A wish: Cutscenes in Living Story

A wish: Cutscenes in Living Story

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Posted by: CharrGirl.7896

CharrGirl.7896

Dear Anet,

The living story you have provided us so far has its ups and downs, but I feel as though I can speak for the majority of people here when I say that the last two updates, especially the latest one is the best so far and has intrigued many players including me:) I see people discussing the current flow of story both in and outside the game, and it feels like you finally “nailed it”.

I talked before about how you present your story, and while it’s definitely getting better, it can get even better. For starters, we are visual creatures, and as such it is very important that all the crucial story elements and its characters are presented in a memorable, visual fashion.

It would be really, really good if we could get proper cut scenes in the future LS updates. Maybe even GW1- style cutscenes. Although they weren’t perfect…I feel as though they told a story better then GW2. Cutscenes in GW2 are really lacking, and when we do get one, it often felt like they were done real fast, with weird camera angles etc.

Cinematic cut scenes is something this game would much benefit from. Or keep the concept art ones, maybe that is even better.

Or, if it’s too much trouble, can we have at least regular cutscenes? I’m tired of seeing everything like a spectator while the NPC-s are talking there. I want to see Rox, Kasmeer, Bro-ham and Majory talk in this fashion:

Look! The character on the right is wearing her armor. How cool would that be? Is something like this being worked on?

Cheers

Attachments:

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Posted by: Samuli.7852

Samuli.7852

+1 for Guild Wars -style cutscenes. I remember always being so excited when a cutscene started in GW1, waiting for what would happen in it. They were almost like from a TV series with the camera changing from one angle of view to another, showing each character’s face as they talked. The living story doesn’t have that kind cutscenes. Some have been close but usually the camera just spins around the characters.

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Posted by: Sousuke.7268

Sousuke.7268

+1 on this, it would be great to have more cutscenes. Albeit I see how they can be more work, it would still be great.

The cinematic cutscenes for Dragon Bash were awesome!

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Posted by: Jornophelanthas.1475

Jornophelanthas.1475

I would also like for all dialogue cutscenes to be replayable, both for Living Story and Personal Story. It bothers me that all the voice acting that goes into the Personal Story in particular will only ever be listened to once, unless you create an entirely new character.

At least the cutscenes in Guild Wars are replayable, because the missions that include them are replayable.

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Posted by: NinjaChris.9340

NinjaChris.9340

The problem with cutscenes (even simpl GW1 style cutscenes) is that thy’re time extensive.
AN is doing better with dialogue recently but adding cutscenes would cost them sevral days for each update, days they don’t have with their development cycles.

I actually prefer staying in control of my character when npcs are talking, especially when they’re not just standing around and are actually animated.

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Posted by: Sevifor.1925

Sevifor.1925

I would also like to compliment the LS team on these little side conversations. I finally feel like we’re getting a story out of the “living story,” and it’s great to see. It’s easy to skip for grind-centric players while being very satisfying for people interested in a more typical RPG experience. I sincerely hope that we can get more things like this in the future (cutscenes would be awesome, but more of the same is still great).

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Posted by: CeruleanRevolver.6085

CeruleanRevolver.6085

I too kinda want cut-scenes to be replayable after you’ve gone through them. Almost like Marjory’s journal, maybe an option to replay certain scenes? Ie moment of peace, advanced warning, and that delaqua investigation piece.

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Posted by: CharrGirl.7896

CharrGirl.7896

The problem with cutscenes (even simpl GW1 style cutscenes) is that thy’re time extensive.
AN is doing better with dialogue recently but adding cutscenes would cost them sevral days for each update, days they don’t have with their development cycles.

I actually prefer staying in control of my character when npcs are talking, especially when they’re not just standing around and are actually animated.

I agree to a certain extent. That’s why I proposed cut scenes like the ones we have already in personal story, in my attachment picture.

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Posted by: Vick.6805

Vick.6805

No matter how the cutscene or dialogue is done, please please please please please always provide a “skip all” or “skip to next” option.

