Cinematics and FFXIV

[Intaki]

I would be surprised if ARR had a fraction of the development budget the failed 1.0 did. If you want a reason for why things aren't as pretty as they could be, that's probably your answer.

[kyuven]

this is defiantly a good point... would only work if they could craete a means to read player data and render then in the scenes.

This just isn't going to happen, though. The costs of implementing it outweigh the benefits.
Out-of-engine cutscenes simply aren't practical for MMOs for more than trailers and bumpers. In fact I've never seen an out of engine cutscene aside from these cases in any MMO, even more cinematic ones like GW2 and SWTOR.
In order to get out-of-engine cutscenes, you'd need to sacrifice another aspect of the game.
And once again, this is an MMO. The standards are fundamentally different because they involve our own custom characters. There's also "PS3 limitations" to take into consideration, although in this case it's the simple problem of out-of-engine cutscenes bloating the game's size even more than it is, which is pretty much a universal issue.

[Aethaeryn]

This is about a million times better than any of the cut scenes in 2.55.

Anyway, a lot of story stuff has been bland throughout 2.x, but I thought 2.55 was getting back on the right track.

[AlexionSkylark]

If people did that, we'd have to watch DERPLANDER in place of our characters on key points of the narrative.

I surely would dislike that a lot.

[RyuRoots]

"Final Fantasy as a whole has always pushed the envelope when it comes wonderful visuals."

Uh, no. Final Fantasy FMVs maybe, which seems to be what you want more of, but that's separate from what they do with the game engines which have been respectable, but never bleeding edge. And if you just want more FMVs...why? XIV isn't an ugly game, and there's a lot of story and lore and character here. If you'd rather have more dev time and money spent on cutscenes which couldn't show anyone's character instead then dear *god*, no. Yes, they were pretty and they were novel, but they didn't really add anything to the games other than some (admittedly entertaining) spectacle and are nowhere NEAR as important to final fantasy as moogles or chocobos. Nevermind that both of those two were a part of the series before FMVs even existed in games.

[myahele]

Maybe some action scenes that doesn't involve our character could have a CGI?

But as other's have said, it would be too expensive?

Also:

The cutscene in FBoB was SE's idea and I think Yoshi didn't like want it because it would take too much resources especially for something that not many will see

[Catwho]

Not just expensive in terms of cost, but in terms of disk real estate. MP3 voice tracks can be compressed to about a meg a minute, and utilizing the in game engine means that cutscene content can be done very quickly with little disk space. Whereas high definition FMV content will quickly bloat a 20 minute cutscene into 200 MB, ten times what an in-game rendered cutscene would take. That adds up quickly in a game built on cutscenes.

[Trollhammer]

1.0 was really superior to all that has been in 2.0 in terms of cinematics. I think 90% of all cutscenes are made of standard emotes. It actually looks like normal PCs doing roleplaying like I did in World of Warcraft back then. Nevermind...

What bothers me though and that is the reason why the 2.0 implies that my character is godlike is that the party members aren't included in cutscenes. They are there for the victory stance scene and then magically disappear to leave all credits as a Warrior of Light to me. Thanks, peasants.

[Catwho]

Well, no. There have been quite a few references to "thanks to the crack team of amazing people you assembled last time, we were victorious, could you do that again?" You're praised as much for your organization skills (THANKS DUTY FINDER!) as you are for your personal abilities.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Well, no. There have been quite a few references to "thanks to the crack team of amazing people you assembled last time, we were victorious, could you do that again?" You're praised as much for your organization skills (THANKS DUTY FINDER!) as you are for your personal abilities.

Yeah it seems NPCs don't just praise you for WHAT you did but for being able to gather like minded individuals to help out. It's almost like the WOL can get everyone click his/her Like button.