5 Things To Do If You Use Cutscenes in Your Video Game
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I'm going to blame BioShock Infinite given that it does the Half-Life style (albeit much more heavy handedly than both HL and BioShock 1) and quite a lot of people bought and loved that. Then the "uh it's just an interactive movie" accusations were thrown en masse at The Last of Us less than four months later, despite the otherwise positive reception.Casual Shinji said:
Probably somewhat related to point #2, but if you do have to have a cut-scene, make sure that you have a cut-scene. Playing 10 seconds of pointless crap, then stopping to have a loading screen before an entirely different scene starts playing is just stupid. We don't need "dramatic" establishing shots every time we enter a new area. Shadow of Mordor was a particularly bad offender here (although few games come close to how terrible Dragon Age Inquisition was for doing this) - complete story mission, cut-scene with some conversation/exposition, loading screen, 5 second cut-scene of Talion sitting on a dog, loading screen, Talion actually sitting on a dog ready to play. It's all in-engine so there's no graphical benefit, it's a third person game so the view is virtually identical anyway (and as Shamus says, the developers don't have a clue what they're doing with the camera and shot set-up anyway), and it serves literally no purpose at all. There's no conversation or plot, no movement or lead-in to an ambush or anything, just the character being shown in exactly the same state it will be once the player gets control back, but so completely disconnected from anything that happened in the preceding cut-scene that it had to load a whole new scene to display it.
Of course, none of that helps the people unfortunate enough to have a console version.
There are about a billion mods pretty much anywhere you care to look to skip it, and they can skip anything from the stupid cart ride, the tutorial section, to large chunks of the game. And while that intro was rather annoying, it really doesn't make sense to say it's "so heinous there's a mod to get rid of it". There's a mod to turn all the dragons into a professional wrestler as well. Just because a mod exists doesn't mean something must have been so broken a mod was required. Occasionally that is the case (the game is virtually unplayable without some kind of UI mod), but the vast majority of mods are just pointless bullshit.MarsAtlas said:
Of course, none of that helps the people unfortunate enough to have a console version.
I just find it a crime to have cutscenes at all. The magic of video Games is to make the player feel like stuff happens to you. The player projects himself into a world and learns it's rules, so every moment of gameplay, the player should be able to act on these rules. This goes for quicktime events, too.
Don't simply take away control of the player without reason, let the player keep control, and create ingame reasons. If you don't want the player to move, don't make controller input ineffective, but show the character's attempt at following the input and let the player understand why, in the game world, this movement is currently restricted. Show the character struggle to jump, struggle to move. When your character is tied up and you press "punch", don't do a "I can't do that right now", show him pulling the chains!
The connection between your hands and the Character must always be there!
A great example is part of the ending "cutscene" of Shadow of the Colossus. You keep control of your character, the attack button is still the attack button, and you move and turn to fight. And at the end, you, the player, are struggling, not some character in a cutscene. You use the same controls you've used the entire game, trying to win a struggle you can't win. It happens to you.
Don't simply take away control of the player without reason, let the player keep control, and create ingame reasons. If you don't want the player to move, don't make controller input ineffective, but show the character's attempt at following the input and let the player understand why, in the game world, this movement is currently restricted. Show the character struggle to jump, struggle to move. When your character is tied up and you press "punch", don't do a "I can't do that right now", show him pulling the chains!
The connection between your hands and the Character must always be there!
A great example is part of the ending "cutscene" of Shadow of the Colossus. You keep control of your character, the attack button is still the attack button, and you move and turn to fight. And at the end, you, the player, are struggling, not some character in a cutscene. You use the same controls you've used the entire game, trying to win a struggle you can't win. It happens to you.
Corollary to rule No. 1: quicktime events during cutscenes are not gameplay; they are the opposite of gameplay.
I don't object philosophically to cutscenes, provided they're used correctly, but forcing me to mash buttons in the middle of one is clear evidence that the designers are lazy and hate their customers.
I don't object philosophically to cutscenes, provided they're used correctly, but forcing me to mash buttons in the middle of one is clear evidence that the designers are lazy and hate their customers.
Freaking amen to that! IMO #4 ruined the ending in Metroid: Other M. And the worst thing is that it wasn't even Samus who killed the boss in the cutscene. Just think it for a moment: Samus doesn't even get to shot the final boss! (neither in gameplay or cutscene).
I think you've nailed it. I never understood the praise that HL2 got for its cut scenes, the plot and characters were uniformly terrible.Scow2 said:
If you're going to have exposition and dialogue without interrupting gameplay, and you should, then I like the naughty dog and mass effect route of giving us something to to do. Faffing about a lab, waiting for the doctor to stop talking, doesn't qualify. Similarly, Skyrim had one of the worst openings I've seen.
