One Incredible Detail At The (Very) End of Titanfall 2

[@any_austin]

I need you to read this carefully: Use code 50ANYAUSTIN to get 50% OFF plus free shipping on your first Factor box at bit.ly/4dIBz33! Do you see that? It says “50ANYAUSTIN” and NOT the old promo code, which was different, but I won’t be retyping it so I don’t confuse you. But don’t get confused. Use your eyeballs. Wait I actually just clicked the link myself and it auto-fills the promo code so you should be fine actually. You can relax. Huge thanks to the KZbin channel GAMEbience for doing God’s work.

[@devinosland359]

Austin you forgot to go back on the tangent about the fake hunger game box room skybox, I really wanted to hear about it 😢

[@alephnole7009]

its been a while but i think Sekiro also uses 2d cutouts like this

[@temporal_paradox]

​@@devinosland359Don't worry he'll remember next time for sure.

[@Jan12700]

Scam

[@Venzynt]

This is pretentious, navel-gazing, pseudo-intellectual trash which also has a desperate and irrelevant ad in it because not even you value the purity of your self-aggrandizing "art".

[@AuirGuardian]

TITANFALL 2 MENTIONED!!!!!

[@st.altair4936]

We eating good tonight, Pilots

[@canihave1dab724]

Titanfall 3 confirmed!

[@any_austin]

Doing my part to get them to make 3

[@graysonparks6696]

RAHHHHHHHHH

[@True_Underscore]

@@any_austin So real of you, my man

[@kylerlamouche5386]

He never finished the tangent from 9:00

[@ConnorShea]

THIS KILLS ME

[@nepunepu5894]

I think the tangent is the "philosophy" part of the video about "can this be an S tier, if these maps aren't D tiers" because the level he said there is a tangent is the S tier level.

[@Rynax-]

He promised!! :(

[@Tobascodagama]

I think the Patreon video might be where he finishes that tangent?

[@any_austin]

fuck

[@Goobzor]

disappointed never went back to talk about the dome level.

[@st.altair4936]

Another Titanfall 2 video 🗣🗣🔥🔥

[@nbctheoffice]

We want dome.

[@Foxhound141_67]

Never forget

[@fergerlrr7481]

I came here to say this

[@fearingalma1550]

As someone that worked with Source for a while, I think the part you speak about is likely due to the limitations of the Source engine. In the original engine build (based on my work with SDK 2013) most environmental lighting is baked during the build process and not real time, so they have to use a LOT of tricks for some of these sequences to work, and some of these sequences will read like engine hacks because that's effectively what they are. Warning: this is going to get technical. Source engine has tech called a "3D Skybox" where the game engine allows you to place an entity called a sky_camera in a portion of the map and build a tiny diorama of what's in the distance of your level to match up to the rest of the map via reprojection. Think of it like a moving background inside cars on a movie set- to create the illusion of a much bigger world than there otherwise would be. Getting that reprojection aligned so that it remains a logical extension of the background at all times can be very challenging, particularly in a visually busy game like Titanfall 2. And the more you bring up these 2D assets the more I wonder just how much Respawn changed some of the underlying technology when integrating it with the Radiant tools. (This is once again a plea to Respawn to release the Titanfall 2 gcf to the community so we can start building cool shit in a cool universe k thx) So to the wing you point out- they probably did a 2D paint for that wing because they needed it to match up with the lighting for the rest of the scene, as well as the DOF post processing. In the foreground, the dropship is blurred out because we, the viewer, are focusing on the planet exploding. But, since that is a 3D rig, they use env_dof_filter or some modified version of this to blur the foreground to bring the player's focus to the background. If they just use the dropship model wing, this would blur out and ruin the effect. So much visually is going on with all the explosions and angle changes and teleporting the player between 2D and 3D skyboxes that this was likely necessary to get the scene to work. This effect is likely an evolved form of the hack they use at the end of multiplayer rounds when the defeated team gets to their dropshops and jump out of the map- when they FTL jump to orbit and you look over and see the planet, they don't let you for very long because that, too, is a 2D asset they put together to create that effect because of Source's engine limitations and 3D skybox technology. So good eye, AnyAustin! I genuinely didn't think about how sick some of these hacks were until you brought it up. Titanfall 2 is truly a showcase for what is possible with a mature engine and people that know how to use it to its fullest and get around its limitations in creative ways.

[@funkdefied1]

Great write up

[@bigben01985]

Came to the comments to see if someone actually knew why. I'm glad I wasn't disappointed. Thanks!

