Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Guys the cut-scenes i am seeing on Youtube arent that great? Thoughts?

Agree!

Like the OP, I'm actually NOT happy with the cutscenes and cinematics in the game AT ALL. they are poorly crafted and poorly executed, and it has nothing much to do with the overall graphical quality. The writing is bad, the choreography is bad, and the execution is bad - even for the important supposedly major scenes.

Another thread by an individual with far more training in this particular area than I have made an excellent post and video (for those who would rather watch and listen for a couple of minutes, with visual examples, rather than read), and I'd very highly recommend that folks here take a moment to remind themselves of it:

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=739508

I like them. Even made my own vid of all the Gale scenes which amount to a little over an hour of content. It is quite alot of time for each char in the total game length, but the voice acting is so good that I really enjoy it. I liked them in other games too (DA, ME, etc). I still enjoy the cutscenes in those old games, tho not every game needs them to be sure. They never break immersion for me…except in DAO when you would accidentally click on a companion during combat and have a heart to heart covered in blood. Lol

I am also old af, and have been devouring fantasy fiction longer than most folks I chat with online have been alive. So I don’t think cutscenes are something that “the younguns” alone enjoy. I think they are fun for story immersion. Especially if animated well (tho this is hit n miss in the EA at present).

Here is link to my vid if anyone feels like watching! Just the scenes, no talking from my old arse. Made it for my pals.

BG3 Wizard of Waterdeep all scenes

Also…troll post made me chuckle. What a strange thing to be upset about. The world keeps getting weirder.

Litterally

Yeah I don't get that argument either. I will be 50 in December, and I love cutscenes. I have also been gaming since The Odyssey (that was the poor mans Atari btw).

That video was excellent btw. Thank you for linking.

In watching it, it struck me why I generally like cinematics in these types of games, even when they are not great. I am the type of person that usually has to watch things like, say, recorded lectures or conference talks, at 1.5 speed. Why? Because I read so much faster than narrators, teachers, snd game companions talk. And I cannot stop myself from doing it. At all. So, when I play a game like, say, DOE2…which I just happen to be playing now…I inevitably miss the narration and voice acting completely. Because they show me a wall of text with responses that I read and decide on before the slow voice actors finish ‘emoting’ the first line.

This is not something I enjoy. It is a legit mental block I have. If you try to read text to me that I can see, I am simply compelled to shut your voice out and take over. Yes, I know you are trying to emote and make me care about you. But my brain latches onto written words like a starving tadpole.

Cinematics, even when poorly executed, FORCE me to actually shut my brain down a notch and listen and enjoy the characters. So for me, the best games, in terms of immersion, are either cinematic or fully text based.

And I thought my atari memories made me the old one. Frogger. Now THAT was immersive. (Splat) Lol

I'm not a fast reader - I read prolifically, but despite that, I'm not actually 'fast' compared to many of my friends. Despite that, many games that have text which is fully voice acted as well, I would generally overtake them. I have the same issue you do, in that listening to the voice acting after I've already read the line is distracting or at times tedious when I'm waiting to make my choice, etc., I understand where you're coming from.

I appreciate games that have partial voicing - where the speaker might deliver the first sentence or two of their dialogue, for example, but the game leaves you to read the rest.

What I will say, is that in games that are fully voiced but which also contain the text of large amounts of exposition, I identify that it is such a game, confirm that I will read ahead faster than most speakers will speak, and then, once I've done that, I do one of two things: I either slow down the rate at which I read, listening to the voice and following along at the same pace, and letting myself obtain each word more carefully as I listen, OR, I look away from the text box, and focus on the rest of the screen, looking at the characters, and paying attention to all the other details present, while I listen. It's not hard to do, once you decide to do it - it's not a matter of forcing yourself, so much as resisting temptation and letting things progress at the intended pace, and appreciating it as delivered.

You say you enjoy the game more when it forces you to do this - but it's only a matter of personal decision and a small amount of will power that would allow you to simply do the same yourself with other games. I understand the innate draw; the in-built instinct to read words that are visible; I get that, I do... if you let yourself look at them it can be almost impossible not to; just look away - there will always be other things on the screen that will provide you stimulus to chew through while you listen to what's being presented. If you know you'll enjoy the game more that way - and it sounds like you do - then it's worth doing. If the urge to read is strong enough that you need to practice it, or even to close your eyes, there's nothing wrong with doing that, if it will let you enjoy what a game has to offer more - and please understand I say this coming from a similar position, and with absolute sincerity and good intent.

I definitely agree with this. I like cut scenes when they have a point. Filler ones do not have a point to me, and the ones where Tav is assumed to have a specific emotion are immersion breaking when that emotion is incorrect.

I have this issue too. Only difference for me is most games have at least one voice that just is cringy as hell or makes my skin crawl and I have to have sound off other than the ambient background noises to be able to play. Makes it a lot easier to do things at a better speed. :P

Lol the wrting has to be realistic. The NPCS are just not real enough for me and the wrting is to woke,eg to politically correct.

