Second year! - Machinima

 The second year has started and we began with Machinima. Machinima is a set of scenes filmed within a game engine. To understand what can be considered Machinima we first looked at varied game cutscenes and cinematics. Games usually use Machinima to tell a story to the player. It acts as a reward and provides an incentive to complete the game and can take various forms in a game.

In a third person game the story is usually told in the form of cutscenes, the gameplay stops and takes control away from the player, the story is told and then the game begins again. In this form, Machinima is cinematic, relying on camera angles and 'film' storytelling to immerse the player within the game.

In a first person game like Half Life, scripted sequences are used, however the player retains full control. The player essentially becomes the camera and can view these sequences however they see fit. It can be very immersive however there is nothing to stop the player from looking another way. In a way, the player can choose how immersed  he wants to be in the story.

QTE's are interactive cutscenes. They are timed events that leave the player with some amount of control. It is essentially a 'press button to see more' sequence. Although player maintain some control during QTE's, they can be quite jarring as the story can freeze or take a wrong turn just because you had to push a button at a certain time. I hated the QTE shown above because it didn't make sense. Why do I need to press a button to hug him? and of all places in a game to use a QTE...just why?

The cutscenes in Max Payne 3 rely heavily on film to tell the story. The Max Payne series takes its inspiration from film noir and Johnny woo action films, so naturally the scenes in Max Payne 3 revolve around these core themes. In past iterations of the series, still comic book panels were used instead of cutscenes. It was a really unique way of story telling. To keep this sort of vibe in the third game, dynamic cutscenes and static effects were used. The effects would make the cutscenes blurry and dizzy to suggest that Max is an alcoholic and he would be feelig like that throughout the game. Even when taking painkillers, effects blur the screen to suggest his addiction and mindset.