The Pepe Silvia Rant about How Burke had to Survive.

[Zeealex]

Alright, so first off if you don't know what I mean by Pepe Silvia rant, I refer you to the below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nTpsv9PNqo

 

And yes, I'm still not over this...

Okay for some context as some newbies to the GR franchise might not have heard of Ol' Jenny

Intro

Jennifer Burke was a main char in GR2 and GR2:SS - to my knowledge she was one of the more 'liked' characters and was certainly talked about a lot by the devs in old marketing material - and everyone who has known me long enough certainly knows where I stand.

Back in those two games she was a Staff Sergeant & a rifleman. I could present the argument as to what her actual Special Forces MOS and what her previous, pre-Ghosts MOS would've most likely been, but let's baby steps into this insanity of hyperanalysis.

Pics:
1) Official Concept Art and Renders - Yes the trigger discipline in the concept art also kills me inside too, I have a poster on my wall where that's fixed.


In GRAW - Every one of the old GR2 team was either still a member of Mitchell's team, or they had been promoted into leadership roles. Burke was one of the latter. However, it remains to be known that everyone who became a team leader had their little reuinion moment in GRAW where the player helped them out, EXCEPT Burke. To my knowledge, Burke didn't even say so much as a "hello."

We hear after securing the airport, she was put in charge of a close protection unit charged with getting the US president out of dodge after it was too risky to get Air Force One in the air. Presumably this close protection unit consisted of elements of the USMC, USSS and the Ghosts and was callsigned "Quarterback"

While the player is out killing tanks, Quarterback has been monitored by the enemy using Guardrail IX and they get ambushed, the president is captured by the enemy and Burke is presumed dead.

BUT there are a couple of caveats to this that may just be plot holes or oversights in writing but leave a pretty big opening for her to have survived:

It's never actually confirmed
The last thing you hear of her is General Martin requesting a SITREP in which she doesn't respond.

• In the mission you play immediately after rescuing the president, you go after Guardrail. In the beginning of that mission you learn that guardrail IX has jamming capabilities, so there is a strong possibility, and it would make sense for an ambush where you want to capture a VIP, that comms were simply jammed.
• To support the above claim, nobody had any idea of her current location, despite her having GPS systems built into her kit - But they were able to geolocate the US president from a tracking beacon after he was captured
• The ambush sounded pretty chaotic, at least one explosion is noted. There is a strong possibility that many people were incapacitated but not killed.
• The president talks about the ambush but doesn't confirm she died, he likely doesn't even know himself, supporting the chaotic nature of the situation.
• Salvatore was ambushed by a similar rebel group, while injured and incapacitated, he did survive, so it is within the realm of possibility.
• You never go over to the initial ambush site so you never get a visual. For some reason you go over to Salvatore's position and Salvatore confirms he's not seen or heard anything from her for a while. Possibly indicating a QRF was already present or troops were still in contact

• We are also talking about a person who has:

  • Helped push back an entire battalion of North Koreans, who had tanks, arty, you name it and walked it off like it was no big deal.

  • Helped stop a nuclear apocalypse, while once again holding off an entire company's worth of some of North Korea's finest

  • Defended an entire town with Salvatore, some Kazakhs and some duct tape.

GRAW takes place in 2013, if you dig deep enough into some of the older 'lore' of the GR games, you will quickly realise that if she's dead, there's a big continuity error.

• OG Ghost - Will Jacobs, joined the army in 1996.
• In Ghost Recon 2's Xbox release The cutscenes that drive the story are framed as interviews for a (frankly very cheesy) documentary.
• Will Jacobs is the presenter of this documentary, and it notes that he's retired.
• In order to retire (considering there's no reason to presume medical retirement) he must have served 20 years.
• Meaning the earliest the TV show could be filmed is 2016

GR2's events themselves happen in 2011 (Xbox) and 2007(PS2/Gamecube) -Declassification would likely not have happened til much later

• If you look at the amount of all out hell that happened around Zero-Dark-Thirty's filming, there is no way the filming of a tell-all documentary about a highly classified set of missions in which this small platoon of soldiers saved the world from nuclear apocalypse would have happened within 2 years.
• The absolute minimum wait time as far as I'm aware for declassification of such AAR's is 5 years
• Meaning the earliest the documents would have been released and ergo, the interviews would have been staged - is 2016
• Add to this no one even mentions the TV show in GRAW or GRAW 2, despite Mitchell having an ingame big ol' fanboi (which is cringy af but whatever) you'd assume if Mitchell had a massive fanboy he would've at least watched the show and talked about it - it's never mentioned.

 

So to me, personally, after hyperanalysing all of the little tidbits and threads of information (some of which I've not added here for brevity). There is more of a possibility that she survived, but was pretty badly messed up/incapacitated and serious injury explains why we've not seen her since.

