Generally meaningless...
Message:With Cutlass you guys at least defined the term - focusing on "character closeups" instead of wargaming out every unit in the field.
What does "cinematic" mean in a game anyway? A movie is a passive, non interactive entertainment. It's a damn stupid adjective for a game. Board/card/TTRPGs really can't be movie like.
For any video game it means, what...? There are more "cinematic" sequences I'm watching instead of playing? That one Metal Gear Solid game with a 90 minute cinematic AFTER THE END OF THE GAME PLAY was ridiculous enough. Are you referring to graphics and audio? That's not about being "cinematic," but might be more "immersive..."
As long as I'm ranting, in my video/VFX circles, oh, ugh... Everyone uses "cinematic," as an adjective in a pointless way, as in, "how can I make my video/effect/animation more cinematic?" Um... Is it 24 frames per second, because that is literally the only thing that objectively defines "like a movie," and that standard wasn't set until 1929 (before that was 15 or 18 fps). Picture aspect ratio isn't it - movies have been released in 4:3, 16:9, 17:9, 1.85:1, 2:1, 2.35:1 and 2.4:1. It's not color pallette - besides black and white one can see how use of color changes every decade. 60's colors were vibrant, 70's earth tone, 80's neon... For the last 15 years it's been mostly that horrible orange/teal grade or monochromatic look (like how Wonder Woman looked brown on brown in the Zach Snyder film, but BTS pics showed the costume was Red, Blue and Gold). Thank Cthulhu actual color is becoming trendy again.
Point being, if you say "cinematic" at me I'll be asking you to define what you actually mean, because you haven't actually said anything useful.
Same goes for "digital quality."
Yours,
IronMike
16-Sep-2021