I have noticed games like Metal Gear Solid, Red Dead Redemption 2, or the Witcher (to a lesser extent) get criticised because they are 'interactive movies'. I am assuming that similar criticism will be directed at Cyberpunk, because the dopamine-hungry COD and CSGO veterans will not like sitting through hundreds of dialogues.

I disagree with that. I mean sure, it can be frustrating if you can't pause a cutscene that lasts 5 minutes while your cat is going crazy in your room, but overall, i think that cutscenes show the devotion and commitment of the devs.

Think about it. Animating a cutscene, and then making the voice actors from all languages record lines for it, can be quite costly. I have never played it, but i have heard Red Dead Redemption 2 types of voice lines, one for when you are shouting and one when you are walking and thus speaking slowly. This is such a small detail, but it probably cost them a lot of money, because the voice actors need to record the same line twice. It's also really impressive when the developers predict the player to do unlikely things. For instance in Metal Gear Solid 2 you can find a shaver that you then give to Solid Snake, he shaves himself and remains that way until the end of the game. A little detail, but they had to pay David Hayter and Quinton Flynn to record that. I wonder whether it might have been why Snake speaks so little in MGS V. Perhaps Kiefer Sutherland was a little too expensive.

So overall i think those people (no offence if that's any of you) are mainly dopamine-hungry people that are tired of their lives and just want to kill stuff. Which isn't bad, but don't expect every AAA game to suit you.

Your opinion?

And i know i am kinda meshing together both cutscenes and sequences based on the engine of the game when you have limited control, but you know what i mean.

Reasons I dislike cutscenes:
* When I play a game, I want to play a game, not just watch it.
* Cutscenes use up extra resources, which could have been spent on something else or simply not wasted. (Final Fantasy 7 would have fit on one disk if it weren't for the FMV cutscenes.)
* Cutscenes, of course, cost the developer some money to make, which means that such games are more expensive to make, which translates into higher costs for the consumer and/or developers taking less risks otherwise in their game design.
* Say I'm playing an RPG and just learned a new ability. I would actually like to play with that ability, not have to watch the cutscene before I have a chance to play.
* I just completed a level and am getting tired. At this point, I would like to save the game and turn the game off, but I can't because there's a cutscene. (I note that there are some games, mainly Visual Novels (though I saw this in Serment: Contract With a Devil), that allow you to save mid-cutscene, but that's not something one could expect to see in other genres.)
* If I really did want to watch cutscenes, there's Visual Novels (and Kinetic Novels), where there's no gameplay for them to get in the way of.
* The fact that JRPGs, once clearly my favorite genre, became infested with them can be one reason I've come to dislike them.
* Cutscenes do get in the way of gameplay, and gameplay is why I play video games.

It depends on the game and context. If they're necessary to drive a plot forward in general I don't mind them too much. When they're several minutes long, how annoying that can be depends on how funny / interesting / boring they are (eg, No One Lives Forever were several minutes long but often amusing enough to remain engaging along with being both skippable & pause-able). They're at their best when skippable and placed between missions (eg, Thief), and at their worst when they constantly "snatch" control of the player every few steps to play a real-time micro-cutscenes upon every trivial action (climb a ladder / pick up something / step over a pebble / "glory kill" in Doom = an endless string of a micro-cutscenes that freeze the player out of the game). I find the latter in modern games 1,000x more annoying than "old school" games that had minutes long cutscenes between missions, but outside of those actually gave you continuous complete control during missions without the over-scripted excessive cinematics.

I dislike cutscenes that are too long and accomplish something better told through gameplay.. If my character is fighting someone, then let me fight him! Don't have me do some of the work and then extend out this huge cut scene that is essentially a wannabe Hollywood director masturbating all over my game by saying "look how cinematic it is!" and just let me do the fighting and have a short scene that explains the break in gameplay to change the arena (obviously, I'm looking at you, God of War with your Mysterious Stranger fight at the beginning). I don't need all that insane fluff that takes too long and does nothing beneficial to the game.

