Cartoon Cutscenes??

[Lusus Naturae]

Am I the only one who feels exceptionally cheated by this DLC/Season Pass/Expansion? Mostly, the cutscenes and the way they were utilized so far in the Air and Land updates.

First, they completely changed the way they did their cutscenes, delivering a completely different product, both in implementation and quality. The aesthetics of the cutscenes are like comic book strips, with very mild animation. They're in a similar vein to the Witcher 3 intro, but completely lacking in visual content. You'll just sit there staring at a cartoon cut-out of Rico, swaying in the frame to illustrate some kind of movement [maybe it's windy, or he's standing on a moving object], very little is actually taking place in the cartoons themselves.

Second, they utilize the cutscenes in a way that eliminates what could have been an intriguing gameplay experience. The Land update, I believe it was, had a scene where you were watching from the bushes as prisoners are being loaded onto an airship, and the dialogue that took place informed the player that getting onto the airship was going to be necessary. The very next thing you know, it's cutting to gameplay, with Rico magically transported onto the airship. There may have been a grapple animation, but they could have taken advantage of that opportunity to have us stealthily [because remaining concealed was deemed important during cutscene] infiltrate the huge carrier.

Maybe it's just me, but this really feels like a particularly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ cash grab. The story elements, the idea of E-Den, they're all half-baked and poorly executed. I wasn't expecting an interesting story expansion, but then they tried to make it interesting but they were lazy about it and it sucked. Maybe I'm just salty because it ran like ♥♥♥♥ for the first several months, they still haven't patched in FOV adjustments [thank god for JustFOV Mod], and they made a game in 20-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-16 that doesn't support SLI, when it badly needs the power of 2 GPUs in order to maintain 60fps at 1080p when explosions start happening. A 30fps drop is inexcusible.

But, yeah, where was I? Cutscenes, that's right. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cutscenes.

[Nite69]

its a 50GB game already, they probably did cartoon cutscenes to cut down on hardrive space with the DLC's

[Lusus Naturae]

Originally posted by =EGC= _Nite_:

its a 50GB game already, they probably did cartoon cutscenes to cut down on hardrive space with the DLC's

That's a ♥♥♥♥ reason, 45GB of Titanfall is just audio, GTAV is over 65GB with dlc. Saving 1 or 2 GB by abandoning a set precedent is dishonest, they could have easily communicated the change in their excecution.

[Dusey]

Yeah, it's a little dissappointing. They sould've used the same system the main game uses. The cartoon like cut scenes feel out of place.

[Nite69]

Originally posted by Lusus Naturae:

Originally posted by =EGC= _Nite_:

its a 50GB game already, they probably did cartoon cutscenes to cut down on hardrive space with the DLC's

That's a ♥♥♥♥ reason, 45GB of Titanfall is just audio, GTAV is over 65GB with dlc. Saving 1 or 2 GB by abandoning a set precedent is dishonest, they could have easily communicated the change in their excecution.

chill.... it was just a guess, its the largest game I currently own

[LagMan_PT]

Well jc was never based on story, its more about exploding stuff the most outrageous way possible, on that premise they delivered i think

[Nite69]

Originally posted by LagMan_pt:

Well jc was never based on story, its more about exploding stuff the most outrageous way possible, on that premise they delivered i think

Yep exactly

this isn't a game for someone that is storyline driven, thats only like 20% of the game

[Dusey]

Originally posted by =EGC= _Nite_:

Originally posted by LagMan_pt:

Well jc was never based on story, its more about exploding stuff the most outrageous way possible, on that premise they delivered i think

Yep exactly

this isn't a game for someone that is storyline driven, thats only like 20% of the game

Absolutely true, but that doesn't make the DLC cut scenes any less lame :) It feels like a cost cutting move and it cheapens the experience.

[..:: eeZee ::..]

Originally posted by LagMan_pt:

Well jc was never based on story, its more about exploding stuff the most outrageous way possible, on that premise they delivered i think

Not in the way they delivered in JC2. Still haven't finished that game, I'm done for now with JC3.

Just saying...

(And IMO the DLC cut scenes are just sh¡t. "So, you bought a season pass? There's a good boy, here have some cartoons." Gee, golly, thanks! :-/)

[David Kolář]

Originally posted by =EGC= _Nite_:

its a 50GB game already, they probably did cartoon cutscenes to cut down on hardrive space with the DLC's

Space is not an issue, unlike GTA V, JC3 is just wasting space. 9 GB are audios, which are in another language than english, which you don't need. They should be optional. Another 6 GB are patch files, which just replaces parts of base game (they could be integrated, Steam can patch parts of big files). And these cutscenes? These comic-like cutscenes are video, which makes them around 100 MB per minute of video! On the other hand, in-game cutscenes rendered with engine are only few MB per minute (just animation coords + audio). So these ugly cutscenes wastes space much more than in-game animated cutscenes.

