Summary
Our eyes and minds combined can create such wonderful things. Everything we create comes from what we see and think, and from that animations are born. You can tell a lot with a good animation, be it incredibly limited by choice, or flourishing with absurd detail.
For this article, we’re looking at the animations in games that caused your jaw to drop. Be it through sheer technological marvel or incredible artistic interpretation, a good detailed animation will stay with us for years.
Starting off with one of the newest games on this list, the original Hellblade already made waves for the quality of its animations alongside a powerfully told story. The sequel, though at times muddied in terms of what it achieves in gameplay, has perfect clarity in what it wanted to achieve in animation.
Without a single word, Senua’s face tells her entire story. Every swing of her blade showcases how she feels at any given moment.It’s almost fear-inducingthat we can see in her body language all the emotions she feels at any time. It’s intense, and it is gorgeous.
The Monster Hunter games have always been a smash success in Japan, though it wasn’t until the international release of Monster Hunter World that the series finally got the worldwide approval that it deserved. Finally, the whole world could see the beautiful detail put into each and every monster.
The world itself was gorgeous, and how monsters moved through it, but it was when it got to combat that it all shined. The animation work for your own hunter was already sublime, but the way that monsters moved was divine. Effortless interaction with the environment, every aspect of their body moving with intent despite their scale…incredible stuff.
Rockstar has always been known for detailed games, for the most macro to micro details, though it has typically come at the expense of the developers involved in them. With the promises of improving for their next game, it makes the incredible work put into Red Dead Redemption 2 a little bit easier to appreciate.
The fact thatevery single animalhas a detailed skinning animation is just unreasonable. The dynamicism of entering into melee combat is smoother than you could expect, the way bodies twist and turn to interact with the environment. It’s a staggering level of detail that ordinarily shouldn’t be possible.
The Resident Evil series has never remained consistent, though it’s that lack of consistency that lets it try so many new things. When the series grew stagnant after the third entry, Resident Evil 4 was born, and the animation work it achieved was marvelous indeed.
Fun fact - the original Devil May Cry was actually a prototype for Resident Evil 4 before becoming its own game.
The remake kicked that up a notch. Enemies react with genuine impact to your shots and the pinpoint precision of parrying makes reading those crisp animations all the more important. Plus, it will never get boring seeing Leon flip that gun around his thumb to reload it.
The Like A Dragon series is built on juxtapositions. The story will be heavy and heart-wrenching one moment, while a substory will have you dealing with diaper-clad Yakuza members. It’s in these parallels the game finds itself, and the same applies to its animations.
In regular gameplay, we have some great animations, though intentionally played up for humour. In cutscenes though? The sheer detail they’ve managed to capture on each actor’s face is mind-numbing, and the scene setting they do lets those detailed performances come to life all the more.
While most people (and this article is no exception) would hear the words ‘detailed animations’ and think of a 3D model with enough polygons to melt an older computer, not all animation is that which is applied to a character. Persona 5, and Atlus' games at large, are great examples of the contrary.
Atlus has specifically spoken about how some of their most senior staff are UI designers, and that’s what truly makes their games stand out.
While the general animations of characters are nice in Persona, they’re nothing to write home about. It’s in every aspect of the UI, from simple shop menus to the nitty-gritty of combat. All of it screams with personality, and the transitions between menus are just as gorgeous as a hyperrealistic model.
Character action games are an often undersold genre, though their influence is impossible to deny with every game wanting to sample their combat systems without fully committing to the arcade-like experience. They’re all about showmanship, and what better way to show off your skills than through wonderfully detailed animations?
Bayonetta is top of the list for this stuff. Combat is fast, maddeningly so, yet the clarity of animations makes it so that you can see every attack coming, and exactly how it will hit. Cap this off with the fact that you could narrow down Bayonetta’s animations to the exact styles of dance they come from, and you have some character work that can’t be looked down upon.
Many of Kojima’s games have pushed the envelope in terms of what current technology can achieve. This hasn’t always been in pushing the tech to its limits, but rather in manipulating it to do things in ways no one expected possible. The original Psycho Mantis fight is a great example. Yet the quality of animation can’t be ignored either.
Being so focused on stealth, every animation has to read properly; how fast you’re moving, where the enemy is looking, blending with your environment. The smooth transitions between all these animations, from CQC to enemies slowly dropping their weapons, make each encounter feel so much more alive.
Any FromSoftware game could have earned an entry on this list. Reading animations just to survive is essential in those games, and the beauty of some of them, weapon arts especially, is a joy to behold. Sekiro is in a whole league of its own, however.
Sekiro is all about swordplay without ever giving you a moment of rest, though the same applies to the enemy. It’s constant back and forth, andbeing able to read exactly when a sword is about to strikeyou is the difference between rewarding and cruel gameplay.
While many of the entries on this list are of more modern games, it’s important to look at the games that built these foundations as well. In the pursuit of every higher detail, many games have had to sacrifice part of what made earlier games shine. Ico is one such game.
Every aspect of Ico is unique, from the camera work to the companion, but the fluidity of the animations is something else. How your body moves so freely and feels like there’s genuine weight to it, to how you can somehow feel the tension and weight of your companion when you hold her hand. Every animation feels weighty and lets you gauge exactly how you move through the world.
