I’ve come to really appreciate when games aren’t merely graphically pretty, but that they also take great care with their use of camera angles and animation in general. I speak particularly of cutscenes and dialogue, but frankly this question applies to the entire game.
I find there’s a lot of games that do take cinematography in mind for cutscenes, but nothing else. Or at least the rest of the game is considerably less impressive than cutscenes. e.g., rather than animate something, some games will just have a text box say what happened. And dialogue in many games is very basic back and forth (often with very lackluster quality lip syncing).
RDR2 is perhaps the best game I’ve played so far in this regard. It felt like it animated everything carefully, even had a cinematic mode for horseback riding that I found very pleasing to use, and cutscenes often felt movie quality.
What other games (of any kind) put a lot of effort into cinematography?
Limbo/Inside, but especially Limbo
Flower and Journey, kinda both equally
Most modern AAAs (thinking TLOU/2, Horizon etc.) will tend to have very well done ‘world’ lighting – usually veering towards realism, but when it comes to expression of a unique cinematic look they tend to be samey in my mind. Great, but samey.
I just couldn’t get into Flower, Journey was cool though. You might also enjoy Proteus, A Short Hike, and Sable.
For sure… Sable and A Short Hike are great mentions and both have really distinct and beautiful styles. Haven’t tried Proteus so thanks for the recommendation there.