A lot of this seems to be forgetting it’s a game, not a movie.
That guy also made what was, without a doubt, the most jarring sequence that reminded me I was not only definitely in a video game but definitely in a video game he wanted to be a movie instead.
This gets worse in other parts of his game because MGSV is 90% a game where you observe, plan and then engage on your own terms (then improvise when you fuck things up) but on any level that has Hideo Kojima listed as the level writer, you will have a lot of that overruled to try to force cinematic moments and effects on you.
The reason everyone is showing off Kojima’s movies is because he wants to make movies, and will begrudgingly let the player participate sometimes. Also he might have “limited tech” but he also had literal total creative control over everything including being able to make them re-do parts of the game to fit his movie.
Hitman 3 limits itself to a few very rare (and later by default skipped) instances because it’s trying to avoid being a movie and being more about the player getting involved.
He also spent a frankly obscene amount of money on his cinematic assets. So yes, you should say “budgets” because it costs a lot to build all the assets and do all the custom mocap etc. He also spent a fortune on hi-res actor models, complex rigging and mocap because he wanted to hand out with the actorshe uses them as his big marketing point in his trailers etc. The biggest factor in the quality of cinematics has generally been budgets for the past… ten years or so now.
This is likely a decision made due to the cinematic content being such a tiny part of the game, if put too much variation in camera angles it will both confuse the viewer (like when you get poorly editing shots with cris-crossing action and push them out of the “in a game mode” (see the video I linked).
You may also notice that it’s used actively to signal when things are different or off balance.
In A Necessary Evil the camera shifts from a high angle, dropping in from above to feel as though we were entering another mission and then showing Diana as though she’s the target, then when we have the reveal that she’s definitely turned on 47 the camera shifts to a low angle. It’s unfamiliar, its unsettling, it’s now how we’re used to seeing these kind of dramatic moments with people having guns out. It does that because the high angle is a standard in the game and the cinematics.
You can see it in The Man Behind the Curtain and the mission briefing for End of an Era, the low camera angle gets used to signal when 47 is not in control, when you are not in control. When Diana gets a surprise call from The Constant, it’s a low angel. When 47 plots to destroy the ICA with Olivia, he’s shot from low angles with a few shot-reverse-shot to keep it interesting.
Specifically they wanted to crack the “in-game cinematics that look like an animated horror movie, with a sharp transition straight into first person to put you in the shoes of a survivor” effect. It wasn’t a “quality” issue, it was a particular effect they wanted and they had very particular intentions for it.
Hitman 3’s cinematics are supposed to essentially be a continuation of the game feel, not like it’s setting you up to feel like you’re watching a movie and then in the movie. The story telling takes place through the gameplay, and you observe 47 doing it - mimicking this observation in the cut scenes assists with that.
You need the right tools for the right job, without consideration of that and the relative resources available - any discussion is not “critique” but daydreaming.
That’s what happens when more of the budget is spent in cinematics.
Part of being a good director is working with what you’ve got in terms of assets and budgets, and given that Mike Fisher is normally an editor for movies - it seems likely part of the reason they selected him from the candidates is he was willing to work with whatever he could get - rather than just keep blowing out the budget because “my artistic vision” Kojima style.
So with all that - I think the cinematics are pretty good and about what you’d expect. Most of the issues like Grey’s face etc come from the fact that models had to be rendered to be viewed primarily from the third person and had to be a little cartoony so as to take the edge off some of the violence and the gaps between how the game makes things work and how reality would work.
It could certainly have been better with a bigger budget and more time and resources allocated, but I’m quite impressed with what the director managed based with what he had.
Perhaps it would be better to spend more time examining the cinematics in the game, rather than comparing them to other games?