The Dark Tales of Kakris

[ghenjis]

It has been one year since I have crafted a cinematic. I think it's time I make just a few more.

Overview:
A mysterious murder leaves people baffled in the small isolated village of Kakris located in the wilderness. A well known war hero bound for retirement by the name of Artus goes on his last mission seeking out the bizarre event. With the help of some allies, Artus will unravel a mystery as old as the empire itself, and must now save the great kingdom from utter destruction.


Prologue
Sound Credit

Music by
Justin R. Durban
Edgen Animations
www.edgen.com

Oblivion Openning Track
Bethesda Softworks
www.elderscrolls.com

Voice Acting by
Warnicro
SamuraiPanda
KaiCM

Screenshots


Runtime
Approximatley 10 minutes

Special Thanks
[Death]
IllidanStormrage
Zurg
Fin.
JnM
Player_72985

Download Here



A
Supreme Darkness,
Supreme Dawn
Production

[HernanG]

Sounds very good, ding right now, and then my review ;)

[Craka_J 123]

Watching the Prologue now. I'll leave you a comment/review after. :)

[edit]

Here's my review on this cinematic.

Terrain- [3.5/5.0] The terrain was pretty good. Temple was nice. But the Ashenvale terrain doesnt blend well with Sunken Temple stuff too much IMO.

Triggers- [2.5/5.0] Well... It is only a Prologue, but I didn't like the special effects towards the end and the timing was a tiny bit off at times or delayed.

Battlescene(s)- [2.8/5.0] I didn't like the battlescene that much. The cameras moved too slow and the units animation speed was very slow too. Gotta fix that. I roflmaolol'd when the dwarf died and had blood gushing out like crazy from his face in slow motion xD

Music- [1.5/5.0] Same old Warcraft music... Try to add better music. WC3 Music is a big no no usually.

Voice Acting- [4.5/5.0] I liked the voice acting alot and the dialogue was good too. The voice of the footman guy was a tiny bit... odd.

Storyline- [4.0/5.0] I thought it was catchy :D

Overall- [3.3/5.0] The story is good; voice acting and dialogue is good; terrain is pretty good; battlescene wasn't that great but it was a little creative; Triggers need work. Overall, I thought this cinematic was pretty good, atleast for a Prologue. GJ

[HernanG]

Wow, it is just amazing, Very good terrain, camera manipulation, skins and models,

Only thing i suggest is to remove 1 or 2 effects from the footman, when the demon grants him a bit of his power. It looks over-buffed, maybe a red ring, or aura would look better.

Voices and sounds are great, very well done.

Looking forward to see the next/following part...

[Fin.]

Awesome work ghenny, you terrain was amazing as always and you added in a nice little fight scene too which wasnt that bad. I also thought you did a good job with the cameras.

The story was ok but I cant really tell yet, and the narration at the begining was a tad too long for my taste. Your VA was good, I especially liked Panda's narration. Alltogether good job dude, I look forward to the next ones. <3

[ghenjis]

Originally Posted by Craka_J 123

Music- [1.5/5.0] Same old Warcraft music... Try to add better music. WC3 Music is a big no no usually.

Only 2 tracks were wc3 to keep down filesize.

[2-P]

Am I the only one who noticed that the narrator was drunk?
No, seriously, I think there were some "jumps" in his voice where he suddenly spoke... different.

And I agree with Craka_J 123 about the voice of the footman. It kinda sounds like somebody who's young tries to sound older.

The terrain was very good.
He he, some rocks at the temple entrence were floating and a firefly flew through them. =P


Really nice overall, good luck and fun on the other parts. =)

[Hemlock]

A really nice cinematic in my oppinion, good use of the terrain and a briljant enviroment that came along with it.

The voices were among the best I have heared in a long time, and the music was fitting most of the time.

Camera control was good, though I kinda felt that you perhaps had a bit too much blacking out screens, though that didn't really disturb me too much.

The story is what was I found the most intresting of the whole cinematic, it catches we right from the start (even though the narrators talk was perhaps a bit too long) it was all in all a catch story and am looking forward to see how this ends.

Overall a very decent and well polished cinematic

[SeruK]

Ahh, finally. Ops! Could someone remove this please?

[SeruK]

Good work, thougt I must say I'm pretty dissapointed on some stuff; like the voice acting. The footman sounded, as said, like someone trying to sound older than they are and very unnatural. The action scenes were good enough, but the book stuff was just strange, the book wasn't even open. :P

Overall a berry good cinematic. Good work!

[Armelior]

I must say I'm a little disappointed. I prefer by far "Requiem for a dream".
That said, this is still a great cine you made there. And I know it's just a prologue and so there's more to come.

Visual
Excellent terraining, as expected from what I saw in WT and galleries, great cameras except one or two maybe (I didn't like the low angle shot at the end for ex.).
The only downside here is the footman model, overall it's really good but in close-ups you see :
-the emptiness between legs and chest when he runs
-the shield is partly transparent also
-the stripe crosses the shield when he says "it's a trap"
I know, it's really small details.

Sounds
I liked the voice acting, especially the introducing text - without it it would be boring I guess. The music : nothing special, I didn't notice it except wc3 music at beginning and the one at the end was good. But it definitely needs spell sounds ! The summoning at the end seems odd with all these flashing light effects (maybe too much there) with no sound at all...

Fight scene/other effects
I didn't really liked the battle scene cause I found stupid a footman that teleports at will, and the end was a bit too much bloody, except if you wanted to make a "kill bill style"
And I don't know from where came the weapon he throws at the dwarf - btw good idea to stick it in a tree when the dwarf shoots
And all was really slow as someone already said I believe.

