Cinematics Wanted

FatAssasin

Okay, so I'm getting really into game cinematics these days and would like to gather as many high quality examples as I can for inspiration and reference. And I'm talking about the pre-rendered, high res movies like we see from Blur, Blizzard and Square, not in-game movies that use the game engine.

So I have two questions:
1) What do you consider the top of the line cinematics in terms of visual quality and/or storytelling? The main ones that come immediately to mind are the Diablo, Warcraft, and Final Fantasy series.

2) Does anyone have, or know how I can get, all the cinematics from some of the games that have really good ones? For example, you can extract all the cut scenes from the D2VIDEO.MPQ file in Diablo 2. Any other PC games that have extractable movies?

I image that would be much harder with console only games, but if anyone knows a way I'd love to hear about it.

sonic

i know that for warcraft 3, there was a folder on the CD called movies or something, and the name of the files was something like 012_29.mpq, but you opened them in windows media player and they played fine

oh and another thing, you can check out gametrailers.com for some good quality cinematic trailers for games

iMag

blizzards trailers up to warcraft 3 are available on a dvd set or were.

JKim3

There was also the sneak peek movie of the World of Warcraft cinematic. That should be pretty handy. I'd be happy to put it up somewhere for you to download, if you can't find it.

Oh, and the intro to Onimusha 3 by Robot was pretty damn cool.

Thermidor

theres a ripping tool available for diablos movies ... but i dont think they realy cut it now days anyway ... WC series tho are still looking good ... and as for squares stuff, well they win on style alone in my eyes

Steve

WH40k: Dawn of War has a cracking intro.

http://www.dawnofwargame.com/downloads/index.php?1109541043

Download the demo if you want a look at it in higher res.

-Steve

sonic

Oh yeah! I remembered my WoW collectors edition came with a DVD with cinematic junk... I think you can score one off Ebay (they are pretty expensive though I think)

iMag

Sonic: I found the dvd set itself at futureshop (owned by best buy)

collectors dvd pack of diablo, starcraft and warcraft cinematics.

Daz

Try the cgnetwork articles. They seem to cover stories on all the best cinematics. Warhammer 40k intro for example

http://www.cgnetworks.com/story_custom.php?story_id=2538&page=

You could also try digging out the websites of the folks that are the best in the bizz when it comes to cinematics. Blizzard, Blur studios, Robot etc.

Also, here are some nominations for best game cinematics:

http://www.3dawards.org/2004/06gamecine.php

Asthane

I just finished Star Ocean 3, which has some good pre-rendered cinemtatics, though not a whole lot. It's not too hard to record the cinematics if you have the appropriate video input on your card (which is becomming more common). Since I don't have a TV, I play my games that way and it works great. Only problem is you have to actually get to the cinematics As for directly ripping movie data from a console disc, that, I cannot help you with.

FatAssasin

I didn't even know about the 3d Awards, thanks Daz.

I'm aware of the Blizzard DVD collection, it might be worth looking into. I wish Square and Oddworld would do the same. I believe the movies from Abes Oddysey were strung together and entered for an Oscar the year it came out. Don't remember it actually got in.

And I've got the Warhammer and WOW sneek peak movies. Great stuff. Thanks for all the suggestions. If you guys come across any more worth checking out, let me know.

D63

I know someone mentioned it already, but I just thought I'd mention that the Onimusha 3 intro is just about the best thing ever in the history of stuff.

Gmanx

Slightly off-topic, in that it's (kinda)2d animation, the so-so Ghost In The Shell game for Playstation had a gorgeous intro. Also I remember Tekken 3 having a good intro...for the time.

FatAssasin

Oni also had 2d cinematics, along with Myth and Myth 2. I guess that's what Bungie was into back then, or they thought they couldn't do justice with 3d at the time.

For anyone that's interested, I found some of the Final Fantasy FMV's online: http://bluelaguna.net/pages/selectfmv.php

I just wish I knew what order they originally played in.

RageUnleashed

I saw some great CG work in Armies of Exigo.
-Also the intro to Onimusha 3 RAWKS, done by a contract company by the name of "Robot".
-I agree with Gmanx, the 2d/3d animations in the PS game Ghost in the Shell were great, better than the movies imho (because it actually looked like shirow had drawn them)
-Be sure to check out the work done by Blur Studios, they're a contract company for CG sequences in games (you'd easily recognize their work, they've done A LOT of games), verrrry impressive work