South Of Midnight Previews Seemingly Being Prepared By Team Xbox

This one could be good. Hope it is coming sooner than expected. Lots of good stuff coming in 2025, with my most anticipated being Expedition 33 in the Spring.

This looked very interesting - but also had me concerned. The Cinematics looked very janky, low frame rates which left me thinking the game was a LONG way from being optimised and running well - but then the game-play looked a lot smoother by comparison. It almost has that stop/go animation style but I found it uncomfortable to watch and seemed more jarring with the smoother game-play

@BAMozzy I'm pretty sure stop motion in the cut scenes is a design choice made by the developer.

Compulsion seem to be really good at making games that have captivating art styles and concepts but don’t play particularly well. South of Midnight looks interesting (just like Contrast and We happy few did before it) but I don’t have much confidence in it.

@BAMozzy like Big3 mentioned, the ‘animation looking janky’ is a deliberate design decision. It’s what’s known as decimated animation, and is often used to mimic traditional stop motion animation. Probably the best implementation I’ve seen thus far is for the little marionette guy in Death Stranding 2 (I forget its name). Looks absolutely stunning.

I really liked what they've shown of this, the deep South vibes and visuals were great too. Hoping for a spring, early summer release (well before gta6 overshadows everything else).

@Balaam_ @BIG3 I couldn't care less if its a 'design choice', that it is intentional and meant to resemble that style of Animation, I find it completely jarring and I'm sure that it will be even more so when playing - going from the 'smooth' game-play style to the janky Stop Animation. It makes it look like its stuttering, having issues with the 'cut-scenes'.

Just because its 'intentional' and designed to look that way, doesn't mean that I 'agree' with their decision to opt for that 'style' in a video game - its like deciding to go for 21:9 cinematic style with big Black bars top and bottom or deciding to make their game look like it was 'designed' and/or made for decades old Hardware - doesn't mean that I would prefer it if they made different choices - the option to play in Full Screen for example.

It maybe designed that way, but it still looks 'clunky/janky', still looks like its 'struggling' to run properly, still looks like it 'needs' patching or 'optimising' to get it running 'smoothly'. Its bad and jarring enough when games swap between 30fps for Cut-scenes to 60fps game-play.

I can't deny the 'art-style' looks interesting and appealing, but the animation/motion for those Cut-scenes was almost 'painful' for me to watch - it might be trying to 'mimic' that animation style, but it looks like a 'novice/beginner' attempt - Aardman Animations don't look that Janky and bad....

I just need to see that combat has been improved. It looked like the main character had all the weight and oomph of a plastic bag in a windstorm, the way her attacks kind of just... happened. That's the only concern I had with this game, but it's a major one.

@Elbow At first I thought you were tripping, but after rewatching the gameplay trailer, I do get what you are saying. What also caught my eye how it looks almost like a shared asset for the Blight in Dragon Age Veil Gaurd and the rot stuff in South of Midnight.

@Stoned_Patrol I genuinely think most people overlooked it because the initial showing was in that smaller window because they made the main showcase include the deaf/hard of hearing sign language translator. Harder to see unless you went back specifically to find the game itself in a later upload.

Looks good but I've given up hope of hyped games releasing polished or in some cases even playable, nevermind interesting.
Will not be staying on GP ultimate when my 2½ years run out in December. Other than Forza Horizon 5 and Hellblade 2 I've not had any fun with any other 1st party day 1 titles. (TBF I haven't given black ops 6 a chance yet and that seems to be good from what I've heard/seen)