I realize it sounds insulting to the people who work on cutscenes, and I do appreciate that work, but some of the cutscenes do become tedious if you’re completing content on multiple characters, or even just completing it multiple times on the same character.

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Posted by: CharrGirl.7896

CharrGirl.7896

No matter how the cutscene or dialogue is done, please please please please please always provide a “skip all” or “skip to next” option.

I realize it sounds insulting to the people who work on cutscenes, and I do appreciate that work, but some of the cutscenes do become tedious if you’re completing content on multiple characters, or even just completing it multiple times on the same character.

Don’t you already have that option? You have skip to next sentence, or skip entirely.

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Posted by: Vick.6805

Vick.6805

No matter how the cutscene or dialogue is done, please please please please please always provide a “skip all” or “skip to next” option.

I realize it sounds insulting to the people who work on cutscenes, and I do appreciate that work, but some of the cutscenes do become tedious if you’re completing content on multiple characters, or even just completing it multiple times on the same character.

Don’t you already have that option? You have skip to next sentence, or skip entirely.

In most cinematics, yes, it is an option, but not in all of them. IMO, it should always be an option for anything that is repeatable.

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Posted by: Sitkaz.5463

Sitkaz.5463

Hmm… I’m not sure I agree. In some of the personal story quests they skip to cutscenes here and there and it’s extremely frustrating to be fighting and suddenly pulled out so they can show me what’s going on over the wall, or that there’s a dragon approaching. Claw Island is particularly annoying for this. Though I see your side of it OP, I’d rather stay in control of my character, get to walk around as the conversations take place, take a seat, turn my back, take a screenshot… I like being a part of it that way.

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Posted by: Matthew Oswald

Matthew Oswald

Cinematics Lead

Next

We are at the beginning stages of overhauling our cinematic tools. It’s still very early on, so you wont see anything big for quite some time…In the meantime, you should see a gradual improvement in the quality of cut-scenes as the cinematic and writing team strengthen our collaboration efforts.

I should add that custom animations take up a substantial amount of dev resources that aren’t dedicated to cinematics.

The GW1 cinematics team was created for machinama and traditional 3D animation…whereas the GW2 team was built around animating concept art (motion graphics work)

The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

Cinematics/cut-scenes are an important part of our game. We are constantly striving to make them better and push the limits of our current tools in the process.

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Posted by: CharrGirl.7896

CharrGirl.7896

+
The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

This makes me a sad panda Care to explain why?

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Posted by: Knaifhogg.5964

Knaifhogg.5964

+
The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

This makes me a sad panda Care to explain why?

1. It felt less like a conversation more like a load screen (oh hey there that character is swapped out for another..)
2. Only two characters at a time.
3. Takes you away from the world for a moment.

Those are a few. I like that they’re gone (in future stories)!

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Posted by: Sitkaz.5463

Sitkaz.5463

We are at the beginning stages of overhauling our cinematic tools. It’s still very early on, so you wont see anything big for quite some time…In the meantime, you should see a gradual improvement in the quality of cut-scenes as the cinematic and writing team strengthen our collaboration efforts.

Cool, thanks for letting us know.

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Posted by: MithranArkanere.8957

MithranArkanere.8957

Those were annoying. If at least the scene had everyone and camera moved between people talking or something like that they would be better.

As they were they completely broke the pace of the story. You don’t know who’s exactly talking to who, or what are they relative positions to each other while they talk.

I wish they had resources to revamp them in the personal story so at least they are not just 2 characters and to talk to a 3rd one has to disappear, but having them all loaded ad the camera moves between them instead having them appear and disappear, but if wishes where fishes…

SUGGEST-A-TRON says:
PAY—ONCE—UNLOCKS—ARE—ALWAYS—BETTER.
No exceptions!

(edited by MithranArkanere.8957)

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Posted by: Imperatora.7654

Imperatora.7654

The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

aww, I liked those. They had a very specific art style to them that no one else has ever done before.

