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Son, Put Down That Camera Before Somebody Gets Hurt A lot has changed since the Hi8-video-and-blue-sheet days of The 7th Guest. Game players today demand a much higher level of creative and technical competence, and developers need to recognize that the production values of their video need to match (and often exceed) the quality of the rest of the game. Why are the production values of cutscenes and other video elements so critical? Because you’re competing against the consumer’s instinctive understanding of production values, an education furthered every time they go to the movies or turn on a TV. Too often, a game’s development process starts without much thought for the video other than, "We’ll have a cool video intro" or "We’ll use cutscenes to introduce each level." All too often, this attitude leads to cinematics that seem incongruous and inappropriate for the game. I remember watching the Mechwarrior 2 opening animation, and thinking how great it looked. When I started the first mission, the game’s then state-of-the-art 3D engine seemed cheap and flat. Now, I’ve been playing and working on games for some time, so intellectually, I knew that the Mechwarrior engine was damned fine. However, I couldn’t escape wondering what it would be like to play that game I saw in the intro, with large rocky hills to hide behind and cool textures on the Mechs. In short, Activision presented a bill of goods in the intro that they couldn’t deliver once the player took control of the action. Cinematics should either fit in with the look and feel of the game engine, or use the high visual definition afforded by FMV to reveal details that can’t be seen within the game. Grim Fandango, Blade Runner, and Interstate ‘76 offer excellent examples of FMV that looks like the rest of the game, but offers details and subtleties of motion that are still out of reach of a modern real-time 3D engine. They add depth and character to the games without making the player feel that the game play is a weak and underdeveloped version of the cinematics. The Command & Conquer series and Quake II offer excellent examples of games that use FMV to step completely outside of the game mechanics and offer views of the game universe outside of what’s shown during game play. The cinematics in these games let players look at the world from other perspectives, offering images and information that these players can hold in their minds as they play the game. As we watch a unit’s health go into the red in C&C, we remember the opening scenes of missiles and bullets ripping through flesh and steel. Wandering through the Strogg’s homeworld in Quake II, we think from time to time of that dramatic flyover in the game’s intro and keep wondering just what that big gun we saw is meant for. On the other hand, LucasArts’ otherwise excellent Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 made poor use of live action and prerendered animation in its cutscenes. Far too often, a cutscene would transition into game play, leaving the player completely disoriented by how different the surroundings and characters looked. Either the cutscenes made me feel that the much lower-quality in-game graphics were a gyp, or poor acting made important, dramatic villains laughable. Anybody remember Jerec shooting his tongue out like a frog in the opening video? Goofy. Which is not to say that live-action video is the downfall of a game. The Wing Commander games, particularly Wing Commander: Prophecy, made excellent use of video to further the plot and add depth to characters. The FMV that bookends most missions achieves its goal: it makes the player feel as though he or she is the lead character in a sweeping B-movie space opera. The deeply underrated Spycraft: The Great Game made excellent use of video, creating a sense of realism and immediacy that couldn’t have been matched with CGI. Similarly, Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within used live-action video brilliantly, and showed just how involving real actors can make a game.
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