Speaker 3 00:31
Damien Valentine, use the Machinima. Luke, you. You. Hello and welcome for another episode and now for something completely machinima. We've lost Ricky. We tried to find him, but he seems to have disappeared. But we'll keep looking for him, and hopefully he'll be back next week. So I'm joined by Phil rice and Tracy Harwood, hello, um, this week we're going to be discussing my pick, which is a Skyrim machinima called True Nords. Now this came about because last month I said I was going to look for Skyrim machinima. After we just discussed that sort of documentary about World of Warcraft machinima, and the person who made that talks about being a big fan of Skyrim in that world, that made me kind of curious, what kind of Skyrim machinima exists. Obviously, the game has been out for a good decade or so, and I'm sure people have made things with it, and I think we've seen a couple before we've looked at but I want to see what was, what was new and fresh. So I found this film called True Nords, and it's a relatively recent one. And what happened? What seems to happen, is the director has taken dialog from the NPCs and characters in the game to try and put together a conversation. So all this dialog is from the game, and they try to make a conversation that would sort of make sense, but it doesn't really but in my mind, that kind of adds to the humor of it where it doesn't quite work. And I'm sure that's a deliberate choice, and at least I hope it is because I was laughing not at the film, but at the way the conversations kind of flowed, and it just the way it works. And the other thing that impressed me about this film was the cinematic nature of it, because Skyrim is a single player game, and obviously there's a there's a whole mod set, and you can do all kinds of mod things into it, but I don't know how you control multiple characters at once. I don't know if it's possible or if there's a mod out there that does it. It's not a game I spent a lot of time playing, so I'm completely unfamiliar with that, but I was impressed by this looked like something where you'd had a team who had rehearsed the character movements and knew exactly what to do to play out the scenes. So I thought, you know, this is this is really good. And I thought I'm going to share it with you guys. So what did you think

03:21
me to go next. Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1 03:25
Well, as I understand it. It was released in September 2015,

Damien Valentine 03:30
oh, I said relatively recent, I guess.

Speaker 1 03:34
Well, 10 years ago. Yeah, okay, okay, so it's been made using this creation kit and the Elder Scrolls five Skyrim and, as you say, written, reusing and editing dialog sounds and also music from the game and the description states, Thank goodness that the mercenary, drunk thief and merchant characters, which I understand are NPCs, come together over a campfire and talk about their usual daily routines. Well, it kind of starts with this nice, warm color filter over a forest scene, albeit, I think, with a little bit of a repetitive and irritating musical soundscape. But the first thing that struck me was that that opening scene is quite at odds with the words that are being spoken by the characters, because they're discussing how cold the day is and you're looking at a pine forest with a a warm filter glow over it. And then you can hear the the wind howling and these leaves from God knows where blowing around. Um. Yeah, it seems a little bit what's the word, not the words you know, what you see and what they say don't quite match. I think that's

Phil Rice 05:12
schizophrenic. Something like that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 05:15
Certainly had me thinking. Anyway, that was the first so that blew me a little bit on the first sort of intro to it. But then it quickly settles on these travelers, the Nords, settling into a cave for the night, presumably, where they continue to claim how cold it is, whilst appearing to wear very little, just a bit of an animal skin around the shoulder so that again, was like, Oh, really, that's that's kind of interesting. Anyway, things then start to settle down a bit, and the campfire gets going, and more travelers join for a warm and some food. Presumably, there's a discussion going on, but it's strange. It's a real strange discussion. It feels like there are, at least, excuse me, two separate conversations taking place simultaneously. At least one seems to be about a person being tracked, and another seems to be about some aspect of trade that's going on. And then a little bit later on, there's another story being told, and it's kind of like a story about someone that has a secret and and some sort of odd relationship with with kind of Wizardry and all these things are kind of mixed together in this odd kind of Social banter that's taking place between these characters around this campfire, where they're, you know when, when you sort of evaluate it, you kind of think, well, who are they talking to? Because I don't think really that. I don't they don't appear to be talking to each other, or at least if they are, they're not really listening to each other or conversing. And actually, then it made me think, well, you know, what? Isn't that like any other normal, dysfunctional kind of group, or, you know, group of mates, or even a family where they, you know, they're just talking at each other, and they're not really, you know, they're not really conversing, it's just banter.