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Posted by: Matthew Oswald

Previous

Matthew Oswald

Cinematics Lead

Next

+
The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

This makes me a sad panda Care to explain why?

1. Dev resources for the the team that handled the 2 person cinematics were moved onto other teams after launch. I think it was about 3-4 people. We no longer have the resources to support those types of cinematics. Every gesture and expression is hand placed for each line. Even with a library of additive animation, it still took a lot of time to make one.

2. Personally, I was never a fan of the presentation. I think it breaks immersion and takes you out of the moment.

3. We could never paint enough background art for every scenario. You could experience a cinematic at night, next to a cave, but the background is a happy Divinity’s Reach.

4. Line timing was always an issue. There would always be a pause as new characters came in to speak.

5. Technical limitations prevented us from having more than 2 characters on screen at a time. This made for some pretty painful scenes…Characters would pop on screen and jump from left or right breaking an imaginary 180 degree rule.

Sometimes cutting a broken feature is better than leaving it in with issues. By cutting it, it forces us to develop better tools and presentations. Nothing will get better by ignoring something that a large portion of fans dislike. -I know some fans liked them

Hopefully our future solution will include the gestures, expressions, and additive technology from the 2 character cinematics, but play out in the game world with proper camera cuts and lip sync.

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Posted by: Redball.7236

Redball.7236

I’ll be disappointed if this means our characters are going to remain mute from now on.

Cassius Snowstorm – Engineer
Tycho Snowpaw – Guardian
Gandara – [WvW]

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Posted by: Nike.2631

Nike.2631

Hopefully our future solution will include the gestures, expressions, and additive technology from the 2 character cinematics, but play out in the game world with proper camera cuts and lip sync.

Thank you – that was genuinely informative.

Once you have a new system you’re (more) satisfied with, do you think it likely you’ll go back and re-shoot the Personal Story cinematics?

“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

Those were annoying. If at least the scene had everyone and camera moved between people talking or something like that they would be better.

As they were they completely broke the pace of the story. You don’t know who’s exactly talking to who, or what are they relative positions to each other while they talk.

Eh… you do?
The style of dialogue felt much better to me than the cutscenes we get now. It’s like a VN or more extreme like novel: My brain fills in the details. I know where the characters stand.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: FlamingFoxx.1305

FlamingFoxx.1305

We are at the beginning stages of overhauling our cinematic tools. It’s still very early on, so you wont see anything big for quite some time…In the meantime, you should see a gradual improvement in the quality of cut-scenes as the cinematic and writing team strengthen our collaboration efforts.

I should add that custom animations take up a substantial amount of dev resources that aren’t dedicated to cinematics.

The GW1 cinematics team was created for machinama and traditional 3D animation…whereas the GW2 team was built around animating concept art (motion graphics work)

The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

Cinematics/cut-scenes are an important part of our game. We are constantly striving to make them better and push the limits of our current tools in the process.

I kind of wish you hadn’t retired the 2 character talking cinematics. They weren’t perfect but they had their uses. When you do literally just have two characters talking it can be more engaging to see them face to face like that.

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Posted by: JayMack.8295

JayMack.8295

I’ll be disappointed if this means our characters are going to remain mute from now on.

Bobby mentioned the reason our characters are mute at the moment is more of a technical problem they’re trying to overcome.

Here’s his post:

What people don’t understand is that we wrote and voiced a lot of these moments throughout the year. Some scenes and story instances were cut or never implemented in the final releases, which is why this particular story instance was longer than the typical one and filled with lots of exposition.

I sincerely hope that over course of the year there was an opportunity to get the Hero Voice Actors back into studio and allow the players to be more engaged in the climax of the arc than as mute witnesses.

Scavenge some clips from the existing Personal Story library if you have to, but please don’t leave us completely silent in the face of these world altering events!

Funny that you mention player voice. I’ve had a few meetings recently about that. I can’t go into details but I will say that it’s on the list of things we’re looking to address. The current issue is more of a tech one and less of a “we don’t want the player to talk” decision.