TLoU nailed it, though, as the gameplay was often built around the story, and the opening had a clear flow to it, despite being interactive. The developers were guiding you, but it was so subtle I didn't even think about it the first time I played. Which is what you want, of course.
The Last of Us certainly seemed to have kicked it into high gear. But it's the overall critical and commercial succes that games like TLoU, but also Infinite and Telltale have gathered that suddenly made a lot of people rally under the 'Pure Gaming Race' banner. Eventhough there are no more (interactive) cutscenes now than there were in the 6th generation. They just have a bit more effort put into them now, which for some is enough to have the fear of God struck into them, because this obviously means the cinematics are gonna come and take their games away in the night.Evonisia said:
Well, it was praise at the time. That game is already 10 years old and it has aged.Fox12 said:
I think what people like about those segments is that it keeps you in the moment. It never breaks synchronization, sort of speak.
Tales of Xillia/+2 have you press start to pause the cutscene and open a menu where you can choose to skip the scene. Pause and skip combined. I've seen that in multiple games and that's really the best of both worlds.FirstNameLastName said:
OT: I prefer cutscenes that aren't interactive. I hate long walking scenes in games where you do nothing but follow something or someone taking long time for no reason. With a full cutscene with no interaction you can often either skip it or you can lean back and relax. If you have to walk then you are boxed in. I don't find them to be interactive ways of experiencing the story, I think they give you an illusion of being interactive while actually being just as restrictive. They also often make it more difficult to catch the details because you need to focus yourself. I think this was mentioned in a Zero Punctuation review once for F.E.A.R. (not sure of it was that game) he knew he was supposed to see something scary because of the music, but he didn't actually see something because he was in the wrong place.
But Shadow of the Colossus has cutscenes. A lot of them, and they are used to great effect.Piorn said:
I find the idea that the player should retain control at all times is ok for some games and really bad for others. Half Life 2 is excruciating to replay because of the many mandatory, unskippable dialog scenes that just plain suck and are made all the worse because they insist the player must still be in control of Gordon at all times. If you are going to have a non scene that is by nature non interactive go all the way and use the tools at your disposal to make it interesting to watch. Pretending a non interactive scene is interactive is perhaps the worst thing you can do. I would rather just watch a "shot reverse shot" scene than have to control the camera in a shot reverse shot scene.
Cutscenes are just a tool. Refusing to use them (or desperately pretending they are not there) is as foolish as misusing them.
I think what games ought to do is make cutscenes skippable only after you've already played through them once. We have the technology to do that now, to automatically record the player's gameplay history. If a cutscene is so boring that players want to skip it the very first time, then either it's a failure on the part of the writers or the player has too short of an attention span to be playing a game that has story breaks in the first place.
Didn't The Last of Us do it Half-Life style too, though? I don't recall a lot of cutscenes in that game.Evonisia said:
The Last of Us has more of a David Cage attitude outside of the cutscenes. Half-Life and BioShock would have you stand there soaking in the exposition. Usually The Last of Us has you do an obligatory button action like climbing a wall, breaking a car window or picking up a plank of wood to prop it up against something. In other words The Last of Us does token efforts to push you into interactivity rather than having a cutscene that you are stuck with due to the ability to walk about, depending on where you are on the spectrum (Dead Space - Half-Life 2 - BioShock).Steve the Pocket said:
I imagine these David Cage-esque bits combined with the cutscenes (which are usually a bit lengthy) lead to all the "it's just an interactive movie!" complaints when it was new.
inFamous, the final boss. Just before the final boss what do you pick up? A new power and it is awesome. You get to call down a lightning strike, great effect and you even get to practice with it a few times, depending on how much you want to backtrack and pickup the shards you might have missed. The first time I have the boss on his needs - I activate the super button combo! Nothing happens. Finally surrendering to beating on the guy, whittling him down over the course of 45 minutes and he is down to minimum health. Nope, I still cannot use my power. But once he explains 'I am the chosen one' (or, whatever) they steal the controller, the camera and call down my lightning strike! The one that I earned, that I learned how to use and they wouldn't let me use it.
Never finished the second game. Just lost interest with yet another cut scene and the press A to be good or B to be bad shtick.
Never finished the second game. Just lost interest with yet another cut scene and the press A to be good or B to be bad shtick.
