Above all other reasons, I play (non-casual) video games in order experience a story. This is why, to me, cutscenes are very crucial to my gaming experience. After a tough boss fight, an epic chase scene, or a particularly difficult game section, I feel like being able to set down the controller and enjoy a section of story is a great reward. Unfortunately, other gamers apparently don't feel the same way and game developers have more and more decided all cutscenes should have some interactive element. The problem with this is that not only can I not set down my controller for fear of needing to react to something, but I also can't pay attention to what's going on on the screen because I'm waiting for some prompt to push a button that almost never maps to what's going on. So not only am I missing the story, but I'm also being pulled further out of the experience, which seems like the opposite of what they're going for.
Another direction some developers have gone is to eliminate cutscenes by having story take place while the player still has control of the character, like in the Half-Life series. I had to make cutscenes for Rise of the Argonauts, so I know how much work it is and how much time/money could be spent elsewhere, so I can appreciate this idea, but as a player, I tend to ignore what the character is saying and try to mess with them. I'll walk behind them to see if they track me, I'll throw random things at them (if possible) to see if they react, or I'll attack them (if I know they won't get killed). I start having so much fun trying to mess with something I know won't react that when they finish speaking, I have no idea what they're saying. Of course, that's the best case experience. Other times I'll scour the room for secrets if I feel like I won't be allowed to explore after they're done talking, thus completely ignoring what's going on. Another case I've seen was in Red Dead Redemption, where before almost every mission, you had to follow an NPC to the start of the mission while you two talked back and forth along the way. This wouldn't be so annoying if it weren't for the fact that you have to hold A during the entire ride to stay following the NPC. It seems to me that it would've been much better to press A to initiate/break of following the NPC so I could sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
On the flip side, the Metal Gear Solid series has become a running gag for having incredibly long cutscenes (one upwards of 90 minutes!). This clearly isn't the right way to go about it either. The player bought a game, not a movie after all.
Wait, what? MGS had a 90 minute cutscene? That's ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI agree cutscenes generally should be a thing, provided they're done well. I don't inherently have a problem with the way Half Life does it (often I'd be listening and looking at the same time -- especially on the opening tram, I was more afraid I'd miss seeing something than miss hearing something).
Though I will say this: while in-game cutscenes don't require artists and animators, they are harder to produce in terms of game testing. That's one reason why cutscene characters suddenly get invincible :-)
MGS 4 apparently has almost 8 hours of cutscenes total and the last one is 1 hour and 8 minutes. The only information I can gather are from message boards, so the answers are kind of wildly inconsistent, but those seem to be the most consistent.
DeleteYeah that's true about testing. That's why a recent trend of a lot of games that want the "interactive" cutscene will lock the player in place so all you can do is look around. It's sort of the best and worst of both worlds.
That's the kind of in-game cutscenes I made for Torment. They were far cheaper to produce (since us scripters could put it together in a couple hours), but it still had problems. If the party was separated, or a spell was going off when the cutscene was triggered, or the cutscene tried to move a character and the path algorithm got stuck . . . basically all of those things froze the game: the cutscene wouldn't end, so the player never regained control and could do nothing.
DeleteThere's no win-win situation here, I think. All cutscene types can be done well or poorly. It's just a matter of what resources you have available.