Case Study: In-Game Cinematics for THQ/Kaos

Our dark story begins in a dark place: New York City. While not technically dark on account of all the lights and being the city that allegedly never sleeps, the themes of the games we worked on certainly were. Our Trailer in a Box team first joining their sinister powers on in-game cinematics for the prophetic resource war-inspired Frontlines: Fuel of War and the even more prophetic Homefront (who knew North Korea was taking notes?).

Dark Arts CCO and Rainbow Summoner Coray Seifert was the cinematics director on Frontlines. He had these very dark and foreboding words to share:

“THQ had very light oversight and we were a new team, so we were able to take some risks, tell stories grounded in the real world when others weren’t and try some things that hadn’t been done before…that is until Call of Duty: Modern Warfare blew everything up like 6 months before launch. Stupid geniuses…Anyway, it was a tough project but the real treasure was the friends we made along the way…because the ship bonuses were pretty weak.”

The team blended Homeworld-style animatics with real-world climate change and resource war stories to create a title that still resonates with players today. While we cannot confirm if this was due to shipping the game on gold requisitioned from a cursed mine deep under the Caucasus Mountains, or just good writing, we are happy to see the spell is still in effect players thinking back to it fondly.

“Our team wrote, animated and integrated two dozen cinematics, all while building out our cinematic pipeline and narrative process. It was a wild, messy ride, but I’m still quite proud of the quality we were able to hit with a few simple cinematic cameras, some above average music, and some good writing.” Seifert said, staring wistfully into the distance as dark smoke curled around his hooded cloak.

After Frontlines, the team pivoted to a grittier, more cinematic speculative fiction title in Homefront:

“Between cinematics, in-game dialog and multiplayer barks, members of Dark Arts contributed over 20,000 lines of dialog to Homefront, in addition to contributions across production, art and game design. Our fingerprints are all over that title,” a cat said, sitting where our CCO once was. We have not seen him since.

3 sequels later, the original Homefront’s brutal take on Half-Life 2-style storytelling also remains a proud part of our portfolio…in part because they were good and in part because they were dark as !@%.

Seifert, Art Director John Gaernter and members of our favorite dark art house Art Bully all contributing to both titles. We would summon them for nefarious quotes, but they’re busy doing dark deeds on behalf of our dark clients.

If you’re interested in bringing this style of writing, animatics or cinematics to your game, we have the capacity to do so (please note: dark edginess optional). From a single opening cinematic or support for a full game, between our internal team and our partners at Art Bully, we have the experience, headcount and know-how to get it done…no matter the cost…

…because we have budget flexibility.