Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback [Action Surge] - Thoughts On The New Animation

I'm curious to hear opinions on the new animation for [Action Surge].

Personally I am trying to find a reasonable explanation as to why it went from looking so subtle to looking so over the top, as many other things have in this update. It looks comical and out of place, because in all sense and honesty it looks like a super-hero pose that you'd see in cartoons and movies.

I just don't see Lae'zel, a Githyanki warrior, striking poses during battle to push herself to the limit. Nor any other NPC for that matter that is based on the Fighter class, like Aradin. The animation simply visually does not represent what the ability is supposed to be doing, which is mustering any remaining energy inside of the body and using it for one more swift action, basically pushing yourself to the limit. The Barbarian Rage or even The Dash animation is more visually representative of an action surge than the current one.

Even if this was some attempt to reference the Maori Haka warrior dance or something else... it looks weird, especially when all races use it. At least Neo in the Matrix made it look cool by using it to dust himself off.

I don't really understand these animations. How come that dash is not a ready-to-run stance animation but some weird thing like this. Who can imagine action surge to be some kind of monk kung fu stance, it doesn't make sense to me. Shouldn't action surge resemble "over the edge", last breath feel to it?

Exactly, that's how I feel about it. The animation should visually represent pushing your body to the limit, which usually is very subtle, but definitely not striking a superhero pose

The previous animation was simply holding both arms in front of the body and then beating the chest. It looked alright, but more importantly it was subtle.

The animations for activating abilities/actions look ridiculous. However, we've been telling them this since the very first, and only, Q&A they did right before Early Access launched. I'm not sure why a simple Action Surge or Dash above the unit's head isn't enough for visual purposes.

I also liked the old version better. There was something more authentic. I don't know how to paraphrase it. Action Surge wasn't meant to be animated and lit like a colorful magic spell, but more like a survival instinct, and the old, plain version did it well. Less is more.

It isn't just Action Surge, most abilities for martial classes have over the top animations and ridiculously flashy Vfx. It looks silly and unimmersive and completely destroys the atmosphere of playing a martial class.
I am, to be honest, at a point where BG3 is killing off my desire to play because everything looks so flashy and over the top. At this point it looks more like D:OS 3 than BG 3 and that's quite frankly because of the Vfx and many animations.

Usually I play fighters, barbarians, rangers and rogues because they don't have the over the top Vfx of spellcasting classes, here I have lost every desire to play a martial class.

Not only that, but Cutscene/Dialogue animation is horrible and shouldn't have been added to the game till it was 100%. Most of it looks half assed. Almost none of the NPCs have any natural movement, stiff fingers, bad eye movement, head movement, hand/arm gestures are stiff, glitchy movement sometimes in the eyes, facial expressions, arms, body, head. It's horrible. After coming back to the game to see the updates I"m not really impressed. Added race/classes was fine, but who/where are the animators that are in charge of these cutscenes and dialogue scenes? Some of the cutscenes even in the BEGINNING OF THE GAME are still not finished and I don't see them improving animations much if at all. Just adding to scenes that aren't all there, yet. The animation for this is embarrassing so far. 5 months should have been plenty of time to at least get the beginning of the game cutscenes right. It's ugly. I can animate better than this.

Larian, apparently, doesn't do subtle.

Combat disco should be reserved for the caster classes.