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Originally Posted by Tuco


Originally Posted by mr_planescapist
Where is the humor??? lol
Have you been watching these <animated> cinematic dialogues?? Monty python levels of humor there.

The head movements/ body movement while listening.
Long pauses between lines
Starting dialogues behind objects.
Dipping your weapon then starting a dialogue.
Unresponsive lifeless companions in the background while in conversations.


...Nothing of what you are listing is about humor, though?
These are visual glitches and rough edges in the current state of the presentation/production value.



Because of this I wonder if they are limited in what they can do when it comes to theatrics? A lot of the humor is conveyed through voice acting theatrics. It was up to your imagination how that character is presented in from of you based on the dialogue. Now they are presenting those characters in front of you so doing something that is accurately animated that matches those quirky characteristics is probably a challenge. A lot of the stuff in the game is achieved through motion capture, so to capture all the various funny gestures and whatever else is probably not feasible, and therefore they have to tone down (dumb down) a lot of the light-hearted goofyness (that obvious a few in this thread don't miss and that's fine) that existed in other games.

Last edited by cgexile; 13/11/20 01:40 AM.
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I mean, there are already a lot of (mildly) humorous lines delivered perfectly well.
The voice acting so far has often been top in quality and Larian's "cinematic" dialogues when they work properly tend to range from good to excellent, giving characters loads of expressivity.

Visual glitches and what else on the other hand will obviously need to be addressed, but I can't even begin to pretend it's an aspect of the game I'm particularly worried about.

In fact production value is the ONE aspect where I'm confident Larian people will work their assess off to fix regardless of any player's opinion about them.
Which is why I focus most of my feedback on mechanical issues, interface, controls, world building and its coherence, exploit prevention and what else.

It's fine to point that, for instance, a dialogue flag may appear out of order (just so Larian will know and eventually fix it) or that a specific dialogue of marginal relevance may be lacking in options, but that's stuff I at most "fire and forget" on the in-client feedback form.
I'm never going to waste my time worrying about it.




Last edited by Tuco; 13/11/20 02:04 AM.

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Originally Posted by cgexile
Originally Posted by Tuco


Originally Posted by mr_planescapist
Where is the humor??? lol
Have you been watching these <animated> cinematic dialogues?? Monty python levels of humor there.

The head movements/ body movement while listening.
Long pauses between lines
Starting dialogues behind objects.
Dipping your weapon then starting a dialogue.
Unresponsive lifeless companions in the background while in conversations.


...Nothing of what you are listing is about humor, though?
These are visual glitches and rough edges in the current state of the presentation/production value.



Because of this I wonder if they are limited in what they can do when it comes to theatrics? A lot of the humor is conveyed through voice acting theatrics.
*snip*

A lot of the stuff in the game is achieved through motion capture, so to capture all the various funny gestures and whatever else is probably not feasible, and therefore they have to tone down (dumb down) a lot of the light-hearted goofyness (that obvious a few in this thread don't miss and that's fine) that existed in other games.


1) The theatrics. 3D cutscenes absolutely don't limit what you can do with your voice actors after me ( As far as I understand that's what you implied here) BUT it does impact the end result. I think that's one of the main reasons Shadowheart for instance seems to be aggressive for no reason while without the close up on her face her words could sound differently. And that's why some jokes are delivered in one way rather than another.

2) Adapting the narrative to your technical limitations is a thing but when it comes to dialogues it's better to have the voice convey what you wanted to convey and worst case scenario the body language won't always follow together with it(The face most importantly will "suffer").

Based on what BG3 is+ the interview with Sven + common sense -> No, they intended to tune down the goofyness. But nevertheless, it's an interesting subject.


I'm digressing here, but most RPG's I played in 3d decided to ignore the body language and still rely on the voice. Especially if the character is saying something edgy/agressive it's easier to leave the voice dictate everything. They would do a close-up, make sure not too show the whole body. Body language being more meaningful it can very easily change the interpretation of the words. If done right, it helps convey the information. If done wrong it can mess up everything.

