Cutscenes Are Gaming's "Failure State," Says THQ Exec

[Baldr]

Game Companies need to stop hiring writers and cinematic directors from in-house, yeah it saves money, but then it makes the dialog and cinematic look like crap. There are proven writers and directors out there that work in "Hollywood" that would love to jump ship and work in games except there are no doors open.

 

[Samurai Goomba]

The question I'd like answered is, do games really need a story all that much? I realise that's the direction they seem to be heading, but if I want someone to tell me a story, I'll read a book or watch a film.

A game's story needs to tell you who you are, what you're doing, and why you're doing it. Anything else is window dressing.

Although depending on the complexity of the answers to those questions (see also Bioshock, The Darkness and Deus Ex) sometimes the mere explanation of those three major points must be spread over the entire game.

Obviously the story in something like DOOM or Painkiller can be summed up in a few words, but an explanation of who the main character in Persona 3 is, what he is doing and why he is doing it (why he feels it is necessary, what has led to his conclusion) will naturally take a bit longer.

I think most games could benefit greatly from having that one English professor/teacher we all remember. You know, the one that ripped into everything you wrote without mercy, dinged you points if you misplaced a period while formatting your references in MLA style, and cut out all of your writing except that which was absolutely necessary to your narrative. Capcom's writing in particular is legendarily stupid and largely irrelevant. I can't think of a single cell phone conversation I ever had in RE4 that told me anything I needed to know which I couldn't have found out in gameplay. And that was a GOOD Capcom game.

Perhaps it seems odd to segue into a discussion of game writing when talking about story, but often a story will only be perceived as being as good as how it's presented. Half-Life 2 is praised for its "story," when I think what many people actually like is the writing. The story is a totally generic alien invasion. Likewise, I have heard FEAR and FEAR 2 have excellent stories, but they're presented very poorly through answering machine messages and text logs. Just the thing for a pumping action FPS, huh?

Also, anyone claiming cutscenes are some kind of automatic detraction from a game hasn't played Enslaved. Various other mishandled elements may bring the experience down, but the cutscenes shine.

 

[Evil Tim]

Obviously the story in something like DOOM or Painkiller can be summed up in a few words, but an explanation of who the main character in Persona 3 is, what he is doing and why he is doing it (why he feels it is necessary, what has led to his conclusion) will naturally take a bit longer.

Well, the stories that best suit the genre are told entirely through play; how do we know Simon Belmont fights a great battle against Medusa and barely prevails? Well, um, because that's what the player does. My number one hate for cutscenes is ones that start with the boss you just defeated not being defeated and having the game do it because you were too lame to.

Plenty of videogames try to tell stories that have no business being in a videogame in the first place; if you require huge blocks of spoken exposition to tell the storyline, write a book. It wouldn't be considered acceptable for a movie to repeatedly resort to written text dumps to tell the story, would it?

Also, anyone claiming cutscenes are some kind of automatic detraction from a game hasn't played Enslaved. Various other mishandled elements may bring the experience down, but the cutscenes shine.

Enslaved? The best example you can find of that is Silpheed: The Lost Planet, where the cutscenes raise a fairly routine shooter to one where you actually want to find out what's going to happen next. This is largely because the cutscenes are of a totally different scale to the game's action; it's not just you doing things you should be doing in actual gameplay.

 

[tk1989]

This reminds me of Killzone 2; I hated it whenever it cut to a cutscene. It just broke flow and the immersion, and for some reason so much more than most other games.

What I hate about cutscenes is when they do a big badass battle scene and I'm thinking "why can't i take part? why am I watching my character do something I should be doing?"

 

[Evil Tim]

This reminds me of Killzone 2; I hated it whenever it cut to a cutscene. It just broke flow and the immersion, and for some reason so much more than most other games.

But didn't you just tear up when Throg was showing his sorrow at the death of Man With Hat by punching the shit out of his coffin?

 

[ThreeKneeNick]

I like how you made an article to present his opinion and then just pissed all over it with the last paragraph.

 

[Rayne870]

so, how does he plan to do cut scenes where the player's character isn't present for the events taking place? Doesn't that make stories very limited because for the sake of immersion the player shouldn't be leaving the character they are controlling by this logic. That and I really don't have a problem with sitting through conversation between characters or super cool combat events and such.

 

[Evil Tim]

I'm 100% in support of mute protagonists. A good chunk of Gordon Freeman's appeal is that he is mute.

Yeah, because who would want to play as an actual person when they could play a moving gun with no role in or influence over the plotline?

 

[ntw3001]

I like this guy, because I don't like cutscenes. I guess the point that they can be used as a break to improve pacing is an okay one, but I don't really agree. Games have ways of easing tension without making the player put the controller down and sit back with their arms folded for two minutes of 'quiet time'.

 

[Samurai Goomba]

Plenty of videogames try to tell stories that have no business being in a videogame in the first place; if you require huge blocks of spoken exposition to tell the storyline, write a book. It wouldn't be considered acceptable for a movie to repeatedly resort to written text dumps to tell the story, would it?

You raise a really interesting point. Should games realize when their stories are becoming too obscure or complicated for the medium? Is there a way to tell a complicated story simply? I would point to Shadow of the Colossus as an example of how deep, resonant storytelling can work with minimal flow-breaking or cutscene nonsense.

Again, this brings me back to Capcom. What you said about the player character being too "lame" to defeat a boss perfectly described almost every major boss encounter in virtually every recent Capcom game I have played. The first thing you're treated to upon booting up Devil May Cry 4 is an extremely long cutscene and tutorial in which Dante and a Dante look-alike slap each other around. Then you win, but not really, because despite not being the hero anymore, Dante is still to awesome to be beaten up by player characters.

