Proper cinematics

Final Fantasy has always been a wonderful franchise.
Beautiful characters, amazing worlds and backgrounds, nicelly written stories..etc
But to me FF are before anything else stunning cinematics and visuals !

The MMO is truly fantastic, now the main issue for me are the cutscenes, I know 1.0 had gorgeous ones given that they were made using motion capture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU5N24_5VIk

It has a cost I'm aware of that, but you can't deny that those we have since A.R.R are just plain boring.

Using emotes to animate the cutscenes... quite lazy. (I acknowledge that the dev team are working hard on the game but still).

Is it to much to ask for better animated cinematics ?

Please forgive my english, it's not my native tongue.

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Originally Posted by BiddyBatnana

you can't deny that those we have since A.R.R are just plain boring.

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I can, actually. Could it be better? Sure. Could it be worse? Definitely. Having my own character be in the cutscenes makes them not boring to me.

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Originally Posted by BiddyBatnana

It has a cost I'm aware of that, but you can't deny that those we have since A.R.R are just plain boring.

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I can deny it, because I don't find them boring and never did. So far since 2.16 when I started to play I watched every cutscene, read every quest dialogue (with Google Translate and vocabulary at first ~2 years since I'm not English native either and game hasn't my language and never will) and found all the text and cutscenes enjoyable to witness. Can they be better? Sure they can and it will be cool if the team will adress it at some point. But they are quite good as it is for me personally at least.

I assume what the OP is getting at is that they want more FMV cutscenes, like the kind of thing you’d see in ffx. There is one in ffxiv at the end of the binding coil of Bahamut and that’s it.

Personally doesn’t bother me but I could absolutely see it being a cool thing they could do for cutscenes that don’t involve our character (like all the after credit style scenes we get at the end of a patch story).

if the cost wasn't prohibitive they would most likely make more. it also takes months for visual works to create even the expansion teaser trailers.

I prefer cutscenes to cinematics because my WoL is in them.

Sadly the FMV that they did do at the end of turn 12 got Yoshida's higher ups to tell him no more costly stuff like that one please and thank you.

I actually like the in game cinematics most of the time. Sure they don't always look amazing but at least the characters in them are the actual characters we see in the game (including our own characters) and the cutscenes have come such a long, long way since the start of 14. And we do get the occasional CG cutscene anyway.

Plus, yeah, the cost of CG cutscenes is pretty much definitely cost prohibitive anyway.

It would take too long to create such cutscenes. They can't even use voice over for most of them because they are working till the last minute on the story and there is simply no time left to voice the stuff.

It is not possible with the 3 months schedule of the patches.

Damn right that the cutscenes are hot garbage for the most part. It’s gotten slightly better as time goes on but I’d rather not even have ‘em if all it’s gonna be is cameras pannin’ over two people noddin’ at each other. Bonus points for poundin’ fists to palms or usin’ a fade out/pan to let someone take their hat off or pick up an object. It’s about as smooth an’ natural as a chunky voidsent.

Plus it ain’t even a bonus havin’ me there if all I get ta do is stand stupid while the monster of the week casually strolls offscreen.

I’m fine with real time cut scenes, what I want is more voice acting

also expenive

I actually prefer the in-game models to the high-quality FMV ones. The characters look weird in the Shadowbringers opening video.

And they've been improving a lot with using custom animations to let characters physically interact, or just to avoid using the generic emote set.

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Originally Posted by Sated

I prefer cutscenes to cinematics because my WoL is in them.

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Why not both? In ARR we had the phoenix t12 cinematic, for 5% of the raiding community. And people barely realized that they exist outside of intro.
Short cinematics like that could be so powerful for raid tiers or story endings etc. while still keep the WoL ones for 99% of it. It would feel rewarding I guess

Problem with using cutscenes is our characters probably won't appear.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

Short cinematics like that could be so powerful for raid tiers or story endings etc.

