Guild Wars 2

Even though I did not play GW1, I still checked out the cutscenes and wow, it was amazing. It’s a good ArenaNet brought it back to GW2

I kinda like these cut-scene. It gave me some memories to Guild Wars 1. I hope they will do these more often.

I love how they use cut-scenes now in living story compared to the close up dialogue screen-thingy that was used in our personal story.

The personal story cut-scenes presented the story in a more “flat” (for a lack of a better world) manner.

The living story cut-scenes give more life to the dialogues because you can see characters interact with the environment. They can make the NPC’s break a chair or table to show that they are angry instead of just telling us that they are angry.

I hope Anet will continue to use this style of presenting the story and improve it in their future living story releases.

Kudos to the dev team for this!

I agree, this way is much better.

For one thing I’ve been thinking for a while that part of the issue with the bad voice acting is actually down to the way every cut scene is presented. Because all you see is two people against a non-descript background you’re already pulled out of immersion and faced with the idea that this is two people reading lines to each other. So when some of the voice actors sound like they’re reading lines in a sound booth with no context (fair enough, they are, but that’s where the acting comes in) it becomes a lot more noticable than it would otherwise be.

But also this way makes a lot more sense. It really hit me when I did the Greatest Fear arc where you blow up a bone ship. Tonn (the demolitionist) was activating the bomb and in that case the voice actor did a good job but it was completely ruined because when he was saying something like “Ok, here we go…wait, let me try again….it’s no good! Something’s wrong!” all I saw was him standing there doing nothing, so the dialogue didn’t make any sense.

Telling a story needs both dialogue and actions. There’s a few ways that can be achieved but when you’re using a visual medium it makes most sense to show us the actions.

I hadn’t really thought about it, but now that my attention’s been brought to it, I agree. The personal story dialogue-screens were an interesting experiment, but don’t beat a fully rendered cutscene.

It’s possible that the distinction is one of resources – the personal story required covering several branching storylines in the time allotted for its development, while for the Living Story, they had fewer they needed to put in and those they did, they knew that players would be watching (compared to personal story, where you’d need the help of friends or at least 30 characters to see every dialogue). Thus, they could afford to put in resources for full cutscenes.

The dialogue screens may have their place in situations that are simple discussions, but when there’s going to be some action in the scene or when there are multiple characters involved… I think going full cutscene does become important.

I completely agree. Now that F&F has kicked into action, I’m loving every second of it. And seeing these in game dialogue scenes rather than the previous (lifeless) dialogues, at least these have brought some spirit and atmosphere to dialogue scenes. I really hope this is a sign that the old ones are out and these ones are in.

I never even noticed that they were doing actual cut scenes until I saw this thread. I’ve only done a couple of the new missions, too.

I definitely like the cut scenes though!

I agree, the cut-scenes are a major improvement to the story telling. This was leagues ahead of the rest of the game, please keep this up.

Guild Wars 1 cutscenes are good, please continue to use this style of story telling from now on.

BobbyStein.2315:

Glad that people like these. We’ll do more in the future, perhaps.

Yay!

I agree. The Cut scenes were great for conveying the story. Overall Ive liked the VO and the dialog alot in The Razing so far.

Agreed 100%. I can’t stand the boring personal story ’’cutscenes’’ I really really like these though!

I’d like to suggest making the future cutscenes, in these minor stories, a little more thematic. Something more like a film rather than some camera rotation that treats the scene like a vista.

I would also love to start seeing some new character animations if that’s ever going to be possible in the future.

1+ for cut-scenes.

Brutalistik.6473:

BobbyStein.2315:

Glad that people like these. We’ll do more in the future, perhaps.

Yay!

Not perhaps do it! people love these or do a combination with the dialog scenes would be possible right

BobbyStein.2315:

Glad that people like these. We’ll do more in the future, perhaps.

Perhaps?! I think you meant to say for sure. (o:

The cut scenes and close-up views both serve different purposes. The latter was way overused throughout the game. I would like to see both in the future.

