Video Game cutscenes...how did it come to this???

[gery900]

Discuss about cutscenes!


This should probably be on a Extra Credits episode , but, anyway.
Cutscenes now are just used to put in the game a cheap story, to be useless and long, and to be just something that you really don't care for.

That's what's happening to most games, where's the time when cutscenes were a motive to celebrate! When they were deserved! Not given away!

For example:
I've been playing Deus Ex : Human Revolution , and cutscenes were poured in good measure to separate gameplay sections and to make the story better, good, but what really shined to me, what took me back to the old gaming days, was when, in the second boss fight, i just couldn't do it, i tried and tried, I failed and failed, change tactics a lot, but when i finally got through it, just when the last hit was given, a cutscene began, WHAT A RELIEF! OMG! Such satisfaction! I really was glad that that cutscene appeard, I deserved it, It was like the game said "THERE TAKE IT, VICTORY IS YOURS!" .

What happened to those days!!?

 

[Archangel768]

I thought this was going to be a 'cutscenes should never be used in a game' and I was going to go on about how I love them but it seems this is not the case.

I know what you mean, I remember the times in games where beating a boss would result in a glorious cut scene. The PS1 Final Fantasies are good at doing that.

My main problem with the cut scenes today isn't that there are a lot of them but, a lot of them aren't that interesting. A lot of games stories these days just aren't as interesting. They aren't compelling, there's not much motivation to keep going on through the game to find out what's next. I think game designers need to improve on telling compelling stories that make me want to keep on playing.

A bad example would be Metal Gear Solid 4. A lot of the cut scenes can be quite boring really. With the way that they just sit there going on and on about something (I'm sure it would have been more interesting to people that played others in the series because they could probably appreciate how everything was being tied together for the final game) but, it's like they didn't even attempt to try and make the story exciting a lot of the time. Where they could have summed up their points a minute or two, they instead spent 20 minutes. It was only when things moved fairly fast like the action scenes, or the dramatic points where I was actually having a lot of fun and wanting to find out what happened next.

A game that has a lot of cut scenes that doesn't bother me is Final Fantasy X. There conversations are a little bit more upbeat and not so monotone which made them more interesting to watch. That being said though, while MGS4 was about %50 cut scenes and the rest gameplay being about 7 and a half hours each, Final Fantasy X was more about %10 cut scenes and the other %90 gameplay being about 5-6 hours for the cut scenes and about 49 hours for gameplay (for me at least) which may have made it not seem as bad. That being said, I find amusing when people say Squaresoft just wants to make movies when in the long run, their games usually have a lot more hours of gameplay than a lot of other games including games like Half Life 2 which don't use cut scenes. I don't see why such a lot ratio of cut scenes to gameplay would bother so many people.

 

[thenamelessloser]

On normal difficulty in deus ex 3, all I needed to do was spam the stun gun on the first two bosses. But you need like 20 stun gun ammo for that to work.

Anwyay, I think this is the first post that siad anytng good about cutscenes.

But then again I found hte best part of the story in Deus ex 3 to be the PMs cuas ei don' thav eto watch the horrible animations and reading the emails...

but again I came from the first two deus ex's which I don't think even had cutscenes besides the beginning and end.

In a game like Final Fantasy X cutscenes don't bother me because JRPGS are linear stories but Deus ex I htink suffered from even the relatively small amount of cutscenes in the game I think.

 

[Pinkiequasar]

Some games don't work very well with cutscenes. Recently I finished playing Borderlands and the closest it came to a cutscene was when it introduced the bosses with a small action shot. Also, cutscenes would have had to wait until you had collected all the loot you wanted from a boss. Instead of cutscenes, a small window opened up in the HUD for people to talk to you or all was text.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Couldn't agree more, and I wasn't even around in the 'old days' of gaming. I love games with a good story, and where appropriate and done well I think cut-scenes are often the best method of assisting story-telling. But there's nothing I hate more than cut-scenes that could have been done perfectly in 2-3 minutes be dragged out for damn near 20 just because the game feels if it doesn't repeat every single bit of exposition about 5 times we'll surely miss something, or because the devs were just trying to pad out the playtime.

Like many things... If you can't do it properly you're best not to do it at all.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Wow I'm surprised at how thought provoking this topic actually is, like somebody up top said, I thought this topic was going to be about "I hate cut scenes they shouldn't exist blah blah"

I think the problem isn't with the usage of cut scenes themselves but where and how they are executed. Video games have made HUGE leaps in technology, but for all the game play improvements, these people are NOT animators, or at least not on par with what you see in feature length films.

There are compositional elements that have to be used to make cut scenes visually engaging, they have to have believable character animation (which most games slack off on) and have to be presented in a way that wont bore the viewer to death. If the cutscene is done right, the viewer wont mind watching it for a fifteen minutes because it will be entertaining.

Cutscenes can do great things for a games atmosphere and entertainment value, not just for the player but for other people who happen to be watching. When I first started up Final Fantasy 13 and Square had that beautiful scene of the train with the futuristic landscape and the camera panning, my dad just stopped and stared at the TV until it was done, even though he had no idea what he was watching. It was visually engaging.

Unfortunately, to many artist cut corners for the sake of deadlines and budget. It's not their fault, but if they had more time, we would get more then just talking heads.

 

[ultrachicken]

What happened to those days!!?

Those days? Deus Ex HR is relatively new, so those days are technically...right now.

PS: Wait for the next boss fight. Without the right build you will be totally utterly fucked. Like me.