Speaker 3 07:28
So Phil, that Minecraft movie, sorry, I couldn't resist,

Speaker 1 07:35
yeah. Well, exactly. Okay. So that, that bit aside, which, you know, I was first of all thinking, well, it's just I don't get what this is. And then I just sort of thought about a little bit more, and I think, yeah, actually, I do get what it is. These, these voices have real kind of cadence, even if it's not at all clear what exactly it is they're talking about to each other, or who cares most about what, what aspect of the discussion. And then, of course, it kind of hits you that these, these are just voices from the game having been chopped up and stitched together. And maybe there's a bit of thematic way that that's been done, but I think actually, there's not a lot of great attention to detail in the way that a conversation might unfold, in the way that it's been stitched together, which is an interesting strategy. Actually, there's, there's a lot of references to things that are clearly in game, things meaning basically that anybody like like me, or anybody else that doesn't know a thing about the game will never understand what's going on. There's, there's, there's certainly no attempt to explain any of that in game stuff. Well, of course, you know the the voice acting is, is well done. It's from the game. Frankly, that's probably, and, well, it's, it's one of the most interesting aspects of it, the fact that these voices do carry it, even if you can't follow what the conversation is, I suppose, really, you know, have this have been made in the days of 11 labs? You know, in the last couple of years, you'd probably have heard those voices actually probably engaged in a bit more of a conversation, because, if permission were possible, there might have been more emphasis on the actual, on an actual script that tells something that's more conversational between, you know, some, some something with a narrative art that takes place between the characters, rather than this kind of random set of stuff that's jammed together. However, by the end, I'm kind of curious enough to want to know more about the characters and what their roles are, not, not really any kind. Clear about who these folks are as individuals, or indeed what they do in the original game. But I guess an interesting point is because if you take the voice acting away from the from the plot of the game, does it still have an association to any particular story. And I think what he's seeing here is maybe not. And are these main characters in the game, or are they just NPCs? There's another question that I sort of asked myself, and I don't really know, but I would guess that they're probably not main characters. And if it had been made with main characters, would there have been a stronger narrative arc? But again, I don't know enough about the game to sort of comment on that. My guess is there probably might have been more of a narrative had there, had it followed one of the character a little bit like, you know, the the the cyberpunk 2070 7v character that we we reviewed a few months back that followed a particular character through a sort of a gameplay version of it would it? Would that have worked any better? I don't know. I think, I think the reason this worked was because it it evidently so dysfunctional in the way that these characters interacted, and in the end, that is its charm. It's not that it makes sense because it doesn't. It's not that they are interacting because they're not. They're just folks sitting there just talking away at people not conversing with them, and that's what I really liked about it. So, yeah, good choice.