While I agree with most of the list in concept, I think a better over-arching watch-phrase is "Do what you're doing with attention and intention." Don't half-ass things like cut-scenes because you couldn't be bothered with more than the shallowest considerations of what that scene was there to accomplish.
If I make you watch a lengthy cut-scene because I want to dump info on you and I don't have the imagination or creativity to do so in a way that doesn't yank you out of the game, that's one thing.
If I make you watch a cut-scene in which, say, things you have put into motion but are no longer in a position to affect occur elsewhere... that could very well be a reasonable thing to do. Even a well-considered choice, making the player consider the ramifications of their actions while rendering them powerless to change them in the moment.
(Still not a good reason to make the player unable to skip it in a third go-round, screw up the cinematography, or outlast the dialogue's welcome, of course.)
If I make you watch a lengthy cut-scene because I want to dump info on you and I don't have the imagination or creativity to do so in a way that doesn't yank you out of the game, that's one thing.
If I make you watch a cut-scene in which, say, things you have put into motion but are no longer in a position to affect occur elsewhere... that could very well be a reasonable thing to do. Even a well-considered choice, making the player consider the ramifications of their actions while rendering them powerless to change them in the moment.
(Still not a good reason to make the player unable to skip it in a third go-round, screw up the cinematography, or outlast the dialogue's welcome, of course.)
Have the option to pause. I hate not being able to pause in a cutscene. I also hate sitting there when I want to pause (because someone walked into the room and is talking to me, because the phone rang, because the cat has climbed on top of the television, etc.) but I'm too scared to pause because it might skip the cutscene.
I also like the ability to rewind and fast forward a cutscene and activate or deactivate subtitles from the menu when I pause. These are all basic convenience features, I don't know why developers don't include them, maybe they just hate us.
I also like the ability to rewind and fast forward a cutscene and activate or deactivate subtitles from the menu when I pause. These are all basic convenience features, I don't know why developers don't include them, maybe they just hate us.
100 times yes to number 5. Unskippable cutscenes are worse than QTEs. Even movies have a fast forward option.
Ok I admit cutscenes aren't as bad as I made them out to be.DrOswald said:
But think back to SotC, sure it had cutscenes, but after the opening entrance of the protagonist, the cutscenes always either serve to look at things like landscapes, or show things your character can't see, because he's either absent or unconcious. Even the horse bridge scene right before the final colossus forces you to commit to riding over the bridge, and the short cutscene with Wanderer's reaction is just there to focus the camera on the consequences of your action.
All of the Wanderer's actions in the gameworld are directly enacted by you, nowhere in the game does the Wanderer perform an action in a cutscene.
Considering dialogue, SotC is of course a weird example, as it barely has any. The only "dialogue" in the game is right at the end, and it's made up as a non-interactive cutscene, I guess to let you focus on the events, but also because there is nothing to control. Your hero is a wobbling mess and can't fight, so you understand why you can't control him right now. And it's not a flat dialogue, things happen in it too, which justifies it's existence as cutscene.
In general, I feel cutscenes are fine, as long as they don't put the player character on autopilot.
If the protagonist is acting, let the player control that act. If he's not acting, tell the player why.
Bioware is egregiously guilty of using the 'shot reverse shot' technique during almost every bit of character dialog. I've yet to complete a modern Bioware RPG because of it.[footnote]Well, and a number of other reasons.[/footnote] I fully understand and appreciate that people can look past that sort of thing, but it just wears on me after a while and I start tuning out of the dialog altogether because of it. It doesn't help either that it effectively makes almost every scene of character interaction feel the same as every other.
Fortunately, you don't have to say it; blocking player input has already been described as a grand innovation by the game design luminaries Jon McIntosh and Ben Kuchera.
The logic goes that timely and consistent response to control input merely serves to make the character model a sort of puppet accomplice of the player, thereby allowing immoral actions to be carried out without feelings of guilt that would accompany performing such actions in real life. Instead, a well designed game must suppress player input and even act against their requests in order to condition the player to be a superior human being.
This is the future of progressive game mechanics, so you'd just better dispense with your
Excellent article, and sad indeed that we still need people saying stuff like this this day and age. I'd like to add two suggestions to the list that I think are crucial:
* Don't abuse the opportunity of the cutscene to put the player character in a position where they are at the worst strategic position possible for combat.
I remember Dragon Age: Origins being especially guilty of this several times, though it's certainly not the only one: I would be sneaking along, trying to scout into the next room, when I'd suddenly unwittingly trip a cutscene trigger. When I wanted to be standing, by myself, at the edge of a room, the cutscene would drag my character into the DEAD CENTER of the room, along with the entire party I had just very intentionally left behind three corridors away. A fight would inevitably start post cutscene, normally with the whole party swarmed on all sides, and with my wizard right next to a giant monster I had just taken great pains to try to keep from happening.
