The Art Of Reload Animations In Video Games 

Some games to point out fundamental niches and quirks that could have been included in the video. Before you read, note that there's some great work in this so far. Keep it up! Marathon: Technically the first game to feature reloading despite it not being an introduction big enough to take notice by the industry Unreal: A weird reload mechanic for one single weapon. It would count to 20 each shot before it played a reload animation but the counter could be reset to 0 whenever you re-selected the weapon. Counter Strike 1.6 and Source: An absolutely breeding ground for new talent via Gamebanana, It's here where some big names started and eventually got hired by the big scale titles we know today. Homefront: The Revolution. An interesting title, but the one thing to note is its random sequence of animations, sometimes the weapon would be facing upwards when reloading, sometimes downwards but only for the second half of the animation. Payday 2: Eventually updated over time and notably in 2015, weapons had individual rounds featured in translucent magazines. Also had some of the slickest animations for a few years. Titanfall 2: Featuring some of the more weighty but speedy reload animations for the early to mid 2010s, the staff would contain one of the animators that would move to Infinity Ward to work on MW2019, and be responsible for the famous competition-style shotgun load. Insurgency Sandstorm: One of the first if not THE first titles with staged interruptible reloads, and "speed reloads", which disposes the magazine entirely to reload faster. People say the animations feel more like a coffee break in combat but have plenty of intricate detail. Escape From Tarkov: Naturally around about as equal detail in how guns load to Sandstorm, but right down to singular round-into-the-chamber loads. Very interesting to see as a mechanic.

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

Technically it's CSS and CS1.6 that revolutionalized the weapon animations. In fact most animators in those AAA games, used to make skins back in the day and helped them improve their animating skills.

You know? In Half-Life the pistol has two different animations. One when it's empty and another one when there's a bullet in the chamber. That's why in Sven Co-op (Half-Life co-op) the pistol uses a normal reload when there's ammo left and then spins the gun when it's empty. It uses Half-Life as a base with two different animations.

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.

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

I LOVE the reload animations in The Finals. You can literally unlock different reload animations. Embark studios showing how its done

The gun jamming mechanics of Far Cry 2 are amazing because they play very well with the whole atmosphere of the game. You're going through jungles and deserts, in the burning heat or the torrential rain. It's very likely your gun will have issues and seeing as your enemies are basically militias who are taught to fire a gun and nothing else, their weapons will be in a precarious state.

I think good reload animations can make the experience more anjoyable, same with interact animations, I just love looking at them.

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.

Modders have some awesome reload animations for their projects. Hitman47101 and Rockbiter created a full overhaul for new vegas that manages to approach the modern levels of quality, which is nuts

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.

I've always been fascinated with reload animations in video games for years. Not only was it cool to see are much they have improved over the years but also how they impact a player's immersion in the game. I used to watch Mar89tum back in the day and just watch compilation videos of weapon reloads in slow motion because it just captivated me. MW (2019) Definitely raised the celling with their animations and have kept on improving but I mean the COD's reload animations before that were just fine. Right now I'd say the games with the best reload animations would be Insurgency Sandstorm and Titanfall 2. However it looks like the game industry is constantly improving which I'm all for.

Cod Realism? That's funny Also alot of what was in MW19 was already present in other games. Killing Floor 2 did mag retention first an Payday 2 had rounds visibly leave the magazine

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

marathon had the first reloading stuff for every single guns

Me when the revolver doesn't have primed rounds when I fire it

the ethnic cleansing reference was so out of pocket 😭 same though

I have nothing against the quality of the MW2019 animations, they're well made and clean, don't get me wrong, but with everyone copying it's style, I grew to kind of hate them, no, not because they're good, a specific detail from them, that didn't need to be copied alongside trying to match is quality, but was anyways: Jitters. Everything is now so fucking jittery and ADHD like it's distracting and everytime I reload it makes my heartrate go up and gives me zoomer brain, it's like everytime I pushed R, someone grabed my shoulders from behind and started violently shaking me, I hate it. I love quality animations, but please, cut down on the ADHD jitter, smooth and calculated animations can be good too, what's important is style and attention to detail, cool isn't only flips and free style, proffessional and efficient can also be cool.

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 think you forgot the insurgency games that was the first to show the gun components like the mag catches of m4 moving during reload and the safety selector moving when you change the fire modes.

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!

Just found your channel - love it. Dont change your humor its awesome !!

the best animations are Goldeneye and Timesplitters. because the guns go offscreen so they didnt have to make a reload animation

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

One of the things that bothers my OCD in games is the lack of +1 chambering. Especially when it's a game like CoD where it's got great animations and attention to detail, but they don't include something trivial like that. Battlefield, their competitor, has done it since 3. Like it's such a small thing but it just bothers me a lot for some reason. I can't say for sure why that is.

Damn i need to take notes. Good video!

oh man, you forgot about marathon :(

Subbed :)

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

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

2:39 "They wanted to focus on realism", procedes to show guns where almost everytime the ejection port is on the left side, with the Lee-Enfield having THE WORST Bolt Action Animation possible

And not a single word about Tarkov? Nice video btw

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.)

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

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

Really good video 👍

Nah man I hate reload animations

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.

Wtf have I just watched

Im sorry the video was cool. Then you said like 5 different times "this was the start of the era of realistic reload animations" Tarkov was probably the real reason hyper realistic reload animations became so big. It started becoming really popular around the time tarkov reaaally really started to blow up(2018-2019) and one of the biggest things talked about regarding tarkov was the guns and the animations. And during the last decade AAA havent really been the standard setters. Typically indie games do something and then it blows up and the AAA industry copies that one thing. I think nintendo has been the only exception to that with BOTW. Most AAA studios rather do what works and wait for someone else to make the next big thing and then replicate it.

nice video

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

Goo d Vid.eo

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl had weapon jamming a year before Far Cry 2. And Hunt Showdown easily has the best old timey gun animations

Awesome Video, Just subscribed, but what about Battlefield 1's reload animations?

You didnt mention killing floor 2 at all. This is tiktok tier. You need to watch history of handedness in videogames by face full of eyes.