I Left Out the Reaction Shot, a Dev Journal

When I was a kid watching movies with my Dad, he would sometimes frown and say, “they left out the reaction shot”. What he meant was the movie showed some important moment like the bad guy getting defeated or some tragic setback, but it didn’t show the characters’ reaction. The hero’s relief as they score the game-winning point. Hans Gruber’s face as he realizes he’s about to fall all the way down Nakatomi Tower. It’s the part where we see the character see the same thing we see, and then we see how they feel about it, so we can feel things about how they feel (did you follow that?). It’s the moment that makes the action human. I bring this up because I realized This Means War was missing an important reaction shot. Make no mistake, the game was working great, which as a game designer can create an unexpected challenge: if your system is working so well that it conceals subtle problems, you have to really keep your antenna out to detect them. Our wars were going… well honestly…