Full Motion Video in Video Games

Full-motion videos (FMV) are used in video games for cutscenes, which serve to narrate and drive the story. The alternative is to render the cutscene in-game.

FMV

FMVs are pre-rendered videos, that are shipped with the video game. They are video files, which require lower system requirements than video games. Studios can produce very high quality sequences and the game console is effectively acting as a video player.

Why use FMV

A game studio could pre-render the FMV using beefy workstations and high quality assets. This could take hours to produce minutes of content. Trading build time for runtime performance. Note, this is exactly the same process as used to produce Pixar animations.

The downside is that they aged poorly, due to how quickly computing power has improved. It requires the original, high-quality assets to render an updated FMV. Basically a remaster. When you’re playing a video game that allows higher resolution and polygon count, the quality contrast is hilarious. The cutscenes are so much lower quality than the game play, even if ignoring texture quality.

Examples of FMV

FMVs were very common in the 90’s. This was a time when 3D graphics were first being introduced. Game systems were not powerful enough to display 3D graphics with high polygon counts and high resolution textures. Examples of games include:

• FF7
• FFX
• Ghostbusters
• Command and Conquer

RTS games commonly used FMV because the game engine was not designed for high-fidelity rendering of individual character models. They were optimized for large maps and large quantities of low-polygon units. FPS tend to use in-game engine to render. Many artists use FPS games for machinima productions, since it’s very minimal changes to repurpose the game for cinematic purposes.

In-Game Engine

Cutscenes can also be rendered within the existing game engine. Sometimes, interactivity is removed and the player character is pulled through a sequence of scripts. Other times, the scene takes place where but clearly using game models and textures.

Why Use In-Game Engine

One unique and powerful outcome of using in-game rendering is that the scene is dynamic. Player customizations, such as armour or guns, will show in the scene. Explosions and physics are calculated in real-time. AI will continue doing stuff in the background. This opens the door to so many hilarious bugs or scenes. And it keeps the game from feeling stale.

In-game cutscenes age as well as the rest of the game. If you increase the graphical settings or use HD textures, the scenes will look better too. You don’t need to wait for a remaster, you have the source files required to produce the scenes.

It can be difficult to script a cutscene to produce the outcome you want. It’s sequentially a game script and triggers. As such, it can be quickly to render an FMV, so that you can manipulate the game world as needed to produce and capture the exact results you want.

Examples of In-Game Engine

It’s more common to find in modern games. Computers have gotten more powerful and game engines as well. The technical limitations of early 3D systems are no longer limiting the director’s form of expression.

Examples include:

• Max Payne 3
• Call of Duty
• Half-Life

Lots of FPSs are on this list and that’s no coincidence:

• they already have a game engine designed at the right level of fidelity
• game levels often are scripted sequences
• cutscenes can interrupt the game play loop and pacing of the game, more so than other game genres