The opening battle between samurai spacemen and skeletal warriors in Onimusha 3 was created by ROBOT. The goal was to produce the best 3D cinematic opening ever. Character Samanosuke by © Fu Long Production. © CAPCOM CO., LTD. 2004. © CAPCOM U.S.A., INC. 2004 All rights reserved.

Game technology has advanced incredibly over the last decade. Today’s games incorporate cinematic sequences to both entice the viewer with glimpses of the game, and also develop the characters, situations and stakes of play. It is a fascinating world that is becoming more open-ended as time progresses, and gaming cinematics plays an increasingly vital role.

What are Cinematics?
“We define cinematics as our bookends to a game level that help the storyline along,” says Dev Madan of Sucker Punch, creators of Sly Cooper. “We call them intros and outros. With the intros, we set the boss up, give the player an idea of who he or she is, what their back story is and paint a location to give the sense that the character is traveling to somewhere exotic. We create acts one and three of a three-part story, and the player controls act two. Act one is the setup, the who-what-where-when-and why, and act three is the resolve.”

Madan goes on to say that cinematic sequences allow gaming artists more latitude in creating characters. “The cinematic sequence is pure storytelling- you get to control all the things that you have to surrender in a gameplay experience — things like camera moves, the pace, how a character delivers a line and timing. Cut scenes are an opportunity for us to portray the character in a number of sequences to build his/her character to the player.”

Realism
Sony’s Brian Johnson (of the Cinematics Solutions Group) has to his credit his work on the photorealistic stadium intros for NFL games, and the cinematics for the Navy Seals titles. As far as creating a realistic cinematics experience is concerned, Johnson says, “We shoot for realism, especially in the sports line. The producers all say, hands down, give us reality. They want to see the player move and breath and have character. If you watch one of our football games and you take a look down the hallway from the kitchen into the living room and see the game, I think you’d be hard pressed to see the differences from reality. And once we move to PlayStation 3 it will be very difficult to discern any differences — it’s going to get just incredible with the next incarnation.”

Dev Madan, of Sucker Punch, which created Sly Cooper and the Thievious Raccoonus (above), finds that cinematics are a great storytelling device to get the player familiar with the characters. © 2002 Sony Computer Ent. America Inc.

However, Sean Cushing of Pixel Liberation Front recognizes different objectives. “We’ve focused mainly on game trailers which are used at E3 as part of the marketing package for new games.” Rather than striving for total realism, Cushing points out that it is often a better idea to use cinematics that are closer in quality to the actual gameplay. “Some trailers in the past have gone too far with realism, and people who buy the games and play them are disappointed because the graphics aren’t the same quality. So we’re very conscious when we do a trailer to increase the quality about twenty percent, but not so much that we mislead the player regarding the graphics they will see during the gameplay.”

An example of realism is Onimusha 3, a PlayStation 2 game with an opening cinematic created by ROBOT Communications in Tokyo, Japan, utilizing 3ds max as a rare cinematics tool. The Onimusha 3 cinematic portrays battles between samurai spacemen and skeletal warriors that plays like a cross between Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Lord of the Rings.

“In the final episode of the Onimusha series, our intension was to produce the best 3D cinematic opening entertainment ever, and captivate the game players,” said Ikuo Nishii from ROBOT. “Takashi Yamazaki, a film director of Returner and Donnie Yen, legendary martial arts choreographers in Hollywood and Hong Kong, co-directed the production with Shirogumi and Kaihei Hayano, who both completed CG creations for both Onimusha 2 and now, Onimusha 3.”