I generally like the Ultimates that have been released so far. My main complaint with them though, is that blank background. The black background is necessary for various reasons, but it does not have to be so empty.
Level 4 Enders do not have this problem. While they have a black background as well, they also have that greenish smoke there. It makes them look much better than if they were just blank.
So, I have a suggestion. The Ultimates should have a similar effect on their background to the level 4 Enders. Maybe it should be a little more subtle than those, because bright green everywhere might be too distracting from the actual Ultimate that is going on. Also, it may clash with Tusk and Sadiras Ultimates, because they kind of have backgrounds already. (Fire for Tusk and webs for Sadira.) As long as it is not too flashy, it shouldn’t take away from the look of the Ultimate.
What are your thoughts on this?
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I support this idea. Sounds good to me, so long as it doesn’t take too much effort on the part of IG, or interfere with the cinematic in any way.
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My guess is that the reason they don’t have greenish smoke is because the Ultimates cheat a lot on where exactly on the stage they are. The Level 4 enders pretty much stay well within the stage confines but the ultimates for all we know could be anywhere.
Actually, thinking about it, that’s a very good point. Street Fighter 4 always used some very good camera tricks, but multiple videos on youtube and on eventhubs have people modding the pc version to use a static camera to watch the cinematic Ultra Combos.
Watching those videos you see Capcom did a lot of camera tricks with both the stage locations and character animations to give a sense of speed, dynamics, etc., but without the camera effects, and creating a reference point to direct someone’s attention to during those camera effects could possibly backfire and ruin the illusion.
For all we know, the ultimates could be occuring within the confines of the stage as well, but like Capcom, IG is using clever camera tricks in the same manner to create dynamic shots that give the impression of a much larger stage, but if you add the reference point of the green smoke or even remove the black background entirely, you probably would end up ruining the illusion because the camera angles or reference points would give away what are those clever camera tricks.
As it stands, only one stage actually had some kind of skyline or roof that we could tell, and that’s why Shadow Jago’s ultimate never looked strange when he performed it on that stage. The IG crew have been really clever with their programming abilities though, and what they’ve done to bring Ultimates to the game is probably a lot of hard work, even with the use of the black screen on the stage during Ultimates.
I can get behind this idea it’s not as farfetched as trying to retain the background with all those crazy camera angles which can put the camera in places it shouldn’t be.