cinematic-conversations
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Guild Wars 2 devblog highlights cinematic conversations
"One of the things we game developers always have to struggle with is reconciling our ambition with the reality of a production environment," begins today's Guild Wars 2 dev blog. That principle of balance comes into play in the case of the game's cinematic conversations, as the blog notes. James Boer goes on to detail many of the unique strategies used in Guild Wars 2's dialogue scenes in order to ensure that precious balance between ambition and pragmatism. For instance, characters are designed in such a way that they don't look terribly good during close-ups, and there is no easy way to integrate facial animation. As a result, the team settled on a compromise, pushing the characters farther into the background. This, combined with the painted backgrounds utilized during conversations, lends a unique style to GW2's cinematic dialogues. For the full details, just head on over to the ArenaNet dev blog.
Guild Wars 2 developer explains updated cinematic conversations
Guild Wars 2 fans are starting their morning with an interesting update and some entertainment, thanks to ArenaNet's motion capture and cinematic guru Chuck Jackman. Chuck is the mind behind the newest ArenaNet blog entry, all about the recent improvements to Guild Wars 2's cinematic conversations. The cinematic conversations in Guild Wars 2 are the brief cutscenes that take place between player characters and NPCs at significant points in the story line. Until now, players trying the demo have only seen the placeholder versions of these cinematics, which consisted of a lot of seemingly-random emotes and what Chuck describes as "some very basic lip-synch that resembled more of a duck's bill than a human's mouth." The team has been hard at work on improvements, though, and today's blog entry unveiled two videos of the new cinematics. It's a fairly lengthy read, with plenty of explanation of everything from emotes to facial animations to voice work. If your eyes glaze over at even a hint of tech-speak, fear not. While we have our doubts about Chuck's claims of blotting out the sun and tearing code from the minds of ancient gods, it's definitely an entertaining and informative read for any gaming fan. Check out the full entry at the ArenaNet blog.
