Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker Footage

[Soviet Heavy]

G4 has three exclusive clips from the new Animated film, available for viewing on their website.
Clip#1 [http://www.g4tv.com/videos/57127/dragon-age-dawn-of-the-seeker-x-play-exclusive/]
Clip#2 [http://www.g4tv.com/videos/58524/dragon-age-dawn-of-the-seeker-x-play-exclusive-2/]
Clip#3 [http://www.g4tv.com/videos/58547/dragon-age-dawn-of-the-seeker-x-play-exclusive-3/]

My impressions? Not good. For a CGI film, there are a lot of problems I see in the first clip alone, namely the light reflecting off of Cassandra's armor, and yet the shadowing on the robed figures remaining static. The facial animations look like they found Valve's lip syncing software but forgot to animate the rest of the face, and the animation just looks bland.

The dialogue is rather stilted, and for a preview, it doesn't really give us much context at all for what the hell is going on.

Its rather disappointing really. I've moved past anger for Bioware to just expecting less of them, but this is still pretty poor. There are television shows that move more fluidly with CGI than this. I can think of two right now, Transformers Prime and The Clone Wars. Those shows manage to put their CGI to better use than this film has so far.

So what do you think? Were you satisfied or disappointed by these clips? Do they change your expectations for the film in any way? I'm not inclined to blame Bioware for a lot of this, apart from perhaps the writing, since this is being animated by someone else, but it's still a bit of a letdown.

 

[Emiscary]

"Stuff That I Would've Cared About Before Bioware Betrayed Me" for 500 please Alex.

 

[SajuukKhar]

I didn't think it was possible, but someone made CG worse then Pixar.

I should give them a medal for accomplishing that, but that would just insult medals everywhere.

 

[endtherapture]

So Dragon Age has gone from full LoTR style fantasy to full ridiculous leaping anime crap.

Great. Dragon Age 3 could be disastrous if it's anything like this.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I didn't think it was possible, but someone made CG worse then Pixar.

I should give them a medal for accomplishing that, but that would just insult medals everywhere.

Wait, what? What do you mean by "worse than pixar"? I'd argue aesthetics with you, but on a technical level, Pixar is next to unbeatable.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Wait, what? What do you mean by "worse than pixar"? I'd argue aesthetics with you, but on a technical level, Pixar is next to unbeatable.

I meant aesthetically

I have also seen plenty of anime CG that was so good it looked hand drawn which far outclasses Pixar.

Pixar may be the best western animation company, but that isn't saying much when many western animators agree they suck compared to Japan.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Wait, what? What do you mean by "worse than pixar"? I'd argue aesthetics with you, but on a technical level, Pixar is next to unbeatable.

I meant aesthetically

I have also seen plenty of anime CG that was so good it looked hand drawn which far outclasses Pixar.

Pixar may be the best western animation company, but that isn't saying much when many western animators agree they suck compared to Japan.

Well, aesthetics are a matter of opinion, so I won't push it. And I agree that there are some really damn impressive art styles from Japan. I only wish that somebody would give them a budget to work with. Money is one of the big reasons that so much anime is mechanically similar in terms of execution.

This however, has neither good aesthetics or a good budget.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Well, aesthetics are a matter of opinion, so I won't push it. And I agree that there are some really damn impressive art styles from Japan. I only wish that somebody would give them a budget to work with. Money is one of the big reasons that so much anime is mechanically similar in terms of execution.

This however, has neither good aesthetics or a good budget.

If only every anime studio was Gainax, the makers of FLCL, Tengen Toppa, Panty and Stocking, or had Evangelion's money.

But yeah the DA thing sucks on both levels.

But this is Bioware.... did anyone really expect anything better.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Well, aesthetics are a matter of opinion, so I won't push it. And I agree that there are some really damn impressive art styles from Japan. I only wish that somebody would give them a budget to work with. Money is one of the big reasons that so much anime is mechanically similar in terms of execution.

This however, has neither good aesthetics or a good budget.

If only every anime studio was Gainax, the makers of FLCL, Tengen Toppa, Panty and Stocking, or had Evangelion's money.

But yeah the DA thing sucks on both levels.

But this is Bioware.... did anyone really expect anything better.

This isn't Bioware, they're writing, but Funimation is handling everything else, as well as hiring the guys who did Appleseed I think. Their writing is up for debate, but they don't have control over the animation.

 

[SajuukKhar]

This isn't Bioware, they're writing, but Funimation is handling everything else, as well as hiring the guys who did Appleseed I think. Their writing is up for debate, but they don't have control over the animation.

Funimation............ they chose Funimation?

/facepalm WHY!!!!!

Everyone knows Funimation, along with 4Kids, are butchers.

They should have gone with Pixar.......... or better yet, get the people who drew avatar the last airbender to do it, those guys know how to animate.

 

[Jazoni89]

It looks like a cutscene from Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn.

What a load of utter rubbish.

 

[Korten12]

This isn't Bioware, they're writing, but Funimation is handling everything else, as well as hiring the guys who did Appleseed I think. Their writing is up for debate, but they don't have control over the animation.

Funimation............ they chose Funimation?

/facepalm WHY!!!!!

Everyone knows Funimation, along with 4Kids, are butchers.

They should have gone with Pixar.......... or better yet, get the people who drew avatar the last airbender to do it, those guys know how to animate.

dafaq..?

Funimation may not have the best voice actors, but they don't butcher, 4kids censors the hell out of stuff, and just does a horrible job in general.

 

[SajuukKhar]

dafaq..?

Funimation may not have the best voice actors, but they don't butcher, 4kids censors the hell out of stuff, and just does a horrible job in general.

Any company that thinks dubbing anime is acceptable is a butcher.

Funimation is better then 4Kids, but in a similar way that shit with sprinkles on it is better then just plain shit.

Sure they try, but its still shit.

 

[TephlonPrice]

Wow. That looked... pretty bad.

Animation looks like a wack job of cel-shading & 3d. Seriously, that shit doesn't look smooth or good. The Star Wars show on TV looks better. Fuck it, I've seen footage of CGI rendered Care Bears that looked better than this.

The dialogue... seems like standard fantasy fare dialogue with some bad anime overtones. But I'm kinda used to it, so I'm not gonna knock it. Certainly not up to what BioWare or even Obsidian can do tho.

The first clip looks like some Hattori Hanzo anime ninja shit, which looks cool but doesn't fit (and holy shit at them blood effects; looks like some bad 90s era FPS.)

How much is this expected to sell at again?

 

[Smooth Operator]

So it's a random 3D anime EA bought, well which franchize name could we plaster on this one then, oh I know...
Thank god they saved up enough money pinching content from games so we can bask in this magnificence.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Studio Ghibli are perfectly fine with Disney dubbing their movies for over-seas. Therefore, your argument is completely invalid.

That is only because
1. Disney vastly outbides anyone other company that even attempts to offer to do it
2. Ghibli can't do it themselves

Being FORCED to do something isn't proof of anything, your argument is completely invalid.


Furthermore MANY Ghibli fans HATE Disney's dubs because they add lines to the movie that ruin the whole point of the movie.

 

[Jason Corner]

that looks like alpha footage, the effects are sporadically rendered to different parts of the video. Also too cartoony for my liking but that's just imo