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I guess I just don't see what it could provide that the cutscenes don't already? The cost of production doesn't seem worth it when a cutscene allows for much better storytelling (and as Iscah said, I agree the cinematic characters just look... off. It's not the same).

Personally I'd rather see them further improve their storyboarding and animations in cutscenes than put more resources into niche cinematics.

1.0 gorgeous cutscene is the reason why gameplay is... Less than ideal and complete rehaul to 2.0 happened.

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Originally Posted by Sated

Personally I'd rather see them further improve their storyboarding and animations in cutscenes than put more resources into niche cinematics.

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They already do very long, expensive cutscenes for each addon. But if you look back at almost every final fantasy game in existence, they have more polished/animated cutscenes/cinematics and they were often the most memorable scenes from a game. Let them cut the trailer animation by 30s and add a different one to be unlocked in the game, then they don't waste resources like you think they would. And it wouldn't matter if you don't see yourself for 30s in an awesome cutscene.

Your expectations of an mmorpg are just so low lmao... SE can be happy that everyone is so satisfied with it and that their community adamantly defends it.
Look at Elder Scrolls Online which released half a year after ARR and you had every quest synchronized by voiceactors, dialogue options that actually matter, we got the same cutscene musics since ARR start in sidequests or at bossfights (they prefer to use old boss music even for shadowbringers bosses like why? xD, there are other plenty good ones to use). Devs who create quests just need a better toolkit to be able to be more creative with colorfilters, different sfx/audio background, "more emotes"/skeleton presets - you notice whenever they have to show something they cant really "emote" they just put a blackscreen or cut the scene off? , more transformations and usable items (like duty special items) aka minigames could also be a thing. They are better off selling books with the quests so we can just read them and don't need to fly around the whole map for just talking and nothing else. Some quests really are like that, where you do nothing else than to read long text without fighting/collecting/whatever even.

So yeah, I think they can totally polish their questvariety designs a bit and also try to make somewhat good nonstory sidequest cutscenes, otherwise I would just not make them, they are too similar to just looking at it ingame. Those quest cutscene where nobody moves around or joins/leaves the story, I doubt they are worth it, if its static like that.

The cut-scenes are fine. The only thing is the lack of voice acting. I mean, what's the point in having a cut-scene for MSQ if it's not voiced like the majority of them? It's kinda of a cold water bath.

Thanks y'all for your replies !!

But I can see some confusion ~¤
I don't speak of cinematics like the openings .
I speak of the custscenes, and the ones we used to have during the 1.0 era. In witch our character was doing more than simply nodding. The animations were smooth and not premade emotes. That's my issue.
The scene where Papalymo and Yda meet our character in Gridania. It was hilarious.

I miss those.

Now, it's true that the amount of work behind those is horrendous and the time schedule being short doesn't help.
I rewatched some of the latest cutscenes and I can see some effort being put to those.

I don't really find the current cutscenes boring. Also, that link doesn't work for me, it gives me an about:blank.

I do miss the mocap, that's for sure.

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Originally Posted by Tlamila

It sounds like you're talking about 2.0 instead of 1.0? I don't think the old game had that.

I don't really find the current cutscenes boring. Also, that link doesn't work for me, it gives me an about:blank.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ9e53u8AIA

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Originally Posted by Tlamila

It sounds like you're talking about 2.0 instead of 1.0? I don't think the old game had that.

I don't really find the current cutscenes boring. Also, that link doesn't work for me, it gives me an about:blank.

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If you copy/paste the link, you have to remove some extraneous text off the link. Not sure why it adds that. Similar thing happens when I google public pages for my company. For some reason, it adds extraneous info into the url that I have to remove to get to the page.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ9e53u8AIA

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Originally Posted by CazzT

If you copy/paste the link, you have to remove some extraneous text off the link. Not sure why it adds that. Similar thing happens when I google public pages for my company. For some reason, it adds extraneous info into the url that I have to remove to get to the page.

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Thank you both!