[@erickschusterdeoliveira2662]

the dome level had an intentionally bad artificial skybox to make the actual skyboxes look better. hit the nail? also the time travel level is visually gorgeous, they pulled off the contrast between skyboxes perfectly.

[@any_austin]

You got it exactly right. I’m impressed. That’s the exact thing I was gonna come back to talk about out but pretended to forget but I didn’t really forget it’s just a running bit I do to make you guys have to think about what the thing might’ve been to trick you into thinking critically about video games because that’s my real goal with this channel

[@grantsparks6554]

A D-tier skybox to emphasize the S-tier one. A simulation of a distant 3D view, rendered in 2D on a screen closer than the view implies, in a similated game space using 2D billboard trickery very effectively to create a sense of depth on a real screen in my house that I played this game on. A simulation in a simulation. Wheels upon wheels. How clever.

[@grantsparks6554]

​​@@any_austinalso, Austin. If you think that the prefab house factory is the best level in Titanfall 2, you are SO real for that. Couldn't agree more. What an incredible and inspired sense of space and motion in that factory - the highlight of a game focused entirely on space and motion.

[@bodaugherty9654]

@@any_austin It's worked for me. I've just recently bought GTA Definitive Trilogy. Played the crap out of those games as a kid, but being older, and especially after watching your videos, I'm keen to look at more subtle, mundane shit. And it has made the experience all the more pleasurable. There's just a lot of engagement, lots of "why is this happening or why is this here?" type of thinking going on.

[@Blox117]

@@any_austin plot twist: he actually did just forget

[@KurtFitzy]

Hey 3D environment artist here: the smoke you’re looking at around 6:08 is PROBABLY using something called “flow maps” which is a type of looping animation that works by just using one texture to drive how another texture scrolls along. Usually it’s used for water but it’s also often used in big smoke columns in games.

[@mobyrichard6298]

I’m someone who has approximately zero knowledge about video game programming, if you have the time would you explain how this works like I’m a child? To me it’s like magic how you create entire worlds

[@bandana_girl6507]

That sounds a lot like how certain theatrical lighting effects are done. We'd basically take two wavy lenses that we could slide past each other to create things like water ripples or fire, but it's just looping

[@KurtFitzy]

@@mobyrichard6298 This video is a good explainer: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hHOomod9fbGee9E It's a shader where you have one texture with colors corresponding to directions. Those directions then get used to move another texture along a surface.

[@magic00squirrel]

I was wondering how this worked. Thanks!

[@rileysimmons9886]

Guessing that factory one is a depth map, then? I've worked with those in Wallpaper Engine before 😅

[@eggs_benny]

10:15 this is an interesting observation because mountains viewed from a distance irl look kind of surreal, almost like they’re a painted part of a skybox. So skybox mountains in games will capture that feeling much better than 3D modeled ones can capture the feeling of being up close to one

[@-tera-3345]

Yeah, being able to see all 3D models with the same clarity no matter the distance can end up looking kind of uncanny. There's no color fade as the air absorbs certain wavelengths over the distance, no haze from heat or water vapor that may be in the air. No effects of refraction or any of the other optical effects the atmosphere can cause at longer distances. While I'm sure effects can be used to imitate these, they still always seem to end up with the 3D model looking far too clear. So a large-scale 3D model can often end up looking more like a diorama than an actual vast landscape.

[@michaelwells529]

Literally just thinking this. I’ve lived around tall mountains most of my life and every time I look at them they never look real, they look like a painting even though they are the real deal lol

[@reptarien]

Oh you cooked with this. okay new idea. Open world game that has LOD that progressively gets more painterly the further away it is despite being photorealistic up close. Now that would be breathtaking.

[@tarakivu8861]

@@reptarien Thats just UE5 with Lumen

[@14Rocket]

It's sad Titanfall was murdered by poor marketing, releasing it literally the week between CoD Infinite Warfare and Battlefield 1, with the final nail in the coffin being EA trying to compete with PUBG.

[@st.altair4936]

Which is both funny and sad since TIF2 is easily better than all of those. (people are gonna be arguing about this in the comments now aren't they)

[@niza310]

@@st.altair4936no argument here. TF|2 is superior. I was playing multiplayer just this last weekend.

[@friendofp.24]

@@st.altair4936Battlefield 1 is actually good. It's COD that sucks.

[@lehuy7306]

@@friendofp.24 nah I have to disagree. That year was FIRE for FPS. BF1 was great. COD Infinite Warfare was great retrospectively. And of course TF|2 was phenomenal.

