Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Just remove 90% of cinematics and focus on the game

I like cinematics as much as anyone, and the prologue cinematic is truly beautiful, but still, I'm here for the gameplay not a movie.

They'd be great if they didn't cost so much to produce, or if everything else in the game didn't seems to suffer when so many of the dev zots have to go into video game film making.

Just reading through the fixes in the last patch #10 (which included some great fixes) it was pretty clear that they really wanted to show off the "reshoots" from the cinematics team as a thing I'm supposed to get excited about. Alas, that's really not what I'm here for.

I'd rather they just used whatever in-game cameras and animations are actually available to the player (the stuff you are likely to encounter in regular play) instead of separate camera tracking and animations built out purely for cut scenes.

I'd rather they be scenes without a cut, if that makes sense. This is how almost everything was handled in BG1/2. With the exception of the game launch Intro and Chapter break cutscenes, dialogue scenes even with voice over were delivered without recourse to a whole separate system for more detailed and elaborate animations simply for the cutscenes.

They're cool for major story beats and the initial story set up, but I just think its being overused. Not to knock their cinematography team, they've been doing great work obviously. But if I had to choose between someone getting paid to "reshoot" a cut scene, or paying someone to improve or unlock the player's actual in-game camera, I'd choose the later every time. Or again if I had to choose between reskinning or re-lighting some random NPC in a cutscene dialogue, or improving the PC animations during actual gameplay, its no contest there again. I'd prefer they focus on stuff the player can play with.

Every time I see a placeholder for a cinematic that is still "pending" my first thought is invariably, 'why not just cut it out completely and focus on something that involves active gameplay rather than a passive viewing experience?'

Oh well, its an old lament by now I suppose, the way the winds have been blowing. Its just unfortunate that more and more zots have to go into movie magic and making sure the lips all sync, when it puts so many limits on other things that are much more interesting to me in a game.