I think the cinemascope here is already heavily stylized and closer to classic animation in the vibe than hyper-realism per say. Like we definitely know what that looks like from other games, but I think think that's the real hook here. It's more Mystery science theater 3000 but like a sword and sorcery version of that, than anything like a traditional film flick. I think as the player the most engaging elements are when we get to adlib and become the cinematographer of our own run, which is why I like what they're driving at, but want a lot more flexibility for how this is all staged out. Particularly our control of the camera and the way the avatar is animated, with more player inputs on all that stuff.
But if they would show those same faces in a fight, now that would be appropriate. And that would probably get me, the player, more emotionally involved in combat. How about showing quick close ups of a fighter dodging a blow? Or showing the pain of getting hit? How about showing an archer drawing her bow, or a wizard concentrating on a spell, beads of sweat on his forehead? How about showing a close up of the raw emotion of seeing your companion, or even your lover, die?
Also, and I guess that is probably more difficult to achieve, would it be good if Tav cinematics took Tav's characteristics into account. High wisdom characters could display a knowing smile, high strength characters could be seen flexing their muscles, high dex characters flipping very sharps knives, high intelligence characters looking smug, and so on.
I would love that!
Also if the portraits would key off similar stuff. Like for status effects and have that all stitch in together. To me that's the good stuff in the stew, like hamboning around, but as it gets more sophisticated I think they can do gravity here, cause they do achieve that at points. Mostly it's lighthearted I think now, with some schlock for flavor, but it also has it's moments. Cinema and the still visual is still a very powerful mood setter. You can imagine what the game would look like if every scene was animated out in-game with the camera just sorta holding the wide shot. It'd look like the Zhents dipping back into the cave fleeing from the Flind, or other little moments of that sort, which is ok, but also you can kinda feel where the limits would be there. When they pull way in with the super zoom or go crazy on the track cam, or do those vignettes backs and forth, that all helps build to the crescendos and those are quite satisfying. It would be fun to have a more dynamic cinema mode for combat as well. Similar to dice animations, things like that could be controlled by a skip setting depending on what sort of present the player is feeling.
One thing I noticed very early on is that you can skip a cutscene presentation in cinemascope, but when it's acted out in-game with the avatars this is usually a locked-in present that can't be skipped. So it actually would take longer to cut around that way if we were bound only to that sort of delivery with the current way of doing it. Even if they made it look real clean, it'd be rough if there was no way to edit it down on the repeated viewing.
But yeah, I do love that idea of more situational gesture and emotive happenings at the players discretion, into combat or for other moments in exploration. Seems like it would be a lot of fun.