[@ImGonnaFudgeThatFish]

People really love to talk about this shit ad nauseum instead of actually *playing the video game*.

[@CaptainAndroc]

Titanfall 2 honestly has some crazy attention to detail across the board. For example in the first mission you can listen to radio chatter between the IMC and it mentions a specific unit being sent to a location you go to later on. (the factory level) When you are inevitably attacked there the soldiers are from the same aforementioned unit. Something 99% of players run past immediately but I love that they paid attention to that stuff.

[@Wub-rv9xx]

tho as a military hobbyist I’d rate their comms protocol as mid >:T

[@literallymalware]

TITANFALL 2 MENTIONED!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!

[@ItsJoeyG]

6:18 I have > 1k hrs in Titanfall 2 and I have never turned around on the first mission. I didn’t even realize it was just black 0.0

[@Welter117]

Any Austin remains one of the best on KZbin. There is so much we miss in the games we play everyday and I'm glad you're crazy enough to show off the smallest, strangest details that we either sprint by or only stop long enough to say "man" and move on.

[@Brian-sh5ne]

I think details like this are appealing because they show the humanity behind the artwork, like seeing the brushstrokes in a painting or hearing moments of roughness in a singer's voice

[@unfortunatebear]

The hand wavy use of the censoring bleep is my favourite running gag on this channel lmao

[@_anniefish]

there's a moment in the final fantasy vii remake where you're climbing up the mako reactor and see the slums below and they have that similar matte painting kind of feel and you better believe i made cloud slide up and down that ladder to keep on lookin'

[@puffcigs7222]

The sunshine wouldn’t feel so good if it wasn’t for the rain

[@TheVicar]

What happens when you get both at the same time?

[@ZackRToler]

Halo: Reach has some great 2d backgrounds and moments during scenes. Like the opening intro to the game

[@baron3904]

Halo 2 also has some amazing ones

[@glitchvid]

Halo in general has some of the best skyboxes ever put in games. The Voi portal storm skybox is one of the most technically and artistically accomplished skyboxes I've ever seen. ODST also has some incredible work put into ultimately less than a minute drop sequence at the beginning, including an extremely consistent city layout where you can see all the locations that later missions occur at.

[@bongusdongus2137]

Really, really love that factory matte with the moving parts. It feels like watching a classic Star Wars film, or a similar old “auteur” movie. The way it responds to movement, while the lighting remains static because it is still a “matte” (I know it’s a skybox but the function is the same and matte is more cooler and nerdy to say), all with little moving layers of other 2D sprite work, gives it such a beautiful and immersive cinematic feeling. It’s less “realistic” than a true 3D render, but the effect that it gives is so much more atmospheric, and communicates a sense of grandeur and scale beyond what a 3D model ever could. By looking and feeling more “filmy”, it ends up feeling more grounded despite being a less accurate analogue to what being in a real environment would be like. I think a huge part of why this “less realistic” approach is more immersive than a 3D model (beyond just looking goddamn lovely and slightly dreamlike) is because, with matte work, the environment artists are in complete control of exactly what you are seeing and how you are perceiving it at all times. With 3D renders, you have to contend with the limits of different hardware, draw distance, LOD, and just plain bad angles depending on where the player is. With this approach, the scale and feeling it imparts on the player can be tightly controlled no matter what variables are present; the detail is hard coded, the draw distance doesn’t matter because it’s a set distance that isn’t nearly as far as it’s meant to look, and the player can’t get to a spot where things look kinda fucked up and janky because the exact details, the way light hits it, every inch of the texture, is exactly planned out and uniform no matter where you view it from. Absolutely stunning stuff. EDIT: also, to anyone reading this who loves high detail, crunchy res spritework like this, I cannot recommend Amid Evil enough. It’s one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played, the weapons and huge parts of the environment are all 2D sprites with this exact kind of insane attention to detail, all done in Unreal so you have this really beautiful reactive lighting in the mix.

[@ZackarySmigel]

I loved Titanfall 2, and 1. The campaign in 2 was super underrated.

[@st.altair4936]

That one button prompt in that one level has stuck with me 8 years later

[@ryanrising2237]

It was very highly praised, I think it was appropriately rated. However, it didn’t sell as well as it could’ve, and that’s a bummer.

[@st.altair4936]

@@ryanrising2237 Yeah it's the 29th most overwhelmingly positive rated game on Steam. It's well liked and rated, just not nearly as popular as it deserves to be.