Beyond bad cutscene design, it's artificial fight challenge increase. It's the designer being too lazy to design a fight that's properly a strategic challenge and takes into account player intelligence; rather it just hamfistedly forces you into a bad position to make things harder, even though you yourself would never have allowed your PC to get into that position. It's like if you were playing a tabletop RPG and the GM just picked up your miniature against your will, for no reason, and put it in a square you didn't want them to. Technically the GM might have the right to do that (and even then, not really), but it ensures the game will end with my miniature shoved up the GM's nose and me leaving to find a better game with a GM who doesn't have to cheat to get the game exciting.
This also leads to...
* Respect player agency (especially if it's an RPG)
People play games to be able to interact, not watch a movie (indeed much of Shamus's thesis). If my main character should reasonably be able to act in any way possible during a scene, they should have the option of doing so.
I've seen several JRPGs in particular--but other games and game genres have done this too--where you have the villain monologuing while any sensible character would just stab him while he was still talking. Worse are scenes where the scene is blocked so that you should be able to move around and react and, for example, jump in the way before the monologuing villain stabs the heroic sacrificial lamb party member to death. I won't cite the most obvious example of that that everyone's probably thinking of, but rather mention some others: the farmgirl getting killed by the warlock in NWN2, or the prince's bodyguard getting stabbed in Suikoden 5. Both of those are actually blocked in such a way that technically you should have been able to intervene and help.
This is also lazy design because if you really just need the main character to be helpless during a scene, make them actually helpless! Someone upthread mentioned cutscenes happening when you're bound--that makes sense! Pillars of Eternity has a scene where it would be hard for you to intervene because you're separated from the action by a balcony (although why, say, you can't fire an arrow at the obvious baddie is still beyond me). Either give people a choice to react and reasonable options in doing so, or if you want the PC to be immovably helpless, then actually in the story make them immovably helpless. The former is better than the latter of course.
* Don't abuse the opportunity of the cutscene to put the player character in a position where they are at the worst strategic position possible for combat.
I remember Dragon Age: Origins being especially guilty of this several times, though it's certainly not the only one: I would be sneaking along, trying to scout into the next room, when I'd suddenly unwittingly trip a cutscene trigger. When I wanted to be standing, by myself, at the edge of a room, the cutscene would drag my character into the DEAD CENTER of the room, along with the entire party I had just very intentionally left behind three corridors away. A fight would inevitably start post cutscene, normally with the whole party swarmed on all sides, and with my wizard right next to a giant monster I had just taken great pains to try to keep from happening.
Beyond bad cutscene design, it's artificial fight challenge increase. It's the designer being too lazy to design a fight that's properly a strategic challenge and takes into account player intelligence; rather it just hamfistedly forces you into a bad position to make things harder, even though you yourself would never have allowed your PC to get into that position. It's like if you were playing a tabletop RPG and the GM just picked up your miniature against your will, for no reason, and put it in a square you didn't want them to. Technically the GM might have the right to do that (and even then, not really), but it ensures the game will end with my miniature shoved up the GM's nose and me leaving to find a better game with a GM who doesn't have to cheat to get the game exciting.
This also leads to...
* Respect player agency (especially if it's an RPG)
People play games to be able to interact, not watch a movie (indeed much of Shamus's thesis). If my main character should reasonably be able to act in any way possible during a scene, they should have the option of doing so.
I've seen several JRPGs in particular--but other games and game genres have done this too--where you have the villain monologuing while any sensible character would just stab him while he was still talking. Worse are scenes where the scene is blocked so that you should be able to move around and react and, for example, jump in the way before the monologuing villain stabs the heroic sacrificial lamb party member to death. I won't cite the most obvious example of that that everyone's probably thinking of, but rather mention some others: the farmgirl getting killed by the warlock in NWN2, or the prince's bodyguard getting stabbed in Suikoden 5. Both of those are actually blocked in such a way that technically you should have been able to intervene and help.
This is also lazy design because if you really just need the main character to be helpless during a scene, make them actually helpless! Someone upthread mentioned cutscenes happening when you're bound--that makes sense! Pillars of Eternity has a scene where it would be hard for you to intervene because you're separated from the action by a balcony (although why, say, you can't fire an arrow at the obvious baddie is still beyond me). Either give people a choice to react and reasonable options in doing so, or if you want the PC to be immovably helpless, then actually in the story make them immovably helpless. The former is better than the latter of course.