After seeing the cinematic, it's certainly graphically more beautiful, but I don't necessarily find it more enticing. And as others said, they're certainly too expensive.
And I'd also rather have more voice acting than this, if they really were to put more resources into making cutscenes (which I doubt they will).

I mean, I could certainly go for another dozen or assets across idle poses, facial expressions, and sigh variants...

It often feels like our and our NPC fellows' whole range of expression is limited to some dozen assets. Doubling that in perception could go a long way.

Yes! Do you remember how epic the cut-scene after Pheonix in 2.0 was?
I don't think we had a cut-scene THAT epic since then :(

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I mean, I could certainly go for another dozen or assets across idle poses, facial expressions, and sigh variants...

It often feels like our and our NPC fellows' whole range of expression is limited to some dozen assets. Doubling that in perception could go a long way.

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I agree. I would like it if there were a few more in game emotes/facial expression added to these cutscenes, not just vigorously nodding to everything. As a Miqote main, I feel there is 1-nod, 2- slam my fist against the palm of my hand 3- scared, with both hands in front of my face and fingers clenched in an awkward cat-ish position.

Also in MSQ, sometimes the (often very good) voice acting kind of falls flat because of those weird movements, although I remember a lot more examples of that in Stormblood than in Shadowbringers, so I guess they are finetuning the cutscenes as years go by.

The once-per-expansion opening movies from Visual Works are very nice. Probably have to settle for just that. I get it, it's a waste of resources to animate quests better unless we're ok with having fewer quests and less often. Everything about making games is picking the right places to make compromises.

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Originally Posted by Sated

I prefer cutscenes to cinematics because my WoL is in them.

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This^ It makes "You" feel like you're part of the story which you are. Some MMO's don't even show your character in cut scenes and don't allow you to speak in them either. It brings that special feeling of having your character recognized by their friends and everyone around them

Actually, I don't like the FMVs at all but think the realtime-rendered cutscenes are fine. Pre-rendered FMVs are nothing like the actual game. Almost as bogus as the Overwatch ad on Switch: "Not actual gameplay footage".

I used to click trough the story in ARR because it was so slow and repetitive that even in small slices, you'd get an idea of what's going on.
In Heavensward then I turned off everything that distracts me (music, TV,...) and tell my cousin over Discord to shut up because I am watching cutscenes.

Heck, I even recorded cutscenes for my mother (because she is a Lalafell freak just like me) and we were watching the Nanamo cutscene

when she is getting poisoned

on the 50" TV in the living room with my harddisk hooked up. It was 44 minutes and we sat there, watching the ingame cutscene (and lots of "[Lalafell] are soooo cute" from my mother) and later a couple more, like the Krile introduction when she pwns Alphinaud.

So if it makes my mother watching cutscenes from a game that she never played and usually she starts to do something else while watching TV and still she is focussed 100%, I think they are fine.

Especially as Lalafell. Waddling up to the enemy that is 10x as big..


https://imgur.com/9mjol58.png

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Originally Posted by MrKusakabe

Actually, I don't like the FMVs at all but think the realtime-rendered cutscenes are fine. Pre-rendered FMVs are nothing like the actual game. Almost as bogus as the Overwatch ad on Switch: "Not actual gameplay footage".

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I like the movies because they let us see the world and characters with a level of detail that the game could never approach. S-E have always had the best CGI movies since the PS1 CD-era so it's like a tradition now. I feel like watching that awesome Shadowbringers intro again now...

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

I like the movies because they let us see the world and characters with a level of detail that the game could never approach.

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One thing I'd say about that is that I do appreciate it when a game could make their movie cinematics and in-game designs look as much the same as possible. There is something to be appreciated about certain art styles, but I'd rather have a more realistic art style if it means I will recognize the character if or when they make the cinematics, unless the cinematics is made to accommodate for the in-game art style.

i prefer the way it is now. potted plants no longer has the same lines of coding as PCls