Feature length cinematics

Community General Discussion
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Why are we not seeing feature length cinematics being produced by Blizzard? The standard and quality of their cut-scenes have just got better and better over the years and in light of the possible time frames between movies (if there is ever going to be another) these would allow the story to be told in a way that I am sure would grab our attention and loosen our purse strings :slight_smile: Its just so frustrating to see the skill that the team behind these cinematics have, not being let loose in a episodic or movie length way.

Maybe it will happen, maybe… I really do hope so.

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I would absolutely love to see this. Although I think the reason is they don’t is because it takes so much time and effort to make the short one so we’ve had so far.

Which is a huge shame. I’d pay good money to watch a full feature length movie on the current events of Warcraft.

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There ain’t enough of a following any more. Even if EVERY single wow player. USA, europe, eastern etc watched. That’s 1/4 of a good TV show. And I doubt many none wow people would watch it. Its a very niche market, and very expensive to make.

I remember them saying on GoT how putting a dire wolf in, literally cost millions. Hence why we very rarely saw them. Even with CGI like safe haven, a full hour long of that, would cost millions. And obviously won’t make them millions back.

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It takes months of work and lots of money to create and render those 2/3 minute CGI cutscenes.

To get a full length movie of CGI warcraft, it would require an obscene amount of time and money. They would have to bring in outside help to do that, otherwise risk not putting enough time into the current game.

It would cost them millions to make a movie and chances are they wouldn’t break even on it because the fanbase just isn’t there.

Look at the warcraft movie for example, that shows the dilemma of projects like this. You either open up the movie to get more money and risk insulting fans with changes.
Or you keep faithful and risk not getting enough money to break even on the movie.

Warcraft is too big in it’s own lore to make a simple narrative movie. Too many characters are tied too deeply into other characters, who in turn are tied into other characters and factions, ect.

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It isn’t cost-effective for them.

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Yeah money talks sadly.

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Money doesn’t talk, it commands.

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It probably took them months and months for those few minutes.

Making a movie would also mean many more characters and that takes even more time.

They are a game developer not a movie company.

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It would have been much better than the film they made, to have a totally CGI/Animated cinematic instead. That’s just my opinion ofc.

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Especially characters with excessive hair or fur. That is extremely difficult and time consuming to animate.
That is why in the ‘Lost Honour’ cinematic, Genn was blurred in the background, to save time and money animating his fur.

I’ve seen a lot of similar opinions and am curious as of why you feel that way.

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Probably because they stories they tell for the cinematics are completely in their control and not appeasing some studio or financial backers.

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The blizzard cut scenes are good but they usually don’t involve many characters. Notice we didn’t see Thrall’s family in safe haven. They reuse assets a lot too: Anduin features a lot, and Saurfang. Also notice how even Genn Greymane was in Worgen form in the cinematic where Anduin releases Saurfang; when usually you would’ve expected him to be in Human form around town - but they reused the Worgen model which they had from the BfA cinematic.

So even though they are amazing, they are very small scale. It would cost a bomb to make it like GoT.

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I think its BS with that talk about money, if they actually focused on it, made a good one thats actually following the story it would make tons of money.

This argument that CGI is expensive and difficult worked 20 years ago, not now, its still more difficult than having bunch of dudes in cardboard armour, thats for sure but its not such big problem.

And its blizzard we are talking here about, look at cinematics from starcraft 1 they could beat many modern CGI effects, they have without a doubt many skilled people working on these and if it went fully under control of blizz they could avoid non-fans messing with it (to a degree).

And if it was done correctly it would bring tons of cash, LotR was super nerd geeky DnD movie, based on books that were even back then considered too difficult and boring for non-nerd person to read, and how massively popular these movies were.

They could scour the internet and hire all the people who were making animated … ehm … adult movies … they so vehemently banned and in a week they could spam dozen movies a month …

Its because while the movie wasnt that bad it was bad, especially parts where they were acting and parts where they mixed acting and animation.

After 20 years of basically the best animated movies and cinematics ever made they present, that, whatever that was.

Every time they release new cinematic for wow it saddens you that you will never actually see proper movie done in that quality from your favourite world …

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There are few reasons why Blizzard doesn’t release feature length cinematics. First of all they are a gamedev company, not a movie studio. Secondly it takes months of work to make those few minutes of cinematics. It would take year or 2 to make something way longer. Just look at blockbuster movies, sometimes it takes 2-3 montths to shoot them and a year to make all the CGI but usualy there are like 5 different CGI companies hired to do it. If you look at the credits most of it are the people that made CGI for a movie. Blizzard story and cinematics team isn’t that big and they have to make cinematics for many games, not only WoW.

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That’s dwarves and orc females out then. :slight_smile:

Warcraft movie says hello.

If it wasn’t for China I bet it would have made a loss.

And I restate: game company.

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How to prove you know nothing about CGI or animation in one fatal swoop.

A single frame can take hours to render, not mentioning all of the technology and skilled workers required. Now times that single frame by 50 for a 50 FPS clip.
You now have up to 50 hours for one second of a cinematic.

An episode of Season 6 GOT was estimated to be running close to 10mil. That was all because of the CGI.
(source - https://moneyinc.com/much-costs-make-single-episode-game-thrones/)

DnD came out in mid 70’s, LotR was written in 1948…

So, every scene then? Literally every scene has animation in it. Blue/green scene for the live action actors and mocap for the Orcs.

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Because it was made by some … people … not blizz and it wasnt CGI, it had that classic :“Hey lets take existing, functional world and completely rape it to oblivion” complex of every game based movie …

That part where they sit on the hill and watch the forests of azeroth is absolutely amazing, watching that whoever was that in cardboard shoulderpads stab pillows with plastic sword from wallmart, now that was horrible …

And game company, yeah but there are people in it who do these cinematics somewhere …

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  1. Theres tons of people making animated short, yeah they release 1 minute per 2 months but its single person doing it for free, dont tell me they couldnt speed it up on industrial company sized work, its only about trying to do it. Dont tell me they were working on some of their game cinematics for 10 years, and thats as someone else said “gaming company” now imagine if they actually went full movie …

  2. I dont really care about anything GoT related, I could beat half of their CGI after half hour with blender, I think they spend 9mil on coke so they could create something so bad … shame we dont have info how much blizz wastes money on their own cinematics …

  3. If you started talking about orcs and elves you were nerd doesnt matter if its 1950 or 1990 … thats what I meant :smiley: …

  4. Bad wording :smiley: I meant live action and mocap, you know what I meant :smiley: …

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Yes, a relatively small team for a few minutes clip. they would practically have to set up a film studio.

Blizzard have been burned badly in the recent past by branching out of core game development.

The WC movie also proved that it’s not that popular outside of the existing fan base. To an outsider it’s a rip off of existing things like LotR and it is - WoW is a collection of ripped of things; there’s nothing original in it.

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Using premade models which have premade skeletons and movement sets.
They haven’t designed and animated them from the ground up (like what has to be done for all actual CGI movies)

The CGI post-production for the Warcraft movie took 20 months to complete, that was with a full team of professionals working around the clock on it.

This is the point where I stop replying to your nonsensical trolling.

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