I really love the black and white, off voice narrated parts of reunion Intro. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk_L8BL0r48 Would love to see something similar for PA. Though it might not fit . BTW: if you have the chance try reunion out great game.
Gimme links man . I only played Supcom Fa and such never TA. Edit: watched it. Think i will stay with Reunion . Sorry i am black white comicophil. Also reunion intro music sounds better imo. If there werent the colored parts it would be a true masterpiece. Edit2: just realized after watching that i knew the intro
Watched the link. I suppose one person's idea of awesome is other people's idea of...not so awesome. Or the exact opposite of awesome. Seriously, I would be extremely disappointed if the intro to Planetary Annihilation was anything like that intro!
When it comes to Intros(and potentially Trailers) I have one thing I respect more than anything else, In-Engine footage/Game Assets. Some of my favorite examples; Battlefield 2142(Intro) Dawn of War: Dark Crusade(Intro) Supreme Commander Trailer Mike
For trailers, sure, but for intros or ingame cinematics? There are so many great non-ingame sequences out there. The Descent Freespace intro was one of my old favorites. The Privateer and Command and Conquer cutscenes were works of art. Even the Dawn of War intro did an amazing job of setting the tone of the game. (And I hate to say it, but it did so much better than the Dark Crusade intro.) It's certainly an achievement to use the engine to make a cutscene, but unless your engine is built in a way that it could do a great job (like TF2's videos), then it just can't set the tone as well as using a non in-engine method.
I never said In-game/Game Assets were better, but that I respected them. Personally for ingame cutscenes in particular I prefer in-game stuff, I don't like the "visual whiplash" that results from going between In-game and pre-rendered cutscenes. For trailers, I like the In-game/Game Assets because then they're actually showing me the game, which is kinda important for a trailer IMO. Mike
That is indeed a classic. I'll never forget the first time back in the day, watching that intro in awe.
I always always enjoyed a cinematic intro video much more than any in-game stuff, simply because it gave my mind a bit of a picture of how awesome the artists WANTED their units and things to look - and then I could imagine that kind of awesome every time I saw a smaller, low res version of the units on my screen as I played. I mean, look at the Dawn of War video, especially if you compare it to what DOW looked like when it was released. Same thing as the TA intro - it gives your mind a whole bunch of detail that you subconsciously add to the lower detail units when you're playing.
This. A lot. It's becoming less important these days, but my god how much the Dune II intro improved the game. And the brilliant move to have the build menu take up most of the screen, with about half reserved for a picture of the unit. It really let you fill in the details on your 10x10 pixel tanks.
I know cinematics aren't really in the budget but it might be worth it to make one, excellent, cinematic. This will be both the intro and the trailer. If you can make it good enough it can be your main advertising, since it will go viral. Think of the Dead Island trailer, or the Starcraft 2 teaser*. But if you can't make it excellent it's not worth the effort. Here's my attempt: So basically a hi-fi version of the Kickstarter video. Needs work, but could be good. Dead Island has sold 5 million copies, which is absolutely insane, and it's all thanks to their trailer. If such a cinematic can be made with Uber's resources it could be well worth the money. Maybe once the game is out the door and patched, artists have some free time and it can trigger an instant impulse buy. (Time it with a 50% Steam sale?) Oh, and no voiceover please, it didn't really work for the TA intro let alone the Supcom one, and is really pointless for non-English speakers! Show, don't tell. *Funnily enough, not only was the teaser the only great part of Starcraft 2, they actually made it worse in the game. **Everyone who knows their SF will instantly think "Von Neumann machine". Everyone else will instantly think "awesome".
How could you NOT like the SupCom trailer? The day I saw that trailer was the day I decided that the Cybrans were the coolest. I also agree. The Bioshock Infinite trailer does a really good job at using in-game footage and still getting the gist of the game across.
There's a big difference between a *trailer* and an *intro cinematic*. Trailers are meant to get you excited about the game - show some gameplay, ingame units, whatever. Intro cinematics set the tone of the game and potentially introduce the story behind the game. Even the TA intro had a basic narrative story to start the clip, and then lots of pew pew because it's awesome. A remake of the TA intro would be perfect imho. How's that for nostalgia.."What began as a conflict...." swoosh asteroid passes by.. WITH ENGINES. Pan down to a commander setting up his base...
Is it really plagiarism if you have the same voice actor and developers working on their own brand, with its own plot, its own code, and its own gameplay elements, being used in new and innovative ways in a market with no equal? If the answer to that is yes, then every single video game ever is a direct ripoff of Pong. Scoring elements? Pong. Competitive play? Pong. AI? Pong. Pathing engine? Pong. A single unit with both combined offensive and defensive traits that can be utilized to unique strategic effect, which you have at the start of the game? You bet your *** that's Pong.
It's not their brand. They don't have the IP rights to Total Annihilation, so yes, even with the same people and the same actor, it might be a copyright infringement to blatantly copy a movie from something you don't own the rights to. All of your other examples have nothing to do with it.
Which means uber can't print discs of Total Annihilation and sell them. Big deal. Any other trademark features of the TA games have been long since remained unclaimed by its owner for years and copied into many different titles, effectively abandoned to public domain. Atari owns TA, right? It would seem that liquidating dead IPs that do nothing for their income is in their best interest. That pertains to specific characters and plot elements. Basically, if it's on TV tropes then it's fair game. So no, Uber can't write about lush, green Empyrrean or cold, metallic Core Prime. Writing about 2 distinct, competing clone and AI factions is pretty fishy as well. But robots that build robots that blow up planets? There's nothing wrong about that.
For trailers, is it really worth it now when anyone can look up a Let's Play on YouTube? For intros, aren't you going to be playing exactly what you're seeing in a few seconds? Seems a bit cheap. I prefer a prerendered cinematic to draw you into the game world. The most effective trailer (Dead Island) was about as far from gameplay as you can get. Of course there's no need for a PA trailer to be that misleading but IMO it should focus on showing as awesome graphics and events and possible to draw in people who aren't already fans. I feel it would be a bit of a waste to make it pure fanservice like that. Most hardcore TA fans probably backed the Kickstarter.
