Blizzard Cinematic Quality Deteriorating?

[Eligor]

You're misunderstanding the point we were making.

It's not that the in-engine cinematics can't do lighting tricks. It's that Blizzard doesn't do them. There's a difference. They didn't show anyone sillhouetted against the sun because they didn't want to. They didn't show chiaroscuro because they didn't show it. The game could do these things just fine. But those tools don't matter if you don't use them.

It's like blaming a camera for an unimaginative or untrained visual director. Most videogames don't have DoPs (Directors of Photography) on staff. So guess what? They don't use lighting as well as a movie crew.



These two scenes are trying to portray two completely different things. Of course they're shot in a different lighting style. If they used the same style, it wouldn't work.

And what do you mean by "visually coherent" anyway?

Errr... What do you mean "two completely different things"? Both have metallic corridors, darkness, white electrical lighting. Yet if you really look at the WoL engine cinematic you'll see that the shadows are quite approximate and much more geometrical than in "Amerigo", they obey the laws of the in-game engine which however good and detailed are not quite realistic (a good approximation, but still obviously an approximation), while the fourteen years old pre-rendered cinematic while having much less detailed textures and (perhaps) even a lower polycount still ends up looking more convincing because it gets the lighting right, you don't have this sense of "approximate shadow" you get in WoL, the behaviour of light and shadow is much more intricate and coherent.

Case in point:

In-Engine WoL


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Old SC Pre-Rendered Cinematic


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That wasn't what you asked. Allow me to quote you again:

"show me a good dramatic chiaroscuro or sunset done in engine"

We did. Games can do these particular effects, and quite convincingly when necessary.

Now, you've moved the goalposts, pointing out that in-game cinematics aren't as good as prerendered ones. Um duh. But that doesn't mean that they cannot be used to properly portray atmosphere in a scene. And that's coming dangerously close to saying that Pixar can't portray a scene because they're not rendering photorealistically.

If any particular in-game cutscene does not portray things as you think they should, then its either because the game developers have failed or you aren't getting what the game developers are actually trying to portray. The tools aren't at fault here.

I said "show", not "describe" or "mention". What I was (and am) saying is that modern in-engine cinematics still aren't as good as old pre-rendered ones (so if Blizzard would make a pre-rendered cinematic of a space battle in SC 1 quality I really wouldn't mind, as long as the imagery itself is good). Nor do they usually offer the freedom of pre-rendered cinematics since in-game engines are still written with specific kinds of images and atmospheres in mind, so any in-game cinematic is dependent upon that engine's strengths and weaknesses. While a pre-rendered one is made from scratch with a very specific effect in mind. The very mindset of creating a pre-rendered cinematic leads to better and more thought out imagery, even if the textures and models are not the crispest and most detailed out there. I never said that there absolutely can't be a pre-rendered cinematic with good dramatic imagery, just that I've never seen one. I certainly didn't blame anyone or accuse anyone of failure, or said that a scene cannot be portrayed unless portrayed photorealistically. You asked why not settle for an in-engine cinematic instead of a lower quality pre-rendered one? Well, once in-engine graphics will possess enough visual versimilitude to allow the artist to create as eloquent and deliberately composed shot as this (or any other sort of image the artist has in mind) without having to compromise due the engine's shortcomings and specializations I'll happily settle for in-engine cinematics:



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You don't really understand the properties of light attenuation and the sheer scale of distance that is outer space.

Perhaps, but I do know that if I want an image with a spaceship exploding next to another one, a sun in the background and perhaps several energy bursts zooming past I'll definitely have to deal with more than one source of light.

[Nicol Bolas]

What do you mean "two completely different things"? Both have metallic corridors, darkness, white electrical lighting.

The purpose of the scenes in terms of storytelling is different. In the Amerigo scene, the corridor is the harbinger of doom. Death happens here; the lighting environment exists to emphasize the threatening and violent nature of the Zerg.

In the SC2 scene, it's about Zeratul bringing a message of foreboding to Raynor, setting the overall plot of SC2 in motion.

