CUTSCENES

Hello, space cowboys!

Today, we'll talk about one of our most vibrant storytelling elements — cutscenes. We'll also discuss what guides us in creating them, the tools we use, and the challenges we face.

When designing cutscenes for the game, we adhered to several principles, with the first being the principle of necessity. The primary goal is to simplify the player's understanding of what's happening — conveying information without lengthy dialogues, helping to assess the situation, or finding a secret passage.



Secondly, it's often easiest to reveal the personality, motives, and emotions of characters in cutscenes. They allow us to showcase the seriousness of a situation or emphasize the dramatic nature of a moment — as seen, for example, in the escape of Scalphunters leader’s favourite arphant.



And, of course, cutscenes are an additional opportunity to showcase beautiful panoramas of K'Tarsis from interesting perspectives!



Creating cutscenes is a rather labor-intensive process. We work with them directly in our own engine, using standard assets. However, the process requires meticulous directing, partly echoing the daily routine assignment process. In addition to that, we work with lighting, perspective, speed, and many other settings.



The drawback of such an approach is the time-consuming nature. Despite our efforts to use a minimal amount of resources and not make cutscenes overly complex for the sake of cinematic quality, directing one episode in the game engine can take up to three to four days and involve numerous tests — selecting angles, lighting, camera movements, and much more. However, the ability to quickly, vividly, and clearly convey the story to the player is definitely worth it!



Nevertheless, we do everything to streamline the cutscene creation process. For this purpose, we're developing special tools that significantly reduce the workload. For example, processes like simulating shots and hits on an object, playing footstep sounds in corresponding animations, and much more are automated.

When creating cutscenes, we aim to make them dynamic and concise, showing only what is essential. Due to the time-consuming nature of their production, we prioritize elements that are crucial for better unfolding of the game events. We plan to release several more cutscenes. Perhaps, you would like to see specific moments in them? Feel free to share your preferences in the comments and on Discord — and see you soon on K'Tarsis!

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