My only suggestion would be to ease up on the camera panning a bit. Having the camera move side-to-side in a scene where there isn’t much movement – dialogue scenes particularly – feels a bit weird, like the viewer is seeing it from some floaty spying robot or suchlike. Aside from that I do like this cutscene system.

I’m wondering, though, if it can support the lip-sync system that we see in the original GW2 cutscenes? Without proper lip-sync it is missing something important, for sure.

Agree! Now I’m starting to understand, why I think the Personal Story in GW2 is boring, well, more boring that in GW1. Because of this close up dialog. This is the main reason why I found PC pretty boring.

Cut-scenes which we have now in Flame and Frost story, are really great! It’s just like scenes in GW1. It is a very good style. When I saw this cut-scenes yesterday… I can’t tell you how I was satisfied! Guild Wars 1 cut-scene has returned! Yaaaaay!

They are much better than what we have in Personal Story. Much more!

Such close-up dialogs which we have in Personal Story and Story in Dungeons, make you feel like it is…. like two actors are reading their texts. Such dialogs are bad in my opinion. No offense.
It limits my imagination. Because I can’t see anything except two characters, standing and talking.

Cut-scenes…. now we are talking! Just like in GW1, character not just standing opposite each other and “reading the text”. With such cut-scenes characters interact with surroundings.

I’d say, that close up dialog is like you are in the theater, with a wooden decoration. Cut-scenes it’s like movie with special effects.

Close up dialog is good too. But! If it’s… monologue. For example when Rytloc was telling us the story about AC. So it’s not even dialog, it’s cinematic.

Speaking of Rytlock, it was good seeing him tell someone to sod off for once.

I was going to make a post similar to this myself. Glad to see it’s already here.

I love these cut scenes WAY more than the flat dialogue screens we see in the personal story. I was literally giddy with enjoyment when I played my first living story quest last night. These are how I imagined the final dialogue scenes would be when I played all the way back in beta. For me, these scenes are MUCH more immersive than two character flapping their mouths are each other from opposite sides of the screen. When it comes to telling stories in the future I hope that you guys stick with these and trash the dialogue screens that we get in the personal story.

I loved the flat dialogue screens in theory, but in practice they really didn’t work as well as one might have hoped, and certainly aren’t as effective as cutscenes (including “Rytlock explains AC” or “This is what the Order of Whispers is about”-type cutscenes/animatics), particularly in terms of emotional engagement, and seeing cutscenes back here is definitely good.

However they are a wee bit buggy, I found – sometimes with two people in an instance they trigger fine, sometimes they don’t trigger at all ever under any circumstances (requiring you to do them separately – but I only found this with the “watch the scene” stuff, not the missions).

Still yes, awesome, good direction, more please, though let’s have a bit more focus on our characters as well, if possible (I know the differences in size and shape of PCs may make this harder – I presume this is why the “flat” dialogue scenes were used in the first place).

BobbyStein.2315:

Glad that people like these. We’ll do more in the future, perhaps.

I’m curious:

1. Which of the two types of cutscenes takes more work overall?
2. Which is more fun for those making it?

I like the cutscenes. However, I do have a few suggestions:

1. My character does not participate in the cutscenes, and instead only watches passively. Suddenly, I feel as if my character has been rendered mute.

2. The character animations in the dialogue cutscenes are beautiful, and even if the same animations are used in the more “dynamic” cutscenes, they are barely noticeable. This is a shame.

3. All those animations and lines of voice-over seem wasted if they are not replayable once the event ends. (It has been stated that replayability will end once Flame & Frost ends.) This double goes for the personal story cutscenes.
Even if it is not feasible to replay the personal story instances, would it be possible to at least replay the dialogue cutscenes? For example, by adding a replay button in the personal story log on the Hero Screen.

4. For that matter, would it be possible to create a similar story log for the Living Story entries? (Including a way to replay the cutscenes.)

I was really happy to see the cutscenes, as well

BobbyStein.2315:

Glad that people like these. We’ll do more in the future, perhaps.