They should not be lit the same way from a storytelling perspective. Just because they're both dark corridors doesn't mean that they should look identical lighting-wise.

Yet if you really look at the WoL engine cinematic you'll see that the shadows are quite approximate and much more geometrical than in "Amerigo",

So, there's a dramatic scene happening, but you're ignoring that to focus on how "geometrical" the shadows look? Sounds like a nitpick, at best.

Also, the lighting environments are completely different. Given the placement of lights in the SC2 corridor, one would expect to see something very much like this pattern of lighting.

they obey the laws of the in-game engine which however good and detailed are not quite realistic (a good approximation, but still obviously an approximation), while the fourteen years old pre-rendered cinematic while having much less detailed textures and (perhaps) even a lower polycount still ends up looking more convincing because it gets the lighting right, you don't have this sense of "approximate shadow" you get in WoL, the behaviour of light and shadow is much more intricate and coherent.

In an absolute sense, the prerender is a better imitation of how light behaves. But from my perspective, it's still an imitation. They're both wrong, but the prerender is slightly less wrong.

To me, the in-game cutscene reaches the "good enough" threshold to be able to effectively use light and shadow to communicate and enhances the storytelling of the scene. Could it be better? Yes. Could it look noticeably better? Certainly. But is something functionally missing that makes the communication incomplete or clearly wrong? No.

You can do the same kinds of visual storytelling with both, and you can use the same skillset to do it. One just look better out the other end, but they can both do the job.

What I was (and am) saying is that modern in-engine cinematics still aren't as good as old pre-rendered ones

"Good" is a subjective issue. The SC2 engine is able to provide greater detail than older prerenders (of course, since it's running at higher resolution, it has to). Detail builds character. Character is 1/3rd of what narrative storytelling is all about. Maybe if they could have used smaller details to do their storytelling, perhaps this cutscene wouldn't have featured the appalling idiocy of a guy smoking in a sealed life-support unit.

So if I had to choose between "more accurate lighting, with less character" and "adequate lighting, but with more character", as a storyteller, I'd have to go with the latter.

There's a reason why more and more games don't do prerenders anymore (besides the increased use of interactivity for traditional cutscenes). Oh, you might get one for the intro and one for the ending, but that's about it these days. In-engine graphics these days have reached the threshold where developers are no longer embarrassed to tell stories with them.

And the minute that happened, pre-renders were kicked to the curb.

Perhaps, but I do know that if I want an image with a spaceship exploding next to another one, a sun in the background and perhaps several energy bursts zooming past I'll definitely have to deal with more than one source of light.

And if you did that, all the ships would look like toy models rather than ships, because the light attenuation suggests that they're feet or inches away from each other (and therefore tiny), rather than hundreds of feet away.

Sadly, far too many special effects artists think like you do.

[Eligor]

The purpose of the scenes in terms of storytelling is different. In the Amerigo scene, the corridor is the harbinger of doom. Death happens here; the lighting environment exists to emphasize the threatening and violent nature of the Zerg.

In the SC2 scene, it's about Zeratul bringing a message of foreboding to Raynor, setting the overall plot of SC2 in motion.

They should not be lit the same way from a storytelling perspective. Just because they're both dark corridors doesn't mean that they should look identical lighting-wise.



So, there's a dramatic scene happening, but you're ignoring that to focus on how "geometrical" the shadows look? Sounds like a nitpick, at best.

The drama in both cases is communicated by the scene's look and feel as much as by the music and the voice acting. So yes, the look of the shadows is important. If you think this is nitpicking, keep in mind that Akira Kurosawa had demolished the roof of a whole building because it spoiled the composition of one shot in a single minor sequence in a movie (and he knew something about cinema and visual storytelling).

Also, the lighting environments are completely different. Given the placement of lights in the SC2 corridor, one would expect to see something very much like this pattern of lighting.

They're both overhad electrical lights illuminating dark metallic corridors, and the dialogue between Zeratul and Raynor is lit from the same angle and by the same kind of light as the door in the Amerigo shot.

