Most infuriating "cutscene incompotence" moment?

[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.

 

[sXeth]

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?

The best was the cave with the ransom videos, where a guy magically spawns after having cleared it twice (I snuck in before getting the key, and then after took out the batch of spawn from nowhere people) and KOs you in one shot immediately after having taken down something like 20 dudes with machetes.


In Dishonored, Corvo just stands there and lets himself be accused of murdering the Empress, No attempt at verbal defense even, or escape.

The later FF's all tend to have a point where the demi-god characters are just stopped by guns pointed at them.

AC3 when Connor gets arrested by two grunts that he should be able to kill or disable in about 0.2 seconds.

Dark Souls, you get cutscened into watching Pinwheel til he turns around and splits. Gameplay wise I'd just creep up and backstab that twit.

 

[Gecko clown]

The ending of Red Dead Redemption was completely spoiled for me when John Marston's head and all the soldiers' heads started spinning round The Exorcist style.

 

[Zhukov]

Dragon Age: Origins.

Hey guys, see that incredibly ancient, powerful and possibly possessed witch you came here to kill? Yeah, don't start stabbing the crap out of her or anything while she has her back to you. No, just stand there in a rough diamond formation like a pack of gormless twits while she calmly walks over to that little hill and turns herself into a fucking dragon.

 

[m19]

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...

I remember everyone complaining about this at the time. Doesn't really bother me since no one has yet invented a way for the player to lose a fight and integrate that into gameplay.

 

[ratzofftoya]

I think far more infuriating than this are those times when, in the cutscene, your character does something really, really cool that he or she can't ever do in the game. I always just think "LET ME PLAY THAT PART!" Uncharted is a main offender in this category.

 

[exp. 99]

Fallout 3, when you first enter 'The Pitt'. I'm level 24, with full power armor, 500+ stimpacks, and the terrible shotgun. I literally fistfight with deathclaws for fun, and have survived ground zero of a fat man explosion in an enclosed space. For all intents and purposes, I'm bloody well indestructible.

Yet somehow, four plebs armed with sticks and armored with spare tires and bondage outfits appear. They get the drop, okay, I understand this. Then the lead guy, the guy with the shotgun barrel literally pointed at his forehead, begins to monologue at me. Cue a prompt twelve-gauge lobotomy since he's so obliging in giving me a window to...wait...what's this? They're hitting me with sticks? How cute.

Except that the walking incarnation of death and destruction somehow gets brained by neanderthals.

It took me a month to bring myself to pick the game back up after that. Bethesda disappointed rather massively with the railroading there.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Half Life.

When you're jumped by two Marines.

Two, bearing in mind you've torn through about a hundred by that point. Gah.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Dragon Age: Origins.

Hey guys, see that incredibly ancient, powerful and possibly possessed witch you came here to kill? Yeah, don't start stabbing the crap out of her or anything while she has her back to you. No, just stand there in a rough diamond formation like a pack of gormless twits while she calmly walks over to that little hill and turns herself into a fucking dragon.

A prime example of what I was gonna say. Those cutscenes where the good guys are in conversation with the big bad or a major bad and the good guys have every means possible of being rid of him right then and there but instead choose to be halfwit statues and refuse to do anything.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

Metroid: Other M painfully comes to mind.

When the Metroid is stalking about near the end of the game, Adam shoots Samus THEN shoots the Metroid.

That cutscene was obscene amounts of stupid, incompetence AND ape-shit monkey nuts retardation.

 

[Luca72]

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.?

Perfect. That was one of those moments where it fully dawned on me that this wasn't the Deus Ex I asked for. I was mashing Q that whole cutscene hoping this was some kind of cleverly disguised quicktime event.

 

[SilverBullets000]

Dragon Age: Origins.

Hey guys, see that incredibly ancient, powerful and possibly possessed witch you came here to kill? Yeah, don't start stabbing the crap out of her or anything while she has her back to you. No, just stand there in a rough diamond formation like a pack of gormless twits while she calmly walks over to that little hill and turns herself into a fucking dragon.

I find this hilarious actually. If you played with a rouge, you could set half a million traps on the hillside before the fight even began, turning it into a do a bunch of coniving shit and then watch her spawn right on top of it all moment.

OT: I'm actually really forgiving when it comes to cutscene incompetence and weapon loadouts. Actual stupidity, however, is usually what agrivates the hell out of me. I'm going to say that Other M's cutscene with Ridley was an example of cutscene stupidity due to previous games and the fact that Samus had been slaughtering monsters left and right, but froze up on that one creature. Not because it was bigger or more powerful than the others (or even past Ridleys) mind you, but because...a manga said she would? Ugh.

 

[DementedSheep]

Dragon Age: Origins.

Hey guys, see that incredibly ancient, powerful and possibly possessed witch you came here to kill? Yeah, don't start stabbing the crap out of her or anything while she has her back to you. No, just stand there in a rough diamond formation like a pack of gormless twits while she calmly walks over to that little hill and turns herself into a fucking dragon.

DA:O had that quite a bit. Oh hey a demon, I think I?ll just calmly walk right up to it and have a chat! Or bandits why don?t I just stand up and stare at them until they notice me! It?s especially infuriating when it happens as I was getting my rouges in position before the battle starts and it means your character ends up in front and so is the one everyone targets. That's fine if you?re the one tanking but not when you?re playing a fragile character.