What do you want from a cinematic?

I have been looking for a thread which could deal with such a topic, but didnt find one, so i thought I would start one for the public.

Personally I am currently working on an epic cinematic into which I have invested quite some time now and which i want to maybe bring something new, so I was wondering if you could give me some feedback on what you want from an epic cinematic or any other cinematic you can think of?

Now this relates to absolutely anything you can think of, if you want to criticise some of the other cinematics for what you think could have been done better, or what they are lacking, post it in here. As I say I was thinking about anything, like for example the storyline, would there have to be a love story in an epic cinematic or do you think that would be to clishéed, also would you want a story which describes a journey, of some kind, or rather a story which evolves around one place? or how action packed would a cinematic have to be, should it be more thought provoking and focused on story or pure fighting action?

Other than plot, what kind of battle scenes for example would you want to see? Should they be large scaled battles and sieges or should the conflict be on a smaller scale? Do you think there should be duels included? Or how would you balance it throughout the whole plot?

I think this kind of thread could be useful to anyone who wants to work out what people expect from a cinematic. This really relates to anything you ever noticed and didn't like or you wanted to change, how ever banal you may think it to be, post it for everyone to see.

Looking forward to your ideas and criticisms

Thx Tschig

I kinda like the idea, but you what you are saying is to others telll you a story, each cin has to have his own story, created by the creator...

What I expect to see in a cinematic.

• Good terrain.
• Good plot.
• Epic battles (like LotR or Troy) and duels between the good guy and the leader of the bad guys.

What I want to see in a cinematic is:

- Good landscapes (more if it's epic).
- Camera movements (I see too many cinematics with still camera while characters are talking, that gets boring).
- A good story, of course.
- Fades.
- Different shots of the same sequence, and close-ups of characters.
- (Custom) musics and sound FX.

Salutions®

well, nvm what I sayd before...
what I want:
- Good battle´s between the good and the bad army
- Battle between the good boss and the bad boss
- good story of course ;)
- It has action
- Good camera Movement
- Good Spelling ( I am not good on it I know :P I am not the correct guy to say this but what tha hell :P )

personaly id prefer to see a cin with no plot, but just great terrain. i think the limited animations on the units make a cin look awkward and strange, when trying to create a cin like a short film

From a cinematic, i want :
-Beautiful terrain
-good ambiance/atmosphere
-originality
-Some fun.

Thats exactly what i wanted! Great Keep the ideas coming!

To Mara, yeah I agree with all, but the custom Music, integrating music from other films or any kind really, but custom music I found to be difficult to include... though it is possible of course

Dark Musician got one major point though, would you want it to be more of a pure "physical" fighting going on or would you want the heroes to have magical powers as well as normal abilities? Or to what extend should magic and magical effects dominate the setting and the plot?

Gitlich I can see what you are getting at, but I found that by fusing all kind of different animations into one character you can get quite a variety of different things they could do... all it needs is the old anim transfer tool from oinker Thx for that one!!

Kalkhran I like your point on originality I know this is a major part for most people to judge a cin.

Everyone said it would need beautiful terrain, to what extend would you have custom models included, or custom skins? Same with the music it is hard to included all the music you want to include, because of the later size of the map? I am thinking of putting all the maps into one campaign, which would leave one file but this file would be pretty big so one needs to think about how to present it to the people once it is actually finished... so how much would you be prepared to included? Less than 50 MB or more or nowhere close to that??

Thx guys keep the ideas coming, remember it could be anything...

uh... less than 50 mgs of course... most of the comps cant run a map whit such a size fast...

Anything between 1-50 megs.

To dark m I know but I was talking about one campaign file containing all the different maps, ie episodes or chapters, as well as a universal list of imported files to be used for all the maps, all together a size of 50 MB... so that you wouldn't have to include everything twice across different maps, you would just get one file containing the whole cin...


To everybody else, also think about how many special effects (magical <-> physical) you would want included, and into which direction the cin should go, magical or just physical or a mixture of both...

Thx Tschig

Since my main character is a warrior and not a magican do you think I should include a wizard along the way? The Duel in the end would only be based on physical abilities, however ubernatural they might be...

hummm, add like a companion of the warrior (but its a mage, not a warrior that time)

I was gonna do that anyway, but I thought, that I could maybe shift the magical focus, from the heros and units to the places the protagonist actually visits as well as some of the people he meets... but it should not take over the abilities of the warrior. he will also beat an evil mage in between... but I dont want to focus too much on it, though he will fall in love with the magic he finds on his path he will never pocess it and his magic companion must die before the end, sadly...