[@ManMannequin]

@@ryanrising2237 It's because EA made the idiotic decision of releasing Titanfall 2 between Battlefield 1 (a game they also published) and COD: Infinite Warfare

[@NachosChipeados]

@@ManMannequin No, the game failed because its just really hard to get into. There's a reason new players don't stick around, just look at what happens every time the game goes on sale. This is coming from someone who likes the game

[@codylego]

The background of the multiplayer maps might be of interest to you, like the giant angel statue on angel city

[@phoebe.aur0ra]

13:55 idk if that was on purpose but I giggled

[@Friday_Monday]

It is He's recently had a joke where he censored himself saying "fuck" by playing a clip of his friend saying "fuck"

[@RimHellworth]

15:18 I like to call it “Breathing Room” it lets you take a break from constant action and appreciate what you just experienced

[@Zood94]

As you said, it's all about the 'vibe'-the feeling of the final scene. Choosing 2D instead of 3D for that last moment was meant to enhance the emotional impact. By limiting your ability to look around and focusing on a 2D image of the destroyed planet, they avoid the distraction of a detailed 3D model that might pull you out of the moment ("Oh, it's just a 2D planet"). Instead, the simplicity of the 2D image directs your attention and emotional focus to the planet itself ("Oh wow, look at that planet").

[@gax9898]

Speaking of super flat backgrounds, the dream sequences of Mass Effect 3 have some crazy low-res PNG trees on the outer edges. They're animated to wobble, making it look like wind is blowing them around, but it's very clear that it's just a single plane image. It made me think of your videos.

[@thedualitysystem]

Using more 2D art in 3D games is actually a great idea. These skyboxes look like playable concept art.

[@GrieveIV]

My phone buffered here 3:55 and I thought he was doing some kind of silent subversion bit

[@sabbywins]

Nothing exists in isolation. Everything exists in context. The impact of a really good section of a game is greater when it's surrounded by a lesser section. Lesser can be less exciting, quieter, slower paced, or just worse. A good game will pace itself appropriately so that the truly awesome sections are surrounded by the correct context to make them hit that much harder - every piece working together to craft an overall experience. It's the reason areas like Blighttown in Dark Souls are integral to the game. You need the misery to know when you're happy.

[@NoTime2Explain676]

Not quite a matte painting type thing, but i know that a lot of multiplayer games, particularly ones from the Xbox 360/PS3 era, would use 2D graphics for distant objects. I know the Christ the Redeemer statue in the distance of Favela in Modern Warfare 2 is a 3D object on top of a 2D mountain. But the one i always remember is Battlefield 3, where the map Kharg Island has an entire hillside covered in 2D trees that is, somehow, not out of bounds, even on the scaled down 24 player version of the map. And yet you could have probably played Battlefield 3 for dozens or even hundreds of hours and never noticed it because the hillside has absolutely no objective, vantage points, anything. its not even on the way to anything. But despite almost 2 years of post-launch updates and content, they never did go back and fix that because despite being a playable area, it serves as little more than set dressing and i have found that to be incredibly endearing for some reason

[@slghtmedia]

ANYAUSTIN GOING TITANFALL MODE??? IM HERE. I SPRINTED

[@st.altair4936]

I wallran 🗣🗣🔥🔥

[@friendofp.24]

I grappled

[@Addsomehappy]

I'd vortex grenade jump here if I've ever figured out how to do it consistently

[@st.altair4936]

@@Addsomehappy I spent my first 2 hours in the game mastering that to get 1st place in the tutorial lol

[@lf-inkk]

In the dome level that he left behind, im pretty sure the point he was making is that the backgrounds look intentionally bad, both to enhance the immersion they are technically "Fake" areas made for battle simulations, but also to make the other skyboxes in the game look and feel more "Real" W AnyAustin always making me enjoy the small details in games, such a peak guy

[@hyrumstephens2002]

Ur videos just keep getting better and better

[@Antiphar]

Someday when I'm about to die and my life flashes before my eyes.... I hope the skyboxes are nice.

