This is a project that I've been following in the corner of my eye for some time. It appears to be a fan-written story following an episode in the life of the famous Lord Inquisitor Coteaz.
The project has been ongoing for some time, and is not likely to be completed before 2013, but I felt that since the trailer was released this afternoon, it might be time to share this information with the rest of you.
Although not directly linked to the Inquisitor game, it is relevant to the lore of the WH40k universe, and the Inquisition on which most of our games are based, so I felt that this may have a place here. However, if I am wrong, then I am sure that the Imperial Authorities will reprimand me, and descend upon this post for appropriate removal.
Anyway, this is the trailer in question. Some good animation is shown, and some not-so-good animation, but bear in mind that all of this is still a work in progress, and the finalised version will not be released for about another two years. Plenty of time to improve. It already looks more promising than the mediocre-yet-underwhelming "Ultramarines" anyway...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7glPda2Lcc
And this is the Lord Inquisitor project's homepage.
http://www.thelordinquisitor.com/
I hope that you find this enlightening, entertaining, and that it is not too out of place, here.
I'm pretty sure I've seen a little snippet of that before ages ago. Looks promising, but it also looks like it might be a guns-blazing space marine action thing really.
Quote from: Heroka Vendile on November 12, 2011, 05:16:02 PM
looks like it might be a guns-blazing space marine action thing really.
Personally, I'm hoping that it has at least a few angles of intrigue that would be more in keeping with the way that we interpret the Inquisition. However, the movie DOES follow a character who is a known "battlefield inquisitor". Coteaz doesn't exactly do an awful lot of sneaking or creeping around to meet shady contacts. He's more the sort who leads Grey Knight companies into battle against daemonic incursions etc.
However, the inclusion of a shot in the trailer where Coteaz is looking down at Imperial citizens from a balcony, and a few hints found on the project's homepage, leads me to believe that there will be at least some glimpses of The Imperium away from the warfront, which we as Inquisitor players all know and love.
From some of the other render testing videos on the YouTube channel, I would guess that there's going to bloodletters in the film. Which makes sense, because Coteaz is a Malleus inquisitor. My money's on a chaos cult which summons some daemons, which Coteaz then smashes up with his daemonhammer, along with gratuitous amounts of kill it with blessed fire. Which is even more effective than regular kill it with fire.
Probably be a scene where a load of inquisitorial stormtroopers are cut apart before Coteaz intervenes and starts hitting things.
Looking forward to it.
I look forwards to seeing more of it, and really hope that it will be better than Ultramarines, that was just too bad to watch.
Quote from: Dolnikan on January 09, 2012, 08:26:08 PMUltramarines was just too bad to watch.
Ultramarines had one very important thing The Lord Inquisitor won't - John Hurt doing the opening narration.
But yes, unfortunately, very sub-par. Aside from the many other fluff mistakes, the Marines were cynical, antagonistic or both, which just isn't right for indoctrinated warrior monks. (Some of the lines would have been great for Imperial Guardsmen. Space Marines, no.)
I think the Lord Inquisitor will rise above that, because it's not being done to a budget, it's being done as a labour of love and a showreel. As we can already see, animation quality is far better than Ultramarines (although the recoil animations look pretty odd), although the trailer's narration does leave me wondering what the quality of the voice acting will be like.
I actually enjoyed Ultramarine, I just wish they'd spent half as much time on the environment as they did on the characters, the whole setting for the film was cheaply mashed together for speed.
If they'd actually spent time building a world instead of just some half hearted "spooky" background it would have improved the setting and the story much more.
From what I've seen of Lord Inquisitor it looks like he's spending as much if not more (which is quite right to do so) time on his environment to fully immerse his story into
Animated/CGI 40K movies tend to leave a bad taste in the mouth, to date the two best examples of 40K lore on screen have been (IMO) Inquisitor - although that did have a terrible CGI juggernaut - and Damnatus.