On the same not, excessively long animations annoy the piss out of me. When I'm looting something in a game, waiting on my character to kneel and rifle through the container is unnecessary. Also, when upgrading your lightsaber, I shouldn't have to wait for Cal to flourish it for 5 seconds when I'm done. Excessively long animations can be more "realistic", But damn. I can do those in real life. I can't fly 30 feet in the air while slashing a firey dragon's throat or shoot people in the face with a shotgun because they won't take off their Spacer's Choice Moon Head. Stop bloating games unnecessarily, devs!!

dtgreene, AB2012 and paladin181 echoes my sentiments.

Trying to blame "dopamine-hungry" people is just a strawman.
If you want to watch a movie, watch a movie.

I don't want less control in gameplay, for a costlier game, with less spent on the actual game-content.
Consoles and cross-platform gaming is also partly to blame.

Depends on the game. MGS 2-4 took it waaay too far. But Red Dead 2 etc wasn't all that bad and VERY well done. It does make me wonder, why do people bother playing games? Go play some pong if it bothers you so much that there's a story.

Action, Action, Action, Action
Hand eye coordnation
Pushing buttons
Dash attack spin block, wall jump...



Sit while your mind is in an active state of wanting to do something while you do nothing and stare at a static cutscene you may no care for...

I don't mind the usual cutscenes at all. As long as they are skippable that is. Always let the player decide, that is always the best way to do it.

But I highly agree with AB2012 here. The Doom example is perfect. For the duration of the "super cool gory finishing awesome move" you are basically phased out of the game. Nothing can interact with you and you can't interact with anything. You are immortal for the duration of it and can't do nothing but watch. They might be fun to watch 3 or 5 times, but when every fight devolves to the same animations over and over, it can become pretty boring quickly.

This! :-)


I mostly play RPG's. And i hate it, when the Gameplay is interrupted by cutscenes ...every 5 minutes or less.

And i would like to use the moment. And defend "Pillars of Eternity".
PoE was highly and unfair criticized, for his "book like" Storytelling.
I absoluty prefer this style, for a good RPG. Because it promotes my own imagination.
And it is objectively superior. Because you can work so much better with details.
It fits better together. "Book like storytelling + Fantasy RPG" than "Movie Style + RPG."
(I also play Pen&Paper RPGs. One reason, why i prefer telling instead of showing.)

And...yes. I also prefer to play a silent "Main Character". When it is possible to create my own character in an rpg.

If i like to watch a movie. I start netflix, or take a visit to my local cinema.

Probably because so many are badly done... I respect Carmack, bu tthat is Bullshit. Not all games are all about the action, you know. what Carmack is saying is that only the kind of games he designs are worthwhile.

As a player I can tolerate them if well dosed and functional to the plot like, for example, taking the control off the player and make him watch the outcome helplessly in key moments.

The problem is they need voice acting and performance / motion capture which are incredibly expensive and I generally think that those funds could be diverted to developing the game.

On the other hand games heavy on spoken dialogs and cutscenes are really great for streaming because they don't require the streamer to read all the texts all time and focus on the gameplay making them nice to watch for the viewers.
That is an edge case but from that standpoint is convenient as hell.

what about kojima walking simulator?
now that had like a half hour cutscene before you are allowed to do anything, very bad game, it is not even a game ...

carmac sounds like a fanatical ,only good what he likes and everything is bad what he doesnt, so lame

When I first started playing PC games, back in the days of Gabriel Knight etc., I used to see cut scenes as a reward, an achievement.

These days, cut scenes usually frustrate me -- they're an interruption, and intrusion. I dislike having the control snatched away from me. I think this is partly because some scenes have become overblown, the product of frustrated wannabe film directors.

Yes, I understand the desire to create a cinematic experience, but gaming and cinema are fundamentally different. Gaming is a directly participative experience; cinema is, at best, mentally participative. Cut scenes should be made to take account of the difference.

They've tried that. It's called quick-time events, and it is hated.

No, they need to learn moderation, timing, and appropriateness.

A cutscene here and there, where it is not interrupting the player, or after a heavy segment, could be a good thing.
If done right.