In an absolute sense, the prerender is a better imitation of how light behaves. But from my perspective, it's still an imitation. They're both wrong, but the prerender is slightly less wrong.

And precisely because every narrative image we encounter (from a staged and lighted film shot to a rendered CG shot to a painted illustration) is an imitation it is of the utmost importance to get things right as much as possible. Otherwise it wouldn't matter whether you have your scene done in a cubistic Picasso style, an impressionistic Van Gogh style or highly realistic Everett-Millais style. Hey, they're all "imitations", right? But it does matter (I'm sure you wouldn't want to see an SC cutscene drawn in a highly cartoony anime style for example). I realize that this is an extreme example and you may wonder what different approaches to light and shadow have to with it, so...

To me, the in-game cutscene reaches the "good enough" threshold to be able to effectively use light and shadow to communicate and enhances the storytelling of the scene. Could it be better? Yes. Could it look noticeably better? Certainly. But is something functionally missing that makes the communication incomplete or clearly wrong? No.

You can do the same kinds of visual storytelling with both, and you can use the same skillset to do it. One just look better out the other end, but they can both do the job.

In Visual storytelling style IS substance. Everything from the costumes your characters wear to the kind of light cast by the lamp onto the table to the texture on the wall communicates the story you're telling and has a lot to say about the atmosphere, environment and the characters. Ideally, every shot from a cutscene or a movie should work as a separate narrative image. You should be able to frame and put it as a painting on a wall or as an illustration in a book and it should work. This demands a great amount of deliberate thought and meaning put into light, shadow, colour and composition. Obviously, each and every image can't be overloaded with thousands of details full of deep meaning and significance, your brain won't be able to take it in and it would be far too much (the visual equivalent of baroque purple prose), and thus it brings us to...

"Good" is a subjective issue. The SC2 engine is able to provide greater detail than older prerenders (of course, since it's running at higher resolution, it has to). Detail builds character. Character is 1/3rd of what narrative storytelling is all about. Maybe if they could have used smaller details to do their storytelling, perhaps this cutscene wouldn't have featured the appalling idiocy of a guy smoking in a sealed life-support unit.

So if I had to choose between "more accurate lighting, with less character" and "adequate lighting, but with more character", as a storyteller, I'd have to go with the latter.

Since we cannot have an overload of details in an image we must focus on those which matter, the ones that tell the story. So the important thing is NOT the net amount of detail in an image but rather the quality of the details that are important whether they be the cut of Zeratul's cloak, the texture of the corridor's plating or the colour of Raynor's hair. And (surprise, surprise) the kind and quality of the detail present in a (realistic) visual image depends entirely on the quality of light and shadow, imagery after all is nothing but light reflected into the eye. Everything you see in an image is light and shadow from textures to volumes to atmosphere, and thus the lower the quality of your lighting is, the lower the quality of details, including those that define character. So you don't get less character with "accurate lighting", you get less character with "adequate lighting". It doesn't matter how detailed and high res are the textures you put on your characters, if they're not realistically lit it would always result in a much less believable (and usually much less impressive and memorable) image than one with lower quality textures but good lighting.

And if you did that, all the ships would look like toy models rather than ships, because the light attenuation suggests that they're feet or inches away from each other (and therefore tiny), rather than hundreds of feet away.

Sadly, far too many special effects artists think like you do.

I'm speaking about big ships and big explosions. Big enough to reflect on another ship hundreds of feet away (or smaller ships flying around closer).

I'm not claiming this is necessarily a good shot, just one that happens in space and has more than one significant light source.

[hyde]

Eligor makes some strong points. My knowledge in cinematics goes as far as a tutorial for 3DS max, so I will talk strictly from a "consumer" viewpoint.


In game (pros and cons)
-They looked good on max settings
-The FPS Drops "Distracted" you from the immersion factor (I run i7 920 and a Radeon 5770 OC'd)
- I like how there were many cinematics, even for story branches (like killing Dr. Hanson)
- The content/events used for in-game was appropriate. I don't care if non essential events are rendered in-game. Unlike Tychus's Marine Suit up, scenes like boarding Valerians ship is intense but not something I'm going to pig out on eye candy.
-Yeah they are going to definitely look like crap on low-end systems, but this is the problem with PC-Gaming. BUT SERIOUSLY... any PC Gamer should at least have a Radeon 5770 by now (its 110$ USD here in Canada!!!) which can run all the cinematics at 30FPS+++ on MAX at 1650X1050 Resolution.

