SC2 is going to have only 13 minutes of prerendered cinematics. It looks like we are going to have only intro and outro. For comparision in original StarCraft the cinematics were 20 minutes long and in Broodwar 12 minutes. What do you think about it? Is it enough?
13+ minutes sounds all right to me. I cannot recall Wc3 having more either. And if the quality matches the announcement trailer -> awesome.
I also remember some behind-the-scenes footage from Blizzcon 2009 where they told us how much work is involved in making these cinematics. The Intro for WoW: The burning Crusade took them a year.
SC2 is going to have only 13 minutes of prerendered cinematics. It looks like we are going to have only intro and outro. For comparision in original StarCraft the cinematics were 20 minutes long and in Broodwar 12 minutes. What do you think about it? Is it enough?
It says that there are 13 minutes of pre-rendered cinematics and about half an hour story mode scenes. Given that you supposedly have between-mission decisions to make as part of the story, it makes sense that the between-mission cinematics got replaced with story mode stuff. I don't see why this is surprising or unwarranted.
Also realized that there's only one campaign, and not 3, so we only have 1 campaign opening and 1 closer, rather than 3 of each.
I hardly even noticed the sparsity of pre-rendered cinematics in War3. Ingame cinematics may not be nearly as pretty, but the voice acting is top notch and it really draws you into the game.
A lot of games nowadays place less emphasis on pre-rendered cinematics, since realtime renders can look so good now. And with good reason, I prefer in-game cinematics because they flow with the gameplay, instead of some abrupt cut to a movie in the middle of the game. I skipped all the SC and D2 cutscenes after watching them once, heh.
The in-game rendering is so much more advanced than the original Starcraft that most of the mid-campaign story cut scenes can be done with the game engine.
There's really no need to use pre-rendered for a 1 minute cinematic like the ones in SC1. You could easily just use real-time rendering for those type of cinematics, and I'm sure it would look just as good since the SC1 cinematic quality is a bit outdated compared to the more recent games. Save the pre-rendered budget and time for the real important cinematics.
Well I love blizzard pre-rendered cinematics, so i'll never complain if there are more. 13min combined with in-game cinematics could work very well. But of course none of that matters much compared to multiplayer-gameplay. Still, absolutely looking forward to the cinematics.
On April 11 2010 11:34 Ocedic wrote: I hardly even noticed the sparsity of pre-rendered cinematics in War3. Ingame cinematics may not be nearly as pretty, but the voice acting is top notch and it really draws you into the game.
I hated the in-game cinematics of Warcraft 3. There are few worse ways to destroy immersion than watching a character get killed and seeing their "corpse" phase through the ground. =/
On April 11 2010 11:34 Ocedic wrote: I hardly even noticed the sparsity of pre-rendered cinematics in War3. Ingame cinematics may not be nearly as pretty, but the voice acting is top notch and it really draws you into the game.
I hated the in-game cinematics of Warcraft 3. There are few worse ways to destroy immersion than watching a character get killed and seeing their "corpse" phase through the ground. =/
How is seeing it in a cinematic any more immersion-breaking than seeing it as you play?
On April 11 2010 11:34 Ocedic wrote: I hardly even noticed the sparsity of pre-rendered cinematics in War3. Ingame cinematics may not be nearly as pretty, but the voice acting is top notch and it really draws you into the game.
I hated the in-game cinematics of Warcraft 3. There are few worse ways to destroy immersion than watching a character get killed and seeing their "corpse" phase through the ground. =/
agreed
the graphics were so bad you would really have just preferred the voice-only briefings from SC1
Also I'm not sure what people are talking about with SC2 in game cut scenes looking good. The graphics engine is great for what it is. An RTS game where each unit is meant to be viewed from a long distance and it can run well on older computers. But this is not an FPS game, the in game cut scenes aren't going blow you away.
On April 11 2010 11:34 Ocedic wrote: I hardly even noticed the sparsity of pre-rendered cinematics in War3. Ingame cinematics may not be nearly as pretty, but the voice acting is top notch and it really draws you into the game.
I hated the in-game cinematics of Warcraft 3. There are few worse ways to destroy immersion than watching a character get killed and seeing their "corpse" phase through the ground. =/
How is seeing it in a cinematic any more immersion-breaking than seeing it as you play?
In game, I'm just killing things and not paying too much attention to the story because I'm busy actually doing stuff. On the other hand, the purpose of a cinematic is to forward the story, so more attention is spent on things like graphics. So if I'm watching a dramatic death scene or something, the vanishing body just kills the mood. Something that is an acceptable break from reality for gameplay reasons is not necessarily acceptable outside of gameplay. It's all about willing suspension of disbelief.
I disagree with the last few of you. The Wc3 in-game scenes were great. There was a great flow to the story telling. In Starcraft 1, there would be missions then all of a sudden a cinematic that was pretty random ( the dragoons attacking the terran base ), sure it kinda fit with the grand story, but the particular one you are involved with (ending cinematics were good).
Keeping the story progress through in game scenes lets you stay immersed. I think Blizzard intends for you Spazer to enjoy the story while you are in the game.
It's a game not a movie. They could maybe add a few more minuets of cinematics? But then again, there will probably be lots of in game cutscenes anyway to make up for it. I'm not going to complain. I think they have nailed it.
SC2 is going to have only 13 minutes of prerendered cinematics. It looks like we are going to have only intro and outro. For comparision in original StarCraft the cinematics were 20 minutes long and in Broodwar 12 minutes. What do you think about it? Is it enough?
Possible DVD space issue - 4.7gb of room and cinematics likely to be 720p at a guess
There were more cinematics in the original SC, but think about it, the quality was much lower.
And while most of SC1's cinematics were fantastic, a few of them were pretty throw-away. Like that cutscene of the Norad II crashing, or the cutscene of the Zerg jumping into a random wormhole, or the cutscene of the Wraiths yelling "Yeeeha!"
On April 11 2010 12:41 yomi wrote: Also I'm not sure what people are talking about with SC2 in game cut scenes looking good. The graphics engine is great for what it is. An RTS game where each unit is meant to be viewed from a long distance and it can run well on older computers. But this is not an FPS game, the in game cut scenes aren't going blow you away.
The pre rendered cinematics were always reserved for the more epic moments. Still, there is no such thing as too many epic moments.
About the graphics engine. Blizzard has released a SIGGRAPH paper back in 2008 as reported on TL. It has been Blizzards intention from the start to do a lot of story telling through the normal graphics engine, and worked on making it look prettytight.