Perfect Dark Reboot To Offer Quality/Performance Mode; Melee Combat Confirmed

Xbox Game Studios, The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics’ upcoming reboot of Perfect Dark will offer a Quality and a Performance mode.

A job listing for the position of Technical Art Director at The Initiative has revealed that the studio’s upcoming title, Perfect Dark, will feature a Quality and a Performance mode. The new recruit’s responsibilities will include working with Technical and Art Directors to get the highest visual quality out of Unreal Engine for PC and Xbox, for both Performance and Quality engine modes.

Furthermore, the LinkedIn profile for Adam Lawson, former Senior Gameplay Animator on Perfect Dark at Crystal Dynamics, states that the game will feature both “synced” and “un-synced” melee combat.

“Synced” melee combat likely refers to synchronized animation frames for the attacking player and the defending NPC or vice versa in one-on-one encounters. This would include choreographed fight motions such as stealth takedowns. “Un-synced” melee combat actions would likely involve more basic animations with no dependencies, such as throwing a punch at an enemy and then having it react in a certain way.

Previously, it was revealed via the LinkedIn profile of the Principal Technical Animator at The Initiative that Perfect Dark takes advantage of Unreal Engine 5’s MetaHuman to deliver realistic-looking character faces. Thornock is involved in the development of the Maya tool pipeline for animation, rigging, and character art. He has worked to integrated MetaHuman faces into the pipeline and push the main body deformation with extra focus given to hands. He has also collaborated with the engineering team from Humain on the development of a streamlined and a properly interpolating RBF for Unreal Engine.

For the uninitiated, MetaHuman is a complete framework that gives creators the ability to create highly realistic human characters. It includes MetaHuman Creator, a free cloud-based app that enables the user to create fully rigged photo-realistic digital humans within minutes.