Personally I'd love to see her come back at some point in the game series, she was a very likeable, charismatic and somewhat unconventional character even looking back at her now. You rarely see characters like her fill the role that she did in the team, she was a female spec-op who didn't fit a stereotype like Diaz (i.e. all female soldiers are snipers of some kind) - Not at all saying Diaz was a bad character, just stereotypical and not really anything 'new'. But at the same time as being novel and unconventional, Jennifer wasn't an insufferable ###### with a sense of entitlement like most 'Strong Independent Females' video game devs and movie studios churn out these days. She almost filled a 'Lancer' type role in the team and had quite a discernable character arc compared with the others.

They've done something similar with Diaz and Mitchell over the years, where they've given them a bit more to do. I think they should do the same with ol' Jenny and some of the others too.

It wouldn't be too difficult to write her back in. Hell, I'd even offer to give a hand if Ubi wanted it seeing as I've overthought this whole thing so they don't have to, but chances are, they don't, and that's okay.

Thank you for coming to my Pepe Silvia, hero-worshipping TED talk.

 

 

[Rocky]

Wow, you really went after this!

[Zeealex]

yessir! 😅 It has bothered me for far too long!

[Zeealex]

Okay so this is part 2 & 3 of this Pepe Silvia Rant.

Part 2 - The Pepe Silvia Rant about Burke's Background and MOS.

So - I had mentioned this in the orignal post, once again, over a decade of overthinking and speaking to guys who have been in the SOF pipeline means I have a fair grasp of a possible background and MOS.

So first, her original Bio is relatively short, but gives us a little bit to work with:

Quote

Jennifer Burke was born on June 28, 1978. She comes from a blue collar family in Indiana, earning her GED (General Educational Development) diploma before joining the United States Army. Slightly rebellious, she is an adrenaline junkie and enjoys extreme sports in her spare time. She is outspoken and not afraid to speak her mind.

Okay so first and foremost, shes'a hoosier - Original dev interviews (when I can find it I'll link it in) saw them make a slip up here, they said she was from "Boston" - probably referring to Boston Masachussets. However there is a teeny tiny little town in eastern Indiana called Boston. which is more corn fields than people. So for the sake of continuity, let's put her there. 

She also got a GED rather than a high school diploma, now, this could indicate a couple of things:

1. She could have dropped out of high school
2. She may have struggled with her study/low GPA and got a GED instead of a high school diploma
3. Se simply took the more efficient path to finish high school as quickly as possible without the extra "fluff"

Now, it also mentions "before joining the US army" - most likely indicating she joined right out of high school, whether she dropped out early or not.

There is the possibility for people aged 17 years old to join the US army as far as I'm aware, they will usually go to bootcamp and complete their training by the time they're 18. So it's possible Jennifer got her GED at 17 and enlisted as soon as possible.

So, let's go with the dropout option - let's for now say she dropped out and joined the Army at 17.

Personality type
Okay, let's deviate a minute - as deriving her personality type from the bio and gameplay helps to inform the other bits.

So first off MBTI is pseudoscience and I'm very aware of that. It's also difficult to accurately assess this so there'll be a lot of "stereotyping" and dichotomy based assessment and less use of "functions" for the sake of brevity. But - she's rebellious, sarcastic, outspoken and enjoys extreme sports. Cool, that gives a baseline to work from. She's also working a job which requires quick 'in the moment' thinking and more of a sensory input, this job role is quite common among certain personality types, particularly ESTJ, ISTJ, ESTP and ISTP.

Once again that old dev interview I'm struggling to find here helps out. They stated she and Nick Salvatore were designed as very outgoing characters. While Diaz and I think Parker were more introverted, Inferring she's most likely an extrovert, Narrows it down to 2 possible personality types from the above, ESTJ and ESTP. Her rebelliousness and rather outspoken attitude, with the dash of "adrenaline junkie" Indicates her judging capacity is probably a teensy bit weaker than expected of an ESTJ. While it appears during gameplay she has quite a strong intuition (which would indicate possibly ENTP), this has likely come from life experience. So her most likely personality type is ESTP.

https://www.truity.com/personality-type/ESTP

In terms of Ennegram - for the sake of brevity, she is 8w7

This gives us a bit more to work with to determine a bit more about her background later on.

Special Ops MOS

So - The next thing to cover is her MOS both before she joined the Ghosts and when she was in. For reference I'm going to use the 18X MOS codes for SOF. So, Weapons, Comms, Medical, and Engineer (and also Team Lead but that's a given in 2013 so no point in covering that)



First and foremost - her original bio states she's a rifleman, however this may not necessarily be indicative of her true MOS as they're a bit skewiff in GR2 - While weapons sergeant could easily be appropriate, as a woman she would not have been in a combat MOS before hand and probably had a specific skill outside of combat prowess which was useful to the Ghosts, this would have steered her to another specialism. Let's dive a little deeper.

She could have been a medical sergeant, however there is neither a gameplay, or bio indication towards this, she seems a little more eager to make stuff go boom than patch a wound. Probably a gameplay limitation more than anything, but still worth noting. Again, in terms of comms, while she is one of the few characters to have a PRC152 modelled onto her character, there's no indication she is particularly comms oriented.
When looking at engineering, however, in the PS2 version she is heavily involved in missions which involve nuclear weapons or explosives, specifically looking at the Dam and the Final mission. In the Xbox version this appears to be slightly less so, however she is still involved quite a bit in scenarios where explosives knowledge is useful. She is also quite heavily involved in missions involving vehicles (either assisting against an enemy ambush on a convoy, or ambushing an enemy column). Fuel Depots, strategic demolitions etc etc. She is also directly involved in the defence of the medical camp in the Xbox version of GR2 - Developing effective fortifications and defences is an engineering sergeant's remit

This gives a strong "engineering sergeant" steer - with multiple non-combat MOS's that fit a blue collar background which could have quite easily backed her here.