I don't understand the difficulty regarding boss fights. Toss two or three grenades their way, a remote detonated explosive for good measure, and they're basically dead.

OT: I feel like games normally shouldn't have cutscenes, and if there are cutscenes, don't make them action scenes. I would rather be the guy punching out C'thulu than watch the guy punching out C'thulu.

 

[Zhukov]

I tend to prefer my games with zero cutscene, or least a bare minimum.

I mean, I suppose if you have a scene that is just a few people talking and the game doesn't have an interactive dialogue system then you might as well use a cutscene, but apart from that I'd prefer that the story be worked into gameplay as much as possible.

 

[Stall]

The 2nd boss of DE: HR is insultingly easy.

1) Get augment that gives you immunity to electricity/emp
2) Stand around the power terminals
3) Wait for the chick to charge you and blow up the terminal
4) Blast her until she's no longer stunned
5) Run away
6) Repeat 3 more times


All the bosses are pretty insultingly easy come to think of it... even on give me deus ex.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Couldn't agree more, and I wasn't even around in the 'old days' of gaming. I love games with a good story, and where appropriate and done well I think cut-scenes are often the best method of assisting story-telling. But there's nothing I hate more than cut-scenes that could have been done perfectly in 2-3 minutes be dragged out for damn near 20 just because the game feels if it doesn't repeat every single bit of exposition about 5 times we'll surely miss something, or because the devs were just trying to pad out the playtime.

Like many things... If you can't do it properly you're best not to do it at all.

Is it wrong that I read Metroid: Other M into every word of that post?

Anyway, there are a lot of games that do them badly, and a lot that do them well. I guess I agree that they should never become the main focus - games like Portal and Morrowind have shown us that there are much better ways of construing a story through an interactive medium.

And I'm pretty sure EC has done an episode on storytelling in games.

Well, I've never played Other M so I wouldn't know. I was thinking more in terms of MGS4 and DMC4

 

[The Wykydtron]

The 2nd boss of DE: HR is insultingly easy.

1) Get augment that gives you immunity to electricity/emp
2) Stand around the power terminals
3) Wait for the chick to charge you and blow up the terminal
4) Blast her until she's no longer stunned
5) Run away
6) Repeat 3 more times


All the bosses are pretty insultingly easy come to think of it... even on give me deus ex.

Heh i beat that chick by glitching her into a wall and shotguning her in the face about 20 times, but the last two bosses can be beaten in seconds regardless of build by:

Spoiler

1. Having the Grenade Launcher
2. Aiming the Grenade Launcher at their squishy bits
3. Holding down the fire button until the cutscene activates

So yeah they could have ramped up the difficulty a bit or made them escapeable (epic dive into a vent anyone?)

OT: Cutscenes are perfectly fine with me... Unless they decide to make your character stupidly incompetent during the cutscene, Deus Ex Human Resources had a few of these moments come to think of it...

 

[Twilight_guy]

Technology made it so cut-scenes are significantly easier to make then they were 30 years ago. No seriously. Cut scene were use sparingly because there were technical limits, now there aren't.

 

[AlternatePFG]

The 2nd boss of DE: HR is insultingly easy.

1) Get augment that gives you immunity to electricity/emp
2) Stand around the power terminals
3) Wait for the chick to charge you and blow up the terminal
4) Blast her until she's no longer stunned
5) Run away
6) Repeat 3 more times


All the bosses are pretty insultingly easy come to think of it... even on give me deus ex.

You don't even need to use any strategy at all for them, just keep a few spare EMP grenades. I beat all the bosses on pretty much my first try (except for the first one) just by spamming EMP grenades and then gunning them down.

They tend to give you plenty of EMP grenades right beforehand anyways.

 

[krazykidd]

Im guessing no one here liked heavy rain ,and FF13 . I have mixed feeling about cut-scenes. Since i'm a big jrpg fans , long sequences of spoken diologue doesn't bother me ( see xenosaga , loved that trilogie ,bassically a movie with jrpg elements lol ) rather than alot of text to read which i don't mind ( see any FF game before 10 ) . Also a game that , almost seemlessly combines gameplay and cinematics which i love also is fear effect 1/2 . Now what i don't like is how they dealed with diologue in the MGS series , those were long and boring .

Anyways what i'm trying to say ( i have problems expressing myself im sorry ) is that in story heavy video games ( mainly jrpgs) cinematics are great , but in anything other than that ( games with alot of action like gears of war) cinematics/ cut-scene should be at a minimal, because story really isn't as important as gameplay.

 

[cyop]

Discuss about cutscenes!


This should probably be on a Extra Credits episode , but, anyway.

Extra Credits latest episode ... cutscenes XD
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/cutscenes

 

[taciturnCandid]

It depends on the game. In a shooter, I skip the cutscenes because I usually don't care about a shallow story.

On an RPG.. I like cutscenes as they provide eye candy and a chance to flesh out the story without you having to press A all the time.

Basiclly. I like it when it fleshes out a story or shows something really cool

 

[Zantos]

I like it when they're used to demonstrate how awesome someone is in a way that would be difficult, or even impossible, during normal gameplay. Like almost everything Dante ever does in DMC.

 

[Aircross]

Do you not like that cutscenes are being used more to further the story? What I find is those that dont find the cutscenes interesting are actually not interested in the story of the game. So its not the cutscenes fault its that you dont care about the story.

The Half Life series.

Engaging story telling without cut scenes since 1998.