have yet to test this with other animals in the world.)

Look at Me When You’re Talking To Me!

When I entered some tavern or other in Whiterun, I was immediately spoken to by the owner of the place. She was standing behind the counter. However, I noticed that she was not looking at me — just staring straight ahead. Ironically, she only looked at me when the server lady spoke to me (and mentioned her name). Then, she wouldn’t stop looking at me at all. One thing I forgot to test was to see if it was proximity based. That is, if I went father across the room, would she have stopped looking at me. All in all, with that sort of incessant tracking, I feel like I’m being targeted by and anti-aircraft gun. At least with the bar there, she had a reason to continue facing that one directly.

Move More than Your Head

Now to this clown Heimskr in Whiterun. As seems to be his job, he runs his mouth out in the town square. When I walked up to him, he started tracking me. (Grateful to have an audience, I suppose.) While it looked OK at first, at one point he raised his hands up… right between my face and his. He was still trying to look at me, but his hands were in the way. As I moved back and forth (after stopping to grab some lavender), he kept his body facing forwards and his hands raised — but his head kept tracking me.

It looked horribly unnatural to have his body pinned to one orientation — especially in a gesture that is meant to be for the audience’s benefit — and yet still move his head so much. Unlike the bartender above, he has nothing holding him to that orientation. I would like to see some pivot to the body as he addresses me that way.

Face Me Once in a While

This one is a little rough. While I commend games for not always having the agent face directly at you, my qualifier is constantly. Sure, orient your body differently as you move around! However, you aren’t being clever (or realistic) if you position your body so that it is facing away for some reason, point your head toward the player, and then leave it that way! In the video you will see 3 clips of people who happened to not be facing me directly when I started speaking to them. They didn’t orient towards me at all when they started speaking to me and didn’t fidget at all during the conversation. The result looked rather uncomfortable.

Not shown in the 3rd clip is that the speaker did reorient himself after we were jostled by someone walking rudely between us (more on that subject later). I thought that was interesting in that it triggered some sort of alignment code in the agent. Therefore, it seems that some such code exists, but just wasn’t being used.

How to Fix it

This really isn’t that difficult to fix. Not only would it look less uncomfortable, but it can be leveraged to make for far more engaging characters. All that needs be done is the following:

If the player moves outside of a particular front-facing zone, pivot the body as well as the head. You don’t need to pivot to face him completely, only enough to get the head into a more natural range. For example, if the zone is 60° on either side of center and the player moves out of it, pivot so that the player is now 30° off-center instead. Try it on yourself and see how natural that feels. As you are talking to the player, reorient yourself once in a while through various shuffling animations. Again, make it so that your body is always somewhere between +/- 30° off of the centerline to the player. Don’t always stare at the player. People don’t do this in conversation. Randomize headlook more. Look around occasionally — even while you are talking but then glance back at the player directly. The points where you glance back at the player can actually be marked up with the facial animation so that you glance at the same time as important points you are trying to make. Otherwise, look around either randomly (and not all in the horizontal plane, either… up and down are OK, too!) or at other points of interest in the room. For example, people walking by, the performer in the tavern, windows and doors in the room, etc.

Anyway, these are just minor things that have jumped out at me in my initial few hours with the game. While not really bugs, certainly, the headlook issue breaks immersion for many people if it is not done naturally.

There are far more annoying things I have seen that will be addressed later.

Tags: animation, headlook, RPG, Skyrim, vision