Jimquisition: Cutscenes Aren't A Failure State

[disappointed]

So, to summarize this episode:

- Cut scenes can be bad but aren't always
- Cut scenes can be good
- People shouldn't be forced to use cut scenes but shouldn't be forced not to
- Cut scenes can sometimes be good
- Not all cut scenes are good but some are
- Games should be allowed to use cut scenes when the designer thinks it appropriate
- Cut scenes shouldn't be compulsory but nor should they be banned
- Hating cut scenes doesn't make you clever
- Cut scenes can be good

...yes, well, it's a fine argument and hard to contest but it doesn't stop me being pissed off when I watch a cut scene in which my character does something cool that I could have done in the game.

That said, most games these days feature so much challenge-free busy work that they may as well be pure cut scene.

Also, there are no cut scenes in multiplayer. This has changed people's expectations of gaming as a whole.

 

[GonzoGamer]

This whole attack on cutscenes is bizarre as fuck.

I didn't even realize there was a whole attack on cutscenes.
What's bizarre to me is that it seems like the most harmless thing: it's a brief moment where you don't have to do anything and just watch a scene but if you don't care and want to move on, you can press the x or start button and get on with it.
It's like if people complained about ice cream cones: it's not like you have to eat it. You can just eat the ice cream if you want.
I remember when Ninja Gaiden (NES) came out and cutscenes were a novelty.

 

[Treblaine]

It's not a rule but a "maxim" that in cinema to "show don't tell" yet that doesn't mean that narration and exposition is absolutely forbidden, but it should generally be avoided.

A similar maxim for games should be "do, don't show".

Then of course there are he issues with perspective shifts, but that's just a matter of having a careful touch.

 

[Triaed]

Just to add (what many people already have) that there should be an option for a player to skip the cut-scenes.
Leave them be in the developers' artistic bag, but give me the option to skip them if I do not want to see them

 

[mike1921]

Just to add (what many people already have) that there should be an option for a player to skip the cut-scenes.
Leave them be in the developers' artistic bag, but give me the option to skip them if I do not want to see them

Yes but for the love of god have it in a way where you can't accidentally skip them. And please, please, if we can't skip it the first time have an option do the Visual Novel thing (or at least the katawa shoujo and sengoku rqance thing) where things you've already seen can just skip themselves automatically.

 

[DustyDrB]

I had forgotten all about S Club 7. ...I think that was for the best.

Anyway, I'm fickle. I'm not a fan of just standing there listening to an exposition dump. But I'm also not a fan of cutscenes near 10 minutes long or longer. RPGs usually get it right, having the player involved in exposition while saving cutscenes for truly big moments. I haven't played much of any Half-Life game, so I can't comment on it. But Metal Gear Solid's cutscenes are absolutely ridiculous. I love those games despite the cutscenes, because the gameplay more than makes up for it. That series has fantastic potential for environmental storytelling, but neglects to engage in it most of the time. Metal Gear Solid 3 probably had the most of it, and it is often considered the best game in the series.

As with many things in life, what works best here is a balance.

 

[DustyDrB]

Does Jim just pick a hot topic, throw on his tired, tissue thin facade and rile up the sheeple every week? Seems like it. The show is about as informative as reading a Twitter feed.

So you're saying he's very informative, then. Because you could not possibly be ignorant of the use of Twitter in major protests (Egypt, Tunisia) over the last year and a half.

 

[Therumancer]

Visual Novels are NOT a sub-genere of video games, they are a sub-genere of books (novels) that are simply working in an electronic format. "Choose Your Own Adventure" books gone electronic.

What about visual novels such as Symphonic Rain, Kamidori or Sengoku Rance?

If they break that format slightly but still fall into it enough where they are calling themselves Visual Novels as opposed to making pretensions of being something more, it's a non-issue.

That said it's not my genere of choice, so I don't read many of them.

 

[Raso719]

How else can you do a "meanwhile elsewhere" bit? How else can you make dramatic camera angles that enhance the drama of a scene?

Cut scenes, that's how!

I still believe that games can have stories and that they can convey their stories via all manner of narrative or vehicle, including cut scenes. Honestly I don't even know why we're arguing over is games should have stories or be art or have cut scenes. I mean, how is this even an issue? I mean, what, just because the most popular games these days are shooters that little more than online death match arenas who try oh so hard to appeal to brain dead morons who think is's "cool" to hate art or variety every game needs to be a bland and tasteless death match? Please don't be such a tool.

If you think that way then please stop gaming, you're ruining it for the rest of us. I don't think that all games should be like JRPGs, please don't insist that all games be like Call of Duty ot Half Life 2 (as awesome as the former was).

 

[jaketaz]

I really enjoyed that ending. Classy.
No seriously, I was wonder how you were going to try to one-up Jesus, and then it was hilarious when you did. This and ZP are my favorite weekly shows, TV doesn't even compare.

 

[Arakasi]

It should be noted that I played Diablo II ENTIRELY for the inter-act cutscenes.

Seriously, the promise of a new cutscene was what got me through the grind.

 

[Deacon Cole]

Sure, they can. Cutscenes can be used for good or for bad. They are not, inherently, one thing for the other.

