Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Update #2

Good evening folks. Another update on progress for the part 2 of Divinity.

It's the mid point of the second week of work. And I've managed to reach the 4th minute out of 10-12 ish. Here's a quick screenshot of the timeline so far:

Thus far it's been the usual case of moving each scene into Adobe After Effects. Keyframing and experimenting with the text to make it playful on screen. No major issues on that.

The major issue is in the midpoint however. Because of something I've dubbed the "High Judge Orivand" problem. Which is my current mountain to climb. In part 2 the party meet an important character in the form of Fort Joy's overall commander, High Judge Orviand:

And during the scene an extremely important story point is revealed - what happens to the Sourcerers taken into Magister custody?

So important is this scene, that it's even referenced right at the very end of the game. Meaning (especially on a chain watch) it needs to be crystal clear to the audience what is going on. If they miss it, I'm screwed.

Unfortunately during the initial playthrough a high-profile mistake happened - the party accidently initiated combat with the NPC's far too early.  Due to the following situation:

• I misclicked a chair and entered the planned dialogue box, breaking my stealth.
• My team misinterpreted this as an attack and went with "All In" melee whilst they still had their stealth. This put them in combat.
• I rushed through the opening moments of dialogue to try and rally to their defence, thinking they were getting attacked.

The result, as you can imagine is a bit of a clusterfuck - https://youtu.be/uBFPSfSbpmo 

This also meant that they were locked out of the dialogue, being in combat. Meaning I had to then narrate what was going on, over the top of High Judge Orivand - https://youtu.be/dLQvRlyDhv4 

Now as an editor, that's utterly unusable! Memorable, but unusable. This would be the point where a second take would be done. But it's a live-stream. A live performance. There is no such thing. This is my High Judge Orivand problem.

The solution? I was able to do a completely different livestream years later, recording perfect audio on a completely isolated audio track - https://youtu.be/qOxEg0qvQwg 

My task now is to splice the two scenes together in such a way that it looks like the start went a bit wonky, but then the High Judge was able to finish his dialogue properly. Using After Effects to seamlessly hide over the cracks.

So far so good on this front. But it's too soon to tell if I can make it work. And without this little moment of seriousness, big plot revelations later in the series won't work.

Work continues on the edit. Thrashing to get through this middle section and I'll let you know how it goes :)