I’m guessing he means there’s no current way implemented for our characters to talk (i.e. like the living world characters do) in the open world outside of these one-to-one cinematics (other than audio cues from skills/conditions/etc). Hopefully once that technical hurdle is overcome, our characters will be a lot more vocal.

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Posted by: MokahTGS.7850

MokahTGS.7850

Hopefully our future solution will include the gestures, expressions, and additive technology from the 2 character cinematics, but play out in the game world with proper camera cuts and lip sync.

Thank you – that was genuinely informative.

Once you have a new system you’re (more) satisfied with, do you think it likely you’ll go back and re-shoot the Personal Story cinematics?

It makes very little sense to go back and redo old, completed work. It makes as much sense as George Lucas going back over Jedi and adding in the Vader “NOOOOOOO!” line…just a giant waste of time.

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Posted by: Blitzburger.1576

Blitzburger.1576

Are you guys kidding? This is GREAT news, the stage-like cut-scenes were really poor and lazy looking.

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Posted by: Latinkuro.9420

Latinkuro.9420

We are at the beginning stages of overhauling our cinematic tools. It’s still very early on, so you wont see anything big for quite some time…In the meantime, you should see a gradual improvement in the quality of cut-scenes as the cinematic and writing team strengthen our collaboration efforts.

I should add that custom animations take up a substantial amount of dev resources that aren’t dedicated to cinematics.

The GW1 cinematics team was created for machinama and traditional 3D animation…whereas the GW2 team was built around animating concept art (motion graphics work)

The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

Cinematics/cut-scenes are an important part of our game. We are constantly striving to make them better and push the limits of our current tools in the process.

is this change just for newly developed content, or do you plan to update the old personal story cinematics as well ?
what about dungeon cinematics ?

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Posted by: green plum.7514

green plum.7514

I am very happy that you are moving away from the personal-story type cutscenes. I always though they were really disruptive and unnecessary. It was a feature that took a significant time and effort for artists/animators/voice actors to implement and yet added so little to the game (and actually, took a lot from the personal story experience – at least for me. Made me really hat some characters, including my own).

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Posted by: Donari.5237

Donari.5237

I’m interested to see how they change. The main thing I liked them for (not that I disliked them all that much) was the fluid gestures they’d get my character doing. I got some good portrait shots with hands in natural motion, and had my guild forum avatar for a while with a picture of Donari smiling as he spoke.

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Posted by: Matthew Oswald

Previous

Matthew Oswald

Cinematics Lead

Next

We are at the beginning stages of overhauling our cinematic tools. It’s still very early on, so you wont see anything big for quite some time…In the meantime, you should see a gradual improvement in the quality of cut-scenes as the cinematic and writing team strengthen our collaboration efforts.

I should add that custom animations take up a substantial amount of dev resources that aren’t dedicated to cinematics.

The GW1 cinematics team was created for machinama and traditional 3D animation…whereas the GW2 team was built around animating concept art (motion graphics work)

The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

Cinematics/cut-scenes are an important part of our game. We are constantly striving to make them better and push the limits of our current tools in the process.

is this change just for newly developed content, or do you plan to update the old personal story cinematics as well ?
what about dungeon cinematics ?

I don’t think it would be a wise investment to go back and redo some of the old cinematics. There will be plenty of new story content needing cinematic moments.

If there is time, I’d love to have the option to take a polish pass on old stuff.

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Posted by: Blazing Rathalos.1904

Blazing Rathalos.1904

We are at the beginning stages of overhauling our cinematic tools. It’s still very early on, so you wont see anything big for quite some time…In the meantime, you should see a gradual improvement in the quality of cut-scenes as the cinematic and writing team strengthen our collaboration efforts.

I should add that custom animations take up a substantial amount of dev resources that aren’t dedicated to cinematics.

The GW1 cinematics team was created for machinama and traditional 3D animation…whereas the GW2 team was built around animating concept art (motion graphics work)

The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

Cinematics/cut-scenes are an important part of our game. We are constantly striving to make them better and push the limits of our current tools in the process.

is this change just for newly developed content, or do you plan to update the old personal story cinematics as well ?
what about dungeon cinematics ?