Well, they are inherently one thing: a different medium. It's called motion pictures. Which isn't a big deal as games do use things from other media all the time. Music, for example.

It's also not that new an idea if you consider things like the intermissions in the original Pac-Man, in which case, cutscenes go back to 1980.


But then, in those days it was more about showing off the graphics capabilities of the hardware and the animation talents of the programmers. Furthermore, the cutscenes in the original Pac-Man didn't really tell a story (although later Pac games did).

But that was then. These days, such things are simply taken for granted because they don't have to try to squeeze a game into a 4KB cartridge. So it's less about what the hardware can do than what the game itself does.

Which is why there's a movement among developers and fans that the story should be told through the gameplay instead of splicing a movie clip into the middle of things. I don't think it's a mark of failure, really. Failure means you tried something and it didn't work. I think it's more a warning sign of stagnation. It's just one more area where the medium is not being tested. Why try to figure out how to do all those things I quoted earlier through gameplay when you can just use a tried and true method from another medium? I think that's the real problem.

 

[esperandote]

Spielberg said that too? And i thought it was weird Del Toro said it.

 

[silverdragon9]

I agree completely although i would have used metroid prime instead of xenoblade.

 

[Scow2]

"Video Games" are the ultimate form of Multimedia - They are drawings, sculptures, movies, paintings, symphonies, and interactivity all rolled into a single package.

You're not "Leaving video gaming and going into movies" when you insert a cutscene, because movies are a part of the whole of a video game. The issue is integrating them well.

 

[CapitalistPig]

I didn't even realize this idea was under fire. If you don't like cut scenes why play video games with them? isn't that kind of like pulling your own teeth out? Anyway, I'm with Jim its a tool to be used or not. Personally I'd rather watch a well rendered cut scene then feel "involved" in the scenes when they make me "tap A rapidly" or press a 3 button combo. The experience is just that. An experience. All games would and could like to differ in delivery of this idea. Nothing wrong with either form. I know what I like and avoid what I don't.

Thank god for Jim.

 

[CapitalistPig]

I come from the generation that saw the emergence of the cut-scene as THE new thing that was made of awesome - something that most of us considered, at the time, to be a huge reward and something we actually played the game to work towards. I still carry this mentality imparted by that experience of playing state.

To relate this to a current event, I think that's part of why I was so dismayed by the ending of ME3 - the feeling that there should have been a long, rewarding cut scene to provide closure and reward to my epic achievements - whatever they may have been - contributed to my general feelings about why the ending was unsatisfactory, much more so than the actual writing of the ending, the god child, or all the other things others found seriously problematic. I was more accepting of those things in general (though I didn't care for them particularly) than I was of the lack of closure / cut scene reward.

Now, I'm not saying that games that are light on cut-scenes aren't good. In fact, I love the open world games that more or less leave cut scenes in the tool box minus some opening and beginning context providers/closure tools. It works with how they are telling the story - or letting you tell it to yourself, as the case may be, in which case being laden with cut scenes would be getting in the way more than helping things along. If a Final Fantasy game, on the other hand, came out without cut scenes I would be totally confused.

Different games, different approaches to how much is going to be done in cut scenes. I think Jim hits this one straight on.

Speaking on the generational note.

AMEN. Can you say Syphon Filter? One of the first and best RPG military games that utilized cut scenes to the max. The only reason I finished each level was to see what was coming next. While gripping a pillow at the edge of my seat. Granted I was 11 at the time but damn that was good stuff.

 

[Lugbzurg]

Now for me, I admit Im more concerned with the reason WHY I am slaying 10 million zombies rather than the simple mechanics of slaying zombies. (thats why L4D is so disappointing to me personally. I know its supposed to be a B movie vibe, but SOME plot other than "Were trying to escape" would have been nice.

As well as a lot of other people, I find this to be a sheer brilliance in the game. We don't care how it happened. We don't care why we're doing it. We just wanna have fun. It's already plenty ridiculous and rather simplistic on the player's end, so, why add extra narrative?

Although, I can say that those cutscenes at the beginnings of the levels with the characters just standing still are quite unnecessary. They really should have just been talking to each other like that in the gameplay itself.

 

[viranimus]

We don't care why we're doing it.

To each their own of course, but if you dont care why your doing it.. then why bother doing it?

"because it is fun" is not a sufficient answer. Without motivation what is to stop you from having "fun" by repeatedly killing yourself, or jumping off a bridge to spell your name with your own corpse, trying to kite as many zombies at one time, etc.

It cant be the mechanics because the mechanics are as formulaic as any other major shooter on the market.

So again, without the motivation to "escape" what is the point of following the developers pre plotted course of entertainment? Why not make your own entertainment within the games context?

If you dont care for the motivation, then why play by the rules of the game at all, or even playing it to begin with?

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

Does Jim just pick a hot topic, throw on his tired, tissue thin facade and rile up the sheeple every week? Seems like it. The show is about as informative as reading a Twitter feed.

So you're saying he's very informative, then. Because you could not possibly be ignorant of the use of Twitter in major protests (Egypt, Tunisia) over the last year and a half.

Not too good at spotting the point, I see. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule. If you wanna argue, go ahead and read about 1000 random Twitters and get back to me.

Sheesh.