Cinematics in Skyrim

[Xprimentyl]

First off, allow me to apologize for yet another Skyrim thread, but I am not a rabid fan here to wipe its ass with rose petals; I have a legitimate issue for you all.

One thing that has always bugged the hell out of me since Oblivion, and now Skyrim has done little in the way of improving, is the scripted cinematic moments. For all the epic-ness leading up to a moment when your perspective is locked and you must watch a scripted event, what always ensues, without fail, is a laughable scene befitting a grade school play. The poor animation/hit recognition, the voice acting not matching the action on screen, etc. It all looks really artificial. For example, without giving out story details, I had to bear witness to three people fighting a dragon; they each stood right in the dragon's face (one person actually DIRECTLY in front of another,) the voices were saying "YEEARGH!' and "HI-YAAA!" but the action was clusterfuck of one person standing in place "breath-wobbling" (no doubt queued up to do soemthing and getting that "this person is busy" message in the upper-left of his periphery,) another person's errant swings despite being well within the dragon's personal space, and the last person clipping against the errant swinger causing a running-in-place animation.

So, I ask you: do you think Skyrim would have benefitted from pre-rendered cinematic? I know the use of the in-game engine in cinematic moments is a bold line between Western and Japanese RPGs, but I can't help but think Skyrim could have been made to feel a lot less fake if the truly epic moments were rendered to be so...

Thoughts?

 

[luckshot]

i liked the way they used in game cinematics, it kept the game from having to load a prerender that is obviously not part of the game world.

but then again i did enjoy the first one where you are freed by a dragon interrupting your beheading, so i think i have a different view of them

 

[Xprimentyl]

i liked the way they used in game cinematics, it kept the game from having to load a prerender that is obviously not part of the game world.

but then again i did enjoy the first one where you are freed by a dragon interrupting your beheading, so i think i have a different view of them

Yes, the opening one was pretty cool, but then again you were actually involved, running around, dodging, etc. I'm talking about scenes wherein you simply should watch something play out; it ends up looking like a low-budget theatre production: the timing between line delivery, how every character just stands idly by awaiting their turn in the queue of events, the combat is laughable, like watching people in fat suits bump into each other until one flops down on the ground like a flipped turtle. I just dont think the in-game character animations can convey the intensity of a scripted event, one befitting and truly epic experience, as well as some decent, ideally seemeless, pre-rendering can. When I stormed Winhelm, I would have liked to have seen Ulfric shoot up from his throne, start a heated debate, see the characters engage each other in the way the scene intends. Instead, I sprinted up to the throne of an indifferent Ulfric (wasn't his turn to emote yet despite watching his beseigers stroll his meadhall) while my compainions took 15 seconds to calmy walk the length of the dining hall to deliver their lines at the "appropriate" time all the while, I'm wandering around examing the food items on the table because they were a lot moe interesting to watch than the Nord puppets waiting their turn to talk shit to each other.

 

[Zhukov]

I... guess.

Pretty cutscenes would make the actual gameplay look bad in comparison though. At least when you see a messy brawl between badly animated NPCs you can think, "Yup, that's Skyrim combat right there."

Put simply, a lack of cutscenes prevents inconsistencies between cutscene and gameplay.