I don’t think it would be a wise investment to go back and redo some of the old cinematics. There will be plenty of new story content needing cinematic moments.

If there is time, I’d love to have the option to take a polish pass on old stuff.

On thing to note there however: even though it is the “old” content, it’s still the same thing pretty much every single new player will encounter, or whenever a player creates a new character of course. My point being: no matter how much better the new content gets, it won’t automatically improve the experience for new players. In fact later on, especially if you ever expand the personal story (with these new improvements), the old portion might start sticking out like a sore thumb more and more.

Then again, I’m not Arenanet, and everything in
the above post could be complete and utter nonsense.

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Posted by: Cliff.8679

Cliff.8679

We are at the beginning stages of overhauling our cinematic tools. It’s still very early on, so you wont see anything big for quite some time…In the meantime, you should see a gradual improvement in the quality of cut-scenes as the cinematic and writing team strengthen our collaboration efforts.

I should add that custom animations take up a substantial amount of dev resources that aren’t dedicated to cinematics.

The GW1 cinematics team was created for machinama and traditional 3D animation…whereas the GW2 team was built around animating concept art (motion graphics work)

The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

Cinematics/cut-scenes are an important part of our game. We are constantly striving to make them better and push the limits of our current tools in the process.

This is fantastic news. I agree, the personal story method of handling the cutscenes was always pretty weak. Very excited to see what you guys can do with the new tools. Will there ever be a blog post or anything down the line giving us some more details about how the new system will handle cutscenes? Maybe even before the first release that uses it so we can know to expect it.

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Posted by: CharrGirl.7896

CharrGirl.7896

+
The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

This makes me a sad panda Care to explain why?

1. Dev resources for the the team that handled the 2 person cinematics were moved onto other teams after launch. I think it was about 3-4 people. We no longer have the resources to support those types of cinematics. Every gesture and expression is hand placed for each line. Even with a library of additive animation, it still took a lot of time to make one.

2. Personally, I was never a fan of the presentation. I think it breaks immersion and takes you out of the moment.

3. We could never paint enough background art for every scenario. You could experience a cinematic at night, next to a cave, but the background is a happy Divinity’s Reach.

4. Line timing was always an issue. There would always be a pause as new characters came in to speak.

5. Technical limitations prevented us from having more than 2 characters on screen at a time. This made for some pretty painful scenes…Characters would pop on screen and jump from left or right breaking an imaginary 180 degree rule.

Sometimes cutting a broken feature is better than leaving it in with issues. By cutting it, it forces us to develop better tools and presentations. Nothing will get better by ignoring something that a large portion of fans dislike. -I know some fans liked them

Hopefully our future solution will include the gestures, expressions, and additive technology from the 2 character cinematics, but play out in the game world with proper camera cuts and lip sync.

Yeah of course I never meant to imply that those cut scenes in personal story were the holy pinnacle of storytelling, even if it turned out that way. But even if something isn’t as good as you planned it to be, in my opinion it still beats the current “bystander” type of storytelling where all the important characters in the current LS are treated as mere NPC-s , without any lip sync, animations and gestures. I guess that’s what I’ve been missing, and want to see.

Hopefully you can deliver even better way of showing character’s emotions and we’ll be rooting for ya Especially if we can see some of the new stuff in the LS season 2.

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Posted by: ChadRiley.6290

ChadRiley.6290

Wow that’s too bad, the conversation cinematics were entertaining and at least helped to make me feel like the story was about me; (at least until the Treherne Timeshare) whereas the Living Story is about everyone else.

And I liked the personalities of our mentors and other NPCs displayed during them. Now it’s going to be a skeleton story and new players won’t give a crap about the NPCs that come and go in their personal story.

Edit: Or am I a moron? Are the cutscenes being removed from the personal story? Or just not used in the living one? If they’re just not being used going forward I redact a portion of my disappointment.