Also, anyone claiming cutscenes are some kind of automatic detraction from a game hasn't played Enslaved. Various other mishandled elements may bring the experience down, but the cutscenes shine.

Enslaved? The best example you can find of that is Silpheed: The Lost Planet, where the cutscenes raise a fairly routine shooter to one where you actually want to find out what's going to happen next. This is largely because the cutscenes are of a totally different scale to the game's action; it's not just you doing things you should be doing in actual gameplay.

Huh. I played that game and hated it because of the bland gameplay. But I see what you're saying. Sometimes a cutscene is most useful when it features something that just couldn't or shouldn't happen in gameplay. For example, if a game is going to be crappy anywhere, it might as well pack all its crappiness into the cutscenes, like Painkiller did.

A good example is "radio the base" interactions. Gears of War has an absolutely TERRIBLE in-game system where Marcus slows his walk to a ridiculous snail's pace whenever he phones the mother ship, and invisible walls make a sudden appearance, fencing you in. Since I basically can't move, there's no excuse for this dialogue happening during "gameplay." Marcus might as well get the same information from the whiny support characters during one of the many shakeycam-abusing cutscenes. If I'm going to be playing a game, I should be playing it. This goes back to FEAR 2's text logs. If I have to actively stop playing the game in order to look at or read something relating to the story, that smacks of lazy, hack design.

 

[Samurai Goomba]

I'm 100% in support of mute protagonists. A good chunk of Gordon Freeman's appeal is that he is mute.

Yeah, because who would want to play as an actual person when they could play a moving gun with no role in or influence over the plotline?

Exactly. Outside of Crono from Chrono Trigger, who is characterized somewhat well through his actions despite being mute (or perhaps "textless" is a more apt description, since everyone was mute on the SNES), I've never understood the "blank slate" protagonist way of thinking. Surely it's more enjoyable to play as a character with an emotional investment in completing the main objective, right? Someone who reacts with believable emotions when confronted with challenges? I dunno.

Does anyone really think Silent Hill 2, Final Fantasy Tactics or Xenogears would have been improved by "mute" player characters? In my opinion, part of what makes the stories in those games good (100% of what makes SH2's story good), are the emotional responses of the main characters. Freeman (like almost every mute protagonist) basically has no character arc, motivation or purpose. He just is, and everyone else seems to impose their ideals onto him (which he never objects to). Maybe that's the point. Maybe it's Valve's "Would you kindly."

I feel like Bioware has pulled off cutscenes pretty well, Mass Effect sort of gave you a way to control the cutscene and develop your character further...
Also, I dont remember THQ making an incredible amount of games.
The last one I remember was the game based on the Spongebob movie...yeah, exactly...

Eh, I don't know. The cutscenes always seemed to go on way longer than they should, and like all Bioware RPGs the game let you choose the same dialogue option more than once, which in a tripe-A title feels lazy and very "game-like." Most of the information people give you in ME isn't so important that the player NEEDS to hear it again if they weren't paying attention the first time, so they might as well remove the option. Many times I found myself trying to skip dialogue and accidentally triggering another section of the conversation because of the wheel menu.

Bioware has some good writers, but they really need editors. Mass Effect's actual game is way shorter than it has any right to be (if you remove the obnoxious, repetitive spaceship side missions that are all the same 2-3 things repeated ad nauseum), and maybe cutting back on all that fancy Bioware mouth-opening technology (in other words, hire editors) would have let them put a few more good levels (like Feros) into the game.

Some might say Bioware is indicative of everything that is wrong with the current direction storytelling is taking in gameplay.

 

[Byere]

Video game storytelling techniques need improvement?

Well then, as a gamer practically my whole life and a lover of RPG games, I guess this one person's opinion makes my life and many others lives totally inert and pointless, huh?

Screw you, Danny Bilson. Many MANY games have brilliant cutscenes and tell the story by using them. Admitted, there are games that use them far too often or have them go on for too long (MGS and the FF series in many cases), but that rarely detracts from the story itself. The gameplay maybe a bit, but after having played many RPGs and haven't read/listened/watched/played through so many stories through these and many other genres of games, I feel that they work far more effectively than say a cutscene in (as previously pointed out) Fallout 3 where you're looking through your character's eyes and during a scene you can look around (ignoring what's going on) and in some cases even wander away from such a scene.
At least in movie cutscenes you have to pay attention to it if you want to know the story.

 

[Evil Tim]

Again, this brings me back to Capcom. What you said about the player character being too "lame" to defeat a boss perfectly described almost every major boss encounter in virtually every recent Capcom game I have played.

Yeah, though the original Devil May Cry got it more right than the later ones; off-hand, I think every after-boss cutscene was the boss dying, not cutscene-Dante finishing them off with moves he can't do in game. It was better that way.

A good example is "radio the base" interactions. Gears of War has an absolutely TERRIBLE in-game system where Marcus slows his walk to a ridiculous snail's pace whenever he phones the mother ship, and invisible walls make a sudden appearance, fencing you in. Since I basically can't move, there's no excuse for this dialogue happening during "gameplay."

You know what's missing that would explain what those scenes are actually there for? The word "LOADING." UT3 engine games in particular have a nasty tendency to need either doors that take a long time and / or a minigame to open or unskippable exposition to cover loading the next area.

 

[Evil Tim]

What? Half-Life practically pioneered story telling without the use of cut scenes and it does a damned good job of it, too.

Yeah, instead of taking you outside the game to tell you things, it locked you in a room with nothing to do and told you things.

The main difference was the inability to skip the latter type and the token ability to move the camera around.