Thread: 1.0 to 2.0 - Cut Scenes

As someone who's had to do this on many different occasions.




Cutscenes take a very very very long time to procure. The amount of time you put in them, is the amount of time you sacrifice elsewhere, or in the quantity of them.

If I had a game with let's say four levels, and I wanted a cutscene for the start of each one, along with a begining and an end, there's only so much time I can put into crafting each one.

If you haven't had to do anything on this scale before, or even something as simple as planning, directing, shooting or editing audio/video, then you might struggle a little to understand how much effort actually goes into the little details and how long that actually takes. (Even more-so with games)

It is NOT as simple as putting in a few camera positions/effects and animations, it takes A LOT of work, and A LOT of time.




FFXIV ARRs development early on was founded on the principle of "How do we balance quality vs. time", and they balanced it so that the quality across most content is the same, but with the occasional cutscene that matters more with additional effort and work. This saves time and leave room to develop and expand elsewhere instead of 1.23's mistake where we had a few cut-scenes that were nice, but felt disjointed and repetitive elsewhere.

The video sample below that I recorded from 1.23, a cut-scene that took a fair bit of effort to make, but in the expense of making cut-scenes like this, they fell short in many other cut-scenes and in terms of overall time management and development for the game.

https://vimeo.com/51107372

Originally Posted by Yukiba

Oh, I'm by no means saying its a simple process.. I'm just saying I wish 2.0 cutscenes were like 1.0. The camera angles and movement, and just how they are directed with a tone you can feel.. Just a better experience all around.

No worries, I know what you meant. And I completley agree.

I was just explaining the reasoning behind them cutting back on the quality.

The problem being, the developers were thinking "This is Final Fantasy, therefore we need Final Fantasy tier cut-scenes", but in the process they forgot of the sheer amount of content, variations and overall time restrictions that an MMO development entails. Ontop of inexperienced and badly trained staff that weren't prepared or ready for a new generation of games development or processes they focused so heavily on making sure everything looked pretty that it ironically felt spare and few between.


Also worth mentioning change your audio language to Japaneese in 2.0, trust me on this.
There are more details, more careful animations and facial experssions to have been crafted for the JP audio than the ENG audio, its only slightly subtle changes, but the cutscenes are MUCH nicer as a result.
(Considering the ENG VA's are so low budget it shouldn't be too much of a sacrifice)