And yes, comic-like screenshots really suprised me too. I was disappointed, because DLCs lost feel of storytelling completely. These are just small sidemissions, which are usually given as small pre-order bonus etc (they usually don't contain cutscene and are just go to A, do B, go to C, end of mission). Well, just like those expensive "expansions". :(

[Lusus Naturae]

Originally posted by Dusey:

Originally posted by =EGC= _Nite_:

Yep exactly

this isn't a game for someone that is storyline driven, thats only like 20% of the game

Absolutely true, but that doesn't make the DLC cut scenes any less lame :) It feels like a cost cutting move and it cheapens the experience.

[Lusus Naturae]

Originally posted by David Kolář:

Originally posted by =EGC= _Nite_:

its a 50GB game already, they probably did cartoon cutscenes to cut down on hardrive space with the DLC's

Space is not an issue, unlike GTA V, JC3 is just wasting space. 9 GB are audios, which are in another language than english, which you don't need. They should be optional. Another 6 GB are patch files, which just replaces parts of base game (they could be integrated, Steam can patch parts of big files). And these cutscenes? These comic-like cutscenes are video, which makes them around 100 MB per minute of video! On the other hand, in-game cutscenes rendered with engine are only few MB per minute (just animation coords + audio). So these ugly cutscenes wastes space much more than in-game animated cutscenes.

And yes, comic-like screenshots really suprised me too. I was disappointed, because DLCs lost feel of storytelling completely. These are just small sidemissions, which are usually given as small pre-order bonus etc (they usually don't contain cutscene and are just go to A, do B, go to C, end of mission). Well, just like those expensive "expansions". :(

I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing their waste, and thank you for that well articulated break-down. The studio in charge was obviously too green to handle such a huge endeavor, this game could have been so much more. They have their meat and potatoes of their franchise, which is blowing stuff up, but they could have really done with some more sides, garnishes, a wine pairing. It really feels like another one of these "checklist" games, where they just went down the list and made sure they had everything, not much creativity beyond JC2 [the Tombs could have been SO MUCH BETTER!!] and the story depth is toe-deep, with maybe the DiRivello [sp] tapes being the only exception. They actually created some decently interesting characters this time, which is what's most frustrating, because they hardly expand on it! I want to know more about Alma , maybe have a flashback mission to when she was at the plant, they could have used the Season Pass to have expansions with storied gameplay that fleshed out the histories of the characters. Afterall, this was his HOMELAND, his birth place, you'd think he'd have more history and passion driven missions regarding these characters we're supposed to believe he's known since he was a young man. The whole story setting had a lot of momentum and then just fell flat, all DLC they offered felt a lot like pre-order bonuses and much of which could have been created and supported by a modding community. It's all good, as far as story is concerned, I'll just learn not to expect much from Avalanche in the future, even when they DO hype the story up.

It's a super fun game, though, don't get me wrong.

[Erebus]

Originally posted by Lusus Naturae:

and they made a game in 20-♥♥♥♥ing-16 that doesn't support SLI, when it badly needs the power of 2 GPUs in order to maintain 60fps at 1080p when explosions start happening. A 30fps drop is inexcusible.

Throwing more CPU-overhead at the game isn't going to fix your framedrops. SLI is never the answer to that kind of thing (not to mention most mobos and CPUs halve the PCI-e bandwidth between the cards [8x/8x]).

That said yeah the DLC "cuts" suck ass.

[robs2010mazda6s]

JC3 is heavy on both CPU and GPU as well as system ram. Not sure what your setup is like but I get a steady rock solid 60fps at 1440P with zero dips below 60fps no matter how big and in your face the explosions are.

980TI 1506mhz core 8000mhz mem custom non throttling bios.
4790K at 4.5ghz
16gb DDR3 2400mhz ram "yes, ram speed does matter".....
Win 10.

[Lusus Naturae]

Originally posted by robs2010mazda6s:

Not sure what your setup is like

AMD FX-8350
16GB Patriot Viper III 1600
Gigabyte GTX 970 XTREME OC SLI
Installed on 10k rpm Raptor drive with Win7 [had consistent crashes on Win10]

I'm sure if I had a $450+ Intel CPU I wouldn't have as many FPS issues, though.

[robs2010mazda6s]

Originally posted by Lusus Naturae:

Originally posted by robs2010mazda6s:

Not sure what your setup is like

AMD FX-8350
16GB Patriot Viper III 1600
Gigabyte GTX 970 XTREME OC SLI
Installed on 10k rpm Raptor drive with Win7 [had consistent crashes on Win10]

I'm sure if I had a $450+ Intel CPU I wouldn't have as many FPS issues, though.

Well, actually gave $280 for my CPU 2nd hand and im pretty sure new they were no more than $330.00.. but anyway.. thanks for confirming your system, it makes perfect sense now why you get the dips that you are getting.