Speaker 2 11:53
Yeah, I think I don't know much about this game at all. I've never played it, so I don't know if, if these are main characters or not, but yeah, you think if, if one were setting about with this approach to repurpose lines of dialog, if you pick a main character, then obviously there's going to be a lot more lines of dialog to pick, you know, like Arthur from Red Dead Redemption two, for example, whereas most of the NPCs have significantly fewer lines. Yeah, I think I kept, I kept hoping for and hanging on for something narrative to take root. You know, there was, there was a I didn't read the description before watching. So there was, there was this, this sense of, kind of a chaoticness to the to the talking. And I thought, Well, me is this, is this somebody kind of, you know, you'll if you isolate some of the conversations in some of Tarantino's movies between his characters as they're just sitting around talking about how you say Big Mac in France, or talking about a Madonna song or whatever. And you would think this just doesn't make it. What's this have to do with anything? It doesn't make any sense. But it's the thing is, is that he's using that context of a ridiculous conversation between a bunch of guys to help you learn more about the characters, like who they are. It's very indirect, and some people really find it annoying. But I think it works. It can work. And so I was kind of trying to lift that out of this, and just wasn't, wasn't finding anything to grasp. So then I thought, well, maybe then just eventually this is going to, you know, somehow coalesce into, like, like you mentioned Tracy about, you know, something narrative wise. And, yeah, just, it just never did. Then I read the description, it's like, oh, okay, you know, doing the RE contextualizing existing lines is difficult. It's difficult to do it at all, but it's difficult, really difficult to do it well, and I think to be able to stitch together convincing narrative, you have to have a lot of lines available, a lot I think a perfect example of this would be, I can think of two examples, but One One stronger than the other, the wacky Wild West. Oh yes, the mod red, Dead Redemption too, right? All of Arthur's lines in that were pulled from Arthur's database of, I don't know, 100,000 lines or something ridiculous. I mean, just a huge number, and they only picked a few dozen throughout the whole film. Yeah, and and then that, you know that film was the chaos of a dream world. So it didn't really have to make a whole lot of sense, but they did. We did notice that the lines really seemed to line up well with the situation, but he had a huge selection of lines to choose from. When making that much better example would be, Oh man, I'm blanking on the something about ridiculous ties. Yeah, the half life, the half life one where it's all that dialog of all those scientists and stuff, and there are hundreds of lines in there. And he repurposed those into a very, very discernible narrative. So again, I don't know how to compare this in terms of what volume of lines, is it that he didn't have very many lines to choose from? Or he's just not this? Just isn't this filmmakers particular gift, you know? I mean, it's one thing to have the lines, but then to be able to stitch them together. That's not easy to do. It's hard enough to write something, you know, but to actually try to piece together something from only pieces of someone else's writings. Man, oh, man, that's that's a gargantuan task. So anyway, it didn't it just I spent the whole 15 minutes being confused, like trying to figure out what is this supposed to be. That's a little frustrating. 14 minutes is a long time for a, essentially a what is mostly a campfire conversation that is completely senseless. That's a long time for that, you know, that's a three minute joke stretched out to 14. So I found my patients tried by it now stuff I was impressed by and admired the lip sync is fantastic. How'd They Do That? You know? I mean, I don't know if you guys know, but I'm just that's what I found myself asking is, Wow, that's pretty good. And especially for a 10 year old video and a game, it's not blender, it's not I clone, it's it's that's in game and and it's real, like it's not faked. It's the real lip sync. So I've having never played the game. I don't know. I guess, if you encounter these NPCs in the game, when they speak to you, do they lip sync like that? It's pretty impressive. It's better than GTAs was for definitely better than GTA four. GTA five the main characters, they have enough bone structure to where their mouth moves very convincingly and stuff. And these were pretty good for its age, you know. So that was neat to see. I think the mod that probably played the biggest role in this because I looked up later, looked up what these mods were that are mentioned in the description. And there's one that he mentions called directors tools. And that's that's one that's over on Nexus mods, which is a great site for mods for all these things. And the description of that mod says This model allows you to play various animations by players, characters and NPCs, cast plenty of effect shaders and visual effects on them, apply various post post processing effects, change Interior fog or exterior weather. So it's a that's, that's, that's, that's an access to a lot of control of, you know, elements of the game. So I think that probably played a huge role here. I found the, let's say, the lighting and atmospherics, a little bit confusing too. Tracy, I wasn't when I watched it, I wasn't able to pinpoint what, what felt wrong, like, like you zoned right in on there with the color of the warmth and all that I I just knew that it felt weird, that it felt wrong. Once it settled into the snow around the campfire scene, it seemed like, Okay, this this seems to make a little more sense. Yeah. And, you know, I mean that it's the lighting and the all the snow going on and all that is just it's, it was pleasant to look at. And again, it was all a nice setting for what I was kept looking for and reaching for hoping would, would would either become an outright comedy or some kind of a narrative that made sense, and it didn't really ever land on two feet, on either of those things, like at all really. I. And then later, when I read the description about how it pieced together again, that that made a little bit more sense. There's really not, not, not too many things you can do there really, I think the only way around that if, let's say that this was the best use of those lines possible. Then the way around that is to not rely on the lines so much, you know, maybe have a little bit of of physical comedy or or action, and you select even fewer lines to use. But you could, you know, you can, you can let some non verbal stuff happen that could actually build a narrative out of because there's, there's, there's a decent amount of words and lines going on here. It's continuous, isn't it? There's no but it seems like it was just, there was never a gap, never a break. It was just, let's just have this line after this line after this line. It's like, you know, if you pulled some of those out and kind of wove a thread there, it would have been possible to do.

Speaker 1 21:01
So, you know, the one that we looked at some time ago now that that did that really well was the, is it AFK, the talkie orcs and all that. And they also did the the lift scene, didn't they with the Star Wars?

21:19
Yeah, they do, oh yeah,

Speaker 1 21:21
they were very good picking out lines and then just limited motion to sort of carry out an interaction between the characters.

Speaker 2 21:36
Yeah, these games that have so much dialog in them, I feel like that. They're, they're, they're ripe for that type of, what would you call it? Remix machinima, you know, for dialog. I I've always felt like the Mass Effect series. No one's ever really done that to great effect. And there's just so many lines of dialog, and the voice actors are really good. And you go, I don't know if, I don't know if the modding tools are there to support fully doing it, but even if you were just capturing actual lines of dialog from the game and stitching them together, you could do that. It just seems like, of course, I think of it in terms of comedy. There's all kinds of comedy that could be made from that you got. But yeah, games that have lots of dialog are really interesting for that.

