HL is another example of the benefits of having a silent protagonist
It's easy to do interactive scenes when the players character is never really needed for anything because all the important characters moving the story are NPCs
Edit: was just elaborating on warrens point not trying to repeat :P
It did and it didn't. What story was there, really, in Half-Life? That's why they were able to convey it through the world.
Freeman, as a character, is about as deep as a puddle.
Well, speaking of HL, there is no way to get around skipping the cutscenes.
And in general; the answer is; NO (To the person who asked if we skip the cutscenes even tho you have put soo much effort in it.) Atleast I dont. I do like watching cinematics and cutscenes and admire for the most of the games. Unless, its Blizzard. Altho they put too much effort in making their cinematics and cutscenes, its too repetitive at certain point, and becomes annoying if you are doing the fast bounty runs in D3:ROS or Ladder / non-ladder run in D2:LOD.
I personally enjoy cutscenes when they are done appropriately. But if a game, no matter how good, has unskippable cutscenes and/or unskippable tutorials, I likely wont buy it, as it makes me perceive the devs (or whoever in particular made the decision of making these events unskippable) as arrogant and not deserving business - and this arrogance will likely appear in other areas of the product.
A bad offender is the tutorial popup that not only requires you to read it, but also, requires you to perform the described action in order to make the text screen go away. And it gets even worse if the game assumes that the player will need a certain amount of time to read the text, and locks input for that duration. Ungh !!
Older Zelda games were amazing in that regard. You had the choice to read the text conversations at normal "diction" speed, accelerate them at will by keeping the button pressed down so that they appear either faster, up to one big block of text at a time ; and then you could go even faster, by successively pressing and tapping the button to make the whole conversation go by in just a few seconds. Such a perfect design !!
If anything, it would be cool if cutscenes had a fast-forward button too. After all, a game with cutscenes aims at being a "cinematic experience", so why not give the player the ability to FWD like it has been possible with movies since the very first days of home entertainment ?
I don't mind most cut scenes, if they have important info I'm fine with them being unskipable but there is no excuse for making players sit through the same cinematic 5-6 times because they are having trouble getting past a certain spot and keep dying.
I like it if they transition in and out of player control smoothly. I'm not a big fan of having control ripped out my hands while I'm doing something.
I agree with Pior about forced tutorials.
I'm fine with having the hand holding available to players that need it but let people get to the meat of the controls early. Don't torture them with the same stale tutorials that they've done in every game since the beginning of gaming.
If anything, it would be cool if cutscenes had a fast-forward button too. After all, a game with cutscenes aims at being a "cinematic experience", so why not give the player the ability to FWD like it has been possible with movies since the very first days of home entertainment ?
Persona 4 has this(for all dialogue in the game also), I like it a lot.
What about CGI cutscenes? Do you guys hate them too? Even if we work really really hard to make them good?...
I think pre-rendered cinematics are great. They give a sort of 'ultimate' perspective of what he protagonist of a game behaves like or the world at large. Some of my favourite gaming memories are cut-scenes; the Mark of Chaos trailer and Assassin's Creed Revelations trailers are works of art.
As an aside I'm pretty sure Digic are the coolest guys on the planet, but I'm owed a beer by somebody there, so I may be biased
Defining the perfect game seems a little backwards to me. As somebody mentioned, games deliver varied experiences. For me, Starcraft/Brood War is still the best game ever. The story enhanced the coolness of the characters, the cinematics enhanced the story and the multiplayer (which is obviously pure gameplay) always felt like an extension of the universe that I loved. There are also games like Mirror's Edge, which I always felt played pretty badly but was such a memorable experience I'd call it one of my favourites.
To me, cinematics can be unskippable if they enhance the experience. Trapping you in a lift and playing a voiceover is probably slightly smoother way of keeping you in the world but it's all relative. If you have a fast paced death match game, then stay the hell away from cinematics, it's all about the game play. If you have a linear narrative that is being enhanced by well directed set pieces, I'd say go for it. The argument can be made that it's something of a cop-out to not include it in the natural course of playing but you could also look at it as the developers setting themselves an incredible hurdle - keep the player entertained and engrossed while putting the game on hold. Successful instances should be applauded.
It did and it didn't. What story was there, really, in Half-Life? That's why they were able to convey it through the world.
Freeman, as a character, is about as deep as a puddle.
Theres a difference between the story, the overarching narrative which is what you the player create based on your observations and interactions... and the character progression.
One could make the claim that yes, Gordon Freeman was shallow because he didnt really say anything...you dont "see" his character progression in the form of character.
But thats the point, YOU the player are what dictates what the growth is...it is your reaction your appreciation to the characters and the world around you...how you react is the development of the character.
The world tells its story around you, you can choose to stare it down, or look off to the side and hear it in the background.
It was really the firs time any game really told its story in the world space it occurs in while you still remain in control of the character. Since then we have seen more of it in various forms, but it also pointed out that theres no need for cinematics as they often just pull the player out of that mode to show them something and then put them back into the role of the character. In a way, its alienating.
Cutscenes should not be skip-able on a first play through of a game. They are a part of that game YOU purchased and YOU decided to play. If you want to play a game that is just souly gameplay there are tons of games out there for you to play, go pick one of those up. No one is forcing you to buy a game, nor is anyone forcing you to play it.