So, I'm going to say she was an 18C - Engineering Sergeant until 2013.

Previous MOS

So we've established she's an 18C - let's look at how she got there. 

Her blue collar background in her original bio can inform some of this a little, the MOS she likely went into was probably aided by that, again there are outliers in this case and it may be stereotypical, but given that we've established Burke as an 18C, an ESTP, and she has a blue collar background, she probably had a bit more of a "hands dirty" MOS. So something more electrical/mechanical than Intelligence MOS's(which more than likely feed to Comms). She probably was not military police given her rather rebellious nature either. Her previous MOS would have had to have been something that would be useful to SOF in this role, something that would have been noticed by the Ghosts as a potential candidate to join. While Intel is out of the window, it leaves just a handful of jobs which may be useful in a special operations/direct action context.

For brevity - the most obvious previous MOS here, given her 18C designation and her gameplay presence, is EOD Tech. She would have had to have gotten a top secret clearance and could potentially have specialised in CBRN ordnance and could have been noticed by working with NEST & SOF on exercises or could have assisted them ad-hoc on a DA mission and made a good impression.

When did she join?

One of the versions of her original bio in the Xbox version (I think) makes note that she has been with the Ghosts for "a number of years" - this "number" could be anywhere from 3 to her entire life. As a reference point, Diaz's Bio states she has been in the Ghosts since 2005, and none of the other Ghosts are referred to as having been there for "a number of years" - so this is probably indicative that she's been there for a pretty long time by the time GR2's events rolled around. That bio would have also had to have been accurate for both the PS2 (2007) and Xbox (2012) versions. So the chances are, she joined before Diaz did.

The Ghosts didn't have to conform to any global USSOCOM standard since their inception in 1994, meaning she could have been there since the very start (doubtful as she would have only just joined the army in 1995 based on the above).

It's hard to place a number here. However, while its a bit of a stretch, I know from my collection of Paraclete body armour, that the style of RAV she is wearing was manufactured between 2003 and 2005. Makes sense as the game was released in 2004/2005. If i remember rightly, that specific run of Paraclete RAV (woodland with weird colouring) was only manufactured in 2003. Chances are if she joined later she would not have recieved that RAV as Paraclete did not have a mass production line in 2003 and these specific RAV colours were made to order. I could be wrong on the preceeding statement.

We could also aggregate this loosely based on the age gap between her and Diaz. Diaz being 3 years younger than Burke, which would give a join date of 2002, but let's put a pin in 2003 as her join date as this is the later date of the two. 

2003 would have made her possibly one of the first women in the Ghosts - Grey joined in 2004, and all other women were 2005 or later. This would have likely she probably started out as very much a "kid-sister" and probably had to fight hard to gain respect, before maturing over the years into more of the "big sister" by the events of GR2 and a mentor to the other, newer female Ghosts.

 
Other Tidbits

• Based on analysis of her concept art, taking her rifle and stacking it up, with a couple of inches margin of error, she is roughly 5'4" - The ingame models are the same height, so this is not an accurate point to measure.
• She is very likely good friends with Joe Ramirez, Alicia Diaz and Nick Salvatore based on gameplay interactions.
• Clearly does a lot of squats and deadlifts 😳

 

Part 3 - The Pepe Silvia Conspiracy Theory on why Diaz and Mitchell keep coming back, but no one else
So there are a vast number of characters in GR and GR2 who are incredibly interesting and worthwhile bringing back into the franchise/remastering. However, Ubisoft doesn't touch them, and instead opts to bring back Diaz and Mitchell every damn time. Perhaps the only exception is Ramirez and Allen who were killed off in the first bit of GRFS.

So I have a theory on this. While I can't find anything on Diaz, I did spot something - Early dev screenshots of the game seem to indicate that Mitchell was originally called "Logan"
I don't have context on this, perhaps this is an in-joke/easteregg I'm missing, but it seems strange to change the name of the main character this late on.

Games where RSE had some input, older characters are brought in (GR2 with Jacobs (Xbox), GRAW 1& 2(Xbox360)) Games that were not developed by RSE (GR2 PS2, GRAW PC (except brown) and GRAW PS2) after that, characters are briefly nodded to and their original likeness is not used in ingame models, or not present at all, with the exception of Diaz and Mitchell.
This is a theory based on one data point and nothing more. But I'm of the inkling, that perhaps, while all other early characters were developed by RSE, Diaz and Mitchell (and future new characters) were not, and were in actual fact, "studio mandated" characters, or Ubisoft had a direct input into their development and as a result, that's why they keep coming back but others from GR and GR2 do not. 

[wombat50]

Wow!