When the hero says it's a trap, there shouldn't be just a few dust falling from the roof, add I don't know, maybe pieces of floor falling, arrows, spikes, a golem...

The demon in the water (I suppose) looks nice, the acolytes too but the villagers part is not necessary/dull.

Story
Nothing special for this prologue, demon wanting to enter the world and hero wanting revenge... But I believe it will become more interesting in future maps.
The good point : for once the "hero" seems to be a real bastard.


Overall good job, even if you did better.
Deserves to become archive for me, at least for the terrain/cameras.

[ghenjis]

Originally Posted by Armelior

Fight scene/other effects
I didn't really liked the battle scene cause I found stupid a footman that teleports at will, and the end was a bit too much bloody, except if you wanted to make a "kill bill style"

When the hero says it's a trap, there shouldn't be just a few dust falling from the roof, add I don't know, maybe pieces of floor falling, arrows, spikes, a golem...

Just to justify that, I'd like to say that my story doesn't take place in the land of Azeroth. That being said, blood elves, in my story, are not just ordinary footmen, but moreso spellswords. IE why he blood elves revolted many years before when the laws were presented.

The blood is part of the rifleman's death animation. I wouldn't know how to fix it to make it so there's less blood.

And if you see in world editor, there are rocks in the temple that were supposted to be set to appear when he discovers the trap. But they did not show, and I didn't have the time to appropriatley fix it.

Thank you for the criticism.

[Anitarf]

Well, here's my review, warning plot spoilers and all that.


Let's start with some more technical details:

Environment: The terrain and atmosphere are nice, but it lacks some motion. When the trap is triggered, for example, you barely see anything happen. (Edit: you say there were supposed to be rocks there that didn't show, and you didn't have time to fix it? Couldn't you have just released it later?) The main character says "oh no it's a trap" and the screen just fades out. Speaking of which, I think you overuse fading a bit.

Cameras: There's always a bit of motion going on, the cameras are moving from left to right or right to left slowly instead of just standing still, that's all good, but despite that they're still cameras effectively; their perspective doesn't change dramaticaly, so they work as a bunch of consecutive still images - well done, but not always appropriate. Especialy in the battle do they not only appear too static, but are also poorly positioned and key events are often at the edge of the screen or cut off entirely.

Models&animations: The model used for the main character is... problematic. There's a lot of clipping going on, and you don't restrict it's animations, it often uses the take-a-drink animation at completely wrong times. Also, the model seems to twitch between animations, when it suddenly changes between stand and walk animations, for example, which suggests a too low blend time, but as I look at your units in the object editor they seem to still have their default blend time so this shouldn't be a problem, not even with slower animation speed because blend time scales with it, so I'm not sure about this, maybe the default blend time is just too low.

Action: You're lacking a lot here, I already mentioned that the trap didn't really show anything, the battle with the dwarf was similarly dissapointing. It was too slow, the cameras were at their worse, and the blinking didn't pass as very exciting. You don't have to do action if you're not good at it, the antihero could have just silently assasinated the dwarf, would have been even better plot-wise since it's more sinister than allowing him to fight back, giving better reason to the captain to leave.

Sound: There were some sounds missing where you'd expect them, especialy in the battle when I didn't hear the dwarf shooting or the blade hitting the tree. On the other hand, you did add such details as footsteps in some places.

Music: There's some trouble here too. The music isn't tailored to the cinematic. That's ok, not all of us have a composer at hand - but then you should at least try to tailor the cinematic to the music. As is, you often have the same music playing while the ambience in the cinematic changes dramaticaly, and when you do change the music to one more fitting the previos one still hasn't finished playing. A short fadeout isn't enough to finish a track nicely, especialy if it's immediately followed by one with a different mood.

Voicing: The demon's voice was well delivered, the sailor wasn't bad either, the narrator was so-so, a bit too strong on the echo, but the main character's voice doesn't sound too good. Others have already commented on this.


Now for some plot and dialogue dissection:

I think it's a big error to not have any side characters in there - you end up being unable to make dialogue. The main character can only speak with himself, so most of the cinematic ends up being in monologue, and that's just a bad way to present the plot. It's like the narration from the beginning never stops, as the main character keeps explaining to the world at large what is happening.

Speaking of the starting narration, it is too long. I'll have to wait for the whole series before passing my final judgment, but right now it feels that the narration gives too much information about events long past. As I said, maybe more of this information will become important in later parts, but even so, it could then also be presented in later parts, instead of being described to the last detail in the very beginning.

As far as the words go, they're pretty well composed, but sometimes you get in over your head. Sentences like "My longed for immortality will be mine..."... what does that even mean? You need better proofreaders.

A bigger problem than that is plausibility - the story in general works (the guy goes after some gem, kills a dwarf in the process, this makes the sailors abandon him, which he resents and decides to go after them), but on the level of dialogue it just sounds wierd how the character, when noticing that there's noone waiting for him, not only decides to seek vengeance, but also that the punishment will be most severe - death, and that he will have it even if it costs him his own life. That he wants payback, I can understand. But the way he says it, it sounds far fetched even if he was completely nuts. (which he very well might be, considering all the talking he does with himself)


As far as first parts of series go, it's not a bad start, but otherwise it's not particularly impressive, you still have a lot of room for improovement.

[iNfraNe]

I have to agree with ani here. But since the cine has potential ill approve it.

GJ on it :)

[ghenjis]

Could you put it on this site, it's still on rapidshare.

EDIT: Thanks.