But games with cutscenes are there for a reason. They are part of the game the game developers created and want you to experience as a whole, not some disjointed collection of parts. Video games are not sandwiches you get to customize to your personal liking because your like, ewwwwwww lettuce and tomatoes, I just want bacon! If you dont like whats in the game simply find a different game to play that has stuff in it you like. There are tons of options out there for you.
Why do gamers feel so entitled to have everything they want there way and bitch and say game developers are too arrogant for not making everything so customizeable for there own personal preference? "I dont want to level, let me skip it" "I dont want to watch cutscenes let me skip it" "I dont want to do the quest to unlock this area, let me skip it"
As to why there are cutscenes in a game...
Story
Loading screens
Rest in between action
Change time of day
Change of location in the world
Now dont get me wrong, there are some TERRIBLY done cutscenes that go on forever without any real point (MGS5 is the best example) or cutscenes right before a boss fight and if you die you have to watch the cutscene again. Those are a failure on the part of the game developer.
Once you watch a cutscene once or beat the game, cutscenes should be skipable. No one likes dying on a boss just to watch the game cutscene over and over again. Thats bad design.
As for credits, once they go through the list of the main studio that created the game, ie Bungie, Blizzard Team 1, Irrational you should be able to skip or speed up the credits. But three or four min to give credit to the main people who killed themselves to make that game shouldn't be too much to ask for.
Why do gamers feel so entitled to have everything they want there way and bitch and say game developers are too arrogant for not making everything so customizeable for there own personal preference? "I dont want to level, let me skip it" "I don't want to watch cutscenes let me skip it" "I dont want to do the quest to unlock this area, let me skip it"
Well, the whole level skipping thing is a whole other discussion, but regarding cutscenes : for me it's mostly because time is a precious thing ... and also because not all cutscenes of all games are worth watching. I often want to skip a cutscene simply because it annoys me for some reason or another : bad acting, poorly written dialogue, bad cinematography - all of which are especially common within the subset of games "trying to be like movies".
From there I do find unskippable cutscenes to be pretentious : just because their director believes that they are great, it doesn't mean that they actually are
Another feature I'd like to see actually happen is "autoplay". Basically just press start, and let the game play itself. Now one could argue, what's the point of that ? Yet the popularity of Let's Plays on youtube just show that even if there is no "point" in watching a game being played by someone else, it can still be very entertaining. If games could autoplay themselves but also give me invincibility and full stats/amo so that I could just take control of the avatar at any and mess around freely and safely, I think I would buy more of them ! The only game that I know of offering that option is REZ - which happens to be a very tight, hardcore game that not everybody might be able to play.
A recent example of this would be Darksiders 2. I love the art, the gameplay is solid, and the universe is really well put together. However I am not a huge fan of playing the game, because it makes me feel kinda dizzy/motion-sickish (probably something related to the third person camera behavior). So even though I bought the game, I simply stopped playing it after a few hours. Yet had I been able to skip the tedious and/or motion sickness inducing parts, I probably would have "played" the game for a longer time (thus enjoying it more), even if that meant using some kind of "autoplay" or level skipping feature.
In short - devs, please bring back the cheatcodes !!
As for credits, once they go through the list of the main studio that created the game, ie Bungie, Blizzard Team 1, Irrational you should be able to skip or speed up the credits. But three or four min to give credit to the main people who killed themselves to make that game shouldn't be too much to ask for.
I have to disagree here too. I personally much rather prefer the more modern option of being able to access the credits at any time from a menu. That way I can take the time to watch them whenever I want, dedicating the appropriate time to closely look at them as they are sometimes very informative. Having to suffer through them at the end of a game can be tedious. Again, when watching a movie at home one always has the option to skip them or FWD them. I don't see any reason why it should be any different for games...
But games with cutscenes are there for a reason. They are part of the game the game developers created and want you to experience as a whole, not some disjointed collection of parts. Video games are not sandwiches you get to customize to your personal liking because your like, ewwwwwww lettuce and tomatoes, I just want bacon! If you dont like whats in the game simply find a different game to play that has stuff in it you like. There are tons of options out there for you.
Actually you will find that most games are built around the concept that different players want different things, and some even embrace the fact that players will want to customize their experience entirely.
And as such most games _do_ let players skip cutscenes.
Why do gamers feel so entitled to have everything they want there way and bitch and say game developers are too arrogant for not making everything so customizeable for there own personal preference? "I dont want to level, let me skip it" "I dont want to watch cutscenes let me skip it" "I dont want to do the quest to unlock this area, let me skip it"
Customers wishes; what they would want in another product that they will pay for in the future.
Cutscenes should not be skip-able on a first play through of a game. They are a part of that game YOU purchased and YOU decided to play. If you want to play a game that is just souly gameplay there are tons of games out there for you to play, go pick one of those up. No one is forcing you to buy a game, nor is anyone forcing you to play it.
Well this sort of attitude gave us terrible CoD games and Max Payne 3.
The fact I pay for game, and from that point on, I should have ability to play the game whatever way I want it to play, with boundaries of particular genere.
