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?

Sounds to me that if we don't want to "hide behind a finger", as they use to say around my parts to describe people who are being wishy-washy about what they are trying to say, that's exactly the implication that half of this thread is making (and a point that has been made several times across countless previous threads, too): close-up dialogues and voice acting are "a waste of money, a bad use of resources, bad for actual roleplay, etc, etc, yadda yadda" and so they should be removed entirely to nail that good, heart-warming old school low budget vibe.
But fine, let's say you are not entirely in agreement with the people making these claims, despise backing their grievances, and that your point is just that what's there should be improved.

Aside for the fact that I'm mostly confident it WILL be improved (we are most likely NOT going going to see random shit placing itself between the characters and the camera, companions idling few centimeters behind who's talking and/or overlapping with each other and other weird glitches, for instance) we DO seem to have have a fundamental disagreement on what's the threshold of what's supposed to be acceptable.
Let me stress once again that I'm not fucking blind and I can spot the imperfections myself. Do I hope to see visible improvements to animation interpolation, camera work and such? Of course I do.
I just don't think that the occasional NPC looking a bit "woody" is the end of the world and "bad enough that I'd rather not have anything of this at all". Period.

Frankly the game made it rather clear that the name "Shadowheart" is meant to be some throwaway alias she made up on the spot just to give you something.
You can still dislike it, but let's not pretend that the writers are not fully aware of what they are doing here.

Her real name is Jane Blum...true story.

No but seriously likely Tuco is right and Shadowheart is 100% an alias. I think Mr. Narbs got it right in the analysis below - There is evidence to suggest that

Warning: Spoilers.

There is absolutely NO WAY they will release a game with this level of custscene:



It is just completely horrendous (and I am not talking about the glitches) from direction to motion capture and overall artistic approach to convey despair/horror.

They are clearly trying to go beyond simple/casual conversation animations with this game and it has to be measured against other AAA. There is where the majority of the budget is going towards (and probably why they got studios like Gilford). Larian knows that overall presentation graphics and cutscenes need to be top notch to appeal for large masses.

I see no reason why it cannot be as good as Witcher 3, even with customizable PC (funny enough most of the cutscene above has no PC at all). They have a huge team (more than witcher 3 and 5 years in the future), a huge budget and new cash flow from EA. So, no excuses.

lol, that reminded me of this gem:

I am kind of curious how someone can say the cinematic animations are wooden, or unrealistic, when they were literally motion, and face capture...
I mean if you have an issue with mechanics, 5E rules or such, I may not agree with it, but at least it is a legit argument. But when you say that cinematics are janky, or stiff and it was not even animated, but captured from an actual actor/actress I am kind of left wondering...

I did notice some small things, like Minthara model needs some work, and a couple other characters, but overall the cinematics are pretty top notch. The only thing they can do (which I am sure they are in the process of doing) is fine tune the skeletal system to be a little smoother with the motion capture points. But those cinematics are not animated per say, they are captured.

Of course it is relevant, it is about as relevant as someone that is complaining about the "direction" of it, either way, not really your place to decide what is, and is not relevant to a conversation.. The camera angles used in the cutscenes are pretty standard, if you watch the behind the scenes the mocap is spot on.. The direction is fine as well. Yeah there could be a little better writing. It just seems to me to be overly critical to be overly critical to try and push the same old "BG2 was better" argument.. What anyone considers emotionally impactful in scenes is so subjective. It varies from person to person.

Well, Larian just proved that it can clearly happen. First, I am not sure how much motion capture has been implemented due to covid. Second, your capture is only as good as the source material that you are directing. Third, if you throw random emotions that happen without context or is out of proportion (exaggerated) to the scene it becomes unrealistic. That is why it is an art, not a technique. Some less artistically inclined people would say it is ok, but it even so is still atrocious to modern gaming.

Most cutscenes dont deviate significantly from industry standards, unless one expects cutscenes at the line level of a PS exclusive game. Then it has completely unrealistic expectations.
Of course, some cutscenes stand out from the rest, but with each patch, Larian improves them quite a bit.

