So a few days ago I was saying how Shining Tears has poor still image manipulation, and today I came across this fan-made video of Fate at http://big.freett.com/lightheat/avalon.wmv (60MB, right click and save) which is actually manipulates the still CG images far better than the actual game. For a while I was wondering where anime and CG stills are going in gaming and I think this has the answers I was looking for.
1. Long anime cutscenes are dead. I really can't remember any anime in any game I've played that had a minute long, continous cutscene that was actually good (Suikoden 3's intro is good, but the scenes are not continuous). The movie uses short (1-2 seconds) anime snippets from the Fate intro anime for all the character introductions and I think that's the only way Anime can work in light of CG being vastly superior to Anime these days. It's akin to the old Shining Force, where you have some simplistic graphics for the overall game, and then the combat which is obviously the graphical highlight of the game in special animated detail. As can be learned from various complaints on the Square RPGs no one likes CG going on forever either, and CG quality has been superior to Anime for quite a long time now.
2. Anime(ish) stills have to be way higher quality. In today where CG is superior to pixelated Anime, we should not be appeased by some low quality Anime picture of a character. For example, if you played Kingdom Hearts it's reasonably safe to say that the polygon versions of the Disney characters are superior to the handdrawn counterparts (and certainly in detail). Now if they throw you a hand-drawn version of Donald Duck would that impress you? Of course not. I don't know how you'd go about this but obviously some people know how to do it (CG stills of every Fate character is way more detailed than their anime counterparts). And if they can't come up with a drawn version that's superior to the CG one, then they better leave the inferior characters home.
3. Simple techniques are sometimes the most useful ones. When I played FFX, the first thing that impressed me was not any of the graphical powerhouse that went into Yuna's lips in CG or whatever. It's that everything was actually in perspective. Sin was huge, and not just like generic 'take up your whole screen' huge. You can actually see how big he is relative to you. The entire game of Fate and the movie linked above simulates movement by just moving CG stills across the screen with various effects. Going back to #1, I don't think anyone has yet to figure out how to make a continous CG or Anime anything that doesn't just somehow break down at some point. So until they do, I'd rather have some CG/Anime stills with special effects than waiting 3 minutes for a summons to be done in FFX or going into a space opera for 30 minutes like Xenosaga.
1. Long anime cutscenes are dead. I really can't remember any anime in any game I've played that had a minute long, continous cutscene that was actually good (Suikoden 3's intro is good, but the scenes are not continuous). The movie uses short (1-2 seconds) anime snippets from the Fate intro anime for all the character introductions and I think that's the only way Anime can work in light of CG being vastly superior to Anime these days. It's akin to the old Shining Force, where you have some simplistic graphics for the overall game, and then the combat which is obviously the graphical highlight of the game in special animated detail. As can be learned from various complaints on the Square RPGs no one likes CG going on forever either, and CG quality has been superior to Anime for quite a long time now.
2. Anime(ish) stills have to be way higher quality. In today where CG is superior to pixelated Anime, we should not be appeased by some low quality Anime picture of a character. For example, if you played Kingdom Hearts it's reasonably safe to say that the polygon versions of the Disney characters are superior to the handdrawn counterparts (and certainly in detail). Now if they throw you a hand-drawn version of Donald Duck would that impress you? Of course not. I don't know how you'd go about this but obviously some people know how to do it (CG stills of every Fate character is way more detailed than their anime counterparts). And if they can't come up with a drawn version that's superior to the CG one, then they better leave the inferior characters home.
3. Simple techniques are sometimes the most useful ones. When I played FFX, the first thing that impressed me was not any of the graphical powerhouse that went into Yuna's lips in CG or whatever. It's that everything was actually in perspective. Sin was huge, and not just like generic 'take up your whole screen' huge. You can actually see how big he is relative to you. The entire game of Fate and the movie linked above simulates movement by just moving CG stills across the screen with various effects. Going back to #1, I don't think anyone has yet to figure out how to make a continous CG or Anime anything that doesn't just somehow break down at some point. So until they do, I'd rather have some CG/Anime stills with special effects than waiting 3 minutes for a summons to be done in FFX or going into a space opera for 30 minutes like Xenosaga.