Do do realize that forced shovling upon player something that is not interactive, in a medium that is by definition interactive is simply awful design ?
if I want to watch non-interactive non-skipable movie, I will just watch one. With quality that is far beyond any game.
Edit:
Reading prior post about autoplay and let's play.
Frankly cut-scene story heavy games are perfect examples of game that are good to watch on youtube. I can't be bother to play something like this, but sometimes ending or some particular scenes are interesting enough to just watch the as movie (which those games pretend to be...).
And those youtube videos do not encourage me to buy game. Why would they if the "game" is more enjoyable to watch when someone else play, than when I would have to play my self ?
Exactly opposite of sandbox games, or games with lots of interaction or simply multiplayer.
As for credits, once they go through the list of the main studio that created the game, ie Bungie, Blizzard Team 1, Irrational you should be able to skip or speed up the credits. But three or four min to give credit to the main people who killed themselves to make that game shouldn't be too much to ask for.
I already payed them. If that is not credit enough, then go away and don't ever ask me yo buy your game again.
If you want my respect, you first must respect me or rather my time. I don't ask much don't I ?
Cutscenes should not be skip-able on a first play through of a game. They are a part of that game YOU purchased and YOU decided to play. If you want to play a game that is just souly gameplay there are tons of games out there for you to play, go pick one of those up. No one is forcing you to buy a game, nor is anyone forcing you to play it.
But games with cutscenes are there for a reason. They are part of the game the game developers created and want you to experience as a whole, not some disjointed collection of parts. Video games are not sandwiches you get to customize to your personal liking because your like, ewwwwwww lettuce and tomatoes, I just want bacon! If you dont like whats in the game simply find a different game to play that has stuff in it you like. There are tons of options out there for you.
Sorry, but that makes no sense. I can skip any part of a book I read and I can easily skip a part of a movie I watch. There's no reason why I shouldn't have this option in a video game. Locking cut scenes from skipping(if it was done intentionally) is a sign of arrogance to me. I get it that devs want gamers to experience their games the right way, but maybe they need to think less of themselves and more about the end consumer. Some people just don't care enough about story and want to shoot stuff. And some people want to be able to replay a game without having to watch all these scenes again and again.
If they really want so much control over the end experience, why won't they just make it a screensaver?
Middle ground here would be a splash screen that pops up if you try to skip a tutorial cutscene that says "Do you really wish to skip it? It contains details important to understanding the gameplay" YES or NO. That's it, really easy, right? No need to lock anything, a gamer maybe stupid, but is not an idiot. There's no reason to think that a consumer is a hamster that can't think for itself.
Sorry, but that makes no sense. I can skip any part of a book I read and I can easily skip a part of a movie I watch. There's no reason why I shouldn't have this option in a video game.
I dont like the some of the repetitive shooting bits in-between the story in uncharted should I be able to skip the shooting bits then just because I find them boring and annoying?
I dont like the some of the repetitive shooting bits in-between the story in uncharted should I be able to skip the shooting bits then just because I find them boring and annoying?
YES! Absolutely! I'm sick and tired of games wasting my time with stupid stuff like that, when maybe I just want to see what happens next. You can easily watch the whole game as a movie on Youtube, there's no reason why you should be forced to do that and not just skip what you don't like in-game.
There's even a precedent already for that kind of thing. Alone in the Dark remake did have a "dvr" option in the game that lets you skip any part of the game you want. It worked just fine and I didn't see anyone crying how "gamers didn't experience the game in a way we wanted them to do so". If a game is good, gamer wouldn't want to miss anything. But there's no reason to torture gamers with stuff they find annoying in otherwise amazing games.
If developers really don't want to let gamers skip cutscenes, they can always just put an option checkbox in Options menu so that people who really want to do it could skip scenes they don't want to. I feel like it should be so obvious to any game designer. Just giving players options solves so many problems, and yet video games are so reluctant to give players any options at all. Maybe that's why many gamers think that games are slowly becoming movies.
there's no reason why you should be forced to do that and not just skip what you don't like in-game.
agreed. gameplay and cutscenes should all be skip/fast-forward-able and let us quicksave/-reload at all times as an option for the casual player. it's not very entertaining having to repeat some frustrating bit over and over again, nor is searching for the save-point when real-life demands your attention.
not everyone has the time, dedication and attention-span to play a videogame like a 12-year old hardcore gamer might. i'd rather treat it like a book, a movie or a tabletop-game, not some fulltime commitment.
and i would prefer to complete it by 'cheating' than putting it down for good at some bossfight mid-way through.
As for credits, once they go through the list of the main studio that created the game, ie Bungie, Blizzard Team 1, Irrational you should be able to skip or speed up the credits. But three or four min to give credit to the main people who killed themselves to make that game shouldn't be too much to ask for.
Nope. I don't sit through movie credits and I don't care who worked to bring a book to publication. The end user is under no obligation to sit in wonderment at the earthbound gods and heroes who brought that game to life. Credits are, and should always be, optional.
I think my position boils down to this .. once someone buys the game, it's their experience to enjoy. If they want to skip cut scenes, use cheat codes, or whatever - that's fine. It's not up to me to dictate to them HOW they consume the thing I helped create. That's not my role. My role was creating it. How someone enjoys it, as long as they aren't harming someone else's experience, is none of my business.