Different persons are working on each aspect! That's why it's so difficult to make sure everything is shown in the way it was intended. Shadowheart is my favourite example since in some lines she's shown as egoistic but light-minded(First discussion with her as an evil cleric was perfect). She's totally insulting my character but with open arms. There's no doubt she thinks mainly about herself but it's a normal discussion in the end. And then all of a sudden at the camp she uses very similar words but it looks like they didn't rework her idle pose and she comes up as a mid-crisis teenager.

Most of you have enough life experience to understand body language is a thing but for those who underestimate it check it out. It's quite fascinating how Gale " Death dialogue" would change if his arms weren't moving all over the place during his explanation. With arms crossed it would be safe to assume he's messing with you from "the other side". And how less funny it would be all of a sudden.


Alt+ left click in the inventory on an item while the camp stash is opened transfers the item there. Make it a reality.
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Originally Posted by mr_planescapist
Where is the humor??? lol
Have you been watching these <animated> cinematic dialogues?? Monty python levels of humor there.

The head movements/ body movement while listening.
Long pauses between lines
Starting dialogues behind objects.
Dipping your weapon then starting a dialogue.
Unresponsive lifeless companions in the background while in conversations.
....

Larian is going to be busy. NOT changing any of the discussed gameplay feedback, but mostly with the cinematics/bugs until release...



Annnnd, there it is. It's not even a thread until Planescapist shows up to complain about cinematic dialogues. 110 posts on this forum, and all 110 of them are about how cinematic dialogues represent the fall of humanity.

You could make a thread asking, "What's everyone's favorite flavor of ice cream?" This cat would show up and be like, "All my ice cream melted while I was watching some shitty cinematic dialogue!"

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Originally Posted by Firesnakearies
Annnnd, there it is. It's not even a thread until Planescapist shows up to complain about cinematic dialogues. 110 posts on this forum, and all 110 of them are about how cinematic dialogues represent the fall of humanity.

You could make a thread asking, "What's everyone's favorite flavor of ice cream?" This cat would show up and be like, "All my ice cream melted while I was watching some shitty cinematic dialogue!"

This and Corvella's adventures, you are my new favourite person on forum!
I may or may not have choked on my morning coffee...


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Originally Posted by Vamathi
Originally Posted by Firesnakearies
Annnnd, there it is. It's not even a thread until Planescapist shows up to complain about cinematic dialogues. 110 posts on this forum, and all 110 of them are about how cinematic dialogues represent the fall of humanity.

You could make a thread asking, "What's everyone's favorite flavor of ice cream?" This cat would show up and be like, "All my ice cream melted while I was watching some shitty cinematic dialogue!"

This and Corvella's adventures, you are my new favourite person on forum!
I may or may not have choked on my morning coffee...



Well apparently we found the humor.

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Originally Posted by virion
[quote=cgexile]
1) The theatrics. 3D cutscenes absolutely don't limit what you can do with your voice actors after me ( As far as I understand that's what you implied here) BUT it does impact the end result. I think that's one of the main reasons Shadowheart for instance seems to be aggressive for no reason while without the close up on her face her words could sound differently. And that's why some jokes are delivered in one way rather than another.

2) Adapting the narrative to your technical limitations is a thing but when it comes to dialogues it's better to have the voice convey what you wanted to convey and worst case scenario the body language won't always follow together with it(The face most importantly will "suffer").

Based on what BG3 is+ the interview with Sven + common sense -> No, they intended to tune down the goofyness. But nevertheless, it's an interesting subject.

,,,


Right the voice actors will do what they do, but if the 3D is not their to match the act, everything sort of falls flat. Just like in stand-up comedy, body language and timing is almost as important as the joke itself, and some jokes rely entirely on that.

Overall most scenes and dialogue feel subdued and I think it's because of the 3D. The narrative and the writing suffers because they understand what they can and can't do with their cinematic approach to everything. I'm only speculating that this is intentional despite what Swen is saying. It's convenient to say you're make a more serious game without the gags because under the hood they have some creative limitations that they are fully aware of.

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I'm a bit confused about how many replies keep dismissing the "cinematic close-ups" in dialogues as absolute garbage, when if anything so far I've been mostly impressed by their variety and quality even on throw-away characters.

