New World’s latest Forged in Aeternum is all about cinematics, both the design process and collaboration in the base game and in the just-released Rise of the Angry Earth expansion.
This edition features Narrative Director Rob Chestney, Senior Cinematic Animator Erik Medina, Lead Animator Brett Harris, and Lead Cinematic Artist Nathan Hunt. They discuss the process behind the cinematics Amazon put into New World, the creative process, from ideas to storyboards, to work with other teams to both examine the newest cinematics with the expansion content and the progress from what came before.
Medina notes that not only have they introduced many other characters since they created what the game originally shipped with, but their process has improved in speed and quality. Since this is a collaborative process between teams, it took time to review the script from the writing team, the dialogue needed, to make storyboards, and to absorb what was needed for Rise of the Angry Earth’s cinematics to come together.
Those two elements combine, as the rest of the team notes how they've improved with facial rigs, character animations, finding the right camera angles, and additional things that they've learned since the game has been out.
In noting challenges in general, some of it has to do with the complexity of some scenes. A cinematic featuring Thorpe with a portal comes up and they break down the process of creating it. Medina emphasizes that there's so much planning and it's more complex than it looks, especially for a short scene. While the team concentrates on the few key objects and spaces that are needed, they need to have the right framing, the right timing, and to get everything coordinated even to do a quick moment that escalates what's going on and is the gotcha moment for the plot.
Among their favorite Rise of the Angry Earth cinematic moments are the minotaur and the argument scene. Since the expansion just came out, if you haven't played it, you might wait until after you've done so to watch them break down the process of the scenes.
The team looks forward as to what might be on the horizon, and they are potentially looking forward to new cinematics as well. Amazon has also previously showcased some shorter animated "2.5d" cinematics and the process of storytelling with that smaller scale versus expansions and huge updates that feature a lot more complexity.
In all of this, New World’s narrative is still a priority, and there’s much more in the full video.
