La Reina Lost Expressions in Rivals 2#298

To clarify, this is purely in regards to fascial expressions in her animations, and NOT gameplay expression. I feel that La Reina lost parts of her personality in her transition to Rivals 2. She’s a lovely character in Rivals 2 but it’s a lot harder to tell what emotions she’s displaying.. I understand that some of this is caused due to the transitions from sprites to models, a different thread mentioned some of La Reina’s other animations which missed key frames are getting adjusted and so I thought I could critque her expressions in the possibility she gets some of her old charm back.

In Rivals 1, you can see the expressions of La Reina’s taunts cycle from gleeful, fierce, and smug. Her attacks like Nair, Side B’s grab state, and her walking animations have a happy look. But in Rivals 2, La Reina’s face remains in its neutral state for all of these. As for her parry animations which I mistakenly named “Taunt” in the images, they completely different in both posing and tone, but I think this was done for gameplay purposes. I actually like the new parry animation! The eyes even squint during the animation which is nice. But thought I’d mention it anyways as it could be said that La Reina lost personality with the change in parry animation as she’s no longer taunting her opponent.

I’m sure the animation team is well aware about how cartoony expressions work, La Reina and the rest of the Rivals cast are animated really well and have a variety of expressions, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the animation work was inspired by Spiderman, Deadpool, and Robin. But I’m surprised that La Reina herself doesn’t have any sort of expression change when wrapped, which is unlike all the other characters in the roster. One of my favorite examples of masked characters making expressions are from animated versions of Spiderman where their eyes widen to express pain or surprise. It’d be nice if La Reina’s eyes widened in shock.

Despite all that I’ve said, I’m not expecting many changes to La Reina’s animations. As simple as it sounds to adjust her eyes, I find it hard to believe that animators would comb through even 10% of La Reina’s animations for a nitpicky request when that time could be spent elsewhere. But the animation and modeling team have done a great job animating and modeling their characters, even some characters have changed after their reveal and release like Etalus and Absa. Would be sweet if La Reina could get the same love.

to add to this, I prefer her parry animation in rivals 1 as well. She does the “come here” hand signal, and her ROA2 animation is not as good.

It really does suck that the most expressive character in the game has eyes that just don’t emote at all.

Truly is a massive missed opportunity that I hope gets addressed in the future, especially since they’re planning on making skins without the mask (at least ones with visible eyes)!

I do 100% agree that her eyes definitely need more animation and expression all throughout but I think the only ones I don’t really want to see come back are the fully closed gleeful eyes. I think those look a little bit too… cutesy, I guess? Especially on the walk cycle which to me should have more pomp and swagger than glee. Plus it almost feels like a bit of a character arc in how now that she has become an official character, she has EARNED that confidence and smug swagger in her walk and WANTS to be a bit more arrogant about it, putting on a better show for the fans. I like it less “happy to be here” and more “yeah, what are you gonna do about it?” I know that was how the original creators did it but it’s a change I do agree more with the Rivals devs on.

The earned confidence from being a workshop character into an official character just feels like a superfiscial justification for these changes, it’s not anywhere near that deep. The changes are most likely a result of of gameplay and technical reasons.

An example of gameplay reasons would be La Reina’s old parry animation which looks much more like a taunt and most other parry animations don’t have characters sticking their arm farther away from their body. The Rivals 2 parry is a lot clearer in gameplay design.

And as for the technical reasons, it’s just normal/easier to keep the shape of La Reina’s eyes in their neutral state. Unlike other characters, La Reina has no mouth or pupils so it’s harder to read what emotions she’s trying to express in the first place. Her eyes can open and close and it’s just simpler to just leave the eyes open than going through all the animations and closing them a bit. It’s also possible they didn’t know the eyes were closed, or they just felt eyes open looked better. But I don’t think it was for lore.

The only times La Reina’s eyes show movement are during her parry, in pained animations, and her victory screen. They plan to make her pupils visible at some point from footage of a WIP of her victory animation so I’m not sure if it’s even possible to improve La Reina’s fascial expressions without screwing with that. Either way it’s her body movement that’s all the heavy lifting, in a game where all other characters have body movement and facial expression working together to bring a character alive. I just hope La Reina can get a closer balance to that some day.

I’d like this, but knowing how stretched the team is currently I wouldn’t have it high on the priority list

this is a must have (just behind mollo getting in)