First of all, I highly doubt they motion/face capture every cutscene. Most likely they build library of facial expressions, and motions from which they then built most of the conversations. BG3 has a lot of work to do, to make it's conversations look decent.

You also underestimate how much work is needed to create animation after recording actors/stunts through motion capture. It doesn't magically translate into usable footage.

Not to mention that mocap can always go full L.A Noire.

I've been very clear and direct about what I'm saying. I'm always very direct and clear about what I have to say... it's part of my irresistible charm ^.^
What you accuse me of, in order to then mock, has never been a part of it. I don't appreciate being directly and personally painted into a false position and mocked for it.

I've spoken against the mini cutscenes for atmosphere dialogue with various npcs; I've given my reasons clearly. That has nothing to do with any idea about canning close in cutscenes or voice acting entirely. I've been clear that I believe that those mini-scenes, in their current implementation are taking away from the game more value than they are adding - that they exist supposedly for atmosphere ad world immersion, and that they are actively damaging those very things by their current existence. I have spoken clearly about how and why I feel they are doing so.


Are you truly? You are more charitable than I, in that case, because I'm not. That's why I'm commenting here, in this forum and this thread about the issue: to voice during the EA period a concern about something that definitely needs to not be like it currently is, that I am not at all confident will actually get fixed or improved significantly without further voices being raised about the issue. If I was confident that all of this would actually be fixed and resolved in a pleasing and appealing way by release, then I Wouldn't Be Posting Here. So if you ARE confident about this... why ARE you here? If you're DO want it improved, and ARE confident it will be, then those who are complaining about it are wasting their energy, sure, but they also aren't doing any harm - so what's your goal here?


Because they often ARE woody, unrealistic, puppet-like and generally janky. They literally ARE. Look at them, and actually look at them - some of these scenes were fully motion-captured in a realistic way, yes. MOST were not... or if they were they have not been mapped well. Most cutscenes, whether mini cutscenes, dialogue scenes or full cutscenes, involve and excessive amount of arbitrary and unnatural movement that, among other things, illustrates that the models being used have no actual weight; that ever part of every body is just as weightless as every other part and that they all move at the same speed, relatively speaking. Scenes almost always contain an excess of floaty, twitchy movement that doesn't belong there (both in the body, and indeed in the face), that seems to be present just for something to do - because things 'have to be moving in some way, right?', which then ends up over-exaggerated and/or forced. A lot of the movements in many scenes - most scenes even, are stiff and jerky, and not natural at all. Pretty much all of the combat animations look machine animated, not captured (even if captures were used for reference). Many of the camp scenes are the shining exception to this, and have clearly had a lot of love and work put into smoothing them, but they ARE the exception, and even they use a handful of various scene tricks to disguise the places where they are weakest. Further more, even those scenes suffer from Terrible choreography, terrible cinematography and basically having every element of the scene that is NOT the VA, the graphical quality or the smoothed captures (when they are good), being TERRIBLE. In those scenes, the excellent quality of those three things makes the rest look even worse. Go look at Minthara's intimacy scenes and tell me that ANY aspect of that is good AT ALL - it's an abomination.

Even if we look at just the motion capturing itself - anything that involves any kind of active movement or motion of the whole body is just a disaster from start to finish. High quality motion capture for dynamic events requires a full studio, and Larian have been doing these captures with people operating rigs set up in their living rooms, and I'm sorry, but it SHOWS. Maybe we can assume these are stand-ins, put in place while conditions were not good, which are fully intended to be replaced with the 'real' ones - but I'm far too jaded to actually rely on that being the case and trust it. I don't.


This is simply untrue, I'm sorry. The camera angles are not good, in a large percentage of cases. The scene direction, choreography and cinematography are all very lacking, very uninspired and poorly handled. They often look like the work of people with no professional training in those fields who think they can just get it done with some basic ideas and using popular media as their mentor... which is puzzling since their cinematic director (Jason Latino) has worked on several other games previously, which, to my immediate recollection, I did not find myself having cinematic complaints about... yet here, there are so many times where I was left with a sense of "what the hell is this camera angle?" and "Er, what am I meant to be seeing here?" and "Egh, that looked really bad" and "That was so tacky" and "I think they're trying to convey X, I guess", and other such thought paths.