[@coolliam7694]

Prediction: it’s about lakes and rivers

[@Skifreak-nv7ej]

It’s actually the exact opposite. It’s skyboxes

[@end1ngme]

it was about skies

[@st.altair4936]

It was about mountains and skies 😔

[@saveoursquirrels4241]

I was gonna guess skyboxes but the replies already confirmed it so my guess is no longer valid

[@Addsomehappy]

an older running theme on this channel

[@Crayon_Cruncher]

I JUST PLAYED TITANFALL 2 FOR THE FIRST TIME! WHAT CRAZY TIMING

[@Solowinged]

I’M GLAD YOU FINALLY EXPERIENCED IT, WHAT A GREAT GAME

[@MaxManTheEgg]

Great game, hope you liked it

[@WhyWouldYouTubeShowThis]

Now you just need to play Hollow Knight, Batman Arkham and Bloodborne so you can truly get into the mindset of "Wow that was a great game! I'd love to play the sequel."

[@jiinky]

glorp

[@3srs5U]

I mean it is on sale for like three bucks on Steam, I bet a lot of folks are sharing that experience right now.

[@tigerlux714]

Love that you aren’t afraid to make videos you’re so passionate about even the algorithm won’t like it as much as “where does X lead to in X video game”

[@CraaazySteeeve]

When you talk about the "slow/lower quality/worse" parts making the "faster/higher quality/better parts" better, it made me realise why I like Tarantino movies so much. A movie like Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is so good because it lulls the viewer into a sense of false security, by showing so much of the relatively mundane lives of the Hollywood Elite. Then right at the end when you are starting to question what this movie is even about (if you didn't know the historical context), you get hit with an incredible sequence. And if you put that same sequence at the end of a movie like John Wick it just would NOT hit the same, because John Wick tries to deliver constant high octane excitement throughout the movie, whereas Tarantino is happy to make you wait for it, all-in-all making the ending so much more impactful. This also applies tomost Tarantino movies including Hateful Eight, Django, Reservoir Dogs, and honestly most of his other movies to a lesser extent.

[@MrFr2eman]

I think what you talk about is contrast and tone, which shouldn't necesserily tie into quality of things? So everything can be S-tier and still deliver the same experience, well, theoretically. Using Tarantino as example, one of the things people praise Pulp Fiction for is how all the mundane dialogues in the movie are actually fun to watch, not just the dramatic scenes.

[@jscobsnow1038]

I love how Any Austin pays attention to the stuff that most people don’t. I have a whole new perspective on games now

[@adammostbeast]

My favorite song of yours. Couldn’t tell you why but the can cracking sound just goes so hard

[@CBusschaert]

Austin discovering game dev optimizations 👏 Mostly, it all comes down to resource usage reduction: if the camera angle doesn't change, and the lighting conditions don't change, and the model itself doesn't change, then why spend resources rendering a 3d model every frame, when it's a lot cheaper to render an image? If every player is going to see the same thing, just print that thing onto a texture, and use that, instead of being dynamic about it.

[@codylego]

I was going to comment exactly this. Titanfall 2 is an incredibly optimised game, it’s runs buttery smooth at 59.7 fps or whatever on the original Xbox one while looking fantastic and having explosions and lasers. This quality is kept with the skyboxes

[@zimeron1]

yup. Drawing a million triangles is hard. Drawing the cube root of a million triangles is much less hard.

[@kaiserruhsam]

the model of the ship from the end is also probably relatively low-poly for how much more of the screen it would be taking up

[@ThreadBomb]

The teams doing the skyboxes and the cutscenes would be different from the teams creating gameplay assets, and will use their resources differently according to their priorities and time/money resources (which are usually more restricted than for teams working on the "main" part of the game).

[@ChrisBode]

When we're talking about a game with strong art direction 2d assets--or even simple 3d assets with the lighting "baked in"--give you much more control of what your art will look like on the end user's machine.

[@KiwiBeeArt]

I have a distinct memory of dropping in the titan for the first time, after putting hundreds of hours into the first game, i always wished i could get the context of being in a titan when its dropped, and when you do in the second game it made me so happy, its such a little thing they didnt have to do, but they did, and it made me feel so proud, like i was truely a pilot!

[@0412010ryry]

AnyAustin. It's incredible how you've completely changed how I play video games now. Thanks for opening my eyes. I've always looked at video games as an art media. But not in the context you've done. I appreciate the perspective.

[@ScarfKat]

Such a good video. I agree I love the 2D drawn skyboxes in games like this, not just because they look cool, but also because the artistry behind them is just incredible.

[@eiaboca1]

From what you've shown, 2D painted mountains look more like they do in life than the 3D ones!

