WarCraft (2016)

This could probably be better suited as a separate thread, but:

Talking about cinematics, I think Blizzard has slowly been giving away their grip on exceptional cinematic experience for a while now (if you remove StarCraft from the equation) while watching Square/BioWare step up their game. So while I agree with the "we've been saying they should just make a movie" sentiment, personally my quality expectations haven't been as high as they would have a few years ago (even if they are/were doing renders in house). You can really see a dip in quality comparison by looking at ToR:Return vs Cataclysm (parts of which look like they could have been rendered in the WoW engine) for example. Ignoring detail quality (which they have almost always dominated) and style (which is only passable as part of the cartoony art direction of Warcraft), I think substance and overall experience has lost completely. I enjoyed WC3/TFT/WoW quite a bit, but besides the Opening or Arthas killing his dad in 3, nothing in the Warcraft legacy stands out as memorable to me (beautiful, mostly yes, but memorable not so much) where as I always find myself watching Sacred Ashes, Destiny, or the Return at some point during the year with Sacred Ashes and the Return being doubly threatening at actually being fairly good representation of game features/mechanics(with obvious artistic license) as well as telling a story. I think that has a lot to do with their general design/development mentality/focus as strategy games with story//RPG transition as opposed to RPG from the ground up - ie technical skill(beauty) vs artistic skill(thematic/overall quality).



Wrath of the Lich King (2008) vs DAO: Sacred Ashes (2009)


to

TOR: Fallen Empire (2015) vs Legion (2015)

The KOTOR cinematics have always been bad-ass. But yeah I agree, the newest WOW one is garbage.

Khalan_sl said:

The KOTOR cinematics have always been bad-ass. But yeah I agree, the newest WOW one is garbage.

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Because they are trying to get away from stylized faces/bodies while keeping everything else, world, armor, weapons, locations etc. in their tried and true stylized manner - it does not mix.... the WOTLK trailer cheats as you see no humans or anything "real" that your mind can associate with something "real" vs what you see - you get a very shadowed look at arthas' mouth/face at the end...that's it and that is only there at that moment to link the fathers voice over to him and trying to get your emotions into the character etc.

While the other trailers all attempt in their art, to be "real" in everything and that, as you can see from all the examples throughout CGI's history is just advancing every day.

Not sure what you're all smoking calling it "garbage". It's not the best cinematic because the best was Wrath, by all aspects. But it's still amazing graphics, tells a story, has some epic moments..

The TOR cinematics are epic in their own right of course, and all of them have been immensely popular in fact (I love them myself), but I don't think just because the last cinematic for WoW is not better that it makes it immediately garbage. If there is going to be a garbage cinematic for WoW (in my opinion they were all great, but wildly different in some aspects), then the least interesting is probably Burning Crusade because it gave us barely a glimpse at the villain, and was mostly a rehash of the previous one where they showcased the various races and classes, just added some new ones to the old ones. The following cinematics all went for different styles and did it very well.

Runnen_sl said:

It's not the best cinematic because the best was Wrath, by all aspects.

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I don't think it's hard to see them as garbage at all, especially when you compare them to SC cinematics.They're not anymore realistic in character design, but they come off as real because of the subtext involved and the emotions they try and get you to emulate. Making the viewer connect to what's being displayed is a core method to making something memorable - WC3 did poorly and WoW failed completely at that in comparison. I think a lot of it suffers from the games represented by design, but that's a different conversation and a dumb business decision if true.

Again it's how each is presented and the style they have as an art direction.

WarCraft is fantasy, high fantasy with what started as caroonish green trolls and orcs and goofy fantasy humans etc. Our base of this "world" is not really "our" world, or "our past" it's some other world or whatever etc, etc.

StarCraft however is presented, artistically and style wise as "our world" in the future, some time from now that "could" be- so the humans are just as we would envision humans that we are- it's always been a more real art style.

As WarCraft moves away from its cartoonish and high fantasy type of style to a more "real" look it's difficult and inconsistent, just like their "lore" and "storyline" lol

they showed the full trailer before Star Wars today. I didn't really not like it. May be enjoyable enough. I like they're going back on a story we already know. Can't really go forward, the Thrall story is understandable enough, what they did in WoW just jumped the shark, anything coming after it would just be insane.

Making good trailers or short 30 second cinematics isn't exactly the same as making a good movie. Dunno why this thread is all about their video game cinematics. You need good characters, all a cinematic needs is a lot of waaaagh! and you need a good story, cinematics simply don't.

They are indeed different, yet the argument I was making is that a large part of the quality involved with cinematics comes from the story they often portray to pull you in and The Old Republic ones outright prove you wrong.

Warcraft cines have different balances of WARGH and story and the quality of them can be seen to suffer for it.

You could spot the WoW gamers in my theater by all the cringing when this trailer came on.

i think the CGI is starting to get cleaned up, at least the stormwind castle scene looked a tad bit better

The entirety of everything in it looks fake. But I like it. It looks fanciful. It looks like they're just embracing the magical realm of Norrath. It's like a tiny step above the incredibly cheesy effects from all the 80s movies that I loved. I'm totally on board with a new movement for making it look magical but not worrying about making it look real.

Warcraft has always been highly stylized especially WoW. So why should the movie try to be realistic?

Azeroth*

And yeah, it looks decent enough, in my opinion. Definitely embracing the feel of the various game cinematics.

Hah, called it Norrath. Woops.

Khane_sl said:

Hah, called it Norrath. Woops.

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i would call you a noob, but i can understand wanting this to be norrath because an everquest movie is long overdue. trailer still looks bad. uncanny valley on crack.

There already was an Everquest movie. It was called Dungeons and Dragons ;p

Finally started playing the last Starcraft. Confuses me why they'd choose Warcraft over Starcraft to movie treatment. Such great source material.

Because WoW is/was massively bigger than Starcraft and it's all about the money?