As technology progresses and budgets for games get more tight/expensive, I think I can say that in-game cinematics are here to stay for Blizzard. Blizzard has always pushed the envelope, and I'm sure this saved on the final budget/allowed for other things to be made.

My final thoughts is that the cinematics are not deteriorating in any way.
Like others have said, the content was just not there. The story team is directing SC2 so it focuses on Raynor and Kerrigan. Having random marines board a science vessel only to drink beer and get ambushed by Zerg is fine for SC1, but it's not needed (and totally random) for SC2's story.

Anyways, if you guys are hell bent on getting something like that - go let Hanson get infested. Nice cinematic for that. Or just watch Star Ship Troopers and a Predator or Alien movie to get your space battle fix :P.

[TheEconomist]

@Nicol Bolas:

First of all, relax bro. I know arguing with certain posters on this forum can be ooooh so annoying but don't take that out on me

Second of all, cool it with the 'we'. You aren't the speaker of the people. I agree with you but obviously there's going to be people who disagree. I was just saying what I believed Blizzard's reasoning was behind their decision and why it was more effective in portray Kerrigan and the story in a way that they wanted to.

We'd feel more sorry for her in my version.

No "we" wouldn't. We'd feel sorry for her in a completely different way. Your way portrays her as courageous and heroic but, in my opinion, Blizzard was trying to portray her more as being a "damsel in distress" that needed to be saved by the knight-in-shining-armor James Raynor. Currently, she is the Queen of Blades, evil, but before she was "good". The story was skewed towards Raynor's perspective and his major focus was to de-infest Kerrigan to make her human again so that she would be "good" and their romance of the ages could be rekindled *choke*. So, obviously, that's the path their going to take. In fact, your way would seem out of place given what the story was trying to do.

Not that I wouldn't prefer it.

Third, we want to de-infest Kerrigan because doing that would make her weaker. She would no longer be a threat.

No, that's what you and I played it for. StarCraft never has and never will be a love story. It will always be about war to me. But, that just doesn't change that fact that the focus has changed. Luckily, I can still chose what I focus on.

It just seems much more likely to be simple incompetence on Blizzard's part, rather than deliberate maliciousness.

Glass is always half empty, eh? You have no reason to believe that they hadn't thought of exactly what you propose (especially given that it's not exactly a revolutionary, creative, original, or hard-to-think-of idea) but then went in another direction. You thought of it in a few minutes and you don't have the credentials that they do. You seem to be suffering from typical Blizzard fan syndrome in that just because you disagree with a decision they've made, you know how to do it better than them even though you have no logical reason to believe so.

[Pandonetho]

I'm have no beef with the quality of their cinematics, but I really miss the action that they used to include in their cinematics.

Like in SC1, the Amerigo was great, one of my favourite cutscenes, and the BW introduction was great too.

[TheEconomist]

I like the new direction. I hope they make a drama sitcom out of Merry x Jerry x Kerry

[FanaticTemplar]

Your way portrays her as courageous and heroic but, in my opinion, Blizzard was trying to portray her more as being a "damsel in distress" that needed to be saved by the knight-in-shining-armor James Raynor.

Out of curiosity, what do you think of the last character to run out of ammo fighting the Zerg and stare out to the sky where a Battlecruiser is being taken out of orbit as the Terrans below are overrun by the Zerg? Was he also meant to be a damsel in distress to be rescued by a knight in shining armour?

(Talking about this guy in case it wasn't clear or you couldn't recall where we'd seen this scene before.)

[TheEconomist]

I don't answer stupid questions.

[Nicol Bolas]

The drama in both cases is communicated by the scene's look and feel as much as by the music and the voice acting. So yes, the look of the shadows is important.