And I had no idea there were so many personality types.

[Rocky]

Yeh, Wow!

You really went after this!!!

[Zeealex]

Thanks both! Haha I swear I do go outside!! I'll rewrite the original bio later today and post. 

@wombat50 yeah man - there's 16 in MBTI and I can't remember how many in ennegram, I think 32.

I've always found personality type theory quite interesting as a concept, I just hate what some people do with it - trying to learn more about it sends you down a very strange rabbit hole of people abusing the type theory to stereotype and stigmatise many while deifying others.

For instance, I'm (supposedly) ENTJ - according to these 'research communities' supposedly I'm an absolutely psychotic CEO type who is cold and ruthless and also has penchant for being a dominatrix or something? 

I don't usually 'rely' on it for that reason in my personal life - because it's inaccurate af, especially when you factor in developmental disorders like ADHD. But it helps when trying to expand a character's biography from 2 freaking lines into something more substantial.

 

[Zeealex]

The Maggie bit is just a quirk I added in for funzies lol

[Rocky]

Really neat, we need to keep the momentum going with this!

[Zeealex]

Thanks!

I'll discuss a bit about the model development for the time being. While the model seems relatively, model-ish it's actually about a year's worth of constantly tinkering and tweaking to get the everything just right.

Head Model
The project started around June/July 2020 time - at this point I had recovered some of my mental ability to face 3dsMax after fizzling out from Game Dev. I was able to create a new base mesh and hair for the ladies in the FEMAL3 project for Arma 3 - I liked it and I wanted to revisit the old project I had started to recreate Jenny before. The original project fell short, mainly from a lack of patience and at that point technical knowledge.

What you don't see in the progression image below is the literal thousands of tweaks to the model and texture files. There were also some pauses (especially between July and January) to map out and create the gear. July and January I was also stuck in a rut trying to analyse the original GR2 Model file structure with a view to convert them.

On January 19th, I had cracked the file structure of the original GR2 models and developed the conversion software - this accelerated progression within this project as I was now no longer working from just two angles of Jennifer's face. I was now able to take renders across many different angles and I was able to analyse proportions and details right down to the shape of her hairline and the slight asymmetry of her nose, also the position of a freckle on her jawline. No, I'm not kidding. January also saw some major tweaks to the face texture, particularly opting to remove the camoe paint (I suck at that) and add a little more colour variation to her face.

February 2021 is when these progressions from the GR2 model begin to become much more apparent, paying particular note to the strengthening of her jawline, and the lightening of her hair - the original textures appeared to suggest she was blonde, informing the second Feb 2021 render, but this was reverted back to a slightly lighter auburn colour in later versions. I also revisited the eye texture here, older versions were very dramatic and unnatural, the newer versions gave her a much more natural hazel colour, which didn't detract too much from the rest of the face. 

In March 2021 - The model file had become too complex for the rendering engine to manage effectively and renders started going a bit skewiff! so, I had to switch part way through, what you're not seeing here is the very amusing lighting errors which were happening. I upgraded my renderer to Marmoset Toolbag 4 and made use of its slightly more advanced skin shader and lighting system for additional finesse.

In March I also revisited the hair workflow and was able to pull out some more photorealistic detail, which really lifted the model out a little bit. I tried to do the same with the eyebrows but they kept coming out a little too dark, and this was muted down by a fair margin.

May 2021 saw the final version of her face, a direct analysis of two orthographic views of the new model and the original GR2 model appeared to show a very strong proportion match. I'm happy with it, but the constant tweaks and tinkering has unfortunately left its mark, particularly on the bridge of her nose.



Original Model outline overlayed over rework - black lines are original model proportions, some margin of error exists due to angles.



The Vest

The vest was created using a photogrammetry workflow - basically taking thousands of photos of an object and letting an algorithm generate the model and texture. I actually used my green RAV instead of my woodland RAV as this was in much better condition and had far fewer quirks and defects. Using the green RAV would also allow me to generate a texture template, to retexture if needed. To facilitate ease of generation - I popped a blue shirt on the mannequin and plates in the vest, and shot on an overcast day.




The point cloud came out okay, I was able to remove most of the shirt and bake this down into the final high poly model


The final model, baked down into a low-poly game ready format was about 1,500 vertices


I was able to remove most of the blue quirks and clean up the texture bake a little bit for the final version.

The pouches were created using a similar approach, both were photogrammatrized first, however the magazine pouches were originally coyote brown coloured and retextured to be smoke green

After that, it was just a case of retexturing and fitting it to the body model.


I shall discuss the body model & weaponry another time as this is perhaps the most significant deviation from the original GR2 character model and I anticipate this will require quite a bit of write up

[wombat50]

I know jack about modeling but it is interesting to see the progression of the head model from Jul 2020 and the very nice end result.
Kudos to you Alex.

[Zeealex]

Thanks Wombat! I definitely take a lot of pride in it given that it appears to match pretty close to the original. I'll be working on the body write up soon, hopefully tomorrow.