I honestly don't want to make games for people that just want to skip to the end as fast as possible. Thanks for disillusioning me some more guys, there's a lot of that going around.
This thread confuses me, are there a lot of junior film directors in here or something? The assumption seems to be going too far that games are specifically a story-telling medium.
I honestly don't want to make games for people that just want to skip to the end as fast as possible. Thanks for disillusioning me some more guys, there's a lot of that going around.
Then maybe you shouldn't make games with that thinking. It's like you want to make games for yourself, not for other people. And it's not that we want to skip everything, we want an ability to skip everything if we don't want to play\watch it. It should be a common sense to now waste anybody's time and un-skippable cutscenes or annoying repetitive gameplay(i.e grind in jrpg) is nothing but a waste of time, especially on a second playthrough.
Why buy a book if you are going to immediately flip to the last page and put it down? When you boil it all down, games are all about putting a delay between the start and the goal, if you think it's a waste of time I can save you $60 - just look at screenshots & videos online or buy "the art of...." books, that's what I do with Monster Hunter.
Why buy a book if you are going to immediately flip to the last page and put it down? When you boil it all down, games are all about putting a delay between the start and the goal, if you think it's a waste of time I can save you $60 - just look at screenshots & videos online or buy "the art of...." books, that's what I do with Monster Hunter.
I'm not saying I'm buying a book to flip it to the last page. Thing is that I CAN do it IF I want to(and reasons why is my personal problem). That's all there is.
I'm not saying I'm buying a book to flip it to the last page. Thing is that I CAN do it IF I want to(and reasons why is my personal problem). That's all there is.
And why should I bow to your personal issues? I'd rather have a thousand fans that care about the game as much as I do than a million people who just see my products as a casual diversion.
And why should I bow to your personal issues? I'd rather have a thousand fans that care about the game as much as I do than a million people who just see my products as a casual diversion.
So you basically say that any movie watcher and book reader is a casual? Is Albert Einstein a math casual just because he can skip a chapter of his favorite math book? I don't understand why you take a fact that a person can want to skip any part of your game as a personal insult.
If you don't want people skipping your stuff, just make better stuff so they wouldn't want to skip it.
Is Albert Einstein a math casual just because he can skip a chapter of his favorite math book? I don't understand why you take a fact that a person can want to skip any part of your game as a personal insult.
If you don't want people skipping your stuff, just make better stuff so they wouldn't want to skip it.
Well, you've convinced me on one point. I'm skipping this thread.
So you basically say that any movie watcher and book reader is a casual? Is Albert Einstein a math casual just because he can skip a chapter of his favorite math book? I don't understand why you take a fact that a person can want to skip any part of your game as a personal insult.
If you don't want people skipping your stuff, just make better stuff so they wouldn't want to skip it.
I'm with Justin on this one. If I spend many days/months/years making a game, then I'll be making a game that I want to play. Sure, I'll take players' opinions into account and if there's something I like that nobody else likes, then I'll sacrifice it to help the players, but ultimately, developers create experiences that they themselves would enjoy.
One could argue that "the customer is always right" and that this is a selfish mindset, but I disagree. Successful games aren't successful because a developer listened to all the ideas of his or her fans, they are successful because the developer made a game that they wanted to play, that also happened to be a game that thousands of others also wanted to play.
The developer is spending tons of time and money making a game whereas customers are spending $60. For a medium that allows you to get many hours out of a single purchase, I'd say gamers are pretty damn lucky. If you don't like a game, speak with your wallet and not your mouth.
As Justin said, I'd rather have a thousand dedicated fans that love my game and my ideas rather than a million fans that think my ideas are shitty and just want to skip the content I created to distract themselves.
As for your point on "making better stuff" it's basically impossible to please everybody. There is a ton of high quality content that people want to skip, just look earlier in this thread.
I believe somebody else said it earlier, but the fact is, nobody is forcing you to play a specific game. If you find the need to skip parts of the game, then chances are you got the wrong game in the first place. There are thousands of games out there designed with a "gameplay first" mindset in which cutscenes and "non-interactive" parts are limited or non-existent, why not just play those and leave the cutscene-filled gamed to the people who love them? As for pior's point on having a game play itself, I really don't see the point in that. I enjoy watching games as "movies" on youtube every now and then, but I don't see why that should be a feature, especially when the time spent making that could be used elsewhere.
I don't know about the other people here, but I love cutscenes. I'm playing through Persona 3:FES again in anticipation for Persona 5 next year and my favorite part of the game is when I'm taken out of the gameplay to watch a high quality animated cutscene. I also love watching both intros every time I start the game, and the credits of all of the Persona games always evoke feelings of sadness because the game is over.
In fact, I'd say cutscenes create some of the most memorable moments in games for me. Getting rid of them would be quite silly, and people who skip them are just missing out on important aspects of a game. You COULD skip chapters in a book, but why would you? If you lack the time to sit down and read the chapter or play a level, then why not just play later when you have more time?