And yet, the only thing you can say negatively about the in-game graphics is that the shadows are too "geometrical".

The shadows are still there. They are still doing their job. They are still visually telling the story that needs to be told. They may not be perfect, but they get the job done.

They're both overhad electrical lights illuminating dark metallic corridors, and the dialogue between Zeratul and Raynor is lit from the same angle and by the same kind of light as the door in the Amerigo shot.

They had completely different kinds of overhead lighting. In the Amerigo scene, the lights are a single, unbroken bar running down the hall. In the SC2 scene, there are boxes of lights that are broken up by ceiling beams.

In Visual storytelling style IS substance. Everything from the costumes your characters wear to the kind of light cast by the lamp onto the table to the texture on the wall communicates the story you're telling and has a lot to say about the atmosphere, environment and the characters.

And in-game graphics have the ability to put those details in. Costumes, lights cast by lamps, the texture on the table, etc. All of these are details that modern game engines can handle in realtime.

Ideally, every shot from a cutscene or a movie should work as a separate narrative image.

That's like saying every paragraph in a book should work as a separate narrative text. It doesn't and it can't. A shot is simply not long enough to tell a complete story, which is what narrative is all about.

Since we cannot have an overload of details in an image we must focus on those which matter, the ones that tell the story. So the important thing is NOT the net amount of detail in an image but rather the quality of the details that are important whether they be the cut of Zeratul's cloak, the texture of the corridor's plating or the colour of Raynor's hair.

That's called "caricature": the emphasizing of the "important" details over the unimportant ones. That path leads to cartoonishness.

What leads to realism is having a consistent level of detail over an entire scene, just like real life. Walls in real life don't have less detail for the purpose of emphasizing character details. Consistency in detail is how you create verisimilitude in CG.

I was just saying what I believed Blizzard's reasoning was behind their decision

I'm saying that your beliefs simply don't jive with the facts of the cinematics and storytelling. And that they're not self-consistent. For example:

Your way portrays her as courageous and heroic but, in my opinion, Blizzard was trying to portray her more as being a "damsel in distress" that needed to be saved by the knight-in-shining-armor James Raynor. Currently, she is the Queen of Blades, evil, but before she was "good".

Here, you equate the concept of her being "good" with the concept of her being a "damsel in distress". These concepts have nothing to do with one another.

The story was skewed towards Raynor's perspective and his major focus was to de-infest Kerrigan to make her human again so that she would be "good" and their romance of the ages could be rekindled *choke*. So, obviously, that's the path their going to take. In fact, your way would seem out of place given what the story was trying to do.

Except that there was that little Protoss mini-campaign. Where we learn that Kerrigan not dying was kinda vital to the survival of the entire universe. That works against what you claim that Blizzard was trying to show.

Indeed, the fact that these work against each other helps show incompetence rather than explicit intent.

Glass is always half empty, eh?

You're the one who's proposing that Blizzard is actively trying to reduce a character (pre-Infestation Kerrigan) from a strong warrior into a "damsel in distress". Simple incompetence is an optimistic explanation compared to that.

You have no reason to believe that they hadn't thought of exactly what you propose (especially given that it's not exactly a revolutionary, creative, original, or hard-to-think-of idea) but then went in another direction.

The fact that the story as a whole is told in such an incoherent way (see above. There are more examples I could state), coupled with the fact that Blizzard has never been good at storytelling to begin with, is evidence for incompetence over deliberate malice.

Out of curiosity, what do you think of the last character to run out of ammo fighting the Zerg and stare out to the sky where a Battlecruiser is being taken out of orbit as the Terrans below are overrun by the Zerg? Was he also meant to be a damsel in distress to be rescued by a knight in shining armour?

There is a difference: he saw the ship leave. He was actually looking at something that was there very recently. The cutscene very clearly shows us that Mengsk was well out of visual range.

I don't buy Tychus's explanation, but the scene makes more sense for the Marine than Kerrigan.

I don't answer stupid questions.

Besides the fact that it punches another hole in your theory, what's stupid about it?