[Zeealex]

The body

so while I had spent an entire year getting her face to match the original model - her body model weas perhaps the part that saw the most significant deviation.
Original below:


The Retrospective Changes - Modernising The Look
First and foremost, is that we can obviously look retrospectively on US special forces operators of that same time period (in this instance, 2011) and change up a couple of things based on that - This picture of US Special Forces in Afghanistan in 2011 informed some of the changes:


I'd opted to keep her in a MICH as these still seemed relatively common in the field at the time, but I opted use an uncovered helmet instead of a covered one.
Oakley gloves were also a big 2011 aesthetic at the time, with both frontline infantry and USSOCOM alike using them so opted to switch her out of the Nomex flight gloves into those. Most USSOCOM soldiers appeared to use Peltor COMTAC II headsets around this time too, most likely because of their active noise cancelling capabilities.

The choice of camo was a bit up in the air, given that most special forces operators were pictured in afghanistan, given that Jennifer was supposed to be in North Korea around this time, I opted to keep her with M81 woodland patterns, however the Coyote Brown/Tan colours seen frequently did inform later decisions.

I saught to change her kneepad from the USGI/BPE kneepad (which is super comfy FYI) to a lower profile blackhawk kneepad to modernise the look a bit - and also, changed her boots from those god-awful jungle boots (foot murder) to something else. I originally had her in Lowa Zephyrs (similar to the guy on the right of the photo above) but they looked a bit weird later on, also from experience they're not great anywhere outside of afghanistan, so I changed them over to Belleville Combat Hiker boots.

Character-Informed Decisions & Conveying Character Through Visual Input
One of the changes was informed by the character herself. In other words, I pulled out my pretentious art major hat and put it on.

Studying the character, we know she's a little bit of a rebel, probably not one to conform to a uniform standard given half a chance (not that SOF really do in the field anyway), but looking at the original model, there's almost no suggestion of that. She's very uniform with the other guys, she doesn't really wear anything to make her stand out and convey that she's a slightly more non-conformist character. Nick Salvatore does, he wears a T-Shirt for the entirety of GR2. 

So while I was mapping out her gear, I stopped short of giving her a Paraclete SOF BDU jacket like her original rendition. I opted to instead give her a pullover hoodie.

But, I wanted to convey something a little more subtle in that decision, by making the hoodie "too big". This one's left open to interpretation. Maybe its not hers, and it implies a softer side to her character, a keepsake garment belonging to someone special who she misses back home. Maybe it's a long running joke/prank between her and someone else on the team to "capture" his hoodie. Maybe it is hers and she just really likes oversized hoodies. Who knows, I just think those kind of things are fun to toy around with. But it pulls out that little bit of additional character for interpretation, it doesn't fit absolutely perfectly when arguably it would've been very easy for me to do so, it sags, wrinkles and doesn't fit well, why?

 

Additional Tidbits & The Gun

I added a shemagh in, this wasn't for any particular reason other than for visual complexity, also shemaghs are cool. I also bumped her pistol from her leg to her waist because leg holsters are the worst!


The gun was a very simple design choice in reality - it was a modernization; Block I to Block II with a PEQ-15, eotech and G33 magnifier. I was going to add a couple more things here, like a down-grip and a torch, but I started fizzling out at this point.
The paintjob colours and positioning were informed by her original concept art, i just snuck in a bit of snakeskin for good measure. I also just muted down the diarrhea brown to a tan colour instead.
:


I also shifted her radio from her back to her front (I used a mag pouch because I'm lazy) what you see poking out on her back is a relocated antenna:




Things That Were Kept
In terms of things that were kept, she still uses BDU pants - but these are Paraclete SOF BDU pants as opposed to typical BDU pants - while the original model does use standard BDU pants, the DVD Extras point to her actually supposedly using SOF BDU pants, there are a couple of differences between the two, with the paraclete pants having additional pockets and integrated kneepads (suck it, crye).

She also still uses an eagle SAS MKIII holster, it's just on her hip now instead of her thigh.

And last but not least, she still has her Wiley X SG-1's, similar to the holster, they've just moved, they now rest around her neck, just on top of her shemagh.



The Workflow
The meat of the work for the clothing, (hoodie and pants) was created in Marvelous Designer - this is a cloth simulation program originally intended for fashion design, so basically I'm making a literal tacitcal barbie doll.
I had to define a base body mesh that had reasonably athletic features - I bought one as I frankly suck at those, unfortunately most on the marketplace are relatively "slim" and skinny without a lot of musculature, so I had to make do. For now.

After drawing out the pattern and simulating it will haphazardly rolled sleeves, the big problem with making the hoodie was that it was supposed to fit under a RAV - and as a result the wrinkle pattern will look odd and the RAV will appear to float if the hoodie doesn't appear to "crumple" under it - so I had to get a bit creative and define the outline of the RAV in marvelous designer and make it very elastic to define the hoodie's wrinkle pattern.





When I opted to bump her holster up to her hip, I had to resim the hoodie using the holster's geometry to ensure it sagged and wrinkled appropriately again.



The pants were, honestly, a pain in the backside to do, marvelous kept crashing and my PC hated me the whole time. Similarly to the RAV - I had to define the position of the kneepad in a very jerry-rigged manner so the pants would physically respond in the right way.