I don't get why everyone's in such a rush to consume everything these days? Sure, those identikit tutorials for the latest iteration of whatever FPS you just got are both redundant and irritating but it's literally only two or three measly minutes out of your entire play experience with that game?
It's far more annoying to me watching people play a game whilst skipping through all the text and dialogue and then bumbling around for hours completely clueless as to what they're meant to be doing. The devs just tried to tell you, ffs!
I'd have thought people blasting 60 bucks on games would want to get their money's worth rather than just rushing to get to the end as quickly as possible. Maybe we should just start giving people the last level without any shitty art to slow them down or distract them, whilst we're throwing perfectly valid and still obviously quite necessary narrative tools out of the window?
I'd have thought people blasting 60 bucks on games would want to get their money's worth rather than just rushing to get to the end as quickly as possible.
Someone wanting to skip a part of a game doesn't necessarily mean that this player wants to blindly rush through the game. It simply means that for whatever reason, a given part of the game might not be to this player liking. (there could be multiple reasons for this - a drop in quality ; bad writing ; bad gamedesign ; anything really).
Again - it happened to me multiple times, even if I enjoyed a game overall. I remember playing FFXII on PS2, using two savefiles : my own, following my own "proper" progress, taking in the story (and cutscenes !) and doing things in order ; and a downloaded save file with everything completed, giving me access to all the town teleports. That way I could tease myself (!) with the awesome scenery of the later parts of the world, while still working on the game like originally intended. I ended up putting way more hours in the game thanks to that, and it made me appreciate it even more. I think I remember doing the exact same with Doom3, and it was great !
Also it is worth noting that this kind of approach is not incompatible with the appreciation of very "hardcore" games. Someone wanting to skip tedious cutscenes or specific parts of a given game does not necessarily want to have an Easy mode in Super Meat Boy, Megaman or Dark Souls. Different games = different ways to appreciate them.
The idea that a player wants to skip half your game says monuments, without needing any counter-argument.
Seems like the player isn't playing the right game then. Anti-cutscene gamers would skip through a game like Beyond: Two Souls whereas people who enjoy cutscenes would love every moment of the game.
The fact that someone wants to skip a part of a game doesn't necessarily means that this player does not want to enjoy the game at all. It simply means that for whatever reason, a given part of the game might not be to this player liking. (there could be multiple reasons for this - a drop in quality ; bad writing ; bad gamedesign ; anything really).
I was pithily responding more to the "cutscenes = your game is a failure" and "everything should be skippable" line of comments. I don't get how the mere presence of cutscenes makes a game a failure? I'm personally fine with skipping cutscenes, I just think a few people were too quick to dismiss cutscenes or tutorials or dialogue or QTE's entirely as 'junk content' just because it irritated them in a few instances.
I don't personally think we're at a point yet where we can effectively tell every kind of story or relay every complex instruction in every kind of game without some kind of loss-of-control for a player - often because people seem to be in too much of a hurry to take anything in and they need to be forcibly stopped in their tracks to get the message across.
Sure, there's a lot of crap cutscenes out there and I'm fine with anyone who wants to skip them, providing there's still some way to relay important information to the player within the game. I just don't get this line of argument that having cutscenes at all means your game is automatically terrible?
The idea that a player wants to skip half your game says monuments, without needing any counter-argument.
It says a monumental amount about a playernot the game.
To be as hyperbolic, is narrative no longer valid in games then? Do you want games to be pure gameplay with everything else as superfluous skippable content? Isn't that what most games were like 20 years ago? Why can't I play a game by skipping all the gameplay and just watch the nice narrative parts?
Surely there's room for longform dramatic stories to unfold within your game experience as well as cutscene-less, non-cinematic, dialogue-free, plot-light games in this huge market? How much have you massively lessened the overall experience of something like Skyrim if you view every single dialogue and cutscene as a game-design failure?
Some of the responses make it sound like all games should ideally be played like you're trying to speedrun Sonic 2... which is fun! But we can have more than one kind of game, right? It just seems knee-jerk to me to say that cutscenes automatically equals game design failure. Surely it's a tool that can still be used for good?
It says a monumental amount about a player not the game.
What about ... both ?
When I end up leaving a movie theater because a movie irritates me, it simply means that the movie didn't meet my personal criteria of an enjoyable experience. In others words, this says a lot about me as a viewer (picky and easily irritated) and a lot about the movie (sub-par script.) Same for games really.
Anyways - maybe we should turn this thread into something more constructive, by giving personal examples of games we skip parts of (cutscenes, tutorials, anything really ...) and explain why ...
I honestly don't want to make games for people that just want to skip to the end as fast as possible. Thanks for disillusioning me some more guys, there's a lot of that going around.
Agreed, I do not want to make games for people like SuperFranky. I honestly don't care that you want to be able to skip every cutscene you don't feel like watching, I don't care that you want to be able to skip levels you don't want to play. Those are not the games I want to make. So that's why I don't make them. I understand you want that, and that is totally fine, there is honestly nothing wrong with that. But I don't have to make games for you. I make games I want to make and if that's not your cup of tea that's fine, I know there are tons of gaming options out there for you.
