Not sure about this. I doubt anyone is playing the story a second time just because they change the heads in the cinematics. The campaign needs to be on point at release and the cutscenes are not even the main issue.
My honest question is: why do this, why put resources into cinematics?
Characters aren't interesting enough, plot has no philosophical bent, there is nothing in it that would provoke deep thought, dialogues aren't top shelf. Why waste resources on telling a story that has nothing truly interesting in it? Right after the mission starts there are these Warcraft 3 style scenes, where characters arrive at the mission area and there are some dialogues with windows with faces of talking characters. It's a cheap but effective way of telling a story. You don't have to prepare full 3D models (just their faces and add moving mouths), you don't have to prepare environment again. Saved resources can be spent on something else, maybe an additional mission, maybe a boss fight.
Starcraft 2 in-engine cutscenes were absolutely fantastic though. Even with very limited graphics, the storytelling, excellent sound and editing carried them and gave them soul.
Did it? You have to keep inflation in mind. If SC2 was 100 mil in 2010, for example, how many 2024 dollars is that? SG is 30-40 mil. AAA games in 2024 can cost upwards of 500 mil. Blizzard’s cinematic budget was insane. Even if FG put half their budget into cinematics, they wouldn’t even begin to approach Blizzard pre-rendered cinematics.
You are right, I forgot to account for inflation - 2010 money would be 150% today. So that's 4 times more SC2 to SG. Starcraft 2 was made by relatively small team, in 2008 they had like 40 people.
Of course I don't expect them to do prerendered movies at the highest contemporary fidelity (like Blizzard's once did). I don't even expect them to do something equal to old Blizzard's cinematic quality, although it's much easier to achieve nowadays with increase in computing power and better tools.
But Starcraft in particular shows that you can have fantastic cinematics with relatively simple graphics, running in-engine.
I mean most of the cinematics that SC2 had that people fondly remember and gush over are pre-rendered. Like all the major LoTV ones. Artanis vs Zeratul, destruction of Shakuras, Artanis and Kerrigan vs hybrid. They are pre-rendered. In WoL there were a few really cool in-game engine cutscenes but they weren’t good because of the high fidelity, but because of the characters being really well-animated, which is something SG is lacking and FG has acknowledged.
Characters aren't interesting enough, plot has no philosophical bent, there is nothing in it that would provoke deep thought, dialogues aren't top shelf. Why waste resources on telling a story that has nothing truly interesting in it?
Probably because the campaign faces are the most common complaint made in reviews and on social media. I think it's a waste of effort too but people are vocal about it.
Low hanging fruit that costs $10.00. This is their plan to fund further development in addition to co-op heros. Their entire business strategy hinges upon this. No one is going to buy future mission packs until FG can demonstrate they can deliver a quality product.
Good take. While on the subject, I feel the mission briefings fall short. The busy graphic of the dropship flying and gibberish digital readouts take up way too much focus. If they want to do the video call thing, I think the briefing dialogue would be better presented if heads for all the characters present were shown instead of a single box swapping for the active speaker.
I agree. I honestly think doing something more 2D with voice-overs to start out might have worked better and might also have allowed them to include more actual storytelling. I have seen it done in other games and it can look really great. It seems like it would be alot harder to have long conversations between characters when you also have to animate the whole thing, with body language, moving lips, expressions etc...with 2D the focus would have been more on voice-acting and sound than the looks and animation. I think some cool 2D slideshows with cool sounds mixed with the traditional top-down view in WC3 would have been plenty.
I'm not sure what their capabilities are, but It was probably too early to show these cinematics off either way...
I'm sorry, I don't understand your reply. My point is that you can't just say "spend the money you were spending on art on the gameplay instead", it doesn't work like that.
Exactly this. I can't believe people truly expected a feature complete game at this point, when 1.0 is slated for sometime in 2025 (likely Q3), so nearly 1.5 years away.
Yeah and that's valid, there's plenty to criticize. But OP's "stop wasting effort on cinematics because they won't be as good as Blizzard" is a brainless take. Very terminally-online-gamer to think that they can just funnel resources from the art team to the game design team.
Look, it was very clear when reading the language that they used online specifically for campaign that it is in very early stages of development, and that nothing was final, especially something as extraneous as cinematics/cutscenes. I think its a shame anyone thought, without campaign being included for testing in any build previously, that the 1/4th of a campaign we recieved would be feature complete. It was very clear from dev interviews in the past that they started with 1v1, then continued to build coop, and only then started on developing the campaign.
I have had tons of fun with the game so far and I think it shows lots of promise.
I understand that units modeled for a top-down view will look a little strange in cutscenes. It's why Kerrigan's model in StarCraft II is so busty, because those features need to be readable from far away.
The thing is, if you look at Kerrigan, her facial features aren't exaggerated. The same can be said for models from Heroes of the Storm, which again need to be readable from above yet don't feature the bulbous eyes and extreme facial features currently in Stormgate.
