In the first part of this article, we began our examination of cinematic cutscene creation within game engines (the art form called "Machinima") by looking at tool design, overall project management, and content creation for cutscenes.

Now it's time to move on to the meat of cutscene creation, production and post-production, before ultimately considering the specific strengths and weaknesses of real-time 3D as a cinematic medium. Before we discuss the practicalities of your cinematography, though, we should first look at the intent of your scenes -- what is the purpose being served by your masterpieces of cinematic excellence?

Uses of In-Game Cutscenes

Cutscenes are used within games for a wide variety of purposes, some of them more obvious than others, and more importantly, some of them more appropriately than others. The use to which you intend to put your in-game cinematics will determine many things, among them the budget you will need to assign and the techniques you'll need to use. Thus, it's worth examining the most common implementations of in-game cutscenes, and the appropriateness of each kind of implementation.

Dialogue. One of the most common uses of Machinima cutscenes in the recent past has been for in-game dialogue sequences to the player: in any circumstance where another character needs to talk, whether to develop the game's plot or to give a lengthy exposition, many recent games have developed a distinct tendency to shift into full-on cinematics mode for this purpose.

This can certainly be a very effective technique for maintaining the mood of the game while delivering information and furthering the plot. However, it's also the most common way in which Machinima within games fails, losing players' interest and devolving into a tedious ordeal to get to the next interactive portion of the game.

For noninteractive dialogue scenes to work well in a game, they must first and foremost be visually interesting. in other words, any purely dialogue-driven scene is doomed to failure from the outset. Always remember that film is a visual medium: if your cutscenes don't add anything beyond what would be gained by reading the text of the dialogue, you'd be better off saving your money and effort and put the text on the screen for players to read at their own pace.

In particular, if your game depends heavily on in-game dialogue, you'd do well to employ techniques to convey such dialogue other than noninteractive Machinima: unless your cutscenes are rare or truly exceptional, your players will get bored sitting and watching endless sequences of dialogue that they can't participate in or change (which is, after all, the point of playing a game).

Baldur's Gate-style interactive text trees work much better for extensive exposition. They require player interaction, which keeps players from getting bored and keeps them immersed in the game, and the fact that they use a textual rather than visual medium means that players can imagine the conversation's visuals themselves, which means that they'll be of much higher quality and impact than anything you could produce on their screen.

Overall, Machinima has many uses within a game, and certainly brief dialogue and conversation scenes are among them. However, it isn't and shouldn't be used as a cheap and cheerful method of delivering hour upon hour of dialogue. Creating convincing, engaging dialogue scenes within Machinima is a difficult and painstaking process, not something that can be whacked out by the hour to provide cheap visual accompaniment to your spoken script.

(A final note on this point: both Half-Life and the Final Fantasy series employed techniques quite similar to Machinima to deliver extensive dialogue sequences. The key here is that neither took control totally out of players' hands. Half-Life simply had its dialogue delivered to the player's perspective, which the player could still control freely, while the Final Fantasy series, again, presented the dialogue as part of its gameplay, allowing the players to click through it at their own pace. Both of these games are excellent models of using extensive dialogue effective within a game.)

Half-Life simply had its dialogue delivered to the player's perspective, which the player could still control freely,

Introduction of plot elements. This is a fairly specific category for Machinima cutscenes within a game, generally covering a single shot or simple sequence of shots of a new location or new creature (otherwise known as the "Look at this cool thing you're about to blow up" shot). The primary defining factor here is that these are generally short sequences intending to introduce the player to or familiarize the player with objects, locations, or objectives that will be important later on in gameplay.

The simplest example of this usage is the post-Heretic II cutaway shot to reveal the results of a player's pushing a button or a lever on the current level: the player acts on the level, and his view briefly cuts away to show the results of his action (if it's not immediately visible). This is an excellent example of Machinima usage in a game: it's quick and simple (and doesn't take much effort to implement), it's entirely visual (and very effective because of it -- Quake's old "A door opened..." messages didn't work nearly as well), it rewards the players with "something cool" for their actions, and it doesn't take control away from them for too long.

Similar uses can be seen in KISS Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child's pre-level fly-by sequences (again, very effective and simple), and cutaway sequences such as Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.2's introduction of boss monsters. Again, these work well, they're the most efficient way to achieve the desired result (player's jaw dropping and muttering "Oh, %$%^!!"), and they don't require very much effort to implement.

KISS Psycho Circus uses Machinima technique for pre-level fly-by sequences

Overall, such sequences are well done in today's games, and hopefully we can keep it up. Sequences such as these are a no-brainer if your game can accommodate them -- they add value and enjoyment to the game for very little outlay in time and cost.

Plot Development and Mission Briefings. As a third major use for Machinima cutscenes in games, these scenes are the most varied and the most complex. Examples of this form of cutscene can be seen in everything from Dark Reign 2's briefings to F.A.K.K.2's extensive use of cutscenes for plot advancement.

Obviously, these scenes overlap fairly heavily with in-game dialogue: however, the major difference is that they don't rely purely or even heavily on it (or they shouldn't). In general, these scenes are intended to take control away from the players to show them elements of the plot developing and guide them toward what they are meant to do in the next interactive portion of the game.

Provided they remember both their function (to develop plot within a game, rather than to stand alone) and their medium (film), these cutscenes can be very effective. In essence, these scenes are short films, and should be treated as such. They're certainly a very cheap and effective way to develop the game's plot, but, as I mentioned in the first part of this article, they do still require real effort and cost, and should be budgeted for and scripted accordingly. It's far better to have a three-minute sequence that astonishes your players than a half-hour one that bores them.

Although it doesn't use Machinima, Final Fantasy VIII probably holds the record for best use of intervening cutscenes in a game. The scenes are short, spectacular, visually based, and develop the plot of the game without ever boring the player. Obviously, with Machinima it's possible to have more extensive scenes, and to develop more of the plot within them than FFVIII does, but the principles it follows are worth holding to in any similar project.

Introductions and conclusions. The last potential use of Machinima within a game is to create its introduction and conclusion sequences. Currently, most games still use prerendered sequences for both roles, but in the next year or so I predict that will happen less and less, as people begin to realize the potential of Machinima.

Overall, these sequences resemble plot-development cutscenes, but have added roles: to draw the player from the "real" world into the game world, and to wow the player from the word "go." Obviously, for both roles visual spectacle is very important, which is the reason why prerendered sequences still hold onto this role: however, it's worth noting that Machinima can achieve visual results well above and beyond expectations, and save the developer thousands of dollars on expensive CGI.

A few games in the recent past have shown the potential of Machinima for creating introduction sequences: the Unreal series (both of whose introductory fly-by sequences are nothing short of stunning) and Half-Life's introductory train journey (which, while not strictly a film, uses a restricted camera view to create its effect). Both work exceptionally well because they play to the strengths of both Machinima and their respective engines -- in essence, these sequences fulfill the expectations that prerendered introductions don't, showing the player something amazing and saying, "Yes, and the rest of this game will be like this, too."

In order to be effective, an introduction sequence in Machinima needs to be built from the ground up to show off the most impressive and involving features of the game, while simultaneously introducing the game's plot. Again, while it's certainly a cheaper option than CGI, it must be budgeted for appropriately to produce a suitably stunning effect. Machinima-based introductions are a relatively new development in games, but one with such potential that they are undoubtedly at least worth considering for any game using a 3D engine.