Also the story isnt immersive ............at all............regardless of my other takes i am being genuine here

Can you link the scenes you are talking about? "Woke" is one of those politically and emotionally loaded terms that means vastly different things to different people. Can you explain what that means to you?

I would separate "woke" and "politically correct" - as political correctness has a very different connotation - some people see it as overzealous censorship which is a valid point, and some see it as an attempt to reform language to remove structural inequalities.

But mainly I have no idea what you mean by these scenes if we can't all see them.

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Do you make these statements based only on youtube videos, or have you played through the game yourself? because if you only know the game from videos... don't be surprised if you are not immersed in the story.

Generated cutscenes are the perfect approach for a game of this size that doesn't want to compromise TOO MUCH in the amount of variations available.

They clearly have to clean up the system a whole lot more to reach an ideal peak of consistent quality, but generally speaking I think people are being extremely ungenerous in judging what's already there, not to mention occasionally hilariously hyperbolic, if not even outright disingenuous to the point of bordering open dishonesty (see the "five seconds loading for every dialogue" which doesn't fucking EVER happen, unless you are playing on some potato PC with a rusty mechanical HD and maybe not even then).


Generally speaking there's plenty of moments where the (admittedly messy) cinematic angle adds plenty of character and personality even to NPCs that have just a couple of minor lines to say.

Here's a random clip i just recorded as an example (despise the fact that the game decided to fuck with me with some visual artifact on colors here, but let's ignore it:



If you guys are going to tell me that this makes the game feel worse or that it "robs you all of a lot of time without adding anything back" I'm going to call bullshit on you all.

LOL. Yea it looks silly and just does not work for me. Stiff as hell and the body delivery is weird. Would work WAY better during regular overhead gameplay keeping the voice with some animation without that big cinematic closeup. These short cinematic bursts ADDS NOTHING but crinch, to me at least.

+1 !

Your overthinking it.

I own the EA version and have played it. I am referring to the whole game not just a single cut-scene. Reviewers and journalists and critics are constantly speaking generally about games stop being a cry baby and trying to reduce the significant of my points.

The points i am trying to give as feedback to larian are:

- the story appears to not be very immersive
- Alot of (most) of the cut-scenes in my opinion add very little value to the overall immersivity of the game. I would describe them as poorly written and sometimes just weird.
- I would prefer if all wokeness and political correctness was removed from the game. Completely. The focus should be on producing great content not hitting gender, racial and sexual diversity quotas. The political correctness issue i am referring to is the writing needs to be more shocking raw and impact-full. Larian should be writing whatever they want and not be concerned with some socialist, animal welfare, church group, greenpeace group or feminist group going on twitter because larian hurt there feelings.

That's fair. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I was just trying to better understand your point of view. I think I get the gist of it, thank you for that.

There are some that are "handcrafted" (meaning staged, with set character placement and camera shots). I wouldn't say it's a money problem (Larian is investing a crap-ton into this project) but I don't see how it could be logistically possible.

Heavy cinematic RPGs come with heavy restriction to character creation. Cinema has language - if your character has varying physical apperance (height, build, posture) and varying attitude, personality, worldview, objectives, how are you to direct their presence through a cutscene? For example If you want to establish PCs control over situation, how do you effectively frame human vs halfling to achieve that effect?

As far as I know both Mass Effects and Witcher used some kind of automatic generation as baseline. There will always be cutscene who reqiure more or less human touch. But in those games main character isn't very variable, which gives devs an ability to make choices. How much "staging" is happening, in lets say Witcher, I don't know (do all conversations happen in pre-determined conversations? Is it possible to talk to an NPC in an unintended location? - I never thought of those things when playing Witcher, which is indication that the system worked. I constantly thought of those things in BG3, which means the game has a long way to go).

This post and video has been already mentioned, and it more eloquently explains the problem. Stuff like Goblin's attack on the Druid grove or meeting with Raphael is what really worries me. Those cutscenes are focusing mostly or entirely on 3rd party characters, so our PC or party is of little revelance. And they still not effective. It could be that they will get more polish and attention before the release, and that conversation system will overall be improved with more expressions, animations, better shot framing and staging etc. But I am sceptical.

You can call bullshit all you want, that doesn't invalidate the opinions of other people. All it does it make you seem like a grump. that said, I agree with you, the cutscenes, although sometimes pointless (i dont need to see a cutscene everytime i talk to a vendor thanks), generally add more personality to almost all of the npcs.

For me I think the story has potential but needs a bit more in certain regards, but the presentation with cutscenes and dialogue is the highpoint of this cRPG. It is actually ambitions to voice act everything in a game genre where paragraphs of text are the norm, and while there is some jankiness, NPCs emote fairly well and display their emotions through voiceacting and movement. Essentially, presentation is what the game has done best so far. That said, the Player character is stiff as a board occasionally smiling dumbly and needs a bit more to actually stand out as a leader.

OMG YES. I have the same problem, it is especially annoying when watching subtitled movies or shows, I am almost subconsciously forced to shut everything out and read the subtitle.