Cinematics and FFXIV

[Pterois]

Final Fantasy as a whole has always pushed the envelope when it comes wonderful visuals. And ever since the days of FF7 we have been wowed with cut-scenes showing our heros in the most bad ass of situations...



or the calm before the storm...



or some of the most heart breaking moments most here would never forget...



We have only a few examples of this in the FFXIV world...



and even those select few have us all wowed with the intricate battles and emotions...



emotions that i think would not have been captured with game-play graphics.

I know there was a shift in the way the FFXIV team deals with high quality situations (ex. the flower pot polygons) but i'm starting to feel like you guys might have gone to far in the opposite direction. You had to go back in order to build the game back up and I understand this. But since cut-scenes are pretty much as synonyms with Final Fantasy as moogles and chocobos I would really hope y'all would start considering rendering the really important, game-changing portions of the main story in this style. All my brain would let me see during the 2.55 cut scenes was how bad ass this could really look as our hero's one by one made their stand. I appreciate all the hard work you guys are putting into this game, and i know this request isn't a small one but i feel as though it is time to up the quality now.

[kyuven]

Neither FFXI nor FFXIV has done these "out of engine" cutscenes for anything other than bumpers and trailers for things like expansions. 1.0 is actually the exception in that it has an ending cutscene.
These trailers take a long, LONG time to make, and are wholly impractical for MMO development cycles.
And, to point out, every single example you just showed is an out-of-engine cutscene.

[Pterois]

Neither FFXI nor FFXIV has done these "out of engine" cutscenes for anything other than bumpers and trailers for things like expansions. 1.0 is actually the exception in that it has an ending cutscene.
These trailers take a long, LONG time to make, and are wholly impractical for MMO development cycles.
And, to point out, every single example you just showed is an out-of-engine cutscene.

I know they are "out-of-engine" (not game play) screen shots... thats the whole point lol, im saying for the huge cut scene events like 2.55 this game would really benefit from it. Also I used to be a motion graphics designer in the past so i am well aware of the time it takes to complete such a task, i just do print design now and im working on stuff for christmas already lol. But it is far from impossible since they knew what was gonna transpire in 2.55 forever ago. Just talking about big events... not every side quest here and there.

[KayoZ]

I know they are "out-of-engine" (not game play) screen shots... thats the whole point lol, im saying for the huge cut scene events like 2.55 this game would really benefit from it. Also I used to be a motion graphics designer in the past so i am well aware of the time it takes to complete such a task, i just do print design now and im working on stuff for christmas already lol. But it is far from impossible since they knew what was gonna transpire in 2.55 forever ago. Just talking about big events... not every side quest here and there.

I dont think you really know how long it actually takes to do scenes like that. Rendering time alone is staggering and it gets worse the more complicated it is. I read Cars 2 took like half a day per frame... and thats Pixar with HUGE render farms that im sure put whatever SE uses to shame. Sure SE only needs a 2-3 minute video but thats still a lot to do and invest in. There is a reason they can only do them per expansion. Not to mention the man hours it takes to set up, model, animate, light, program, and post-production stuff (compositing, music, sound fx, etc). Its just not practical.

Besides, this makes more sense with standard SP FF games since our characters are the same person. Whats the point in doing all that if all youll be doing is watching other characters at best. Honestly, in game graphics have gotten good enough IMO.

[Sapphic]

Neither FFXI nor FFXIV has done these "out of engine" cutscenes for anything other than bumpers and trailers for things like expansions. 1.0 is actually the exception in that it has an ending cutscene.
These trailers take a long, LONG time to make, and are wholly impractical for MMO development cycles.
And, to point out, every single example you just showed is an out-of-engine cutscene.

Incorrect. Theres a lengthy CGI cutscene in final coil.

[kyuven]

Incorrect. Theres a lengthy CGI cutscene in final coil.

i'd actually argue that one. It's less an independent cutscene and more an extension of the pre-existing cutscene. It's very clear they made the FCOB out-of-engine cutscene at the same time as the End of an Era cutscene. The fact that some of the details don't completely mesh with the in-engine cutscenes is evidence of that to me. They even have it that way on the YouTube channel now.

[Sapphic]

i'd actually argue that one. It's less an independent cutscene and more an extension of the pre-existing cutscene. It's very clear they made the FCOB out-of-engine cutscene at the same time as the End of an Era cutscene. The fact that some of the details don't completely mesh with the in-engine cutscenes is evidence of that to me. They even have it that way on the YouTube channel now.

Irrelevant, only way to see it in game is in FCoB. And it expands on the story in FCoB showing what happened after the WoLs where zapped into the future, with Bahamut and how Louisoix became Phoenix.

[kyuven]

Irrelevant, only way to see it in game is in FCoB. And it expands on the story in FCoB showing what happened after the WoLs where zapped into the future, with Bahamut and how Louisoix became Phoenix.

doesn't change that it's mechanically a pre-existing cutscene given as a "reward" for beating t12.
It's the exception that proves the rule.
What most likely happened was the full cutscene was created as part of the end of an era cutscene, but when looking over it they realized "Maybe we should keep this part ambiguous?" and split it off for later. The t12 cutscene was not created with t12 in mind, t12 was created with the cutscene in mind.
Especially since the HW trailer has been shown to use out-of-engine renditions of things that happen in-engine, which tells me this will be the route they will take down the road. We will very likely not be seeing any out-of-engine cutscenes for the game ever again.

[Nyalia]

Irrelevant, only way to see it in game is in FCoB. And it expands on the story in FCoB showing what happened after the WoLs where zapped into the future, ...

Spoiler tags, please.

[Maleha]

Granted, even taking in engine cutscenes, recently I have had a long conversation with a friend about this: Having had a look at some of the story scenes from 1.0 out of curiosity the quality of cinematography is evident. The way the camera moves, your own character is emoting much more, actually feeling like they have an expression, just a lot of small things that make the cutscenes feel more alive. In 2.0 they scenes for the large part were not up to that standard. But I have to admit that the team has become progressively better, especially in camera work over the 2.0 cycle until now in 2.55. The only thing that is still a bit lacking is our character mostly only expressing themselves with facial expressions and turning their head, making them still feel like a motionless puppet, rather than an active participant. I know for the sake of allowing us to project whatever character we imagine it has to be very general, but a bit less passiveness could not hurt.