Game Intro Cinematic

Environment & Real-time Sequence design in Unreal Engine

Role & Contribution

Environment & Level Design - Responsible for conceptualizing, sculpting, and assembling the game level dedicated to the introduction cut-scene.

Cinematic Artist - Handled camera choreography, lighting setup and setting up real-time sequences.

Technical Focus - Ensured optimal scene composition, asset placement, and rendering performance for the in-game sequence and brand assets.

Goal & Challenge

The goal was to create an immersive, mood-setting introductory cinematic for the game that immediately established the world's unique atmosphere and visual language. The challenge involved integrating high-quality visuals with optimized assets. This introduction cut-scene was of great importance as it sets up the whole premise of the world that the player can explore and aids in telling the story of the game without any words or dialogue.

Process & Creative Strategy

This project started with an idea to set up the premise for a world waiting to be explored while alluding to the ending of the first game (Spirit of the North). I initially thought of the concept and together with the creative director, developed it into a short synopsis. Environments were designed using existing assets from the main game, rearranged in certain shots for optimization and composition. The lighting was carefully designed to transition from a bright, morning mood to a dark, mystical atmosphere featuring the Aurora Borealis. The cinematic path was meticulously planned in Sequencer, focusing on smooth camera work to highlight the established environments and key narrative elements.

Because there were a lot of technical challenges of loading and unloading assets instantaneously across a large map, we decided to make a separate, smaller level for the intro cutscene.

I copied a lot of already asssembled assets from the main level to the cutscene level. Sometimes arranging things in a new way to accomodate for the camera framing.

Added UI elements like the game title, studio logo and names of the main developers. You can control the timing of these elements in the sequencer timeline.

In the actual game level, these giant stones are not bunched up together like this. Environments that are solely created for the purpose of a cutscene has a lot of flexibility in terms of how I can re-arrange things.

Setting up sequences in different corners of the level after arranging all the assets for the shots.

Lighting and time of day can be controlled via sequencer and it's easy to dictate what kind of time I want for each shot. However it's often a good idea to stick to gradual and progressive change in the time and lighting because a big instant change has lots of technical challenges when the cutscene has to be rea-time.

For anyone who has played the first game, this shot would have been a throwback.

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