Cinematic Design

BioWare’s focus on developing cutting-edge story-driven game experiences has made them pioneers in many different areas—technology, process, development philosophy—and in some cases, they have to create entirely new disciplines.

When development of the original Mass Effect began in the early 2000s, the responsibility for creating the hybrid conversation sequences—which were, in effect, partly cinematic, partly interactive—fell on the shoulders of a tightly knit collaborative drawing from the design, art, technology, animation, and audio departments.

Over time, however, it became obvious that the unique nature of the interactive dialogue sequences that define so much of the Mass Effect experience depended on individuals with an unusual combination of skills, talent, and experience

Rather than simply rely on a cross-disciplinary team to take ad hoc responsibility for the sequences, BioWare created an entirely new role within the studio: the cinematic designer.

Creating a Cinematic Moment

At the inception stage of a new cinematic moment, representatives from various teams and disciplines get together in what BioWare calls a “dog-pile.”

The dog-pile is typically comprised of a level designer, a writer, a cinematic designer, and a level artist.

The macro story for the game will be broken down into components, with each component being assigned to an area of the game—a campaign, a level, and then several specific cinematic moments.

When the team zeroes in on a specific area of the story, a writer will present a narrative brief for that area, outlining any major plot elements that need to transpire within the sequence.

While the level designers begin to figure out the details of what the gameplay space needs to be, the cinematic designers begin breaking the content down into sequences of narrative, and outline where different pieces of story need to happen.

They will map out important beats like character introductions and enemy entries and will identify where different narrative tools can be effective; for example, dialogue sequences, cinematics, and three-second cutscenes that showcase a memorable event and provide a punctuation point for the player’s experience at that time.

In Mass Effect 1, the role of cinematic designer was new and relatively undefined.

Production started on ME1 with two cinematic designers who had been technical designers previously and who were then assigned to support the writing of the game.

To give a sense of how significant the process of cinematic design has become for BioWare’s games, fast-forward five years.

Mass Effect 3 now has a dozen cinematic designers responsible for creating over 300 scenes and facilitating digital acting for over 23,000 lines of dialogue.

It would take a staggering 27 hours to play all this content, plus all the other ways in which the cinematic design team supports the game experience (from helping to create ambient moments, to three-second cutscenes, to huge moments or grand spectacles, to background dialogue).

Suspending Disbelief

The team on Mass Effect 3 understood that their primary job, especially with regards to narrative sequences, was to ensure the player’s suspension of disbelief remains intact throughout the game.

Any time a small glitch, bad camera cut, or rocky transition pulls the player out of the experience, the game has to gradually build that player up again to the point where they are fully engaged and invested in the fiction of the game.

With story moments comprised of multiple disparate parts, the cinematic design team’s primary responsibility was to maintain this seamless flow of content and to be the guardians of this smooth narrative flow.

Seamless transitions between different types of content were incredibly difficult to pull off.

But the team felt so strongly about the value of creating a smooth-flowing, seamless experience for the player, one that was not broken by cuts and fades to black, that they were driven to create new technology and processes to make these seamless transitions possible.

It is even evidenced from the level-to-level transitions, where the player is being moved from one environment to another (for example, barely escaping the Reaper invasion of Earth and then moving seamlessly into the Normandy’s interior to take stock of the situation and plan for next steps) without the game having to stop to load.

This creates a wonderfully free-flowing experience that feels great for the player and allows momentum to carry forward, heightening the intensity and drama of the game.

For those instances where a load is necessary due to technical constraints, the loading process will be hidden behind a short contextual cinematic that again helps ground the player in their current environment.