Where are the CGI cinematics?

[Amnaught]

I thought I remembered a blue post that confirmed that Old Soldier cinematics would have an equivalent in coming expansions. But so far only the Shadowlands announcement cinematic and like a weird teaser thing have been shown.

Are we expecting one at the end of the Sepulcher?

[Zentail]

I'd hope so, but we also know Shadowlands has been largely abandoned now.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

If they did have some planned I wouldn’t be surprised if who ever they hired to make them got delayed by COVID and with there own in house delays they scrapped the idea.

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

Probably scrapped if any were planned. The extra cgi cinematic of the Covenants released right before expansion launch certainly seemed like more were planned.

[Kathranis]

Just guessing, but might be they had to redirect resources to redoing the cinematics for Diablo II Resurrected after Reforged flopped, since they wanted to make as positive an impression as possible with D2.

They're also probably working on stuff for Overwatch 2, plus having to deal with whatever workflow disruptions the pandemic caused.

[Fitsu]

There was also a thing about D4/OW2 having further delays due to the amount of people that have left the company recently on account of the whole sexual harassment lawsuit going on and the fact the company seems to just be generally falling to pieces at the moment. I imagine all that has had a bit of an effect.

[Orby]

BfA had 6 big cinematics. I gotta think maybe COVID had a hand in the lack of them in Shadowlands, and its a shame Blizzard do good work on their big cinem,atics, becuase their in game ones are kind of lacking in the same sort of wow factor (no pun intended)

[Lorgar Aurelian]

There was also a thing about D4/OW2 having further delays due to the amount of people that have left the company recently on account of the whole sexual harassment lawsuit going on and the fact the company seems to just be generally falling to pieces at the moment. I imagine all that has had a bit of an effect.

That’s all recent stuff Any CGI cutscenes would have taken months to make so would have been done before most of that.

[Diatribe]

Well, at least back in BFA, they had enough subs to warrant the cost. Now? Now they're cutting all costs.

[Nootz]

BfA had 6 big cinematics. I gotta think maybe COVID had a hand in the lack of them in Shadowlands, and its a shame Blizzard do good work on their big cinem,atics, becuase their in game ones are kind of lacking in the same sort of wow factor (no pun intended)

I agree. Their pre rendered cinematics are among the best in the industry. But the in game cinematics with the slowed down default /say animations and ridiculous expressions are down right embarrassing.

[Draenox]

It was super nice with the amount of CGI cinematics we got in BFA and they are missed, however the in-game cinematics team have taken it to the next level with Shadowlands I think. The amount of emotion and custom animation they have been able to do with the new models, especially with the Night Warrior cinematics in 9.1 and the Night Fae covenant campaign, or the ones with Sylvanas and Anduin, has been leaps and bounds ahead of anything they have done before in-engine.

It's not as good as a super crispy pixar-level quality cutscene, but they have been great in their own way

[cocomen2]

Why waste money when almost all your players play ff14, its easier to just add some random mount to store and get these "tasty" dibs from shills.

[MoanaLisa]

I'd hope so, but we also know Shadowlands has been largely abandoned now.

If there was going to be one of their highly detailed cinematics it would have been started more than a year ago. That stuff doesn't get abandoned since it needs voice acting and the rest for it and that's done months and months prior to its release. Those cinematics sometimes take years to finish.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Well, at least back in BFA, they had enough subs to warrant the cost. Now? Now they're cutting all costs.

Why waste money when almost all your players play ff14, its easier to just add some random mount to store and get these "tasty" dibs from shills.

stuff like this is nonsensical if they were going to make the CGI cutscenes they would have started before launch and given that shadowlands had the best launch ever cutting cost would be be a thing.

[Zentail]

If there were going to be one of their highly detailed cinematics it would have been started years ago. That stuff doesn't get abandoned since it needs voice acting and the rest for it and that's done months and months prior to its release.

I feel like you haven't seen one of these developed before. They absolutely wouldn't have started it years ago. They absolutely weren't putting together a high quality CGI scene for Shadowlands 9.2 back during 8.2. These projects don't get started until there's clear interest, then they don't get finished unless that interest is maintained. If they were planning some high quality CGI, the earliest it would have been started would have been shortly after 9.1 was first announced and even then, likely not until shortly after 9.1 was actually released.

Remember, this is a AAA company. A few weeks is enough to have the hundreds of employees make the necessary assets to animate the scenes. A few more weeks is enough for animations to get mostly complete, just not detailed yet. A few more weeks is enough for animation to have begun detailing and assets to be updated for detailing as well. A few more weeks is enough to finish the project's first pass. A few more weeks is enough to give the cinematic is final detailing passes at the same time that voice acting is being recorded. A few more weeks is enough to polish voice acting and the blending of the mouths. That's 3-4 months, the common amount of time companies have reported.

Companies are run by shareholders. Shareholders would not be okay with a 5-minute cinematic taking years to complete.

[Civciv]

I thought I remembered a blue post that confirmed that Old Soldier cinematics would have an equivalent in coming expansions. But so far only the Shadowlands announcement cinematic and like a weird teaser thing have been shown.

Are we expecting one at the end of the Sepulcher?

I'm still waiting for a CGI about how Eternal Ones exiled Zovaal to Maw. We saw him in chains in short cgi but I want more.

[Soon-TM]

Chances are that people in charge of the CGI stuff were quite busy with D2R (especially after the trainwreck of WC3 Refunded) and now have their hands full with OW 1.5 2.

[Kyphael]

I don't really care for cinematics to support their crappy stories. I'd settle for engaging gameplay and expansion features than watching mini movies about Sylvanas being check mated in 4D chess by Kratos.

[ercarp]

I hope they don't waste any more resources on this flop of an expansion.

[Ethas]

I'm still waiting for a CGI about how Eternal Ones exiled Zovaal to Maw. We saw him in chains in short cgi but I want more.

This. And I also want to finally see Zovaal's motivations other than "he is just very bad".