The 'jump cut' issue

mjqjazzbar

mjqjazzbar

Joined
Jul 28, 2018
Favourite title
Shenmue IIx
Currently playing
Ghost of Tsushima
PSN
mjqjazzbar
Someone's gotta get to the bottom of this because it really doesn't make any sense. It's hard to believe they worked so hard on this game for four years and thought these cutscenes were even remotely acceptable. They would've been a joke in 2000, let alone 2019. Why do you think the team had so much trouble cutting fluid cutscenes?
 
Maybe they had branching dialogue, but it was scrapped and they put the sequences straight and use the fade to jump to different positions in the map.
It felt like it was suppposed to be like in Shenmue II where you go asking Shenhua questions, it feels really weird Ryo always starting with "Shenhua..."
 
That does make sense.

For me, though, this is where I feel like the developers needed someone with a little modern experience guiding them along. I can understand budget constraints, but the cluttered menus and weirdly cut conversations are not a result of the budget. I guess they had no one on the staff who was strong with these items, but for a game that's so focused on being cinematic and for a sequel that's more reliant than ever on menus, these should've been areas of focus.

I've seen complaints about the way the dialogue is cut almost everywhere I've looked, so I'd say this is a critical issue they need to address if they get to make Shenmue IV. It's hard to believe they had people sit through these cutscenes for a couple years and not think they look a bit...weird.
 
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I'm having trouble understanding what you mean by cut dialogue? As in the voice cuts off?
 
I mean the actual footage that's shown on screen. Ryo and Shenhua will be walking and talking, the screen will fade to black, and then Ryo and Shenua will be in another area--no longer walking--maybe talking about the same subject, or just talking about something else. This'll sometimes happen 5+ times in what feels like a minute. It's very unnatural and nothing like what a normal conversation should look like in a movie or a game. It's really bad in the first hour or so of the game. Someone on the team didn't hear "first impressions count."
 
mjqjazzbar said:
I mean the actual footage that's shown on screen. Ryo and Shenhua will be walking and talking, the screen will fade to black, and then Ryo and Shenua will be in another area--no longer walking--maybe talking about the same subject, or just talking about something else. This'll sometimes happen 5+ times in what feels like a minute. It's very unnatural and nothing like what a normal conversation should look like in a movie or a game. It's really bad in the first hour or so of the game.
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Ah, now I'm with you. Yeah I understand what you mean and it does indeed look pretty bad. Perhaps budgetary? They couldn't afford mocapping all of it? No idea.

Seems to mostly happen with Shenhua from what i've played so shredingskin might be on to something.

The reason i thought you meant the voice cutting out was because I'm playing with Japanese VA and sometimes Ryo says a single word in Japanese which is translated to a full sentence in the subs lol.
 
The bigger problem for me is that when talking to someone, literally every new dialogue line changes the camera angle the instant it starts, even when it's the same person talking. If just occasionally the camera didn't change it'd be a lot less noticeable.
 
I just don't see what the budget would have to do with it, unless it's as shredingskin said and these scenes were to involve branching dialogue. It's more of a matter of poor or inexperienced direction The sequences should've been reframed. They're just a bit nonsensical. When I was a film student, we were very much made aware of things like jump cuts and making sure we're not just constantly shooting random camera angles for the sake of it. Of course, some great filmmakers used jump cuts to great effect, but I really don't think the effect here is intentional.
 
There are certain parts, I think that the dynamic conversation camera is MUCH better than regular games that have NPCs, there were some cutscenes that were bad edited (mostly with Shenhua, so that's why I think it wasn't the original intent).
The only time I saw the conversation cam not working was inside the arcade that had those big moles.
But animation is another can of worms, it's why there weren't many QTEs, but I think the lipsync works really well with the japanese language (maybe not that good in some characters that have weird idle animations), but it's very serviceable (and they probably automated it, so they now have a good fundation).
The thing that really bothered me about the UI is the placement of some options, but mostly that they don't show how many owned items you have, something basic most games have.
 
