Cinematic
Cinematics are movies seen in the game, or released as promotional tools, that tell the game story, introduce new characters, or just generally serve as promotion or advertising. Blizzard has a long history of producing high quality movies through their in-house Cinematics Team, and these have been included with every game they've released since Warcraft 2.
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Cinematics vs. Machinima
Beginning with World of Warcraft, Blizzard started to produce two types of cinematics. The traditional, fully CG cinematics are animated short movies about the games. These are produced by the Blizzard cinematics team in much the way a movie company like Pixar creates their feature films, and while these movies originate from the same concept art and designs as the rest of the game, almost all of the artwork and environments are created from scratch for the film.
The newer type of "cinematic" that's been used extensively to promote World of Warcraft and now Diablo 3, is created with the game engine itself. This technique is known as Machinima, and players can make this type of movie themselves, simply by recording what their character sees as they play. The better fan made movies are edited down from many hours of footage, and usually add soundtracks, dialogue, and sometimes even original special effects and animations. One fine WoW example can be seen here.
Red vs. Blue, A fan-made series using the Halo game engine, has become a huge internet success, with episodes even being sold on DVD with the consent of game publisher Microsoft.
D3 Machinima Confusion
The fact that players never have the "first person" view while playing Diablo 3 (unlike WoW machinima movies) is probably what's led to some of the confusion, and various members of the Diablo 3 team have repeatedly had to explain[1] that those movies are not "true" cinematics. [2]
- Joystiq.com: Monk introduction cinematic was choppy in a few places, it looked a little rough. You know, usually Blizzard's cinematics are so gorgeous and everything looks like it's out of a CGI movie. Was that put together in-game? How did you guys create that?
- Leonard Boyarsky: Yeah, that's an in-game done by our AV team. We have two different ways of doing them. A lot of times when they announce patches for World of Warcraft, you'll notice that they'll do in-game ones as opposed to full-on cinematic ones. That's what that one was. Same with our Wizard one last time. They were developing that as we were developing a lot of his skills. I think they did a really good job with the limited tools that we allowed them to have at the time. [laughs] But I thought it was really cool, myself. But I know what you're saying.
Yeah, there was a few times where you were like, "Oh, it's a little choppy" or some of the characters in the background looked all the same, you know. They're facing the same way, moving the same way.
- Kevin Martens: They didn't get the assets very early; they didn't have more time.
- Leonard: We'll take full responsibility for that. [laughs].
Diablo 3 Cinematics
As of December 2009, there have been three Diablo 3 cinematics released. Click to the linked pages to see each cinematic, as well as screenshots and plot details.
- Cinematic: WWI 2008 was the first, released with Diablo 3's premiere at the Paris WWI event, June 2008. This cinematic introduces the game world, hints at the plot, and shows some great scenery.
- Cinematic:Wizard was the second cinematic, released at Blizzcon 2008. This machinima style movie introduced the Wizard character, and showed her marching boldly through the Tristram Cathedral, en route to a final battle with Leoric, the Skeleton King.
- Cinematic:Monk was the third cinematic, released at Blizzcon 2009. This machinima style movie introduced the Monk character and showed him battling Cultists in Arcarnus, before a final battle against a Morlu Caster.[]
Full Game Cinematics
There will be extensive cinematics in the full game, approximately as many as we saw with Diablo 2, with the movies shown before the game, between each act,[3] and after, much as they were in Diablo 2. Kevin Martens and Julian Love commented on that during a Blizzcon 2009 interview: [4]
- Diii.net: Can you comment on the cinematics? The overall length and presentation? When will players see them during the game, and how long will they run for?
- Kevin: That’s not really been decided, since they’re still a work in progress. Currently the plan is to show some at the beginning and end of each Act, but the exact structure isn’t yet finished.
- Diii.net: Any idea how long they’ll be in total? Comparable to D2?
- Kevin: We really don’t know yet, since all of the scripts aren’t finished.
Jay Wilson also addressed this subject during a press conference at Blizzcon 2009. [5]
- We're using cinematics to about the same level as Diablo II did.
- It's a difficult story to tell with cinematics because we basically have a main character who can't be in the cinematics. We've really focused on the ancillary characters - Their focus is always to be kind of implying the player's presence right outside the room on the other side of that door.
- We don't have a big focus on in-game cinematics. We try to tell our story through action, through questing, and through events. We do have a lot more scripted events, but we separate those from in-game cinematics in the fact that we don't pull control away from the player.