[@dirkdowning3455]

The use of the 2d hand painted portion of the ship at the end was most likely used to make the transition between the 2d destroyed planet and the 3d interior more seamless, I think that if that exterior underside of the wing was also 3d then the overall effect would have been too jarring on the viewer

[@justinbrockway7044]

Star wars battlefront two hit me right in my nostalgia box

[@Fahrenheit-kv5pj]

Thank you for linking Titatn Fall 2 and philosophy on comparison in such a thought-provoking manner. Loved the video and keep it up.

[@Clearmedium]

By far the creator I look forward to a release from the most atm. You have led me to revisit many games I love and just slowly and in a detailed manner appreciate the art and environment. Legit made me realize I was missing so much cool art and experiences by not slowing down. Thank you.

[@koolaid33]

I literally replayed Titanfall 2 about 2 weeks ago.

[@AltevBaka]

You’re getting into some spiritual philosophical thinking. You can’t have light without dark. You can’t have S tier sky boxes without d tier skyboxes. Or in other words, “when everyone’s super, no one is”

[@therandomizer4172]

You have got to be one of the most interesting youtubers I've seen ever. Your videos are actually amazing and enjoyable to watch.

[@L4ftyOne]

"Where do the electric lines end up in Red Dead Redemption 2 ?"

[@Pbairsoftman]

You should definitely look at the multiplayer maps in detail, they’re all pretty in their own way

[@ZenithVal.]

17:04 Hand drawn probably isn't the right word. They likely just rendered that part of the dropship so they could cinematically position it in thiis frame... still really weird though.

[@ironmooss1946]

That might have been the best sponsor segue I’ve ever heard. 10/10

[@icarusgaming6269]

Local man discovers hardware optimization, goes insane

[@Nazasu]

"It's just cool" And things being just cool is the best. Love your vids for showing us the "Just cool" things you find. Love it.

[@doomtoken]

That segue into the ad read was perfection. No lie, you might have some of the only ad reads I will sit and listen to solely because of how you lead into them.

[@JohnDoe-hj9fh]

As much as I love the "where does the water come from in x game" or "following powerlines in GTA" I was worried you were gonna become a channel that just follows the niche that works for them especially now that its a bigger channel but im glad to see I'm wrong

[@worms416]

> I buy a game > The next day any_austin releases a video on this > Has happened multiple times now There's a way to abuse this super power but I'm not sure how

[@SgtJet3]

buy outer wilds next ill paypal you.

[@nickjoseph77]

Idk how many times I listened to 7 songs before I happened to hear the can opening in that song. Now I hear it every time. I feel like your music and your videos have somehow opened my mind up a little more to the spirituality of something small and yet incredible like skyboxes or the subtleties of songs I never used to notice.

[@Commander-Riot-Wolf115]

Titanfall 2 is a fantastic game and worth every minute even if you're not playing pvp frontier defense is an option to experience even more of it EA needs to let respawn do their thing and let apex go

[@0the0donut13]

I’ve watched a few of your videos and I got to leave a comment, the style you have is great. I can tell your really passionate about the hidden gems of videos games which I appreciate very much. The nuances and appreciation of the details is so cool. Appreciate your work man

[@dialog_box]

15:19 this is something i was kinda thinking about recently but in a totally different context. in the binding of isaac, there are 5 "tiers" of items, divided simply by how powerful they are; with quality 0 items often being actively harmful to the player, while quality 4 items are the best thing you could ever hope to see show up. and what i was thinking about was how if you removed all the mediocre items from the game, it would lose a really substantial amount of what makes it fun. if every item is amazing, you lose the joy of finding them in the first place

[@henrynye1608]

Also I love your conclusion-ish moment at the end about games needing a bit of boring

[@pjshurm]

rip titanfall :(

[@CobaltTS]

Never forget

[@st.altair4936]

Titanfall 3 next year guys don't lose -cope- hope 💪

[@redwiltshire1816]

The best details in Titanfall 2 is knowing that we will never ever get the answers to the cliffhangers

[@reilandeubank]

I know nothing about Titanfall 2 but I'm here for the signature Any Austin dry humor

[@mschulmeister6519]

I really dig this cause i see games as a representation of what it "should really be", if you see a huge fake 2D structure on older games you'll likely think "hell yeah", at the same time if you see a huge actually 3D structure on a modern game you'll think the same... I personally don't see the point of modelling everything and making things realistically if a simple representation of something already gets the point across, and even has a cute quaint feel to it

[@mschulmeister6519]

