Hey all,
Today we're getting our first look at the newly revamped wrestling locker room. I will try to keep this as spoiler free as possible and will mostly just be talking about the shots themselves, scene logistics, or just the general reasons we're seeing the changes we're seeing from the original. Also, despite talking about a locker room, this will mostly be pretty SFW shots just because I had to feature them in a video version. I won't be discussing story points. So for today, let's jump in; we'll be looking at 3 sets of Before/After teasers and to make things easier, I've just labeled them down in the corner whether they're the original or revamp.
Pic 1
Alright, first shot up is the entrance shot of the original game locker room. At this point in the original game, I had better hardware so here's another one of those shots where we're able to see multiple characters on screen together. I like this-- especially for what my original vision was: "a locker room after practice." So overall, this shot wasn't terrible (although, for entertainment purposes, keep an eye on how fucking small some of the characters look during all these old shots-- I have no idea what was going on). In the Revamp, we'll be seeing the same setting, just with some enhancements and the big thing that I wanted to keep from the original is just the background activity of multiple characters from the team just getting ready and doing their thing.
Pic 2
Revamp direct replacement of the previous image. This is the newly Revamped locker room and it's pretty obvious that I went overboard trying to create chaos here. The idea for the Revamp here took the original plan of a post-practice locker room and quite literally blew it up. I really wanted something that showed how a room would look when a dozen jocks all walked in at the same time. I also really wanted to carry over the theme we saw in the gym where the team is just here temporarily so we're gonna see a ton of those boxes still stacked in here-- which just adds to the chaos. The third theme we'll see in this scene is the background activities. This was a pretty ambitious goal and really complicated and slowed down the progress of this scene but i think it will really help add some realism. Like most parts of the game, we'll be seeing a lot of dialogue play out but we'll also be seeing the team talk, finish up, gradually trickle out of the room, as well as just be a bunch of horseplaying idiots. Parts of this should help bolster story points from the original with some extended scenes as well. I'll also briefly mention that there are a lot of other enhancements to this scene including lighting adjustments but I think to most players, it won't be as noticeable as the earlier parts of the game. I'm just not going into detail with that stuff because I don't think most people will really notice or care that much.
Pic 3
This shot from the original is nothing special but I'm sharing it to provide a context for how the old conversation shots worked here. They were the typically frontal/center shot with nothing else. These old shots also intentionally backed the camera into a wall so I didn't have to work as hard to keep showing the locker room activities because while I did try to capture that in the original, I certainly wasn't equipped enough to deal with it on the level we'll see in the Revamp.
Pic 4
Here's an idea of conversation shots from the Revamp, we're not going to see as much room avoidance here and really try to embrace the environment and allow for more background stuff to play out. We'll also just see more dynamic shots like this as Braden gets dressed and the conversation plays out.
Pic 5
Original shot just showing an alternative angle to the locker room (here's one of those shots where everyone looks super tiny and now you can't stop seeing it either-- you're welcome :p). In the original, the locker room clears out very quickly to reduce workload but I'm foolish and purposely worked against this in the Revamp.
Pic 6
Ok, same angle we saw earlier but since that previous shot angles towards the showers and I was trying to keep things more NSFW on teasers this time around, I'm giving you this shot to show the level of background we're talking about here. Waaaay more interactions with the teammates as they get dressed and the room clears out. You can also see the goofiness in the background. We'll be seeing way more angles in the Revamp, though.
This entire scene was exhausting but it's done. I haven't seen it yet but there's a total of 164 images in the scene to play this thing out. This shit was hard and it's a great reminder why big studios use thousands of people to create this stuff 'cause damn :p
I feel good about it tho and I can't wait to see it myself. For those that played the original, there's some fun cameos here that will remain or be extended, there's humor, banter, eye candy-- I'm just checking a lot of boxes here