Bringing Emotions Into Gameplay in Lobo

One of my long-time obsessions while making this game has been imprinting emotions onto characters, not just in cinematics, but during actual gameplay. It took a lot of experimentation to find a workflow that felt right, especially since I don’t have actors or mocap animations.

I ended up turning that limitation into an advantage. Using a simple emotion library in Unreal Engine, I built a Blend Space with the emotions I use the most, like happiness, sadness, anger, and more. That lets me trigger emotional expressions dynamically during gameplay whenever I need them. In the video, for example, you can see an anger expression during an attack.

These are small details, but as they say, the devil is in the details for a reason. You might not consciously notice them, but your brain does, and they add something subtle but meaningful. Since all my characters share the same skeleton, this system easily scales to every character, especially enemies.

Emotions are one of the most human things we connect with, so adding them felt important. It creates an extra layer that helps players relate to the characters in ways that go beyond mechanics.