(edited by ChadRiley.6290)

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Posted by: Blazing Rathalos.1904

Blazing Rathalos.1904

Wow that’s too bad, the conversation cinematics were entertaining and at least helped to make me feel like the story was about me; (at least until the Treherne Timeshare) whereas the Living Story is about everyone else.

And I liked the personalities of our mentors and other NPCs displayed during them. Now it’s going to be a skeleton story and new players won’t give a crap about the NPCs that come and go in their personal story.

Edit: Or am I a moron? Are the cutscenes being removed from the personal story? Or just not used in the living one? If they’re just not being used going forward I redact a portion of my disappointment.

You are not in fact a moron, but indeed, nobody is talking about removing anything, they’re just not using them going forward. Even though I would personally prefer it if they eventually change these into a different kind of cutscene, they wouldn’t even have to change the voise recordings. But I do of course realise the tremendous amount of work this would take. Maybe they could do this someday in the future, at the point that it really starts holding back the rest of the game.

Then again, I’m not Arenanet, and everything in
the above post could be complete and utter nonsense.

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Posted by: Sousuke.7268

Sousuke.7268

Thanks for the feedback Matthew. Are you guys, by any chance, considering Mass Effect 2 style cutscenes? Those had just the right level of interactivity and presentation imho.

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Posted by: afoot.6932

afoot.6932

We are at the beginning stages of overhauling our cinematic tools. It’s still very early on, so you wont see anything big for quite some time…In the meantime, you should see a gradual improvement in the quality of cut-scenes as the cinematic and writing team strengthen our collaboration efforts.

I should add that custom animations take up a substantial amount of dev resources that aren’t dedicated to cinematics.

The GW1 cinematics team was created for machinama and traditional 3D animation…whereas the GW2 team was built around animating concept art (motion graphics work)

The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

Cinematics/cut-scenes are an important part of our game. We are constantly striving to make them better and push the limits of our current tools in the process.

Thanks for the news—exciting! It definitely sounds like the cons outweigh the pros at this point for the two-person cinematics. I hope that future cinematics will have improved facial gestures and emotional expression, and that the awesome concept art from the stage-like cinematics can still be worked in somehow. And most importantly, I hope we get to hear our characters speak again in the future—and that we get to choose what they say!

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Posted by: Alexander.4827

Alexander.4827

I’m a huge fan of this idea. Ever since alpha I’ve been requesting this. I really appreciate all the work that went into the current cinematics (those animations are amazing, my god) but the weird concept art background was immersion breaking, I agree. That, along with the placement of the characters was a huge step down overall from GW1 in my opinion. I still remember some of those big scenes in GW1 even if they weren’t perfect. It was cool seeing that stuff happen in the environment.

The other thing I really hope to be implemented are the multiplayer cutscenes. One of my favorite, favorite things from the GW1 cutscenes had to be seeing my friends in the background along with me. Even in silence it was awesome just to see them be there.

Thanks for sharing this news!

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Posted by: Immensus.9732

Immensus.9732

We are at the beginning stages of overhauling our cinematic tools. It’s still very early on, so you wont see anything big for quite some time…In the meantime, you should see a gradual improvement in the quality of cut-scenes as the cinematic and writing team strengthen our collaboration efforts.

I should add that custom animations take up a substantial amount of dev resources that aren’t dedicated to cinematics.

The GW1 cinematics team was created for machinama and traditional 3D animation…whereas the GW2 team was built around animating concept art (motion graphics work)

The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

Cinematics/cut-scenes are an important part of our game. We are constantly striving to make them better and push the limits of our current tools in the process.

WELL kittenING DONE!!!!!!! I’m so happy that I will fully enjoy the personal story with this change!!!

Mesmers Shall Rule Tyria!