Ultramarines was predictable, horribly predictable and had a ton of moments that grated against 40K lore. and let's not talk about the work done on Bloodquest
The Lord Inquisitor looks to have much better visuals than any of the others, but the focus on one of the more Hittysmacky inquisitors out there turns me off a tad.
Still, we shall see...
Charax, it's not just us the creator's catering to. Most of the people who watch this won't play inquisitor, and their only exposure to the inquisition will be from the large-scale 40k game, in which hittysmacky inquisitors and correspondingly "less thinking more shooting" retinues tend to macke for better playing than an interrogator with a needle pistol accompanied by a scribe. Remember, the creator is catering for a larger audience than our very specific outlook, and while the voiceover in the trailer seems to have left Marco underwhelmed too, it doesn't look too bad overall, though neither did ultramarines (well, almost).
There are a couple of things in the trailer that jar a little. The recoil, though that has already been mentioned, and the armour. That dark shade of red doesn't seem to fit in. Might just be me, but I think gold and white armour would look better. I was going to say something the chatracter but just because an hourglass is shown, it doesn't mean the inquisitor is Coteaz, though it's looking that way at the moment. In which case... isn't his armour gold?
One of the test videos explicitly names him as Coteaz.
And that doesn't hugely bother me. The thinkysneaky Inquisitor is less mainstream than the hittysmacky type (being the realm of Inquisitor and the Black Library, not the 40k tabletop), and I'd also say harder to do right in what's going to be a fairly short film.
As for the armour colour, everything you have been told is a lie. (Also, I like the red colour.)
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In recent news, it appears GW have given this a tentative green light. But we've all seen those burn out before, and given that Lord-I is (I think) another German project with the same potential UK/German copyright problems as Damnatus, it may well do so again.
International copyright is a nasty thing, and those differences are going to start really showing in this digital age.
I think this one will keep the green light, even though we're talking about GW I think that they won't make the same mistake twice, with the laws etc.
I'd like to think that - but if the problem existed before, I struggle to see how it's gone away now, so I suspect there's a good chance it'll come down to "Sorry mate, didn't realise/remember you were in Germany".
It does sound ridiculous that German law doesn't have dispensation for derivative works, but GW were pretty convinced that it doesn't. (And I have no desire to try and figure out foreign copyright law, so I'll take their word for the moment).
I understand than since Damantus the IP laws in German have changed somewhat and relaxed a little
This is a few weeks old as news goes now, but as it hasn't made it here yet...
1) GW have now given The Lord Inquisitor the confirmed okay.
2) After the call for volunteers, the main story writer is Aaron Dempski-Bowden.
Well, things are looking up!
Some of their animation could do with smoothing out, like the heavy bolter recoil when the thunderhawk is flying (do they even have heavy bolters bolted onto the top?), but it looks excellent so far.
Minor update, a mini-teaser has been released by the TLI team. It can be viewed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3G7FH5sqhA
Essentially, it was just a short animation to show off their new, revised Coteaz 3D model, but it's still got a nice feel to it.
It indeed has a nice feel and there are lots of small details in it. I hope that the final product looks similar to it although I have no illusions about things like plot and the like, those tend to be paper-thin in this kind of movie.
I suspect many of you have become aware of this elsewhere, but there's a new teaser (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjaYW5Cnr5k), this time of the Grey Knights.
It continues to give me a certain hope for this project - unlike Ultramarines, where half the film took place in cheap-to-animate desert, Lord Inquisitor seems to be putting serious effort into the environments and backgrounds. Adam Harvey's soundtrack isn't at all disappointing either.
I'm still not completely convinced by the voice-acting (although it has improved)... but then there was never any hope for the same kind of voice casts that some official GW games/films have had, so I guess it's unfair to expect quite such large shoes to be filled.
I was intrigued to see it's a realtime render as well, using the cry engine. That's the sort of thing that makes editing and small shot alterations so much easier than traditional 3d animation.