As with most civilisations, developing from a nude caveman to the king of a wooden utopia in Rust requires a little communication. Voice chat has always been present and correct in the game, but these voices appear to emanate from hidden speakers in the characters’ chests rather than due to the flapping of tongues and the adjustment of lips.
That was then, but this is now. ‘This’ being the movement of player mouths when voice chat is active.
As demonstrated by Rust’s head honcho Garry Newman on Twitter in this terrifying video clip, when players start babbling into a microphone their avatar will start to move their mouth. It doesn’t appear to be lip-synced, but the bobbing of the jawline will certainly add a little something to the conversation. As for those eyes… well absurd was always Rust’s strong point. These more animated facial features will hopefully be shipping in a Rust update very soon.
Talking about Rust, if you’ve booted the game up in the last two days you may have noticed that you’re now offered the option of ‘Rust’ or ‘Legacy’. Legacy allows you to play the version of the game that hasn’t been updated in over half a year, the very version I had a play around with for our Early Access review and that was scrapped in favour of a complete rebuild. Sticking to the regular ‘Rust’ option will load up what has frequently been called the Experimental build, and will allow you to play in the ever-evolving new version of Rust.