You, I like you, I like this bit of news.
Good job.

Being stuck in the cutscene without being able to skip it is not fun at all. Why does everyone have to be forced to watch that…thing

I didn’t think it would be that big a deal to see two people talking in a close-up, but man was I wrong. It actually makes a difference now that I’ve seen it. Time for some new animations that actually fit the new freedom – npcs movements don’t have to fit on half a screen anymore!

I’d also love some more cut scenes! Particularly ones that have your character performing actions in the cut scenes. Those were always my favorite.

BobbyStein.2315:

Glad that people like these. We’ll do more in the future, perhaps.

WOOHOOO! Can’t wait for future updates (Especially the final part of the F & F series)

I like where they are going with this as well. My only criticism is that the facial expressions and lip-syncing in the new cutscenes are not as good as the dialogue sequences. Is it possible to improve on these?

I know GW2 is capable of doing really good facial expressions. The best examples are actually in the emotes, those are even better than the dialogue sequences.

But perhaps there are technical or resource limitations to achieving that level of quality consistently? I think overcoming them would be worthwhile.

Lucky.9421:

I like where they are going with this as well. My only criticism is that the facial expressions and lip-syncing in the new cutscenes are not as good as the dialogue sequences. Is it possible to improve on these?

I know GW2 is capable of doing really good facial expressions. The best examples are actually in the emotes, those are even better than the dialogue sequences.

But perhaps there are technical or resource limitations to achieving that level of quality consistently? I think overcoming them would be worthwhile.

IIRC, the dialogue cutscenes used in the Personal Story are actually a higher quality model than the ones used during normal play, so they have the much more complex facial structure to handle the facial expressions and lip-syncing during talking. Could be wrong, but that’s likely why.

Vahkris.6847:

IIRC, the dialogue cutscenes used in the Personal Story are actually a higher quality model than the ones used during normal play, so they have the much more complex facial structure to handle the facial expressions and lip-syncing during talking. Could be wrong, but that’s likely why.

I don’t think so. As an experiment, try some of the emotes from the link in game and look at your character’s face.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Emote

You’ll see that your character can do very detailed and charming expressions. If I had to guess, and I am no expert, I would say the facial expressions for those emotes are baked into the animations, the same goes for the dialogue sequences. But to get that level of quality for every single instance of spoken dialogue in the game, they would have to go through and make specific animations for every single one. Meaning a lot of extra work and additional files to the .DAT. Literally thousands.

Or they could create a new dynamic system that can do it real-time, which is what the new lip-flap system is probably a primitive form of. But creating such a thing would be something new that doesn’t exist in any game I know of.

The first option is probably the more realistic one, but I am sure it is not trivial.

PS – Third option could be do what I mentioned in the first one, but only for cutscenes, and keep the lip-flap system for dynamic events. That would be less of an undertaking.

I too have to agree that the presentation of these cutscenes is much better than the personal story cutscenes. Good work!

Also love the return of actual cutscenes. While I did like the ones we got in our personal story, I like those even better – much more dynamic

I’m gonna sound nitpicky but even though I welcome the new cutscenes immersion I thought the action and dialogues were filmed way too far from the characters and it looked more like a panoramic presentation of the location rather so I still felt disconnected to the characters and action.
It needs closer shots of the characters from time to time and more varied camera angles to bring it more to life ( a bit more like in Eye of the North).
Also some of the animations from the older cutscenes could still be used to make the characters feel more alive while talking from time to time.
Eitherway looking forward to how it will evolve.

I think cut-scenes are great, but i didnt hate the old spoken dialogues.
Cut-scenes are often used in both single players games and newer MMORPGs like SW:ToR, and therefore they are not very unique and/or original.
Cut-scenes will in other words never be something that is truly unique and bring players to GW2.
With this in mind, i’d like to reach out to the developers on the Flame & Frost content and suggest more Concept-Art Cinematics.
These are awesome, truly epic and very original to GW2. Please do not stray from the original concept-art design style. I for one would love a new story/explorable dungeon featuring a concept-art cinematic regarding Braham’s Story or similar.
I was always and constantly looking forward to these cinematics in the personal story, and was dissapointed by the lack of same.

