We finally saw some in-engine footage of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End at E3 this year, after a big tease late last year. While the game no doubt looks much better than previous entries thanks to the power of the PlayStation 4, some of you may have noticed the smaller improvements made to lead protagonist Nathan Drake’s character model. He’s got a higher poly count, for sure, but did you notice his hair? Even that has been worked on according to Naughty Dog animator Jonathan Cooper.
Cooper took to Twitter to give us some reasoning behind the lack of unique haircuts on many of the last-gen characters:
A major reason so many last-gen characters sported crew cuts was we couldn’t do hair easily. I expect much more hairstyles this generation…Primarily because engines couldn’t support realistic lighting on alpha (see-through) textures, not to mention physics on long hair
While this isn’t an outright confirmation that Drake’s hair will flow more freely, it is at the very least a strong hint. Though if you take a look at the Uncharted 4 E3 2014 trailer, Drake’s hair looks more detailed but behaves pretty statically. Cooper finishes his thoughts by tweeting:
There are more technologies incoming that will release us from the homogenisation of game characters.
What do you think? Will more realistic hair on character models help add to the realism of games? Or is it nit-picking at this point, given how far back the camera is on most models while you play anyway? Have your say below.
[Source: Twitter via GamingBolt]
