Dawdle at Midway: Watching Motion Capture for MK vs. DC and Hands-On Impressions of a Post-Leipzig Build of the Game

Dawdle's President and CEO, Sachin Agarwal, was invited to Midway on Friday, September 12, to watch the final motion capture session of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe and get some hands-on time with the latest build of the game.  In fact, the build was so recent that they compiled it when he walked into the room.  Read on for a full rundown. And here's the Flickr set with notes.

The day started at 10am when I arrived, accompanied by the two motion capture actors, Pek Pongpaet and Ray Wu.  Pek and Ray work on a contract basis for Midway, but neither of them are full time actors.  Pek is a Flex developer for a large consulting shop and Ray is a resident physician at Northwestern University.  However, both have extensive experience in wushu, and both have competed in international competitions.

This motion capture session was the fourteenth they've done for MK vs. DC.  The MK team has spent as much time doing mocap for the cinematics as they have for the in-game action, even though cinematics are a much smaller part of the play time.  The reason it takes so long to do motion capture for the cinematics is that the capture sessions are eight to ten times as long as they are for in-game action.  A cinematic may take four or five thousand frames, while in game moves only take 400 to 500 frames.  Cinematics are longer and often have close-ups of faces, which require many takes to get just right.  In fact, in the cinematics, the mocap actors actually connected with each other on their punches and kicks to get the muscle movements and facial expressions right.  They were very sore after those days.  It's like professional wrestling – it may be scripted, but it sure isn't fake.

I must say, it's just incredibly impressive to see these guys do full motions without wires or guides.  While the animators may stretch the bodies, the mocap actors really are able to pull off these moves.  Flips, rolls, twists, kicks, falls, all from standstill positions.  Here's a video of Pek doing a 720 spin jump kick:

I saw stuff like this all day.

One of the interesting things was that Ed Boon (yes, he's very heavily involved) would give the mocap actors game situations and asked them for their suggestions for what to do.  I was astounded at how much of Pek, Ray, and the other mocap artists (Carlos Pesina still does a lot of mocap work, in addition to his animation work at Midway) are inside the game.  There is an old episode of Batman: The Animated Series where someone says that they know that Batman and Bruce Wayne are the same person because that fighting styles are like fingerprints.  Watching the build of the game later in the day, Pek and Ray would immediately be able to see moves for which they did mocap just by the way the character animation looked.  It was truly astounding.  It also helps that Pek has been doing mocap for the series for over six years and Ray for over two – because the same people have been doing all the animations for so many games, the characters' move sets look consistent, as well.  Remember, the early games used video capture, not motion capture, so the mocap has been very consistent.

Another note about Ed Boon: it's amazing how well he knows exactly what is going on in the game.  Because all the moves are captured via motion capture, the ability of the development to use tweening to get between animations is pretty limited.  But Boon has an encyclopedic knowledge of the animations, where the projectiles are aimed, where the hit boxes are, what the recovery times are, etc. all in his head.  The motion capture is critical for Mortal Kombat as you have two bodies interacting directly.  I didn't get a chance to ask the team, but I imagine it's much easier for a sports title to "fake" it.  We've all seen clipping in Madden; you can't have that in Mortal Kombat.

We ended the session at around 2pm and then Pek, Ray, and I were invited in to get some hands-on time with the game.  This was very kind of them, as we are certainly some of the first outsiders to get hands on with the game.  I learned a lot of new information, but I will not reveal it here.  If someone else reports it, I'll comment in an edit to this post.  As for what I consider to be public information, I referred to this FAQ on the official Mortal Kombat boards.  I saw one of the Midway team members reading the board during the mocap session, so I'm going to assume that they know what's out there.  I'm going to try give you my impressions of everything while still not betraying the trust of the MK team.

First and foremost, this game plays like the old 2D Mortal Kombats.  I haven't played any version of Mortal Kombat since Ultimate MK3 for the Super Nintendo.  (To be completely honest, my sister has a Super NES and a copy of the game, so I played it over the summer.)  This game is incredibly easy to pick up and play.  The same way the Street Fighter IV is trying to get the old Street Fighter II player back, MK vs DC will be very accessible to the old Mortal Kombat players.

I almost won my very first round against a Midway employee.  He crushed me in the next one, however.  He wasn't going easy on me; he was going for a Flawless victory before I was able to break his combo and start getting some damage on him.  That said, I'm no David Sirlin, folks.  I know that Ed Boon said that he doesn't really think about EVO, but I wonder if this may be the first Mortal Kombat to get in.  Unlike the other 2D Mortal Kombat games, MK vs. DC wasn't a projectile fest.  Again, however, I caution that I am not a tournament player and only had limited time with the title.

We only played this on the Xbox 360 controllers and I didn't perceive any problems using the much maligned directional pad on the 360 controller.  Reading some of the other press after Friday, I was surprised to learn that the game is technically a 3D fighter.  No one mentioned this to me, and I don't feel cheated at all.  Midway staff all pretty much stuck to the d-pads themselves.  The fact that you won't have to get an arcade stick to control this game is a huge plus in my mind.  Perhaps the more expert players will disagree, but I hate the 360 d-pad and I couldn't complain about not being able to do what I wanted.

The third thing that I noticed was that rounds seemed to take a good long while.  Looking at some of the gameplay videos of MK vs. DC around the net (see one embedded below), it does seem that a round averages at least a minute, compared to the 25-30 second matches I'm accustomed to when playing Street Fighter.  Here's a video of some top-tier SFII players playing the SSFIITHD demo:

I imagine this is because Street Fighter has always been an arcade game where point was to get players to shovel quarters into the machine.  If you're playing MK vs. DC at a party with all of your friends, you're going to feel like you got good playing value out of your turn when you're passing the controller around.