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Posted by: CHIPS.6018

CHIPS.6018

I am not an expert in cut scenes. But good cut scenes are generally in three categories:

Emotional – focus on drawing feeling from the players.
e.g.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7I3ILw_hqA

Epic-Some crazy huge event going on to “awe” the players. The players are often just a small part of a much larger event.
e.g.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-e1MQnh3V0

Action-The players are “playing” the cut scene without realizing that it is a cut scene.
e.g.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WAu_xaCPG0

Chipsy Chips(Necromancer) & Char Ashnoble(Thief)
The Order of Dii[Dii]-SBI→Kaineng→TC→JQ
Necro Encyclopedia-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrAjJ1N6hxs

(edited by CHIPS.6018)

A wish: Cutscenes in Living Story

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Posted by: deepwinter.9015

deepwinter.9015

There will be plenty of new story content needing cinematic moments.

Matthew:

Will future cinematic moments included the player characters speaking as well? One thing I’ve missed from the Living Story is Jennifer Hale’s voice acting (I play a sylvari female).

As someone “in the industry,” I know how expensive voice acting can be, but I’d like to hope that we’ll once again hear our characters interacting with the world – instead of being the mute protagonists.

Azhandris – Sylvari Thief
Tarnished Coast

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Posted by: Brutal Arts.6307

Brutal Arts.6307

Please include a SKIP button.

You have gotten what you paid for, all that remains is biweekly gemshop pushing.

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Posted by: Nike.2631

Nike.2631

It makes very little sense to go back and redo old, completed work. It makes as much sense as George Lucas going back over Jedi and adding in the Vader “NOOOOOOO!” line…just a giant waste of time.

It makes absolute sense to have the binding narrative thread you try to ram every new customer/player through to be a showcase of current/best technology, rather than condemn them to 80+ hours of experience you now feel is sub-par.

Its more akin to digitally remastering the imagery than to tinkering with the dialogue.

“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.

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Posted by: Edmo.7159

Edmo.7159

We are at the beginning stages of overhauling our cinematic tools. It’s still very early on, so you wont see anything big for quite some time…In the meantime, you should see a gradual improvement in the quality of cut-scenes as the cinematic and writing team strengthen our collaboration efforts.

I should add that custom animations take up a substantial amount of dev resources that aren’t dedicated to cinematics.

The GW1 cinematics team was created for machinama and traditional 3D animation…whereas the GW2 team was built around animating concept art (motion graphics work)

The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

Cinematics/cut-scenes are an important part of our game. We are constantly striving to make them better and push the limits of our current tools in the process.

is this change just for newly developed content, or do you plan to update the old personal story cinematics as well ?
what about dungeon cinematics ?

I don’t think it would be a wise investment to go back and redo some of the old cinematics. There will be plenty of new story content needing cinematic moments.

If there is time, I’d love to have the option to take a polish pass on old stuff.

On thing to note there however: even though it is the “old” content, it’s still the same thing pretty much every single new player will encounter, or whenever a player creates a new character of course. My point being: no matter how much better the new content gets, it won’t automatically improve the experience for new players. In fact later on, especially if you ever expand the personal story (with these new improvements), the old portion might start sticking out like a sore thumb more and more.

I agree… I do not know if personal story will be expand, but one day we will have a new race and it will need to have a personal story that will probably be much better than other races because of cutscenes.

This affects the first impression of new players, since we have these “2 characters olny” cutscenes in the tutorial area.

I believe that if one day the personal story cutscenes are updated to someting like GW1, many will make an alt to see the whole story again.

If we have a continuation of the personal story and every one have to kill Zaithan to see new stories, then i suggest that old stories become compacted, remove some quests, it would be difficult to make an alt and have to play it again to see new things with him. Would be less scenes to modify If quests are removed.

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Posted by: Fhane.4762

Fhane.4762

So does that mean we get to hear our characters speak again? Correct me if im wrong, but i don’t think if our character spoke in any of the living world stories. I realize it gets complicated when it comes to scheduling appointments for every race, male and female voice actors, but still… sometimes i just feel like my character whom i’ve known from personal story just isn’t there…

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Posted by: BobbyStein

Previous

BobbyStein

Guild Wars 2 Narrative Lead

I’ll be disappointed if this means our characters are going to remain mute from now on.

