Generally, how an NPC reacts to the player, is how an NPC will react to another NPC. If an NPC walks into Astro and there's a greeter, he'll greet them just like a player would be greeted. David talks about a couple being animated where they're debating on a ship and you can tell their story about how they want "this" but they need "this" by their animations.
Definitely. They're working on trying to get the base in now, but they're excited to work on those types of things where you can create some unique animations based off their character whether its wealthy areas and how they act or in the slums, you'll notice a difference.
There's so many emotes that he wants to do personally. They have a base set in there now and they'll likely add more, but that's up to design.
Probably toilet animations. They shot A LOT of toilet animations in Austin. They also have an emergency exit animation for toilets.
It depends. There's many different ways you can do it. Traditional animators say its better to do everything by hand, especially if you're going for a stylized look, but on a project like this you have to take a look at practicality and what works best time wise. If you wanted to mo-cap a centipede that would be fascinating to watch, but you just have to take some shortcuts that look the same, but underneath allow you to create less work for yourself.
They take cues from the environment and each room has its own mood so you can tell where you are based off where you are without having to see a sign.
Performance, making everything efficient as possible. They have a budget and have to stick it. Making sure that shadow calls don't overlap or are too many for one object.
Eventually yes, if you walked into a white room, it would reflect onto the surfaces around you.
He's not 100% sure. The goal is to have it, once item 2.0 comes online they'll really overhaul the lights in how they function among other things. So if you know enemies are in a room you can through an EMP to shut off the lights and disrupt their Night vision or thermal goggles.