I’m watching the game-play video of Tales of Vesperia and, while I feel that their in-game cut scenes are admirable, the acting cues are pretty stiff. For example one actor will preform during his cue, but as he’s done all his energy just stops in mid-motion once the next actor starts her cue. It all makes the scene feel very stop-and-go, as if there’s only one puppeteer controlling an entire cast.

Over all the in-game cut-scenes of the most resent Tales series are quality work; both excellent voice acting and motion capture for a Anime themed game, but if the action cues were tighter and more fluid it would be a stellar achievement for games in general.

That reminds me, I saw the intro cinema for Bad Company a while ago and thought this same thing. The motion capture was great, the voice acting delivered, and graphics and lighting excellent. And despite all this the cues were all stop and go. For example:

*The private makes a wise-ass comment to his Sargent*

*The Sargent yells at his insubordinate private*

In between those two lines is about a two to three second gap which is masked by idle action, like a breathing animation or shifting weight. That gap sucks the intensity right out of the moment despite the actors energy.  That gap needs to be shortened in order to address this stop-go acting that I see plaguing games. Games want to be movies, it’s a fact, and that translates to proper pacing.