Blizzard Cinematic Quality Deteriorating?

[Brutaxilos]

hey guys as you all know blizzard is pretty infamous for their awesome looking cinematics. ever since warcraft 3 the visual spectacle was seriously amazing (not saying sc or d1/2 were bad just graphics wise). and sc2 was no exception. however i felt like the first cinematic (the deal- otherwise known as the cinematic trailer first shown when it was announced) was much nicer than all the other 3 cinematics. the whole texture and reflectivity of the armor was seriously awesome. but anyways if you just pay attention to the skin features on ordinary humans, human kerrigan, raynor, and tychus all had a more cartoony feel than tychus in the first trailer. is it just me or are they actually not as high quality as the first one? how do u think the HotS cinematics will be?

[Hav0x]

I don't agree. I thought they got better and better as the story progressed.

[Existor]

First Tychus trailer was used as SC2 announcement teaser, thats why it has better quality.

All CGI in game are good in quality, but I don't like ingame movies on game engine, that we have 80% of all cinematics. They have no anti aliasing, and with low graphic settings there are totally different textures (on low graphic settings Raynor looks a lot like 20 y.o. guy)

[Romla]

I wasn't dissatisfied with the visual quality of the cutscenes but with the poor content of them.

1) There were nothing more than that we saw in the previews - don't show every cutscene in the preview, Blizzard!

2) I was expecting at least minor battle of terran units against zerg in the New Gettysburg cutscene, some siege tanks bashing zerg units and then falling under the endless swarm of zerg, I was expecting the marines with the nuke blast on the background from the first cutscene to be in the New Gettysburg cutscene. But everything we've got was Kerrigan shooting few bullets...

3) The ending cutscene - what a letdown. Number of zerg units in that cutscene: 0. Why? They could at least show the blast like in the Fury of the Xel'Naga cutscene from Brood War. But everything we saw was 5 marines.

I think the cutscenes in the original Starcraft and Brood War were much better and more epic than that we've got in Wings of Liberty. Even Warcraft 3 cutscenes were better than Starcraft 2 cutscenes from content related view. Just my opinion.

[TheEconomist]

@Exister: On Extreme with 4xAA, they look magnificient annnnd they allow for a loooot more cutscenes. So, we get dozens instead of a couple.

[Wankey]

The in game cinematics were cool but they needed more set pieces. What the prerendered cinematics should've done was really do MASSIVE battles with hundreds and hunreds of zerglings / siege tanks and the likes and have the in game cinematics do the character development.

[PhanttoM]

The in game cinematics were cool but they needed more set pieces. What the prerendered cinematics should've done was really do MASSIVE battles with hundreds and hunreds of zerglings / siege tanks and the likes and have the in game cinematics do the character development.

Yes indeed - one disappointing (game engine) cutscene was "Card to Play". After having seen the SC: Ghost intro/trailer several years ago, the number of zerg onscreen at any given time in "Card to Play" was a extremely lacking.

As for the skin shader - It always looked like Tychus was extreme 'dity' in the original cinematic which happened to make it look more detailed.

[Arkalis]

Well one thing Blizzard had never dissapointed me in the past were their awe-inspiring cinematics, and WoL was no exception

[Freespace]

Blizzard completely changed their workflow after doing the Anouncement Trailer for StarCraft 2. That might have lead to any minor differences of style between that and the remaining 3 cinematics.

As a CG artist myself (you might have seen StarCraft First Contact, and the teasers for StarCraft Final Metamorphosis), I fully understand both where the fans are coming from (more units, set pieces, massive battles), but also where the cinematic artists are coming from. The amount of work to pull off an epic battle scene is horrendous and inhuman.

I actually think the quality of the three other CG cinematics in SC2 WoL is superior to that of the announcement cinematic. The best thing about Blizzard cinematics however is that they age gracefully. Look at the SC1 cinematics, the Diablo 2, War 3, etc. They all look good to this day. They passed the test of time, because of brilliant artistic direction.

[Existor]

Old CGI vodeos are cheaper, I think. The new requires a lot moneys (but I think, it's not a problem for Activision-Blizzard)