The UI needs some major work if they make it to Shenmue 4. They can't ignore things like that if they want to be taken seriously. Suzuki is too good to be let down by poor presentation. I just find it hard to believe he had so much feedback and input from so many Western figures and no one tried to steer these refinements in the right direction. I'm actually surprised reviews aren't really picking on the game's overall presentation. That's where I feel reviews could really bloody up Shenmue 3.
 
I'm lean more on the side of animations, I don't know about the others but in the first one after going through the little bridge, it's walking, fad, standing, fad, walking. But I need to play to be sure because some others look fine like qte, and in that case rework the scene to not change the animation ?
 
mjqjazzbar said:
The UI needs some major work if they make it to Shenmue 4. They can't ignore things like that if they want to be taken seriously. Suzuki is too good to be let down by poor presentation. I just find it hard to believe he had so much feedback and input from so many Western figures and no one tried to steer these refinements in the right direction. I'm actually surprised reviews aren't really picking on the game's overall presentation. That's where I feel reviews could really bloody up Shenmue 3.
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Dude, the screen where you select New Game, Load Game, and whatnot looks so amateurish. I thought it was just a placeholder for the demo, but they actually kept it for the final game to my surprise.
 
mjqjazzbar said:
The UI needs some major work if they make it to Shenmue 4. They can't ignore things like that if they want to be taken seriously. Suzuki is too good to be let down by poor presentation. I just find it hard to believe he had so much feedback and input from so many Western figures and no one tried to steer these refinements in the right direction. I'm actually surprised reviews aren't really picking on the game's overall presentation. That's where I feel reviews could really bloody up Shenmue 3.
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The game needs improvements everywhere: fight, amount of dialogues, music integration, camera handling in talk cutscenes, animation and bizarre loading. This is going to be a massive work so I expect some elements will not get any improvement in Shenmue 4 (my bet is the fight and the UI).

Tbh, the UI is the last of my concerns. I'm even surprised by some good ideas they got (right stick for instantly rotating an item, left stick click to target the enxt NPC). The game was mainly designed by Japanese people and they are infamous for making messy interfaces since decades.

About the jump cut, I did not get too much problem although you made a solid point. To me, the jump cut suggests that Ryo & Shenhua talked about other trivial things but not enough interesting to be known by the player so it made sense to me.
 
The jump cuts felt like a sudo fast forward to me (which I believe is the intent). Almost like a direct response to people that didn't enjoy the walking in Disc 4 in Shenmue II when Ryo and Shenhua weren't talking.
 
This is definitely frustrating. The screen should not cut in between two sentences that the same character is saying. I'm somewhat baffled by it.
 
Ceej said:
The jump cuts felt like a sudo fast forward to me (which I believe is the intent). Almost like a direct response to people that didn't enjoy the walking in Disc 4 in Shenmue II when Ryo and Shenhua weren't talking.
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If so, it's handled poorly.
 
None of these things bother me to be honest. I barely notice. The awkward cuts are more noticeable in the beginning segments, but I have no idea what people's problem with the menu system and UI is. Aesthetically the menu is a little outdated, but functionally it works perfectly fine. There's nothing messy or confusing about it in the slightest.
 
I find it hard to read. That's my main issue with it. It's just very cluttered and the fonts aren't great. I also find the way the game switches you from the analog stick to the D+pad to confirm things could be a little confusing for some people. R+1 is also kind of an odd default button to bring up a menu; why not option?
 
i dont know im just loving the games, im kinda glad i dont let those things get to me, and i dont know if you people are still early but the cutscenes get awesome later to me
 
I think these stop & go dialogue cutscenes are weird too
but i also watched the live stream of Maximilian Dood and there were 8 or 9 thousand people watching
and absolutely no one, for real, no one said anything about these cuts.
Max didnt say anything, the chat didnt say anything.

The top complaints were #1 english voices, 2# animation quality (face expressions)
Those were the two topics on the negative side.
So i think overall its not that problematic to the big audience.
There were waaaaaaayyyyy, way, way more comments about the voice acting and dialogue face expressions.
 
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