Ceej wrote:Now think about cutscenes. In comparison to gameplay, these are intricately staged and the player was never meant to "see beyond" what was on the screen at a single time.
I'm reminded of something I read about the remastered versions of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes. The episodes were shot on 35mm film and then edited for television to 4:3. So some fans are like, "release the remasters in widescreen!" However, since the cinematographers knew that 4:3 was the target format and they framed their shots with that in mind, the widescreen footage contains things that shouldn't be seen in frame... abrupt edges of the sets, boom microphones, crew members at work, and so on.
With Shenmue's cutscenes, of course there aren't mics or crew members, but the characters sometimes freeze immediately when going out of the 4:3 frame. Then there's the suggestion (or, for some, the furious demand) that D3T reframe the shot - somehow zoom it in until it fills the 16:9 frame. Well, this may be possible, though it's not likely to be as easy as we imagine based on the camera controls in contemporary game engines. But beyond the technical issues of working with source code from a 20-year-old game that runs on its own custom engine, changing the zoom, camera placement, lens angle or however else you would achieve the new shot, is the artistic issue of changing the director's original vision. As furious as some consumers get about not having every pixel of their widescreen TV lit up at all times, that's as uncomfortable as some creators get about having their work altered by others. Particularly in film with regards to matters of framing and cropping. And Shenmue is one of the first truly filmic games, so it's easy to imagine that Yu Suzuki would not be comfortable with handing the keys to the Ferrari over to the work-for-hire guys at D3T and allow them to make those kind of creative decisions.
But then one might say, well... all the rest of the gameplay has been altered to 16:9 - isn't that changing the creator's vision? I suppose it is, in a way. But I would say there's a significant difference between a cutscene, which is fully directed to convey the story in a particular way, and gameplay in which the player has agency to choose the view (within limits).
Ultimately there's no clear solution that will satisfy everyone, so I also think there's no reason for anyone to become irate about their preference not "winning." (No reason to be furious on the internet? Yeah, right!) There are difficult technical challenges and difficult artistic decisions and it's really a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't position for the developers. So I say take a deep breath and just enjoy the games for what they are.
Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 7:01 am
