Dead Fantasy

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/115884.html

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/193489.html

I'd like for you to turn your heads over to these two videos. Normally, I embed them, but since they're user made movies, gametrailers doesn't do that. (speaking of which, are you annoyed that you have to pause the two mabinogi movies on the bottom of the page yet?)They're done by a guy who rips models and then reuses them for his fan movie.


Honestly? It's really good. I don't care if you're not into this kind of thing, but he has done an amazing job customizing and redoing everything. The only thing that is really ripped are the model details and general backstory/premise information. Basically, his characters have a justification for being there (though no justification for fighting, but let's ignore that). A friend showed this to me and I was absolutely impressed. Yes, I saw cutting of corners and almost direct animation rips from the respective games, but they were well implemented. The use of environment is what I liked most.


Review with spoilers:



I'd like to point out some odd details that seemed to strike out at me.

In the first one, there were some lighting issues, it can be most clearly seen 1:27 during the rotation where the stage is very bright but the background seems to lack light, and on 2:33 (notice the floor, or lack thereof). They're minor but all of these have been improved and fixed upon in the second one. There are still some remnants of it but not as much.

Dead Fantasy II:
2:19 Ayame has white eyes
3:37 The way Yuna is holding her guns is impossible. Notice her hands...
6:17 The bottle says Ether on them, just in case you're confused
7:11/7:21 The background lighting issue I mentioned earlier.


The amount of detail placed in this was astounding. You always see everyone fighting except for when the "camera" is zoomed into one-on-ones, and the motion blurring was used just right and very well. His ability to direct is what really gets me though. He knows how to not only choreograph fights, but to calm it down, or add amusing parts to it. The use of the environment, like I said is what I love the most. Fighting isn't just on the street and taking what you have around you and using that is a grand load of brownie points.

Oh and uh... Wall-fighting rocks. That is one huge tower though...

I'm not going to go into detail about "who should've won" or "This balancing is unfair," rather I'm actually still confused about certain parts of the animation. For example, I still don't understand the use of Kairi. While I understand predictability, Kairi is from Kingdom Hearts and the square characters were brought over, not the other way around. I don't I've ever seen Sora in FF XII. So when he was talking about trying to extend the DoA universe, I didn't really understand the "restriction" he may have felt as he seemed to do it already. Rather than surprising, I kinda feel Kairi was random, there was a chance to use Yuffie from FF7. Doubling shouldn't have been an issue since Rikku and Yuna were in it anyway.

I wish he didn't name it "Dead Fantasy" as it seems to limit what he can do. Despite my distaste for Soul Calibur, that would probably made a better candidate for weapon battles. Regardless, this was amazingly done and if you're into well choreographed fight scenes, watch it.

I'm more of a fan of multi-man fights. One on One is always great, but multi-fights show coordination and teamwork. That's what makes the choreography amazing to me.

Plus, I wanna see what he does once FF XIII and FF Versus XIII comes out.