Diablo 3 'opening cinematic' revealed
The opening cinematic for Diablo 3 was a surprise no one expected from the Spike VGAs, but it's the one we'll all walk away happy with. Watch it here!
After accepting an award for the studio, Blizzard took to the stage with an award for all: the opening cinematic for Diablo III. In typical Blizzard fashion, the opening for its next game--and our next obsession--was gorgeous. Watch as fire rains upon the land and pits to hell burst open. Then spend some time with your loved ones because they may not see much of you when the game finally launches in 2012.
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Xav de Matos posted a new article, Diablo 3 'opening cinematic' revealed.
The opening cinematic for Diablo 3 was a surprise no one expected from the Spike VGAs, but it's the one we'll all walk away happy with. Watch it here!-
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Diablo 2 barely had a story, but it was compelling and interesting to follow. Mostly though it just got the hell out of your way, set a desperate tone, then shut the hell up. The beta for 3 felt like a Gilmore Girls marathon by comparison, and everything that was said felt like either a cliche or something incredibly obvious.
I've still got the collector's edition preordered, and I'm still going to play the ever living fuck out of the game, but I'm really hoping I don't have to do it with mute on...-
I know the storytelling is going to be bad, but I also know that the mechanics and gameplay will be second to none. I absolutely despise the story in Starcraft 2, omg do I hate it, but the game itself is probably my favorite from the last five years.
It's a shame that Blizzard has such great artists and designers but absolute clowns in the writing department. -
"Mostly though it just got the hell out of your way, set a desperate tone, then shut the hell up."
They also did this well in the original Starcraft. They aren't particularly great at writing, so the best they can do is set a tone. The player infers the rest and their head fills in the blanks, works great.
Since Warcraft 3 they have really imposed themselves into the storytelling in a really ham-handed and "epic" way, and it's just clumsy and not good.-
The "limited" storytelling in the earlier games was probably the product of not having enough resources to devote to it as there were fewer employees. I'm also guessing that the randomness of the cutscenes in Starcraft was because the campaign hadn't been locked down when the cinematics team had to do their own thing. I really liked the Starcraft and Brood War cinematics because so many of them were random bits that were humorous and not really related to the core story. Everything they've done since then has been so self-serious.
Anyway, limitations are a good thing sometimes!-
Yep they were random and funny but most of all they were great homages to well shot and directed scenes in movies, there are game cutscenes in AAA megareleases now that are more poorly constructed than random clips from Starcraft 1. I am serious. Only stuff like Uncharted touches that level of excellence, and a few cutscenes here and there in Ubi's games.
You can watch the Brood War intro now and see what good cinematographers these guys are, even if they weren't always the best animators or artists.
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Absolutely. The filmmaking in most cutcenes are really bad. Blizzard's are always well made, even though the writing/acting side has seriously fallen off.
If they had writers that matched the level of excellence of everyone else who makes those things, it would be pretty awesome.
Brood War intro still totally holds up. Yeah it's an homage to Apocalypse Now, but fuck it, use a good jumping off point.
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Probably quite simple--build simplified models of the characters you want to show moving/rotating/etc, set the background to the parchment texture, and then build sketchbook textures that are see-through besides the drawn lines themselves. In cases where they're drawn on-screen, just use animating textures, and set up the timing.
For the clouds and sky effects, my guess is those were produced outside of that style (and with a limited color palette), and then integrated into the sketchbook aesthetic.
Any 3D animators want to tell me how wrong I am?-
You can definitely do a 3d model and do materials for it that simulate sketching, but I don't think that's what they did here, it feels like a dude modeled and animated the raven very basically then a draughtsman just came back later and rotoed over some of the keyframes to get the jerky motion you see there. It would not have been that much work and the pipeline would have been simpler than going in there and fucking around with texturing and materials in 3dsmax or whatever they use over there to get the sketching effect.
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Yeah the 3d freezeframes are probably sheets in a 3d program textured with someone's sketches. There's a dragon in the distance right after the ravens, he definitely looks straight up rotoed, and the final shot of Diablo rising up is probably a mixture of those two techniques.
It's cool as shit, whatever it is. -
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When you can do something others can't, that empowers you to produce something that is seen intrinsically as something unique since others can't do the same. It's stupid to not use all the cards in your hand unless you plan to hold them in reserve as a wild card.
This puts something they're known for on the same level as other companies. It dilutes the brand name and what people know the company for. Although, given Blizzards poor choices with their other brands in the last few years that doesn't seem all that important.
It's like driving a smart car instead of a jag because other people are doing it, regardless of their reasons. They could very well make something just as good (artistically) as this only with ten times the wow factor.
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I don't really understand what you are saying. Where are they pinching pennies? The sketchy looking sections are all 3d... they are just sketched artwork wrapped around 3d objects in a very cool looking way. Nothing about this screams cheap to me... it's just a stylistic choice. And also happened to be awesome!
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It's aggressively bad, it must be that they're laughing in their sleeves at the audience, giggling to eachother "let's see how offensive the levels of cliche can get while people still buy the game"
Well it's not that, it's just that Metzen is the worst influence in the world as head world/lore guy at Blizz. -
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should have replaced with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWAvnT_bN9U&feature=fvst
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SF4 had the better theme song though: http://youtu.be/prDVEQ4DfOc
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jzCvbctEqQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTYeAPKEpwE
are much better XD.
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Not sure who was the first but remembered Homeworld doing it quite awhile ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfcj9epbJzc
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