I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the cinematics within the game. Do you consider them a mere luxury, or do you believe they significantly enhance the overall gaming experience and atmosphere?
I think they are misguided and detrimental to the experience, the way they are implemented in the game.
Just like a game can be made worse by bland/bad VO, a game can be made worse by having bland/bad cinematics. In my estimate Baldur's Gate3 cinematics just aren't good enough most of the time to not be detrimental to the experience.
It is not to say that cinematics are in themselves are a bad. I don't think that with variety of playable races, classes and silent protagonist trying to look like a game where player has little to no influence over their PC (Witchers, Mass Effect) aren't a good way to go. Have cinematics, but keep that in top down perspective for the most part. Feel free to have some full on cinematics, but if you do them do them well. Make them work for each race, and give them detail they need. Games like PoE2 or Disco Elysium also have cinematics, but I think they are far less intrusive, and organic while being just, if not more evocative. I think what great stuff a game with BG3 budget could do with top down cinematics, and I think it would be overall more effective and better fitting the game.
That said, there is are benefit that close up cinematic brought - and that's capturing mocap of performance, and seeing characters up close. I wonder if those benefits could be kept, without actually doing film like cinamatics - I thought Pillars of Eternity2 gave its NPC much more identity by giving them those quickly made waterpainted portraits. Tyranny experiemnted with using in game models for portraits with varied expressions. What if, instead of trying to make awkward looking movie, one would make detailed animated portraits that would capture actors delivery? I am not sure if it would take less work that doing full on ciematics, but I think it would work better, and not draw unnecessary attention to our mute protagonist.
I remember playing StarCraft2 for the first time, and thinking how cool it would be to get modern BG2. I imagined same game time, with locked by detailed 3d view, animated portraits on the side, saying their barks and responding to damage etc. It is still sounds like a far more compelling vision, than what we got in BG3.
