What are your views on cutscene use and walking sections on games? And on the integration of gameplay with the story.



I used to hate them. The laziest way to tell a story in a game, and very well it may be. Gameplay and story are like oil and water, and games as an interactive medium should strive to merge both.

I still think that to some extent. When I think of good stories in games often it's things like Planescape: Torment and Papers, Please; games where there are no cutscenes and there isn't really a divide between story and gameplay, you are always interacting with the story in one way or another. They are shining examples of the medium.

Cutscenes lead to terrible gameplay don't they? Games where they have an idea for the story, and seems like only late into development someone asks: "But what will the gameplay be?", to be answered with "I don't know. Just put some chest high walls in it and make it a third-person shooter. Maybe add some cookie-cutter stealth or platforming in case they get bored. Now let me get back to this cutscene I'm making."



But then a new plague spread: the dreaded Forced Walking Sections! You see, the devs only know of one way to tell the story, by having the characters talk to each other and tell you about it, or maybe by giving you a tour of the location. You can't be trusted to pay attention to what's being said, or to the right things in the environment, so they take control away from you. Once upon a time that was with cutscenes, but their use has become gauche. It is a rule! The player must always be in control of his avatar!

In theory that's great, but the devs haven't learned new ways to tell stories, so they created cutscenes where you are forced to push forward in order to keep watching it. That's what Forced Walking Sections are, cutscenes by a different name, that you can't skip, and I hate them with a passion.



Believe it or not, I've come to appreciate cutscenes now. You can make gameplay focused games and put the story in the cutscenes. That way if you are ever to replay the game to enjoy the gameplay again you can always skip the cutscenes. With walking sections, you must always drudge through them. Despite the noble intentions in integrating story and gameplay, I think we might have ended up worse than how we started.

I don't mind them as long as they are always skippable, short and to the point, doesn't drag on forever. I'm currently replaying Hitman Absolution and frankly, they are too long even if I don't necessarily mind them. I also prefer it if the game developer have limited means, like an indie studio they don't waste precious resources on paying voice actors or CGI specialists, might as well go with simpler forms like text.

I used to enjoy cutscenes greatly but nowadays I don't really want them there, either taking up my time or draining resources from the developers. I also prefer more seamless integration between gameplay and story telling. I still greatly enjoy audio tapes like in Bioshock because I'm a real sucker for in-medias res story devices such as flashbacks. I love flashbacks, they are sometimes the high point of an experience for me regardless of medium.

In general though I prefer variety and diversity. I like it when some games have more cutscenes and focused on a cinematic experience and others that uses a more minimalistic approach, some that don't use them at all.

If the quality & the pacing is good, i don't really mind. For example, i enjoyed very much every cutscene in Mass Effect. Cutscenes with mediocre voice acting and no style are not preffered. I really like how the story unfolds in HL2 for example; there are no cutscenes and you always are in control of the character, even when you're locked in a room, waiting for the NPCs to stop talking. The same goes with Metro and possibly other games as well.

Cutscenes that are skippable are important if i'm to replay the game, as i don't usually want to see the story again, but to be honest, i can't remember a PC game where the cutscenes got on my nerves. I think it's done much more in console games rather than in PC games, but i may be wrong on that. I agree, i don't mind if they are audio tapes or comlinks (such as those in Metal Gear Solid), video tapes (such as the TVs in Alan Wake that were great & somewhat creepy at times), comics (Max Payne -- great way to tell the story in between the gameplay!) or just books, as much as they are of high quality and enjoyable.

IMHO: 95% of games suck at storytelling.

And it's even worsen with time because:
1. You're getting old and have seen all the clichés possible so no need to rehash them.
2. You don't have much free time anymore so you don't wanna lose some precious minutes.

But there are still some exceptions here and there like "Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons"

Oh, Max Payne.. I don't know why but I was hugely disappointed by the gameplay in both games, I had this vision it was a classic noir stuff but it was just Matrix third person action and endless amount of enemies. That said, the comics in the first game was world class, I was very surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It's interesting how uncommon that comics are used. I think I've stumbled upon it once with a light hearted atmosphere when you played some Marvel or DC Comic hero.

Unfortunately I never finished Alan Wake but I do recall those TVs loosely, very good idea to create an atmosphere while delivering a part of the story at the same time.

Really? The gameplay was what attracted me the most back then (OK, i'm a sucker for Matrix and it's slow motion thing) and recently i replayed it (after nearly 10 years) to see how it holds today, and guess what; it still is one of my favourite PC games! :P But i'd agree on the number of enemies. :)

Also, how could you stop playing Alan Wake without finishing it first? I could barely quit it to go for sleep when i first played it; terrific story & great atmosphere. :P

If the cut scenes are short, progress the story or entertaining, I enjoy them (e.g. Command & Conquer, Far Cry). If it's short enough, it can be enjoyable without direct context for the game (e.g. Panzer General has a short clip e.g. of original footage of some unit moving - but you only see that after playing and winning a scenario after hours).