I am lucky I work at a studio where we make games that we as developers want to play and make. We are not creating games that appeal to everyone, we are not making games that let you do whatever you want, we are not making games that appease every fans desires/complaints. We are creating our game and sharing that with others. If people want to play what we created they can buy it, if they dont want to play it they dont have to.
If you think that is arrogant then you need to look up what arrogant actually means. I am not saying this is the best way to play this game for everyone, not even close as that would be arrogant. But we creating a product we want to make and its your choice to consume that product the we created or not. That is not arrogance at all. That is merely having an idea and creating it and not bending to the wishes of others.
Game development should be about creating games you want to play. All the best game development studios and games are made by people who are making games that THEY want to play. You can see that passion in those games and thats what makes them great.
Some of my favourite gaming memories are cut-scenes; the Mark of Chaos trailer and Assassin's Creed Revelations trailers are works of art.
That kinda warms my little heart... thanks
As an aside I'm pretty sure Digic are the coolest guys on the planet, but I'm owed a beer by somebody there, so I may be biased
Okay now I have to wonder who that guy/gal is.
Also, another thanks
I'm also truly curious to see the reception to our current job, it's something we've not really done before, something very few games have done recently, and also something that'd be not that easy to do with in-engine cinematics (even if rendered offline). It's also our greatest challenge so far and that's something after my 10 years here.
I also don't sleep much these days.
When I end up leaving a movie theater because a movie irritates me, it simply means that the movie didn't meet my personal criteria of an enjoyable experience. In others words, this says a lot about me as a viewer (picky and easily irritated) and a lot about the movie (sub-par script.) Same for games really.
Anyways - maybe we should turn this thread into something more constructive, by giving personal examples of games we skip parts of (cutscenes, tutorials, anything really ...) and explain why ...
Both, to a certain extent, but 'monumentally' I'd say it's more player than game.
Just to restate, I'm totally cool with offering people a choice to skip cutscenes, choices are good! I just think it'd be a shame to dismiss them all as fluff or a design flaw.
The points I'm really trying to hone in on from previous posts is the idea that having any one person wanting to skip cutscenes indicates that there is something fundamentally and inarguably wrong with the concept of cutscenes or any game that includes them; to the point that including them in a game indicates a failure on the most basic 'design' level.
To me that's much more about a player's subjective taste - cutscenes form a complex technique within a medium (the game) not really a medium itself, so to marry up with your analogy, it's less a viewer not liking a film for a sub-par script, it's much more a viewer thinking that ANY film that uses a technique like a flashback sequence is inarguably bad and that all flashback sequences should be optional, no matter how important a film-maker believes that sequence to be.
Now, I do think that not liking things for certain techniques is a valid argument for not liking something overall (subjective taste based on a singular element; i.e. it's fine to think that the flashback sequence was lame and ruined the film, etc), but I don't think it's valid as judgement on an entire games' content or overall design (i.e. ALL films that use flashbacks are fundamentally bad or have failed on a basic level).
Yeah, I am not saying that cutscenes = design failure. It's a case by case basis really ...
However I certainly wish there were less "games trying to be movies" and more cleverly crafted narrative experiences, like Portal 1, Half Life 2 and ... Megaman X, which, by the way, has a few dialog-driven cutscenes .
Autocon - I get your point ... Still my question to you would be : would a "skip level" or "skip sequence" option (or even, a simple invincibility cheatcode like in the good old days ... ) really hurt Uncharted ? I don't think it would remove anything from the overall experience : dedicated gamers could still chose to play the game as intended , while more casual or more busy gamers would be able to enjoy the game just a little bit differently, turning it into an even *more* cinematic experience.
I remember enjoying Uncharted 2 about 70% of the way through, but ended up dropping it because of one tedious sequence (and of course, real life getting in the way too). If I had been given the option to skip that part, I would probably have seen more of the game, maybe up to the end credits ...
Similarly, I ended up not buying The Last Of Us because after playing the demo I wasn't sure if I would enjoy it, since it ran at 30fps and this too can easily make me dizzy or give me headaches. So instead of buying the game and not playing it, I ended up watching the whole thing as a Let's Play (basically : several hours of cutscenes and gameplay). This was a very enjoyable and absorbing experience, but the crazy thing is that I wouldn't have been able to get any of that, had I played the "real" game ...
And why should I bow to your personal issues? I'd rather have a thousand fans that care about the game as much as I do than a million people who just see my products as a casual diversion.
This thread makes us realize that compared to litterature and cinema, the video games audiance is really not mature enough and has a long way to go through before it becomes as a recognizable art form.
I remember enjoying Uncharted 2 about 70% of the way through, but ended up dropping it because of one tedious sequence (and of course, real life getting in the way too). If I had been given the option to skip that part, I would probably have seen more of the game, maybe up to the end credits ...
I have this same problem with quite a few games. Darksiders 1 and 2, uncharted, final fantasy X...these are all games I love, but I dont have the time or patience to master the combat and beat those really tough or reptitive sections with wave upon wave of enemys.
So I end up giving up about 70% of the way through and watching the cutscenes on youtube just to get some of the experience but its not the same.
Mass effect 3 did something interesting by including a story mode where the combat is dumbed down and the story and cutscenes made more of a feature.
pior - I think I was mostly arguing other peoples posts via your excellently worded points, sorry for the confusion.
