The Art Of Reload Animations In Video Games

I'm very bad at writing videos, i said twice that it was the start of the "realism era". My apolocheese :(

There was a game developed by Wolfire Games, Receiver and it's sequel Receiver 2. Basically QWOP but for guns, it is very tense and fun but the most interesting thing about the games was when the developer was asked: "Why QWOP for guns?" (I'm paraphrasing here) And he responded with a statement that is really astute in my opinion: "In a first-person shooter the main character isn't the player avatar but the gun currently in your hands." And I agree wholeheartedly, there's nothing worse than an FPS with guns that feel off but nothing better than an FPS with guns that feel great.

dont forget, we wouldnt actually have gotten the nice reloads of MW2 if it wasnt for the first Insurgency game

188 Subscribers? Crazy, this has the polish, pacing and production I expect from channels with hundreds of thousands of subs. Glad this swang by my home page, great stuff.

the details that grows from each generation to generations into the reloads are just 👌 no matter how old, they are still great!

Honorable mention, SCP SL weapons animations. If you compare it pre and after parabellum, they basically have done god works in those guns.

I think Hunt: Showdown deserves a shout out when you brought up Red Dead 2 and seeing guns from that era and their reloads. Hunt devs even corrected some of their reload animations when a gun historian brought it up. Nonetheless great video!

Nice video man. You should look into the hunt showdown reload animations. It's been around just as long as red dead and features the same guns with even more impressive reload animations

I can’t believe you didn’t bring up tarkov

Great Video :D

I think as an overview on the history of reload animations this is sorely lacking whole swaths of games that imo should be covered however as breif overviews of the different genres of reload animation in FPS games I do think it covers a lot of the cool ones

Subbed :)

i thought this video is from like 10k+ subs channel damn this video is great

The "realism" era is so annoying, cause a lot of characters who have never used guns, or just plain have no experience being 'tactical' use those 'tactical' animations... Like the one that gets me is the reload anims for the Fallout 3/NV mod guns, they're all tacticool, even when the character is low skill... Like reserve the tacticool reloads for when the character gets the quick reloads perk, then it's a reward. But the whole 'fling the magazine away' is silly in like 95% of circumstances... Especially when the char flings the magazine for a super speedy reload, but also takes what feels like enough time to put the gun back into a hardcase container and do a little field service of their pistol to switch weapons. Too many people watched John Wick and thought that the reloads were perfect, but the reloads were all situational, if you aren't gonna put the work in to program them to be situational, then just do a basic reload. But all this is still better than the lazy 'remove mag, hold mag below screen edge, put same mag back in gun' " "reloads" ", cause the moment you up the FOV to not be motion sick, it is fully visible. All in all, the reloads look silly, like a kid that played too much COD having their first range day, being all tacticool, only to get a slap over the back of the head and sent to get the mag back, cause those things a finnicky and cost money, a tool to be taken care of. You only do that shit if A your life is in danger and every nano second counts, or B they aren't your mags, you took the gun and mags from an enemy for example. It's a more impressive reload to have the character hold the fresh mag, and swap the one in the gun, smoothly, or to have stressed or inexperienced characters fumble the reloads slightly. Like if you had a game like Far Cry 3 where the character has no real experience, they should start off fumbling the mags, or having to HK slap the handle twice, and get better at it as they level up, or get perks for reloading. Smooth, tactical, reloads should be a reward for playing the game, upgrading a character, unless that character is lore wise already upgraded, experienced.

Of course, if you want games that arguably did what Modern Warfare 2019, '22, and '23 did before they ever thought about it, you should probably check out games like Battlefield 1 and Killing Floor 2, both of which were released back in 2016. Battlefield 1 had a plethora of animation styles that changed depending on how much ammunition you had left (see Professor Mem's video on Dynamic Reloads for more information) and Killing Floor 2 did tactical reloads for pretty much all of its weapons, with different animations for if you chose faster reloads on your Perks. Not to mention the fact that Killing Floor 2's weapons were animated at a very high framerate so as to capture much more detail when played back at lower framerates, or in moments where the game enters "Zed Time," which was basically slow motion. (Killing Floor 2 does lose points for some, shall we say, lackluster sound design in more than a few places, tho.)

Really good video 👍

I wonder how Bo6 will be considering the semi realism they have to do

zzz the COD reloads looks a like robot is trying to act human

Har cry 2 honestly isn´t the best example. Pretty much all reload animations are flipped to their real world counterpart and don´t get me started on the reload for the springfield bolt action rifle.. you somehow pull out a stripper clip from the buttom and feed in a new one as it would be a magazine.

nice video