Most infuriating "cutscene incompotence" moment?

[DaMan1500]

You might already know what this is if you read a lot of TV Tropes, but what I'm refering to is when, during a cutscene, your character does something profoundly and uncharacteristicly stupid, is threatened by something that shouldn't actually be a threat, or is hurt by an injury they could have just shrugged off in actual gameplay. I have this on my mind because I've been playing through Max Payne 3, which has a few of these. One around the middle of the game was so bad it almost gave me a brain aneurysm from rage. I can't say what it is specifically because I don't know how to make those nifty spoiler box thingies, but basically Max looks into a window and sees a group of baddies who don't know he's there, but rather than give control back to my so I can go into slow-mo and shoot them all in the face, he instead walks through the front door armed with just a pistol (one of the only cutscenes in the game where he doesn't keep the weapons he was using before it started) and asks all the guys with assault rifles to drop their weapons. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

 

[Jacco]

You might already know what this is if you read a lot of TV Tropes, but what I'm refering to is when, during a cutscene, your character does something profoundly and uncharacteristicly stupid, is threatened by something that shouldn't actually be a threat, or is hurt by an injury they could have just shrugged off in actual gameplay. I have this on my mind because I've been playing through Max Payne 3, which has a few of these. One around the middle of the game was so bad it almost gave me a brain aneurysm from rage. I can't say what it is specifically because I don't know how to make those nifty spoiler box thingies, but basically Max looks into a window and sees a group of baddies who don't know he's there, but rather than give control back to my so I can go into slow-mo and shoot them all in the face, he instead walks through the front door armed with just a pistol (one of the only cutscenes in the game where he doesn't keep the weapons he was using before it started) and asks all the guys with assault rifles to drop their weapons. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

Any cutscene in the bullshit "game" that was Resident Evil 6. The entire situation could have been resolved and soooooooooo much trouble could've been saved it the characters had just executed who they were cut scene-ing with.


also,

Spoiler

add this around your text

 

[Nouw]

In Mafia 2, the main character Vito is sent to make a hit. Simple right? Well, in the cutscene he has the target at gunpoint and doesn't shoot him! Someone grabs him from behind and things get ugly quick. It wasn't the most infuriating but infuriating nonetheless.

 

[Tanis]

Remember in KOTOR where you first face the bad guy and you're KICKING HIS ASS...

And then that dumb cow goes 'I'LL SAVE YOU' and toss herself to him?

Yeah...

 

[TheCommanders]

The Assassin's Creed games in general are pretty guilty of this. If I had a quarter for every time the main character lets a target leave without killing them (even though from game play we know they easily could have) I could stay in an arcade for a month.

 

[DementedSheep]

Dues ex: HR, the scene with Zhao was just painfully bad. Not just because of gameplay and story segregation where the character appears stronger in the actual game than they are story wise, I?m use to that and can accept it so long as the character doesn't stand there looking like a deer caught in headlights while this going on but because Adam got hit with stupid bat aswell. ?oh I?m really just a helpless woman, continue standing there brooding while I walk around behind you.?

 

[Misterian]

Eternal Sonata has given me this;

There's this encounter with that chubby armored guy with the big hammer, he suddenly attacks, you beat the crud out of him, then he somehow immediately recovers than throws the heroes in jail with our heroes not fighting back the slightest despite kicking their captain's butt.

Look, Eternal Sonata, if you want to fit in the 'heroes go to jail' part of the story, you could do something more credible, like an actual 'supposed-to-lose' fight like you did that that one lad who was able to beat up Chopin and Polka, but no, you had to pull this 'you-beat-him-except-you-didn't-nyah-nyah!' fight.

seriously, Namco, what was up with that?

 

[DJjaffacake]

Shepard's

Spoiler

sudden inability to shoot straight whenever Kai Leng gets a cutscene is incredibly irritating

in ME3

 

[sanquin]

Mass effect comes to mind the most for me. There is no one single cutscene that does it, just the overall theme of the cutscenes in both the second and third game.

-Suddenly your character can't aim properly any more.
-Suddenly a single bullet can take you or someone else down, shields and health be damned.
-Suddenly your character can jump and such.
-Suddenly you have weapons your character can't use or doesn't even have on them.

And one that's specific to ME3, not really cutscenes but conversations. But still:
In previous games you'd be able to often pick what you wanted to say from 3 options. Multiple times during a single conversation even. Or you could ask several questions if you wanted more info before answering. In ME3 you more often than not just got 2 options. One paragon, one renegade. And then you'd be stuck watching the rest of the conversation while you did nothing as you didn't get any more options after that. It felt like the game had been set on auto-play at those times.

 

[purf]

Any cutscene in the bullshit "game" that was Resident Evil 6. The entire situation could have been resolved and soooooooooo much trouble could've been saved it the characters had just executed who they were cut scene-ing with.

Previously, on Resident Evil:

 

[Amaror]

Oh yeah max payne 3.
cutscne - narrator goes:
"There she was. They dragged her through the door into the next room. I wondered, if i will ever be able to catch her."
Me going:
"She was 10 meters away from you, from an optimal position to jump down and killing everyone, before you touch the ground, and you just watch, you IDIOT!"