Depends which games. Generally speaking, a decent story in most non-story-based games is a definite plus (occasional exceptions: highly abstract stuff like ; counterexample: [url=http://store.steampowered.com/app/344480/]Quell), and if it's going to be supplied via "cutscenes", it's fine by me.

RPGs and adventures on the other hand already have a better mechanism of story delivery -- letting the player make story decisions. Cutscenes often not only supercede it for their duration, they fuck up the story going forward.

I liked the slow motion feature but there was no variety, only like 500 gangsters trying to kill you. I also think that I didn't particular like the level design, it felt exhaustic if I recall right. On top of it all, it was during a time where I was tired of gaming but was not really aware of it. There might be a possibility that I had a bad memory of it that is worse than the actual experience even if I didn't really enjoy the gameplay.

I think there was a technical issue with Alan Wake, I probably had low performance, AA didn't work, long loading times or perhaps annoying save system.

I really don't mind cutscenes at all. When used well and well made they are a great way to move the story along. Telling a story through gameplay is important, very much so, but sometimes you will need characters to talk to each other too. Better to do that in a well directed cutscene that might make it more cinematic and exciting than to just stand around (or walk) with the NPCs and and listen to them talk.

The way I see it, cutscenes and walking sections should be handled like stealth sequences; either focus the entire game on them, or don't use them at all.

A game that focuses on cutscenes would, of course, be either a visual novel or an FMV game.

The way I see it, when I am playing an RPG, I actually like to be able to *use* the abilities I just gained; I don't like having to wait because the developers, of course, put an unskipable cutscene or story segment in the way. I can:

Final Fantasy 7 PC version. (Of course, the game has other problems as well.)
Ys: Oath and Felghana and Ys Origin are also annoyingly cutscene heavy, though not as bad as FF7.

(One observation: All three of those games were made by Japanese developers, and one of them is a port of a console game.)

Yeah Skirim did the "game still goes on while the cinematic is happening" thing a lot, and it was sometime a little weird. Like this scene at the end of the warrior's guild narrative arc where you have that dramatic night burial ceremony going on to conclude your quest, and you can just go away and loot the houses while the villagers are at the burial.
Or the wedding of my character, where all the attendants took off at a dead run as soon as the priest stopped talking. Including my orcish wife. I never found her again after she fled the ceremony ^^

But anyway, I tend to like cinematics. They bother some people, but for me, they're like a reward that the game gives me for passing a point in the game. Maybe I was trained into this mindset by the starcraft cinematics that worked that way :)
They also allow the game to put stuff that would be difficult to render ingame : Big battles, earthquakes, free-fall...
Or stuff that your character don't interact with, but that brings some elements of context to the player

That's the reason I love Valkyria Chronicle, a game that mixes heavily cutscenes and gameplay.

As an intro movie or mission briefing cutscenes tend to work pretty well. Problems start to arise when they are pushed into a blender with the actual meat of the game.

Metal gear games are some of the worst for interupting gameplay with the addiction to numerous clips every few paces the player walks down a corridor. The intro for MSGV was like pulling teeth as a result. They obviously do it to make sure you see a specific thing but after the 4th or 5th time its more likely not to be noticed as the player just wants to actually play the game not wear out the skip button before the long winded intro is over.

In this regard they are more like a qte, which tend to be used to kill something in a very specific way and often lead to a character teleporting across a room as the animation is always from a fixed point.

Skippable cutscenes are always good to have because if you replay the game you may not want to bother with watching everything again. Downside is that if the dialogue or characters are bad then you may just find yourself skipping a scene which has a plot twist, although if the writing is that bad the twists are usually pretty obvious.

Then of course some games have skippable cutscenes mingled with unskippable ones, don't know how anyone thinks thats a good idea.

Games where you are dumped into an unskippable cutscene because of a trigger point are just plain stupid design. If someones in the midst of a fight (and being shot to bits) they'd not stop and have a chat with someone in full view of the people trying to kill them. They can be even worse when the damage taken is real and you regain control on a sliver of health and in a swarm of mobs.

As for forced walking sections I think other M (the metroid that should never have been as it probably killed the series) stands out as one of the most tedious as samus stomps about like a spacemarine with lead boots looking for a single scan to trigger the next bit of 2.5D platforming while samus gets all emo about a baby.

Forced walking also covers those bits where for no reason the players character has to shove a finger in their ear to talk to the same someone they've been chatting with already while doing other things, even simple things like pushing buttons.

Audio tapes are a good way of fleshing out a story as long as you can listen to them and play at the same time.

My biggest issue with cut scenes is that they can't be paused. For some reason my wife seemd to think that cut scenes are the perfect stopping point for her to start talking to me about the grocery list or to ask if I remember what shoes her mother was wearing last weekend and if I liked them because she wants to buy a pair just like them.

I hear that the new Pokemon games are quite cutscene heavy; apparently the speedrun times are close to 6 hours with much of the time being spent on cutscenes, and no significant improvement times possible without finding a glitch to skip some of the cutscenes.