So I’ve started playing HITMAN 3 and I’ve started also seeing the new in-game cinematics. And it is clear that IOI and Glacier are a bit behind in this category.
The clear benchmark would be something like this:
Now before people say… “Budget!”
yes, budget is one area of course. But there’s a couple of things that I would like to raise, especially as IOI are moving into 007 - where the cinematic demands will be even bigger.
Point 1: Director - I don’t want to offend whoever directed the cutscenes for HITMAN 3, but IOI really need to look elsewhere, or send this person to study more cinema styles at least. The opening cutscene in particular is very dry (an SUV ride through Saudi Arabia and a voiced narration? That’s it?). The whole “Is that your winning face” scene really is adequately written, but not blocked in creatively, and there is no nuance to anything that is happening there.
Camera is too high half the time. And that’s just for starters. People who see the visual style from HITMAN 1 (particularly how Platige Image aped the style of actual 007 films while working with Square Enix) will see the potential here that was left untapped in HITMAN 3
Even with limited tech, a strong director can make you forget you are looking at a simple in-game cinematic. For example, this guy:
Even if the technology, polycounts, and everything is ancient in this example by modern standards, strong direction is strong direction. HITMAN 3 is technologically more advanced than MGSV but without a strong visionary behind the cinematic camera, we don’t get the same powerful results. For H3, we know this is a step up from H2. But for 007 the larger public won’t be so forgiving.
This is the starting for point for any improvement in my view.
Point 2: Rigging/Mocap quality and Alternate Render Modes - Back in the days of L4D2, Valve wanted to crack the nut of “in-game cinematics that look like an animated movie” and the way they did this was to actually use their Source Engine to make the cinematics but at such high settings that it would actually not run in real time - thus the cinematics from those early Source efforts were, in reality FMV’s rendered out in JPEG form and played back at 24 JPEGs per second - yes that’s sort of cheating, but you do what you need to do to get your result. The other reason this became necessary was because the actors were actually super-rezzed from the true in-game characters. They had much higher vertcounts and had bone face rigs that were too dense for the actual game. Again, you do what you need to do to get the result that matters.
There’s others I can think of, like how the SSS settings and lighting seem poorly matched half the time (making 47 look younger by accident and flattening out all his facial features) but these two points I feel are the most important to bring up.
How do others feel about this particular aspect of HITMAN 3?