Speaker 3 22:26
With Mass Effect, you got three games with a consistent cast throughout. So that's yes, yeah, yes, even one of those games is a lot on it. So all three you could do something with, yeah,

Speaker 2 22:36
if you got really clever, you could also. You've got the ability to change the look of the captain character so you could actually do multiple passes with it. I mean, it would it be very labor intensive to do, for sure, but yeah, games like that when I'm sure Dragon Age is probably the same way, probably has a similar dialog system, any of those modern Bioware titles would be good for that. So anyway, yeah, I, I didn't know that Skyrim that you could even do NPC control on this level. It's impressive. It's like a toolkit that I wish was available for RDR two, you know, yeah, that would just love that. There's nothing like this for RDR, too. So, you know, that's, that's impressive to see. I just, yeah, did it just didn't quite, didn't quite land the way that it could have but, I mean, you found Skyrim machinima. We didn't, we wouldn't, weren't sure if there's anything out there. So that's a

Speaker 3 23:48
lot out there. This is the one that caught my eye. Okay, it's time to the cinematic nature of it and things like, sure. But at the beginning, I said it was a fairly recent one. Then Tracy said, no, it's actually nine years old. That got me thinking, though, that that's quite early in the game's life. So those mods used to make it obviously going to evolved since then. So, right? More powerful now?

Speaker 2 24:12
Oh, that's true. The description I'm reading is from today of what that mod does. Maybe it, maybe it was different back then, and even more primitive or something. So, yeah,

Speaker 3 24:22
so maybe we should look at some more recent Skyrim to see what people are doing with that

Tracy Harwood 24:28
within the last five years, Damien,

Speaker 3 24:32
well within the last eight years. We can narrow it down, wonder year, yeah,

Speaker 1 24:39
brilliant. So I think that was gonna say I wasn't as disappointed with it in the end, because I put a slightly different lens to it, which is that actually folks around campfires. I've sat around campfires where nobody's actually talking to anybody. They're just yabbering. Into themselves, and it's kind of like normal. And I think if you look at it in that light, it says it kind of does work, but I prefer a story personally, fair enough.

Speaker 2 25:12
Skyrim is that? Is that a Bethesda Game? Yeah, it is. I wonder if there's any, if there, if any of the modding tools for those games, if, if they're at all, like, cross platform, cross, cross game at all, you know, like, Wouldn't it be cool if there was tools like that, NPC control like this for like Starfield, for example, yeah, or even the even fallout that would be, that would be so amazing. I know that there's lots of mods for all those games, but,

Speaker 3 25:49
yeah, I haven't. I need to look at see what's going on with Starfield, because I, I haven't, uh, played it for a while. Be interesting to see, you know if something like that exists? Because it'd be interesting to see what Miss Simmons being made with it. That doesn't mean I'm going to choose a star field next month,

Speaker 2 26:08
but there is, there is somebody out there who has been making a camera tool, and they've done it for like, over a dozen games.

Speaker 3 26:23
Yeah, didn't that come up when we did that cyberpunk music video this. It

Speaker 2 26:27
may, it may be the same one, but this is one that I stumbled on just a few days ago, and I, but I didn't have enough time to get together all the info on it for, oh, for our News episode this month, but I'll definitely, I'll definitely be reporting on it next month, and I may even try some of them out, but, I mean, he's got a full cinematic camera tool for cyberpunk, for red, Dead Redemption two. I think he skipped GTA because GTA already has the director, and Starfield was another one. So this is all the same, and it's the same person, the same tool, but he's adapted it to basically work alongside the executable for all these different games. And supposedly it has like full, full free camera control, not just photo a lot of photo mode in these games, the photo mode freezes time, right? And this supposedly gets around that somehow. So I literally just discovered a couple days ago. I haven't got to play with it yet, but I'll report back on that. But sounds very interesting. That could be really promising. Yeah, no, yeah,

Speaker 3 27:36
right. I think that wraps up things for this week. So thank you. My coast, Tracy and Phil, if you got any thoughts about scarring machinima or this film or us, please send us an email at talk at complete machinima.com and you can check out our website and blog@completemachima.com but that's it for now, and we will see you all next week. Bye

28:00
bye, bye bye.