Congratz
Thanks. Credit also goes to Ralle for useful advice, and for pointing me directions.
Electronic Arts participated on the releasation of WC II too I though it's only Blizzard game?
The expansion pack was developed by
Cyberlore Studios. I believe Blizzard published the expansion pack for PC/Mac only, after proper support/QA/approval of Cyberlore Studio's work.
It is my belief Electronic Arts was involved in the console version, mostly because they had more experience in that particular market than Blizzard.
Back in ye olde days, Blizzard had little involvement related to the console games market. Even StarCraft 64 was a port of SC+BW (with stuff added, changed and cut), developed by
Mass Media Studios. And Michael Morhaime was not satisfied with the final product (though it was released anyway).
The Blizzard Universe was supposed to enter the console market full force with the exclusive StarCraft: Ghost. But... errr... well, too bad...
It is so crazy to see the jump from wc2 cinematics to wc3 cinematics. They both honestly seemed amazing for their time, at least as far as games go.
Now it would be interesting to know more about this.
The original Dos version of BDP did not include the additional FMVs. When I first played BDP on PC, I thought something was lacking somewhere, because I expected FMVs in-between, the same way ToD had them. Of course I already knew expansion packs have less content than their base game. But still, I felt dissatisfied back then.
Now, with all the love and respect I have for CGi work and 3D artists, I must say these intermediate FMVs seen in the console version are lacking in many ways. Their directing seems poor, model animation is kinda embarrassing, timing is bad and so on. I perfectly know MoCap was not prominent back then. But honestly, ToD had the FMVs carefully designed, so that these technical shortcomings and other stuff were not blatant.
Imho, ToD's FMVs succeeded in avoiding all the pitfalls of early CGI animation.
It is my belief Blizzard did not include BDP's console intermediate FMVs in WCII:BNE, because they knew they were lacking something somewhere.
...which leads us to soooo many interesting questions :
- did Blizzard create these FMVs along with ToD's ones ?
- if yes, in how much time ?
- if yes, why did they not include them in BDP's Dos version ?
- did EA have an influence in the creative process, regarding the console version (like,
"we want more CGI because the PS1 and Saturn are multimedia-tailored and additional content is good for business, you have one hour to show us stuff") ?
For human 5, I wonder whether they modeled only the head and nothing else.
One can see a dragon in a distance at the end of ToD's Orc Campaign. But I highly suspect it is a different 3D model. Only Blizzard can tell the full story.
I still remember some wc2 music to this day and I didn't even play that mhch back then.
The original Dos game had both MIDI (or was it XMI ?) music, as well as CD Audio tracks. Back then I had taped the CD Audio soundtrack from BDP. When I passed the tape around to friends, they asked me in bewilderment how I managed to do it.
I played that tape countless times. Such a great and evocative music...
...
...
Boy, those were the days.
** edit **
XMI !
