NWN2 E3 Cinematic Trailer

[Whipporowill]

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Mo ... =462#Files

Well, at least they seem to have decent artists. A few years ago, only Blizzard (and Square Enix) were able to pull one of these off. No explanation of how the splinter winds up in your ass though...

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The scary thing is that it's like a shorter version of the Dungeon Lords intro movie.

 

[Jora]

My understanding is that Obsidian uses another firm to make the cinematics. Feargus talked about it saying that Troika did the same with TToEE.

 

[Whipporowill]

I wouldn't be suprised if that's one of the things that get outsourced to China (and to a lesser degree India), if not now, in a near future.

 

[Volourn]

Meh. The videos last week were much more impressive. What a waste of a 5 minute + download.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

Well, at least they seem to have decent artists. A few years ago, only Blizzard (and Square Enix) were able to pull one of these off. No explanation of how the splinter winds up in your ass though...

Hhm. My reaction was pretty different. I thought it seemed tedious and generic and less impressive than the average cinematic you see these days. The character and monster design are pretty uninspired and lack the flair of Blizzard's stuff (which is, of course, largely lifted from Warhammer) and the direction was kind of blah, mostly cuts / style ripped from the Matrix which makes it seem derivative and dated on the one hand and pretentious on the other. Music was blah, too. I remember how exciting the Warcraft III trailer was -- over half a decade ago -- and I imagine it would still look much cooler not just from a technical standpoint but an artistic one.

Still, judging a game by these sorts of cinematics is silly. What the game does in-game matters much more, especially since in-game cinematics are the only kind that modders will be able to do (realistically).

All said, I'd rate this a B-.

 

[Mr.Rocco]

Jesus, this is almost bad as NWN1 trailer. They should've hired Koreans to do the cinematic. Them koreans make terrible games but one thing they're good at is intro movies. Their crap mmo games like SON and even Lineage2 have really nice movies, almost like motion feature movie quality.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Not really impressive. Seems rather uninspired and generic.
I'll have to agree with Wouldbecreator that the things Blizz makes are more impressive.
Anyone remember the Broodwar Intro? Hell, this was great and its how long ago? 7 years.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

I would say that this is probably somewhat more impressive than the Brood War trailer from a technical standpoint, although it is significantly less interesting artistically. IIRC, the BW trailer's lighting, modeling, and animation would all seem fairly rudimentary compared to what's here, even though they were used to greater effect.

--EDIT--
http://www.blizzard.com/broodwar/popup/download.htm

Here is the '97 E3 BW trailer. It's a technical disaster, though I mean, the animation is almost a decade old, so you can't hold it against them.

 

[Surlent]

The sword is obviously the one that shattered before the oc starts, but who is the guy wielding it ? I didn't know gith had beards.

 

[obediah]

The sword is obviously the one that shattered before the oc starts, but who is the guy wielding it ? I didn't know gith had beards.

It's the Gith-Yankee's arch enemy - the Gith-Hippie

 

[Thrawn05]

If they show me video of the actualy gameplay, I might be more interested in it.

 

[Whipporowill]

If they show me video of the actualy gameplay, I might be more interested in it.

Uh, they did. Last week?

 

[Thrawn05]

If they show me video of the actualy gameplay, I might be more interested in it.

Uh, they did. Last week?

Really, I was pretty busy last week so I must've missed it. That or I saw it, and tried real hard to forget.

 

[Zomg]

I dunno how many points the "impressive cinematics" of old should get. I think there was just some mysterious excitement about seeing those graphics take shape, like an art form congealing. Plus there was some neat-o factor in seeing the same virtual world that you usually only saw in the crude gameplay graphics rendered at the fidelity of imagination. The novelty is gone, though.

I remember thinking the Soul Edge intro was the coolest thing ever. Now that kind of thing is just some shit that forces me to fiddle in the .ini file to stop from playing every time I start a game.

 

[kingcomrade]

That's not always true. Anyone remember the intro to Dawn of War? I watched that thing every god damn time I played the game and loved it.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

Dawn of War had a cool intro, but I didn't watch it more than twice, tops.

 

[Atrokkus]

Brodwar/Diablo2 might have had now seemingly outdated technical specs, but it was technically top-notch at its time. Design and direction-wise, it is top-notch ALL THE TIME, even now.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

I dunno how many points the "impressive cinematics" of old should get. I think there was just some mysterious excitement about seeing those graphics take shape, like an art form congealing. Plus there was some neat-o factor in seeing the same virtual world that you usually only saw in the crude gameplay graphics rendered at the fidelity of imagination. The novelty is gone, though.

I remember thinking the Soul Edge intro was the coolest thing ever. Now that kind of thing is just some shit that forces me to fiddle in the .ini file to stop from playing every time I start a game.

I beg to differ.
I think the technology isn't that far yet to replace well rendered movies with ingame-graphics-cutscenes. Especially in RTS and RPGs, this just looks very poor, like puppet theatre. I won't even elobarate on the total lack of any dramaturgy.
No matter how many times designers say that their ingame scripted scenes are like totally awesome, the truth is they just don't want to spend money on rendered movies.

Oh yeah, the DoW intro was very nice. It's a shame though they didn't create a new one for WA. Greedy basturds.

It doesn't have to be rendered 3D movies always though. The Comics in Max Payne or the half painted/half animated cutscenes in the Thief series were great.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

I've pretty much always prefered ingame cinematics, although in the case of early RTS games, obviously there was really no other option to outgame ones. It looks like Age of Legends will be getting by with in-engine stuff, though, which looks gorgeous.

 

[Oarfish]

HL2 did cut scenes pretty damn well in the engine. Valve have superb animators though and didn't just play idle animations while the yapping was going on, unlike a certain famous RPG developer.

 

[Atrokkus]

Bloodlines's face animation was superb, EXCEPT for the laughter! It cracks me up (heh) everytime I see Jack laugh in the opening dialog!

Damn... I really want to see some quality facial animations in a game... interactive, to boot... ya know, with realistic laughter, teeth-gritting, scowls and shit..

 

[trystero]

Hmmm...

Cinematic was ok... I suppose the bearded fellow had already stolen the sword?

I don't fault the artists neccessarily for uninspired character design. Since this is an FR property, I am sure WoTC insisted on the same sort of style so prevalent in the Forgotten Realms rule books.

- trystero

 

[kingcomrade]

You know which game had the best cinematics of any game ever? Homeworld. What comes in second? Homeworld 2.

 

[Seven]

You know which game had the best cinematics of any game ever? Homeworld. What comes in second? Homeworld 2.

You know with homeworld the "cinematics" were just cartoons, but the in-game cut scenes were something different.