There are other threads (Such as Here and Here) which discuss this in a lot of detail, and I'd really recommend anyone taking a look at them both and thinking about them, even if you come to disagree with them, before trying to say that the scene direction, choreography and general cinematography for the sequences in this game are 'good'.

Here are my personal opinions, in as succinct form as possible.

• Having a cinematic for everything takes away from the oomph of actual important cutscenes. Cutscenes used sparsely are far more impactful.
• Many of the cutscenes which do exist look jarring. I guess this will probably be improved, but it is noticeable at the moment.
• Cinematic dialogues break immersion whenever you talk to a random NPC and are suddenly zoomed in.

Now, I get that not everyone agrees on this subject and I am not asking for the removal of 90% of the cinematics in this game because that is clearly not happening, but say they were to tag cinematics into 2 or 3 groups, "important, dialogue, unimportant," and then in the options there was an option to disable cinematic categories you did not wish to see. Cinematic Dialogues when disabled would then instead just default to the traditional text box. This would allow the people who want to see a cinematic for every arbitrary thing to be able to and the rest of us to not have to.

I'm not sure why you are even under the impression I would have any urge to "mock" you.
If anything you wrote some of what I consider the most valuable feedback on this forum so far. Not trying to create a friendship here, just a honest opinion.

We just don't see eye to eye on this, because I won't agree with the underlying notion that these "close up dialogues" are detracting from my experience.

Eh, it has very little to do with being "charitable" and it's more of an observation that if there is ONE aspect of the game so far that has seen consistent improvement across this EA it's precisely these animations, close up and cutscenes.

Do I expect for it to ever reach the idealized standards some of you are asking for? Nah, not going to happen.
Do I expect for it to get considerably better, all things considered, and reach a threshold of decency I'd be more than satisfied with? Yeah. Mostly.

I love the animations, and the cut scenes. If I need to I can speed them along so I don't see the problem. I think its partially a generational thing though, since I am old and played games that didn't really have stuff like this I always think its a treat when they are provided.

And as has been mentioned they have really made solid improvements through every single patch. I think Larian knows that as part of the broad appeal of the game it has to have enough quality to pull in the people who see gaming as another form of watching a movie on Netflix except with interactions.

I'm not sure it is generational.

I'm in my mid 40s. First computer was a Vic 20. First game system was Atari 2600.

I personally do not want to play a movie, I've never been a big fan of cut scenes. I accept them for big reveals and meaningful moments. Other than that I'd be perfectly happy without them.

I raise you an Apple II/C and Atari 2600!

The thing is, I am saying I would be fine without them but they don't upset me, and I understand that with triple A games to have broad appeal the expectation is cinematography.

as a side note - I was just going over some old Ultima lore and realized Britannia was a theocracy, how did I miss that? Lord British was an awful leader.

Also after thinking about it another reason why i dont like the cutscenes is becuase they are not intriguing enough eg not enough lore about the forgotten realms being showcased ect............

The cutscenes about the guthyanki and the red dragon where interesting though.............you get what i mean?

And that in itself is some interesting lore and it references the story of Gith going to hell to make a deal with Tiamat, the queen of Chromatic Evil dragons. Gith never returned and nobody really knows what happened to her but the result is the elite Gith Kith'rak can ride Young Adult and Adult red Dragons into battle.

I am a HUGE fan of the youtube channel Harbs Narbs. He talks about all the lore in Baldur's Gate 3. The interesting thing is the Lore is showcased in a multitude of ways, from clothing, jewelry, books, conversations, symbols and architecture. In many ways its "baked in" to the environment. If you get a chance check it out. Good stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarbsNarbs/videos

bump

What did you bump it for? Larian ain't gonna scrap cinematics, and we'll have to wait till 1.0 to see how far they will improve. Even if they say: "yeah, those are not final, and it's gonna look brilliant when the game is finished", at this point it wouldn't be much more then wishful thinking.