Originally they were way too long and it required a lot of adjustment to get long-ish but not horribly oversized but then I started running into issues with the front pockets, very annoying time overall, but I got there.



The boots, similar to the RAV and pouches, were a photogrammetry workflow, I had an old pair of combat hikers lying around which I nabbed and photographed


Full disclosure; after making the boots, pants and hoodie, I fizzled out again - to keep the project's momentum going, I cannibalised some older work, most notably the gun, the gloves, the comtacs, shemagh and the MICH (from my ground branch work) to use here. I repainted the gun and reworked the shemagh to work on this model. Once again I lost a lot of energy just from doing that, and resorted to purchasing the kneepad and holster, I think the eotech was also a purchase.

To top the whole thing off, I unified everything as best I could through textures and material work. all the models got plopped into substance painter and "muddied up" - this way she looked less "clean" and more like someone who had just done a DA mission deep in the mountain regions of North Korea



Posing
There wasn't anything particularly special about the posing, it was a simple rig up and go set up - I wanted her new pose to be similar to the original, but with 1) more trigger discipline, and 2) something for that left hand to do other than just kinda dangle there. I decided to have her hold her helmet in her other hand, something a little chilled out that lets you see her full head, without being an action pose or overtly cheesy.


Looking at the comparison again - the overall design is supposed to still resemble her, but be slightly more modern and complex.


What's next?
ideally I want to revisit this later down the line and make a version that fits more closely to the muscle structure expected of a special forces operator - I want to get a full photogrammetried version complete (of her gear) but in order to do that, I've got some more work to do in the freeweight room.

 

[wombat50]

I can't say enough how  marvelous this character looks and the amount of effort and detail you have put in to it.
I have done a little retexturing of GR models but it was child's play compared to what you have done here.
As Richard Attenborough would say in Jurassic Park, "You have spared no expense."
 

[Zeealex]

Thank you for such kind words, Wombat! ☺️

[AlexKimov]

@Zeealex You made like some promo art poster treyarch/dice aaa game stuff

So, can you tell based on your experience is it typical workflow for industry (photogrammetry or other automation processes, marmoset and other tools) or there are some old fashioned guys and girls who creates everything by their hands, pen/mouse starting with splines, cubes, whatever?

[101459]

I... LOVE IT! Pepe Silva references and all! I get to this from a totally different direction: I went down to maintenance and there's no Janitorial Office! Or, more on topic, I've been revolted by the portrayal of women (and girls) in games for a long time, where too often women (and girls) are portrayed as 'porno toy filth thing', some 'token extra', or more recently as seminal ESG satisfying, over the top, 'monster-masculine' thing that makes Sylvester Stallone look delicate, sensitive, intelligent and even pretty by comparison -- you don't have to look far in Ubisoft games to see all of these really disturbing portrayals of women.

Realistic, heroic, aspirational portrayals of women in games, as they are, in the real world, especially those that aspire to and work extra-hard to get to jobs that have typically been a male only opportunity, are few and far between. In the case of the genre we all love here, women portrayed as military professionals has been especially scant, but that's also becoming the case for men too -- as military professionalism has left the building of game design almost in entire.

One of my favorites, and the first female portrayal in a game that I fell in love with -- in the sense of how I would rather see women portrayed in this kind of game, or if I ever had a little girl this is what I'd want her to see, was Manon Batiste in Medal of Honor: she's tough, smart, attractive, charming, witty, and most importantly -- competent. You don't know if Manon likes girls or boys, and you don't need to, you do know she's a great character, admirable, actually historically accurate in many ways, and in many ways could be regarded as the French female James Bond for women with an added bit more realism. Elea Oberon, the voice actor that DreamWorks hired was excellent, she's feminine, tough and exudes real confidence -- not over-the-top bravado as we get in so many games today from both male and female characters.

Love your lore story Zeealex! I generally don't read character or story detail in games too deeply, but yours, got me intrigued to find out more about Manon Batiste than I previously knew, I'm glad I did, and what a nice surprise to find the background they've written for this woman is just exactly the sort of thing you'd think it might be if you were going to write it yourself, if you wanted to create a realistic, heroic, aspirational female character.

[Zeealex]

10 hours ago, AlexKimov said:

@Zeealex You made like some promo art poster treyarch/dice aaa game stuff

So, can you tell based on your experience is it typical workflow for industry (photogrammetry or other automation processes, marmoset and other tools) or there are some old fashioned guys and girls who creates everything by their hands, pen/mouse starting with splines, cubes, whatever?

Hey Alex, I know CoD MW 2019 used photogrammetry for most of their characters, and I think EA/DICE have used this workflow for battlefield in some capacity for some time (since BF3 I think) Ghost Recon Wildlands and Ghost Recon Breakpoint used Marvelous Designer and Zbrush similar to my workflow on the their characters. I think El Sueno and Cole Walker's face was photogrammatrized though. Ubisoft also used Houdini (a procedural 3D modelling program) for the game's level design.

There are a couple of things which still do start from scratch, mainly weapons these days, as even props and level objects can be photogrammatrized. There are also most definitely games which do their characters manually.