Bobby mentioned the reason our characters are mute at the moment is more of a technical problem they’re trying to overcome.

Here’s his post:

What people don’t understand is that we wrote and voiced a lot of these moments throughout the year. Some scenes and story instances were cut or never implemented in the final releases, which is why this particular story instance was longer than the typical one and filled with lots of exposition.

I sincerely hope that over course of the year there was an opportunity to get the Hero Voice Actors back into studio and allow the players to be more engaged in the climax of the arc than as mute witnesses.

Scavenge some clips from the existing Personal Story library if you have to, but please don’t leave us completely silent in the face of these world altering events!

Funny that you mention player voice. I’ve had a few meetings recently about that. I can’t go into details but I will say that it’s on the list of things we’re looking to address. The current issue is more of a tech one and less of a “we don’t want the player to talk” decision.

I’m guessing he means there’s no current way implemented for our characters to talk (i.e. like the living world characters do) in the open world outside of these one-to-one cinematics (other than audio cues from skills/conditions/etc). Hopefully once that technical hurdle is overcome, our characters will be a lot more vocal.

That’s mostly correct. Right now, the only time your character speaks “in the world” is when certain conditions are met, such as when you’re low on health, you level up, close a conversation with a merchant, etc.

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Posted by: BatsLoveCaves.5768

BatsLoveCaves.5768

The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

That’s unfortunate. I have really loved all of the personal story cut scenes, despite the fact that they might not be “perfect”. The pretty concept art in the backgrounds and character animations were a breath of fresh air.

To be honest, I never noticed any of the problems you listed (sometimes I saw discrepancies between the written dialogue and spoken, but that’s all). I always thought the cut scenes were a vast improvement over the way the first game handled cinematics.

I hope whatever tools you develop in their stead are just as impressive.

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Posted by: Hammerguard.9834

Hammerguard.9834

Why do most problems in this game always come down “technical limitations”? That’s all I hear anymore.

… I still want tengu.

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Posted by: CHIPS.6018

CHIPS.6018

There will be plenty of new story content needing cinematic moments.

Matthew:

Will future cinematic moments included the player characters speaking as well? One thing I’ve missed from the Living Story is Jennifer Hale’s voice acting (I play a sylvari female).

As someone “in the industry,” I know how expensive voice acting can be, but I’d like to hope that we’ll once again hear our characters interacting with the world – instead of being the mute protagonists.

They will need different voices for each personality type. That’s 13 different types, male and female. They might also need to add different ones for each profession and each race. It can add up quickly, when this is done on a per story, per release basis.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Personality

Chipsy Chips(Necromancer) & Char Ashnoble(Thief)
The Order of Dii[Dii]-SBI→Kaineng→TC→JQ
Necro Encyclopedia-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrAjJ1N6hxs

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Posted by: Immensus.9732

Immensus.9732

We are at the beginning stages of overhauling our cinematic tools. It’s still very early on, so you wont see anything big for quite some time…In the meantime, you should see a gradual improvement in the quality of cut-scenes as the cinematic and writing team strengthen our collaboration efforts.

I should add that custom animations take up a substantial amount of dev resources that aren’t dedicated to cinematics.

The GW1 cinematics team was created for machinama and traditional 3D animation…whereas the GW2 team was built around animating concept art (motion graphics work)

The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

Cinematics/cut-scenes are an important part of our game. We are constantly striving to make them better and push the limits of our current tools in the process.

is this change just for newly developed content, or do you plan to update the old personal story cinematics as well ?
what about dungeon cinematics ?

I don’t think it would be a wise investment to go back and redo some of the old cinematics. There will be plenty of new story content needing cinematic moments.

If there is time, I’d love to have the option to take a polish pass on old stuff.

I take back what i said for a moment i thought you`ll improve the personal story, i missunderstood. oh well at least the new content will be better which is good

Mesmers Shall Rule Tyria!