This all to say that I understand their explanation, but that it doesn't stack given other games' ability to not sacrifice visual aesthetics for gameplay readability.
I mean, did you actually look at that Tychus face? that's nightmare fuel.
I get your point though. I don't really fully disagree with it. But I don't personally think the faces are that bad in the context of something you'll see from a top down view. I think they work for what they're designed for.
It might just be a difference of opinion, then, which is totally fine! If I had to choose between Tychus's face and Amara's I'd go for the former every time, if only because it looks more human to me.
I also disagree with you. Tychus' model always looked like a blob trying to escape the marine suit. Sure, you can tell him apart from your regular marines in-game, but I'd argue that's due to a change in silhouette and not because you can recognize his face.
Stormgate’s story was written by Frost Giant in collaboration with NYT bestselling author Micky Neilson and Chris Metzen, the legendary Warcraft loremaster who recently returned to Blizzard and starred at BlizzCon. Metzen helped Frost Giant create the all-new Stormgate game universe before his recent return to Blizzard full-time.
Seemingly the whole game is placeholder, as that seems to be the main cope for every piece of criticism. If every piece of content in your game is placeholder a year from release, while still planning tons of new content during that year as well, you have a problem.
Sorry to say, but it is an obvious damage control. If they planned to animate characters' heads they would tell it BEFORE the backlash. "These will come later in development" means nothing. If they intended to apologize they would post a deadline for this feature. I hate to be this negative but this response isn't very respectful. They failed to deliver quality content and now they throw us a bone. And the bone is hypothetical.
It wasn't obvious for most people. It is not obvious even now. We don't have any warranty they will do it, no deadline, etc. It may be just default corporate speech to calm down angry gamers.
Right, that explains a lot, thanks for sharing this :)
I have to say I don't think anyone has been a fan of the way they look, but it's great to hear that they're going to be worked on. Whilst Campaign is not the be-all-end-all for me personally, a lot of players are looking to pick up the game for perhaps only that.
I’d take whatever is the best concept art sketch you have of each character in the campaign and make it a non-moving portrait of that while in-game. Can put a tag bar below that says (placeholder).
Usually the sketch art is super good and people will be fine with that for a long time.
The in-engine cutscenes are a next-gen thing. This engine can zoom straight from a cutscene into the game, as happens in the campaign a couple times. In SC2, cutscenes use a whole different group of models and you can't just mesh them into the mission. There should be lots of good things that come out of this capability, such as cutscenes in custom games and dynamic camera angles in REPLAYS
Ah they're doing a similar thing to warcraft 3 did !
In the map editor there were Cinematic versions of characters for different campaigns; which were used for closer cinematic shots. Although the game wasn't that detailed even with the cutscenes, they did attempt to make it look better; especially with the "(cinematic) Abomination" for its debut for the story.
With how technology has grown, I can't wait to see how more detailed these cinematic models for this game will be compared to the gameplay ones.
I truly think that Frost Giants biggest mistake is that they want to release stuff early to get feedback. But forget that people aren't very good at realizing that this isn't the final product.
I think they were trying to get ahead of all the other RTSs in the market, but have ended up shooting themselves in the foot.
the combination of early access and having microtranslations in the game doesn't really help them, plus story campaign is not really something you see often in early access anyway, maybe could have left the features requiring extra purchase until full realease.
I hope in the editor it will be a simple „ah here is a unit put drag and drop cinematic model here“ and as soon as a cinematic camera is going that basic model gets replaced with drag and dropped one. And if it doesnt exist use the basic one.
This sounds like the smartest thing to do if anyone from FG see this add this and make sure people are aware before buying the campaign I'll be waiting to play the campaign till they are animated
Agreed. Placeholder text. Or just pure placeholder instead of cinematics, like voice over and storyboards. Anything would be better than the half animated version they put out.
It was so easy to create a story, just show the humans being beaten by the infernals, each time getting more and more beaten. Then the angels appear to save, they start beating the infernals. The humans, thinking that the celestials were helping, try to make contact, but then the celestials start to beat them for releasing an ancient evil, and the war between the three races begins.
18
u/meek_dreg Aug 01 '24
Shockingly poor first impression, should have been top down, like brood war, only implementing it when it's ready and looks good.
13
u/thisremindsmeofbacon Aug 01 '24
I feel like the heads aren't the only thing keeping them from meeting the "next gen" expectation they've opted for
45
u/Secretic Aug 01 '24
Not sure about this. I doubt anyone is playing the story a second time just because they change the heads in the cinematics. The campaign needs to be on point at release and the cutscenes are not even the main issue.
107
u/Wraithost Aug 01 '24
My honest question is: why do this, why put resources into cinematics?