 

1 hour ago, 101459 said:

I... LOVE IT! Pepe Silva references and all! I get to this from a totally different direction: I went down to maintenance and there's no Janitorial Office! Or, more on topic, I've been revolted by the portrayal of women (and girls) in games for a long time, where too often women (and girls) are portrayed as 'porno toy filth thing', some 'token extra', or more recently as seminal ESG satisfying, over the top, 'monster-masculine' thing that makes Sylvester Stallone look delicate, sensitive, intelligent and even pretty by comparison -- you don't have to look far in Ubisoft games to see all of these really disturbing portrayals of women.

Realistic, heroic, aspirational portrayals of women in games, as they are, in the real world, especially those that aspire to and work extra-hard to get to jobs that have typically been a male only opportunity, are few and far between. In the case of the genre we all love here, women portrayed as military professionals has been especially scant, but that's also becoming the case for men too -- as military professionalism has left the building of game design almost in entire.

One of my favorites, and the first female portrayal in a game that I fell in love with -- in the sense of how I would rather see women portrayed in this kind of game, or if I ever had a little girl this is what I'd want her to see, was Manon Batiste in Medal of Honor: she's tough, smart, attractive, charming, witty, and most importantly -- competent. You don't know if Manon likes girls or boys, and you don't need to, you do know she's a great character, admirable, actually historically accurate in many ways, and in many ways could be regarded as the French female James Bond for women with an added bit more realism. Elea Oberon, the voice actor that DreamWorks hired was excellent, she's feminine, tough and exudes real confidence -- not over-the-top bravado as we get in so many games today from both male and female characters.

Love your lore story Zeealex! I generally don't read character or story detail in games too deeply, but yours, got me intrigued to find out more about Manon Batiste than I previously knew, I'm glad I did, and what a nice surprise to find the background they've written for this woman is just exactly the sort of thing you'd think it might be if you were going to write it yourself, if you wanted to create a realistic, heroic, aspirational female character.

for sure! I'm not a woman who considers herself a "feminist" (maybe an aspiring feminist-by-example) but I have been increasingly bothered by female portrayal in media. I've always loved the (90's) disney Mulan story, Terminator 2, Alien, and Miss Congeniality(lol) and I think a lot of that is because those movies had female characters who busted their butts for something bigger than themselves. They weren't written as guys with female genitalia - they had struggles relating to their femininity, and overcame them. In Gracie Hart's example, she was literally trying to be a guy with female genitalia, and it kept backfiring for her, that was her arc, getting in touch with her feminity and seeing that it can be advantageous even in a male dominated career field. These days it starts and stops with the character being a guy with female genitalia, there is no arc they stay abrasive and stuck up. I could go on a rant about different aspects of "culture" and why we need to change the definition of femininity here but I'm not going to, because it gets very political and very dark, very fast.

I think one of the reasons why Burke has caught my eye since childhood (other than... other things 😳) is because she most likely worked her butt off to get where she was, but had the time of her life and she was a respected and valued member of the team - she didn't work against the guys, she worked with them, sure she has her rebellious streak, but it manifested quite realistically.

Diaz was actually the GR2 gal that got my eye first as she was a little more relatable to me but to me she had the personality of a wooden plank - especially when put up alongside Burke who excudes personality whenever she speaks (Jeanie Elias did a really great job). She's also gone from being a ###### hot shot and a bit of a nerd with a lot of wanderlust (her original iteration) to a woman who joined the military to 'prove she can do a man's job' or something - when at that point, she was by no means the first woman in the Ghosts. 
 
So it does make me a bit conflicted - there's a part of me that really wants her to come back in a newer game, but there's a part of me that wants her to just remain untouched and in limbo, save for a mention, for fear her character will be butchered and turned into something she never represented.

Manon Batiste seems like a great character honestly, she's caught my eye a couple of times I'll admit, but unfortunately I've not played Medal of Honor games (save for Airborne, I know, sacrilegious) But she definitely does seem like a character who would be a refreshing change of pace for gameplay as the protagonist.

I think the next part of the pepe silvia rant will be exploring Burke's relationships and interactions with other characters, perhaps GR1 characters too as the timelines intersect.

There'll also be another "rant" coming up in the distant future, probably another few months or so.

 

[AlexKimov]

Quote

I've always loved the (90's) disney Mulan story, Terminator 2, Alien, and Miss Congeniality(lol) and I think a lot of that is because those movies had female characters who busted their butts for something bigger than themselves

So true, main woman character in Terminator 6 and Ellen Ripley, can't even compare them, first one is so synthetic, made by some agitated mind who never met a girl or women, just like that and Ripley, she is just natural and dangerous. Just like any other women on Earth )

Quote

 I could go on a rant about different aspects of "culture" and why we need to change the definition of femininity here but I'm not going to, because it gets very political and very dark, very fast. 

It is political and dark 😉 and always was

Edited December 3, 2021 by AlexKimov

[Zeealex]

So as discussed a little while ago - I wanted to explore in slight more depth what interactions she would have with the rest of her team, and with the peeps from GR1 as the timelines cross and she has likely interacted with a number of them.

