Why do some developers still neglect to put a "skip!!!" button of some sort in their games? Is it some form of torture? Testing the player's endurance? Perhaps a way to get the players to get off their arses for a few minutes while the damn thing plays out? Or just crappy design?
Specifically, how can one possibly justify putting a several minute long cutscene right before a tough boss fight? How can anyone think that's a good idea? Haven't the years of feedback from gamers gotten through? And yet, these things still happen...
As you might have guessed, the questions posed in the previous paragraph were motivated by a specific occurence. Namely, The Last Remnant (PC version): Mostly I can sing praises to this game. Truly it does honor to the genre. But I've ran into a bit of a snag. At the end of one of the early dungeons, a cutscene occurs. It is a good cutscene, featuring emotion, intrigue, shiny spells and 20 meter tall swords. It also lasts several minutes.
After this cutscene comes a boss fight. This fight is entirely luck-based, to the extent that I've had my units drop dead before they got to do anything in the FIRST ROUND! This is compunded by the fact that 3/4 of your units are controlled by the AI, so forming a plan is useless. Overall, the battle is a mess, but I'm bound to get a lucky break eventually.
HOWEVER! I've had to suffer through the cinematic four times already. It was especially fun in the aforementioned "Death on the first turn" instance, where I barely got to press 2 buttons before having to watch the damn cutscene again. HOW can this be good game design? How can this NOT be obsolete at this point?
This also reminded me of other similar situations, such as a certain cinematic in FF9 involving a lot of dragons and a skyship fleet. That one was awesome and didn't deserve to be remembered with hate. Yet it is, since it preceedes a damn boss fight...
This thread is as much of an actual topic as it is just me venting. However, I'd appreciate any thoughts you have on the subject.