For instance, I was in awe when I met he random tiefling frantically moving her arms around when she told me "I can talk or I can pack, and right now I'm packing!" or the kid shyly swinging on one leg while telling me "I'm watching you" and pointing his fingers to his own eyes. Or the goblin that when I passed a persuasion check shifted his gaze on the low corner of the screen and mumbled as if he was actually thinking about what I said. Or Kagha and the way her body language suggested that she was visibly upset after the incident that killed the tiefling child, etc, etc.

I could go on for a while, it's a very long list.
Of course there's a lot of junk that needs to be refined, but to claim that in its current state the system is particularly lousy, when it can arguably set the golden standard in this genre? I don't get it.


Last edited by Tuco; 13/11/20 02:12 PM.

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It's ok Tuco, you can disagree and you can do it without any explanations. ^^


About cinematics it's kind of complicated.

Good point :
everything you point out.

Bad point :
1) sometimes it's not dat good and there are some generic moves which are recurrent which is a bad thing for the immersion. It's the eternal fight imagination versus representation.
Does the pleasure you get from the representation superior to the pleasure you would have imagining the moment ?
Does the representation serve or deserve the immersion and imagination ?
Sometimes it's a win-win, sometimes it may be not ?

2) The cinematics for some NPC (like some merchants or useless dudes) looks like a waste of ressources Larian could have put in more content, etc since it didn't really give a big added value to the game.


From my point of view, even though I am able to enjoy some cinematics, with a step back, I think it's more of a gadget thing, like spangles to amazed the gamers with a "o-my-gad-what-an-amazing-technology-thing-it-s-so-futurist".

So, it looks like a waste of ressources regarding the improvement the game could use.

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Originally Posted by Tuco
I'm a bit confused about how many replies keep dismissing the "cinematic close-ups" in dialogues as absolute garbage, when if anything so far I've been mostly impressed by their variety and quality even on throw-away characters.

For instance, I was in awe when I met he random tiefling frantically moving her arms around when she told me "I can talk or I can pack, and right now I'm packing!" or the kid shyly swinging on one leg while telling me "I'm watching you" and pointing his fingers to his own eyes. Or the goblin that when I passed a persuasion check shifted his gaze on the low corner of the screen and mumbled as if he was actually thinking about what I said. Or Kagha and the way her body language suggested that she was visibly upset after the incident that killed the tiefling child, etc, etc.

I could go on for a while, it's a very long list.
Of course there's a lot of junk that needs to be refined, but to claim that in its current state the system is particularly lousy, when it can arguably set the golden standard in this genre? I don't get it.



Ok so they get an A for Ambition there is no doubt about that. It's spectacular when it works for general dialogue/acting and overall the characters look absolutely hot... uh...I mean fantastic! But using some of the characters in my post/examples, they were such big characters (implied by their theatrical dialogue) that to achieve that same level of presentation using this 3D approach is, well:

Originally Posted by Zefhyr

So, it looks like a waste of ressources regarding the improvement the game could use.


As you probably know the way they achieve a lot of their scenes is they motion capture the movements and then basically queue them up programmatically. Maybe they can also fully code some of the animations but based on what they've shown (like rolling around on the ground), it's with motion capture. So the number of scenes that they would have to essentially "film" to achieve over the top eccentric characters we get through dialogue from previous games must be so challenging that it's just not feasible to do without cutting corners somewhere; in this case it's the - funny/goofy/outlandish - script.

"My Hotel's as clean as an Elven arse!"

Where is that stuff?! smile


Last edited by cgexile; 13/11/20 07:31 PM.
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Gales entire character is basically humor :P.

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Yeah but when I push him into a pit he just ends in camp -- which kills the joke. And sometimes the dog.

Actually he is a well written annoyance. Good substitute for Anomen. It seems every BG game has to have an impossibly annoying NPC.

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Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Good substitute for Anomen. It seems every BG game has to have an impossibly annoying NPC.

Whaaaaat
Anomen was one of my favourites!

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Originally Posted by Evil_it_Self
Humor got "traded" for romance :P


What Romance? its more of a tinder fuck date app.

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Originally Posted by Bukke
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Good substitute for Anomen. It seems every BG game has to have an impossibly annoying NPC.

Whaaaaat
Anomen was one of my favourites!


<shocked emoji>

smile Big David Gaider fan, so totally anti-Anomen.

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