But yeah, my personal preference would always be for finding ways to convey story and information without taking the player out of the game; Half Life did it well, Journey became one of the most 'emotionally affecting media consumption experiences' I've ever had because of how damned well it conveyed a powerful narrative with just visual and audio cues - but even it had to resort to cutscenes or forcing the player's viewpoint occasionally to make the narrative as effective as possible.
I think it's just very hard to pull off immersive events well and not always appropriate depending on the game genre or narrative, and I believe there's still room for well crafted cutscenes - Half Life 1 and 2 had a good few of them using in-game assets where you had no control over your character, even Megaman X has little set-pieces and still frames to convey the plot. I can't see how you could convey certain events in-game without them (strategy games where doing something in-engine would require a major overhaul of the engine's capabilities, as an example).
I definitely agree that games aren't served well by clumsily aping movies, though, and it's good to see people being smarter with how they use games as a medium.
To go back my original original point though, I can't think of many cutscenes in games that go on for more than a minute at most? Is it actually that arduous to sit through them, or is it just the loss of control or immersion that makes people get angry enough to want to skip all of them?
Autocon - I get your point ... Still my question to you would be : would a "skip level" or "skip sequence" option (or even, a simple invincibility cheatcode like in the good old days ... ) really hurt Uncharted ? I don't think it would remove anything from the overall experience : dedicated gamers could still chose to play the game as intended , while more casual or more busy gamers would be able to enjoy the game just a little bit differently, turning it into an even *more* cinematic experience.
I think having the ability to "skip" a section would hurt the overall experience. But I totally get what you are saying about getting stuck and giving up on games due to some bad sequences and the need to find a solution to fix issues like those.
I feel the new Super Mario World game on 3ds found a fantastic solution that I would love to see become more common place. If you died a few times a box would appear near the start of the level that, if you wanted, would give you a Tanooki suit which was one of the best power ups in the game. If you still died with that little boost you would be given a Stared Tanooki suit allowing you to be invincible to enemy's.
You still had to play through the level but if you were struggling the developers gave you tools to get through a particular difficult section quiet easily. (you could still die by falling off the world, so it wasnt god mode, but close) Taking the Tanooki suit was also totally optional so if you were determined to beat it normally you could and it was the players choice and not the developer just making the enemies easier or something to the effect.
I think this is the best approach and hope more developers do something like this (Naughty Dog included) as I, as well as countless others have been in tough sections that made you quit the game and no one wants that.
pior - Is it actually that arduous to sit through them, or is it just the loss of control or immersion that makes people get angry enough to want to skip all of them?
The amount of time spent watching cutscenes does add up, there are loads of these "cutscene movies" on youtube and they are often over 1.5 hours. heres amazing spiderman, this game has some of the typical cutscenes I would expect these days https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzQZTGcwi78
Personally the most frustrating cutscenes I have witnessed are ones that take decisions out of the players hands eg not letting you choose to kill an evil bad guy that you know will come back later to kill you. Perhaps that is bad script writing because its so transparent to the player that the guy is going to try to kill you later. Perhaps the frustration is also due to the lack of connection you feel with the character you play in game, I sometimes watch sheperd in mass effect 3 and just think...what a dumbass.
I think another factor here is that game engines and gameplay sequences are really advanced now.
Back in the days of Diablo 1 and Warcraft 2 and Ultima 7 and such, the cutscenes were a reward; you've completed something important within the crude world of the game engine and then you were given a story beat in a much more advanced and effective format. All the cinematic tools of storytelling were suddenly possible to use to maximum effect and it gave a lot of additional weight to those crucial events.
Today the gap is a lot smaller, a well crafted ingame character can be as expressive as anything else, and practically every tool from the box is available to the developers if they are willing to spend the effort. And the engine can deliver the additional emotional effect of keeping the experience contained within the same format. Even Half Life 1 was revolutional in that the character models had a mouth, not to mention the sequel's facial animation that was maybe even a bit ahead of its time (FACS based face rigs, first time in a game). Now it's a common feature to have full performance capture within the engine.
But it doesn't mean that control over the camera and editing, or more advanced rendering couldn't still be an advantage. Even in a realtime cutscene the director has tools to enhance the experience and effectiveness of any event. After all movies aren't sticking to a documentary format either, even if that approach can also be used to achieve great results as well.
The amount of time spent watching cutscenes does add up, there are loads of these "cutscene movies" on youtube and they are often over 1.5 hours. heres amazing spiderman, this game has some of the typical cutscenes I would expect these days https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzQZTGcwi78
Whoops, didn't mean to direct that question to pior, was asking people in general!
That's some awesome info though, thanks! Spiderman there seems like a very good example - did they have to take away player control that often that many times? It's all in-engine cutscenes and they seem very short, but I presume what's annoying is that they stop you in your tracks and try and introduce every fight, enemy, level change, puzzle and directional cue with a new 2 second cutscene?
In this case the cutscenes seem like a design crutch to explain literally everything that happens and needs to happen... but they are arguably also very brief and add a lot of in-universe flavour and information to the game. Given that it's a movie tie-in, they presumably want a lot of acting and set-pieces to make it feel like you're in the film with all your favourite spiderdewd characters and give fans a chance to geek out over the extra dialogue and plot? I remember there being lots of that kind of thing in the Tron movie prequel game thing that I'm sure Tron fans probably got a lot out of.