 

[Starik20X6]

Any game (usually RPGs) where a character dies and the other characters don't use a revival item on them. I get that for narrative purposes you may want a character to remain dead, and if that's the case make the gameplay not counteract it! Have the character get vaporised or something so they can't be healed, or don't have any of the characters 'die' in battles. Just make it so the game follows its own internal logic.

 

[Dragoon]

Has to be Persona 4...
"You're..."
Uh, guys, shouldn't you stop here?
"not..."
Dude, seriously, you know what will happen if we don't...
"ME"
Oh great, we could have prevented this, but instead we stood around like asshats...

Also from Persona 4...
*confronting victim* "There he is! Wait, which ones the shadow?"
Oh I don't know Chie, could it be the one who is giving off an eerie purple aura and has big yellow eyes?

Yeah that was slightly annoying, for me it's a little thing but games that have the default weapons in cutscenes even though you have a different weapon equipped really bug me. It's even worse if in some cutscenes it shows them with the weapon you equipped and in others it shows the default, just breaks the immersion for me.

 

[LawlessSquirrel]

Shepard's

Spoiler

sudden inability to shoot straight whenever Kai Leng gets a cutscene is incredibly irritating

in ME3

Gah, that drove me nuts! I was stumped about what I could add to this thread, but I second this wholeheartedly.

Too many times in that game I had to remind myself 'this is just to push the story forward, it's fine.'

 

[Abomination]

In Far Cry III I hunt bears, tigers, crocodiles and sharks with a machette but Vaas is always able to get the jump on me somehow. I can outmanoeuvre a TIGER in the jungle or a SHARK in the ocean. Yet some bald nutty... Hispanic (? I never got how he was Hispanic) can take me down in one movement?

But generally ANY Japanese or Anime"eque" game has boatloads of these. The Japanese are terrible when it comes to moments of suspense.

 

[TallestGargoyle]

Any game (usually RPGs) where a character dies and the other characters don't use a revival item on them. I get that for narrative purposes you may want a character to remain dead, and if that's the case make the gameplay not counteract it! Have the character get vaporised or something so they can't be healed, or don't have any of the characters 'die' in battles. Just make it so the game follows its own internal logic.

That scene a lot of people find so depressing in FF7 just annoys me so much for that...


Metal Gear Solid does a few for me, though it's much the opposite with the Twin Snakes remake. As much as I love the series, seeing Snake aiming his stinger at a half-dead Gray Fox pinned by Metal Gear going "No! I can't do it!" Every time I'm just like "FIRE THE DAMN GUN SO WE DON'T HAVE TO FIGHT REX A SECOND TIME! FOX WILL DIE ANYWAY!"

Though while that scene remained in the remake, a whole bunch of other scenes were then changed to be cutscene power to the max with his flips, jumping on missiles, being a general badass when my control ingame is largely similar to the original game with a roll move and hanging off things added on.

 

[Rawne1980]

Star Wars The Old Republic....

Anyone who's played the Jedi Knight storyline can tell you.

You get to a certain planet that has the most incompetent republic general type leading there. Not only do the cut scenes make you look equally as stupid but they blatantly mock you for being stupid even though you can't do anything about it.

 

[hermes]

The DBZ games might be among the worst offenders. Countless times, I am forced to win a fight to continue, I might even perfect it, pounding my enemy against a mountain again and again without he even touching me. Yet, the game will cut to a cutscene where he won't have a scratch and scold my character for being "too pathetic", at which point my character would hold for his life and keep wondering why can't he beat him.

This is specially annoying because the condition to pass was to win the fight, to actually loose it or time it out would be a "game over".

In Far Cry III I hunt bears, tigers, crocodiles and sharks with a machette but Vaas is always able to get the jump on me somehow. I can outmanoeuvre a TIGER in the jungle or a SHARK in the ocean. Yet some bald nutty... Hispanic (? I never got how he was Hispanic) can take me down in one movement?

That was also pretty bad. It didn't help that you outmaneuver a tiger mere minutes before you barely escaped Vaas' camp because you were "not competent enough" to fight.

 

[ExileNZ]

Dues ex: HR, the scene with Zhao was just painfully bad. Not just because of gameplay and story segregation where the character appears stronger in the actual game than they are story wise, I?m use to that and can accept it so long as the character doesn't stand there looking like a deer caught in headlights while this going on but because Adam got hit with stupid bat aswell. ?oh I?m really just a helpless woman, continue standing there brooding while I walk around behind you.?

THIS. A thousand times this.
I was going to post this but I'm not surprised it's in the first 5.

The only even remote justification I can find for it is the sweet reversal of it later on (assuming you don't ragequit after the first meeting with Zhao).

 

[Chester Rabbit]

Um, Mortal Kombat. The Sindel cutscene. Everyone rushes her forgetting any combat training they have or any supernatural power and just go the old cartoon villain way and figure rushing up and jumping on her is the best way to win, and what happens?....Well it wasn't good and I am still trying to figure out what happened to Sub-Zero.