Extra point: I have this grip with modern games, that they wanna simulate stuff for no actual reason, like, you must have a super computer to run smoke and fog on modern games but it was perfeclty and beautifully faked decades ago already 😭 A big example of this was when i finished 2014's Wolfenstein and started the 2017's right after... the clothes on the first game looked pretty good, the fur on the jackets was almost stylised cause it was a compacted modelled static fur, then when i launched the second game IT SUCKED, the beautiful fur turned into half a dozen strands cause now they wanted to run hair in real time or something, soooo stupid

[@ClonedGamer001]

13:34 I'm pretty sure the alarm in that scene actually _is_ a Shepherd's Tone

[@zedus4042]

I miss games having hand crafted skyboxes like these, skyboxes like these look so grand and epic, larger than life of whatever is the way to describe it. Destiny 2's skyboxes are also incredible from what I remember, relatively similar to these when it comes to art style. Games nowadays usually rely too much on today's advanced graphical tech, rendering actual 3d dynamic clouds that are technically impressive but artistically nowhere near as good looking as carefully created skyboxes like the ones from Titanfall 2.

[@wretchedslippage3255]

YOU need to pkay Space Marine 2. Every single setting and vista looks like a crazy painting. The scale is immense and almost every angle of that game is art. Its beautiful. I feel like it'd be up your ally even if you dont like the 40K lore. Its just really really good looking with a lot of incredible detail.

[@erickschusterdeoliveira2662]

Space Marine 2 to me is the first game that actually feels like what I imagined "next gen" would be like back in the Xbox 360 days.

[@wretchedslippage3255]

@@erickschusterdeoliveira2662 Im not sure if thats an insult or not. lol

[@Wub-rv9xx]

@@wretchedslippage3255you _do_ play as a giant fridge-man, but thankfully they have the technology to keep him from accidentally adhering to cover

[@willpags8261]

Do you have like a playlist for songs like the ones you use in your endings?? They're always so nice

[@any_austin]

It’s just my artist profile on Spotify

[@IHJello]

Ok, I recently commented saying I was recommended your channel bc i watch Corridor Crew. Now you brought up matte paintings? Oh yea, Im fully convinced of the corelation. Love the content.

[@HorrorHomestead]

Pulling out the "I appreciate Skyboxes" shirt for this one

[@emeraldkoala2]

0:21 personally I've always disliked the "if you haven't seen it by now, you probably don't care about spoilers." argument. I mean, I was six years old when Breaking Bad started so obviously I didn't watch it at the time, is it then my fault if hypothetically I had got annoyed because somebody spoiled something from it? Of course in this specific instance you're really not spoiling much of anything, and if I really cared that much about Titanfall 2 spoilers I'd just have stopped watching the second I realised what the video is about. Also I'm not saying everything should have spoiler warnings for every media ever created. I just think that's a pretty flimsy way of thinking about it. Sorry for the tangent, enjoyed the video regardless.

[@TriforceWisdom64]

I think a lot of the time, if something is older and kind of past its prime in the public consciousness, new people are more likely to get into it if they have the cool stuff spoiled. Although obviously if you're already interested, getting spoiled would suck.

[@carterwright8504]

"When everyone's super, no one will be"

[@st.altair4936]

Such a damn good game. This is the only game I've played that _completely_ nails both the campaign and the multiplayer.

[@Alleister207]

9:28 The year of Luigi indeed... 💀

[@litelbrown]

I just got tricked into watching a Skybox Appreciation video

[@any_austin]

yes you did

[@thetical-yew]

3:35 great transition

[@john_blues]

I clicked without reading because I thought I'd be finding out who has a job.

[@thejadedrabbitTJR]

I'm assuming the ship at the end being 2D instead of 3D is related to the way the ship's model would look when in front of the 2D planet. My thought for that is that the wing would either be too large or would physically look odd, be it contorted or extended in a way that makes our human monkey brains go "ew, wtf." despite it being likely that what we're looking at would be more like how it would IRL. I have no real experience with this kind of art, meaning I could be wrong, but I did do a bit of graphic art at some point in my past, so that's where I'm pulling this idea from.

[@ArcRay20]

im on a similar train of thought. though more for lighting. like, the entire thing you are looking at is 2D images layered and they are clearly lit. now say said lighting doesnt look correct on the wing during this scene. well painting it to have it match the setting would be the best solution instead of struggling to get this one thing right.

[@henrynye1608]

Hey Austin I just need to tell you that during your Factor promo (Which I was WATCHING might I say), youtube decided to show me two other ads before you were even done talking about factor. Just feel like people making the videos should at least hear about things like this. Idk if it means anything though. And even though those two ads happened less than 100 seconds ago I already forget what either of them were. Anyway now I'll keep watching.

