Guild Wars 2

Thanks guys, we were waiting to see these pop up. I don’t think we’d want to fix it…even if we could.

A lot of character/creature rigs share the same animation names. A jump or swim animation may be called the same on all races, or other creatures such as a quaggan. We use a placeholder rig for your character, and call up those different animations within the Cameo timeline.

If you are transformed into something that doesn’t have that animation name on its rig, then you can get some pretty messed up results…as the the animation is getting applied to bones that don’t exist.

Anyway, its your story, who are we to judge if you want to experience the world as a dining room chair?

Latinkuro.9420:

Matthew Oswald.3082:

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.

CharrGirl.7896:

Matthew Oswald.3082:

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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.

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.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Will this ever play in-game? Like by talking to Dessa or something?

Yes, it will play the first time a new player enters the Fractals…and it will be watchable by triggering it within the hub. It also includes a little VO from Dessa that’s not included in the trailer.

(Somewhat related) There is a plan to allow people to playback cinematics through some sort of story UI. This should help people catch up on what they missed.

draconx.3102:

There are some pretty exciting cinematics coming in the future…I hope you guys will receive them as well as the Fractals piece.

I just hope that if/when you add more cinematics to the game you will take care and make them

(a) not pop up in the middle of a fight / action sequence causing you to die instantly when the cinematic ends (*cough*volcanic fractal*cough*)
(b) be skippable so we don’t have to wait 5 minutes for Mrs. Lionguard to explain to Caithe how much help they need dealing with lolscarlet over and over and over again.

(a) I cant answer this as it is a design issue with our scripting system. The cinematics team only handles a few of the flyby-camera-style cinematics. I can take a look at this-
(b) all our cinematics have the ability to be skip-able. Sometimes someone forgets to flag a cinematic as skippable :0

When a scene is scripted out there may be triggers that NEED to happen in order for a set of events to play out the way they were meant to be. If we allow players to skip this type of cinematic, then it can unravel scene, spawns, and such. I’d love to have a fix for this…but players may have to bare with it for the time being. I feel your pain.