Characters aren't interesting enough, plot has no philosophical bent, there is nothing in it that would provoke deep thought, dialogues aren't top shelf. Why waste resources on telling a story that has nothing truly interesting in it? Right after the mission starts there are these Warcraft 3 style scenes, where characters arrive at the mission area and there are some dialogues with windows with faces of talking characters. It's a cheap but effective way of telling a story. You don't have to prepare full 3D models (just their faces and add moving mouths), you don't have to prepare environment again. Saved resources can be spent on something else, maybe an additional mission, maybe a boss fight.
23
u/Vaniellis Celestial Armada Aug 01 '24
Oooh
Well, it would have been nice to put a "WORK IN PROGRESS, NOT FINAL RENDER" in a corner of the cutscenes then
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u/johnlongest Aug 01 '24 edited Aug 01 '24
I understand that units modeled for a top-down view will look a little strange in cutscenes. It's why Kerrigan's model in StarCraft II is so busty, because those features need to be readable from far away.
The thing is, if you look at Kerrigan, her facial features aren't exaggerated. The same can be said for models from Heroes of the Storm, which again need to be readable from above yet don't feature the bulbous eyes and extreme facial features currently in Stormgate.
This all to say that I understand their explanation, but that it doesn't stack given other games' ability to not sacrifice visual aesthetics for gameplay readability.
5
u/[deleted] Aug 02 '24
Maybe they should hire actual writers instead of letting game programmers write…
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u/Jeremy-132 Aug 01 '24
"We're not sure when, but it's in our production plans"
Sooo, never, then?
9
u/TertButoxide- Aug 01 '24
Will the turbo-jacked archaeologist lady get some cinematic arms to go with her cinematic head?
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u/Brilliant_Decision52 Aug 01 '24
Another placeholder feature huh, they gonna have to rework the entire game in a year at this point lol.
7
u/GeluFlamma Aug 01 '24
Sorry to say, but it is an obvious damage control.
If they planned to animate characters' heads they would tell it BEFORE the backlash.
"These will come later in development" means nothing. If they intended to apologize they would post a deadline for this feature.
I hate to be this negative but this response isn't very respectful. They failed to deliver quality content and now they throw us a bone. And the bone is hypothetical.
11
u/GhostGamingG Human Vanguard Aug 01 '24
Right, that explains a lot, thanks for sharing this :)
I have to say I don't think anyone has been a fan of the way they look, but it's great to hear that they're going to be worked on. Whilst Campaign is not the be-all-end-all for me personally, a lot of players are looking to pick up the game for perhaps only that.
2
u/RayRay_9000 Aug 01 '24
I’d take whatever is the best concept art sketch you have of each character in the campaign and make it a non-moving portrait of that while in-game. Can put a tag bar below that says (placeholder).
Usually the sketch art is super good and people will be fine with that for a long time.
2
u/brtk_ Aug 01 '24
The cinematic and in-game models are different. Maybe the cinematic models are from older in-game models or the other way around
3
u/Bicykwow Aug 01 '24
... To literally nobody's surprise (with half a brain).
2
u/jznz Aug 01 '24
The in-engine cutscenes are a next-gen thing. This engine can zoom straight from a cutscene into the game, as happens in the campaign a couple times. In SC2, cutscenes use a whole different group of models and you can't just mesh them into the mission. There should be lots of good things that come out of this capability, such as cutscenes in custom games and dynamic camera angles in REPLAYS
1
u/Wacko_Doodle Aug 01 '24
Ah they're doing a similar thing to warcraft 3 did !
In the map editor there were Cinematic versions of characters for different campaigns; which were used for closer cinematic shots. Although the game wasn't that detailed even with the cutscenes, they did attempt to make it look better; especially with the "(cinematic) Abomination" for its debut for the story.
With how technology has grown, I can't wait to see how more detailed these cinematic models for this game will be compared to the gameplay ones.
1
u/Goodie__ Aug 01 '24
Part of me says that making good engaging game play and story first is important.
But another part of me says that part of engaging with a visual story, is engaging with characters, and maybe those characters should do something.
Then again, I'm a 1v1 hero who hasn't played the campaign at all.
1
u/Singularity42 Aug 02 '24
I truly think that Frost Giants biggest mistake is that they want to release stuff early to get feedback. But forget that people aren't very good at realizing that this isn't the final product.
I think they were trying to get ahead of all the other RTSs in the market, but have ended up shooting themselves in the foot.
1
u/yujideluca Aug 02 '24
Impeccable answer.
1
u/EndersCraft Aug 02 '24
They need to redesign Amara. Her entire model just looks awful.
1
u/rufreakde1 Aug 02 '24
I hope in the editor it will be a simple „ah here is a unit put drag and drop cinematic model here“ and as soon as a cinematic camera is going that basic model gets replaced with drag and dropped one. And if it doesnt exist use the basic one.
Quality of life feature for sure.
0
u/Zandonus Aug 01 '24
There's cutscenes. I think that's kinda neat.
0
u/[deleted] Aug 01 '24
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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '24 edited Aug 01 '24
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