[@any_austin]

holy cow

[@Friday_Monday]

I sincerely believe youtubes midroll ad policy is to just make it as uncomfortable as possible for the viewer so they give up and buy red

[@any_austin]

@@Friday_Monday I’ll have to think about that. Thanks for bringing it up.

[@henrynye1608]

@@Friday_Monday couldn't be me

[@SixCubitMan]

i'm afraid the ship at the end wasn't hand-painted, it was rendered in 3d from an existing model and then flattened. you can tell because perfectly smooth curves and circles are extremely easy when created in a sprite or painting, and not worth the hassle when you have to make them with triangular polygons. when you take a look at the part of the ship that says "jet" upside down, you'll see how it doesn't curve smoothly into the ship, it's five individual lines at different angles to give the illusion of a curve. dead giveaway, it's a photograph of a 3-d model.

[@vito3608]

Oh my god the fact that you added a fake shadow to your background is such a clever touch. I’ve never seen that before.

[@harambemclovin8347]

Literally finished titanfall 2 last week. Also started it last week. Wish it was longer than a couple hours lmao

[@lithic2331]

Before you unblur it(or I unpause it), because yes, I won't be playing Titan Fall 2. I do love trying to convince people to go through long setups for very tiny little payoffs. Well not love trying, but those payoffs are so incredible, and I want others to experience them.

[@CobaltTS]

Missing out

[@mechadeka]

What?

[@TjByers369]

Titanfall 2 has happy little clouds. But the trees are very angry. Very, very angry.

[@impersonal6959]

The sponsor pitch is presented so well that I actually watch it to completion! That is quite the feat. AnyAustin is certified high-quality content.

[@acex222]

"All great games should have parts where they're boring" is potentially the worst opinion I've ever heard in regards to video games.

[@Jpow5734]

2D set pieces need to be implemented into more 3D media like games or animation, one thing recently that has done this beautifully is Arcane which looks and feels like a 3D animation yet all environments and backgrounds are hand painted 2D images and only the characters are 3D and it looks amazing.

[@qwfp]

17:00 to me it looks more like a pre-rendered view of a 3D model, not a hand-drawn image. Maybe they did actually draw this in a way that looks like it would be a 3D model, to match the aesthetics, but I think it's more likely that they just took the 3D model they have, arranged a scene with proper lightning or whatever, rendered it to a texture and used it here

[@treverse_]

Wow, I really agree with you on how you enjoy games that get boring at times. Dredge is one of the best examples I can think of. If there was constant chaos in the water at all times you'd get conditioned to it. But because it is spread out you are always on edge

[@nicholasantchoutine4898]

Ik you probably will never check it out but I think you’d love destiny 2 skyboxes. Bungie cooked with them

[@sidenote1459]

Song is at the end is a bop, you should give that guy a shoutout next time

[@Mayhyn]

(I can't tell if you know and are saying this ironically or not, but that's one of Austin's artist names and his music.) Ive been listening to his stuff for a couple years since he uses them for the end and they're so good ❤

[@jamst5913]

Another Unremarkable and Odd Places in... When?

[@kmaclives3782]

"This small, clearly polygonal wing of the spaceship, is hand drawn"

[@r4dios1lence92]

That question at 15:18 (the second one) is basically answered by (I think that's what's called) the Fitchean Curve. Engagement on a story usually follows highs and lows, with small cycles of tension and release, that rise over time until the final climax, the last release. If you don't leave times of rest, everything becomes the same and feels bland (the first explosion takes you off the seat, but after the third one in a row, you're laughing). For a similar reason, majority of good horror & suspense movies (specially old ones) have moments of comedy. The comedy bits release tension on the watcher, distracting them, and that can make the scare or tense moment more effective. That doesn't work only on written and visual storytelling (interactive or not), but is also very common music theory, map design in games, and many other things. When the artists are REALLY capable, even static art like sculptures & paintings can have the same effect. You always downplay what you do, and I will never be able to tell whether you do that sincerely or jokingly. But you always touch and discuss important concepts, in simple ways, provoking thought and further discussion, leading people to either question and get a little smarter, or search and learn a lot. You can keep claiming to be "THE worst video game shows on the internet. by far." on your channel's description, but I don't think I ever seen anything not worthy actual discussion and pondering. Great work as always.

[@James-rl5tj]

Listen, I've asked nicely. I've demanded, and now im begging. Hair clip lore Now? Plz?