Edit:
VO is pretty much required for these artstyle cinematics. I was so disappointed when i watched the cinematic at “The Battle for Fort Trinity”. I actually thought the missing VO was a bug, so i searched the internet for a while until i realised it was intended. I was sad that day.

i like the epic concept art cinematics when used to explain things from the past… but for everything else these old fashioned cutscenes are good

I just wanted to pop in and say thank you! These cut scenes are sooooo much better then the previous verson, I love them! Well done and please do these in the future as well!

Actually, it’s funny, while the game was in development I thought the “talking head” idea was kind of lame. I felt that it hindered immersion by masking the environment around the characters.

I’m glad to see cutscenes make their way into the game. It would be nice to have the option to skip them (I haven’t noticed an option to) but perhaps there are technical reasons for that.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I didn’t think it would be that big a deal to see two people talking in a close-up, but man was I wrong. It actually makes a difference now that I’ve seen it. Time for some new animations that actually fit the new freedom – npcs movements don’t have to fit on half a screen anymore!

I think a big part of this is the presence of the environment in the story telling. Even if the cut scenes we’ve seen so far mostly take place between static people without a lot of acting or action, losing the environment for that brief moment kind of breaks the story and removes one of the most powerful tools the game has – the environments are absolutely beautiful and detailed. I underestimated how immersion breaking the old style was, the environment in Tyria is often one of the most important characters in the story, whether the conversation takes place in the Lodge, Rytlock’s Office (I’ve been there before but I never felt it’s presence like I did during the scenes from Flame and Frost) or the flaming village of Cragstead, having that environment there during the story telling really gives a lot more power to the atmosphere.

I don’t think GW2 was designed with the robust Machinima tools that WoW has so it might be difficult to do in GW2 what they do in WoW (at least early on, WoW had years to develop the tools to do this kind of thing really well), but given how much more enjoyable these scenes were even just starting out with the idea, I bet we will get some truly great things down the road once ArenaNet uses it more.

I’m so happy to see the return of cut scenes. I love them in the first game! I don’t mind the way the story mode used the backdrops, but it only fit in certain points and limited the emotional conveyance behind the events.

I’m loving this. Way better than the static “story panels”

This is how cinematic should have been since the beginning!

Oh, and when characters talk while walking during and between battles, THEY MOVE THEIR MOUTHS unlike the personal story, in which they seem to be telepathically talking to you like in old games with no mouth animations like Neverwinter Nights.
How awesome is that?

I know it will not happen, but if you made a 20€ pack in the black lion store that would update all personal story quests to these cinematics, I’ll get it. And it’ll be worth it. Even if there was nothing else but people standing still with no particular animations.
At least they would be standing still looking at and talking to each other, instead looking outside the screen at your freaking mouse or at your window.

And don’t you miss this feeling?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etztO87Mero
I know additional animations take always more resources, but GW2 has already lots and lots of great animations we see all the time, from skills to idle movements. There’s no need to make more. Just make them less static.

I love these cut scenes so much compared to just 2 people talking in the up-close scenes. I’m on the side of some on here that have stated that both serve their purpose, and I would love to see what the devs can come up with when making more living story content!

P.S. This is the first thread I have viewed where there are so many responses that enjoy what ANet has brought to the table! I hope ANet takes this, keeps up the great work / evolve it into something great and applies this type of a good change to other aspects of the game where people are not so happy with.

Well the concept art cinematics are indeed still the best … especially if they are executed like the presentation of the orders mixed with IG character models with appropriate animations.

Deim Hunir.8503:

Well the concept art cinematics are indeed still the best … especially if they are executed like the presentation of the orders mixed with IG character models with appropriate animations.

Glad i’m not the only one!

It’s a step in the right direction, but I do believe the cinematography of the cutscenes could be improved.