This exploration will explore some of the other characters a little deeper, and works on the assumption that the character breakdown earlier in this thread is correct.

1 - Diaz

Diaz is likely the easiest to place, based on the snippets of character she has in the original bio's and the books, reads as definitely an introvert with more intuitive traits (IN--) but it's hard to really pull out whether she's judging or prospecting. She's *most* likely a thinker given her career field and her general cool, detached demeanour, she definitely doesn't take things to heart. In her interactions she does read more as an INTJ - very direct and to the point, whereas an INTP would be expected to be a bit more 'scattered' - i'd have to subject myself to the books again to get a closer idea but for now I'll settle on INTJ.
So this means Diaz and Burke are almost polar opposites of eachother. In just looking at the pair of them without the MBTI pseudoscience that's pretty clear too. As an introvert, Diaz would likely lose a lot of mental energy trying to keep up with a likely very chatty, outwardly energetic and boisterous Burke. On the other side, Burke could perhaps misread Diaz's more serious demeanour and introversion as being upset/displeased at something and either constantly ask if she's okay, or think she's a bit of a "no-fun" hardass.

But, there are in-game references to the two working insanely well when they're together on a mission. Pair that with the two occasionally lightheartedly teasing eachother back and forth, it indicates the two are comfortable sharing a sense of humour. Diaz is a very cunning woman, as is Burke, this is probably what fuels the noted synergy between the two. they both use their brains and experience together with devastating effect. There likely would be a knowledge transfer here from Burke to Diaz as well - Diaz being a marksman/sniper who may stay at a fixed position for a long time, Burke may have showed her how to craft and improvise a few sneaky and rather deadly traps to keep her safe and warn her of incoming danger.

Also add in that they're the only two women in Alpha team, they likely would have spent a lot of time together out in the field. They would've been 'tent buddies' and would've likely had at least a few nights huddling together for warmth to save from freezing their t*ts off. They would've also naturally had eachother's backs on base, and out in the wilds.
At home as enlisted soldiers, unless one of them lived off base or the rules were different for the Ghosts, they likely would've been roommates/flatmates too. So that time spent together would've meant they had a lot more time to get to know eachother than if they were just "in-passing" - they would probably know slightly more personal details about the other that aren't really shared with the rest of the team, such as Diaz's frequent nightmares, and that would've probably led to a more 'sibling-like' bond between the two, where the two understand eachother on a very deep, personal level.

Burke, being older and having joined earlier, would've likely been more of an 'older sister' figure to Diaz. However Diaz, being relatively independent would've relied on her less for mentoring than perhaps other female Ghosts. But Burke would perhaps still feel rather protective, even if this was quietly so. While Diaz may have helped Burke to slow herself down and understand that its okay to need some space to think. 

On the negative side, there's a good chance that a misalignment of "smarts" exists between the two - Both women are probably very intelligent, you kind of have to be to join the special forces and last longer than 5 seconds, but Diaz is by far more academically intelligent than Burke who was likely average at best. This could have contributed to some feelings of intimidation/inadequacy or on the flip side, could have led Diaz to become impatient with Burke's apathy toward such subjects or slowness to grasp what she thinks is a 'simple' concept - this could've led to some slightly more heated discussions or straight up falling out, but they likely would've mended it over quite quickly.  The chances are both would've valued the other's respective intelligence, but there is a large vector for misunderstandings and loss of patience in this particular discussion sphere.
Similarly Burke may very quickly and easily push Diaz a little too far sometimes and this could lead to a rather snappy response or pushing back, but manifestation of both of these two negatives would've likely been few and far between by 2011/2012

Bottom line/TL;DR Burke and Diaz would've been incredibly close and rather sisterly, despite their differences. 
 

[Zeealex]

Okay, so I replayed the Wildlands campaign this weekend for funzies, and something stuck out to me in the initial opening dialogue. 

 

Karen Bowman states that the Ghosts don't officially exist,  so they *still* don't officially exist in 2019. 

 

Swinging back around to my modern heroes point around it being a really silly idea for the Ghosts to do a tell-all documentary about a highly classified mission they were on in north Korea within 2 years. It would've been WORSE if the team had done it when they knew they didn't officially exist, therefore, Revising the timeframe of the modern heroes thing to say it couldn't have been filmed until sometime after 2019. 

 

There would have been way too many questions about Burke and Diaz (such as why the are they there as shooters????) if no information about the Ghosts was available at that time. 

Even if you bring up the (frankly loose) datapoint where the ghosts were *supposedly* broken down and reformed as the GST in 2014, and therefore while the Ghosts DID officially exist, the GST did not, Burke would have still had to have been alive to film it in 2014. 

 

My math skills may be really bad but I'm pretty confident if she was dead in 2013, she couldn't have filmed that documentary in 2014.

I swear guys, I do go outside!!

[Rocky]

I think you maths adds up, don't quote me on it though. 😀

[Zeealex]

okay good, glad my math was right for once lmao!

 

at this point, I'm calling it. The timeline makes no sense otherwise.

 

 

 

Rocky do you know anyone at ubi I can share this rant to? 😅