I did get to experience the three new additions to the classic Mortal Kombat gameplay: Rage, Klose Kombat, and Freefall Kombat.  Rage looks pretty cool, but I don't recall it doing anything special during gameplay, although I've read about being used for combo breaking, increased damage to others, and less damage taken.  No idea how it works; the Midway guys could activate it but it just looked cool more than anything. 

Klose Kombat was just an excuse for the Midway guys to crush us, but it seemed to work well.  Certainly, the characters looked great as they were getting their asses handed to them.  Characters get bruises and their clothing tears as they take damage, which is a very nice touch.  Since the Midway team wouldn't allow me to post gameplay video (or any pictures of Ed Boon or any other members of the Midway team), here's a gameplay video from what I assume is Leipzig:

However, the smack talk and the oohs and ahhs from the gallery were the highest during Freefall Kombat.  Freefall Kombat is awesome.  It's a ton of fun, and it seemed to be pretty tactical.  It's not just button mashing – it looks like the competitive players are going to have to master this.  I don't recall seeing anyone pull off a special move during Freefall Kombat, but we've seen Sonya and Joker (among others, I'm sure) do them.  There were a number of reversals, especially in the Midway on Midway matches.  About half the rounds we played had a Freefall Kombat.  However, that may be because the Midway guys were crushing us and pushing us to the outer edges of the ring.  I don't blame them for showing it off – it's incredibly well done.

The characters that were played during our brief time in the room were Deathstroke, Flash, Green Lantern, Jax, Joker, Katana, Raiden, Sub Zero, and Superman.  I played as the Joker and Jax.  I also saw the headshots for Baraka and Lex Luthor on the character select screen.  I believe no artwork or renders have been released yet, so all I'll say is that they look good, and yes, Luthor fits right in. 

As Ed Boon says in this video, Deathstroke is a great parallel to Kano.  I forgot that they announced Kano, and I didn't see him on the character select screen at first, so when I saw Deathstroke's moves, I said "Wow - so who needs Kano?"  The Midway team glared at me.  Whoops - but at least I made the connection all on my own.

I think my favorite character in the game is Flash.  The "around the world" special is just awesome to watch; it takes some skill to juggle the opponent, but it's very satisfying.  That said, my favorite character in the Street Fighter series is Vega, so I have a fondness for quick, agile characters.

I saw the Green Lantern's brutality, which I don't believe has been revealed publicly yet.  I didn't see it coming, but I probably should have in retrospect.  Needless to say, I thought it was just perfect. One of the other people there was like "I thought they didn't kill," and Carlos had to point out to him that, no, the victim was still alive.  It was pretty cool.  (Better than Superman smashing someone into the pavement.)

When I said I played as Jax, I just selected him as fodder for Green Lantern.  He looked good, though, and the guys said that he has a lot of personality during the mocap session.

The Joker is awesome.  He's apparently the first one everyone chooses, even after Leipzig – or maybe because of Leipzig.  One piece of bad news: Mark Hamill did not do the voiceover work for the Joker, although the MK team agreed that it would have been awesome.  Maybe there's still time.

Katana has her old moves - I know, because someone asked how to do the fan throw and one of the Midway guys said something.  Since I didn't get any playtime with a MK character (my Jax was there to get smashed), I don't know if the old button combos still work.

I didn't get to play as Raiden, but he looked like a ton of fun.  He's a bit stockier than I had remembered him in my mind's eye, so I imagine he's a bit more of a strength player.  I didn't ask, but my guess is that he's the MK parallel to Superman, the same way that Deathstroke is in the game as a DC parallel to Kano.

Everyone's already seen footage of Sub Zero and Superman, so there's not much to add to what others have said.  Superman's taunt is pretty cool, though.  (What, you didn't know there were taunts?)  Again, I can't reveal what it is.

Given what I saw of the fatalities and brutalities, there's nothing for so-called "true" Mortal Kombat fans to worry about; they're brutal and they're awesome.  The gameplay is what matters, but hey, Scorpion's Toasty is intact, as seen in the following video:

I want to thank Midway for letting me sit in on the mocap session and to all the guys there who showed me all the tools and cameras.  It was fascinating to learn how they do it, what it takes, how they use the assets, and how it goes from mocap to in-game.  Also, many thanks to the MK team for letting me get some hands on time with the game.  I was looking forward to playing the game at a friend's house when it came out, but now I'm going to buy it.

Comments

[Free Xbox 360]

That's looks pretty cool. I wish I could have been there.

[evil_emporer]

Well Green lantern sounds pretty cool. Even though my favorite character Ermac didn't get in, I guess he makes up for him. Can't wait to see what all he does. But I want to hear even more about Jax and Raiden's moves!

[sneakstar]

Nice writeup. I was going to pass on this game and play it at my friend's place, but now I'll probably think about it and read some more about it before deciding.

[QueenOfTheWorld]

It's Kitana, not Katana. Duh!

[Sachin Agarwal]

QueenOfTheWorld - you're right. Stupid spellcheck! (That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it. The lesson, once again, is that I'm a moron.)

[eray]

carlos pesina moves like crap, hope he wont do the mocaps for the current game, because your last games was crap aswell because he was done the mocaps

sorry for my directness but he is shit and cant do anything

anyway have a nice day

[Karma]

You're wrong about the Fatalities being intact and that "true" MK fans will be pleased.

The truth is, with a recent announcement that the game has gone under the censoring knife at the last minute, MK fans are enraged and are set to boycott this game in large numbers.

It's been revealed that due to Midway pushing heavily for the "T" rating, Joker's fatality, Kitana's fatality, and other fatalities have been removed, censored or completly changed.

It's MK for SNES all over again. Crappily hacked up, censored cheap cash-in game, not worth getting.