If you did skip all those in-game cutscenes though... what mechanism do you use to let the player know what's going on or what to do? Wouldn't it feel less immersive and less like the world of the film if everything was just a text fly-over of objectives and map markers and you hardly ever get to see Spiderman smacktalk some rat-chief pre-fight or swoop in for a chat with that young lady he likes? Are text-overlays or GUI's for this kind of game not less immersive? Aren't they also conveying information in a way that's not true to life? How do you show a dramatic situation like a hostage crisis if you let the character wander around freely during dialogue and start poking around in bins trying to find health pickups or firing rockets aimlessly into the air waiting for the enemies to become attackable? Without the cutscenes is it just shoot web, punch dude, repeat until final dude? Isn't there merits in enhancing a simpler game-mechanic with an interesting plot that plays out around the gameplay? Is it even possible to do complex narrative or set-pieces without some kind of cutscene or loss of player control? What happens if your game makes literally no sense without stopping the player and going 'hey, this guy just went down this hole, don't go wandering around randomly for an hour trying to find him, this hole. here'. Sure, you could always say design it better so it's all done via cues, but what if it adds more flavour having some hero animation and dialogue there? What if relying only on visual cues means your are stuck with a narratively and atmospherically shallower game? These cutscenes in Spiderman seem necessary to provide the context, background, stakes and meaning to all of the players actions and encounters. But I do agree, though, that they're excessively used if they stop you to flag every change in an enemies direction. Which they did do at one point in that video....
I wonder what other ways give the feel of the characters' dialogue, the plot and relay objectives in a suitably dramatic way, especially in a game where the character can swing off into the distance at any second, without stopping the character and giving you plot or instructions you need before you can carry on?
It would be really interesting to know what kinds of ways people have felt immersed in stories in games or ways people have enjoyed receiving cues or objectives that didn't rely on cutscenes? What games have you enjoyed that have a complex narrative or interesting set-pieces that didn't involve copious cut-scenery?
Anyway, apologies for the very late night rambling wall of text. I'm really fascinated by how games can develop to become better, more immersive story-telling tools. I'm still not convinced losing cutscenes is the answer though. Definitely smarter use of them, though, and Spiderman gives a good view on how they can become obnoxious when you rely on them for almost everything outside of basic gameplay mechanics.
Why buy a book if you are going to immediately flip to the last page and put it down? When you boil it all down, games are all about putting a delay between the start and the goal, if you think it's a waste of time I can save you $60 - just look at screenshots & videos online or buy "the art of...." books, that's what I do with Monster Hunter.
Honestly ? Before I buy book, I read wikipedia fan forums and all spoilers possible to get idea if I will like it to begin with.
The same with games. That probably explain why I play single player games so rarely now days.
To be as hyperbolic, is narrative no longer valid in games then? Do you want games to be pure gameplay with everything else as superfluous skippable content? Isn't that what most games were like 20 years ago? Why can't I play a game by skipping all the gameplay and just watch the nice narrative parts?
I wish those days back. I could actually play games.
I'm not being nostalgic, I still play those old games, I just wish I have some remakes with improved graphics. Because these looks rather hilarious on HD monitors ;p.
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It's easy to do interactive scenes when the players character is never really needed for anything because all the important characters moving the story are NPCs
Edit: was just elaborating on warrens point not trying to repeat :P
Well, speaking of HL, there is no way to get around skipping the cutscenes.
And in general; the answer is; NO (To the person who asked if we skip the cutscenes even tho you have put soo much effort in it.) Atleast I dont. I do like watching cinematics and cutscenes and admire for the most of the games. Unless, its Blizzard. Altho they put too much effort in making their cinematics and cutscenes, its too repetitive at certain point, and becomes annoying if you are doing the fast bounty runs in D3:ROS or Ladder / non-ladder run in D2:LOD.
A bad offender is the tutorial popup that not only requires you to read it, but also, requires you to perform the described action in order to make the text screen go away. And it gets even worse if the game assumes that the player will need a certain amount of time to read the text, and locks input for that duration. Ungh !!
Older Zelda games were amazing in that regard. You had the choice to read the text conversations at normal "diction" speed, accelerate them at will by keeping the button pressed down so that they appear either faster, up to one big block of text at a time ; and then you could go even faster, by successively pressing and tapping the button to make the whole conversation go by in just a few seconds. Such a perfect design !!
If anything, it would be cool if cutscenes had a fast-forward button too. After all, a game with cutscenes aims at being a "cinematic experience", so why not give the player the ability to FWD like it has been possible with movies since the very first days of home entertainment ?
I like it if they transition in and out of player control smoothly. I'm not a big fan of having control ripped out my hands while I'm doing something.
I agree with Pior about forced tutorials.
I'm fine with having the hand holding available to players that need it but let people get to the meat of the controls early. Don't torture them with the same stale tutorials that they've done in every game since the beginning of gaming.
Persona 4 has this(for all dialogue in the game also), I like it a lot.
I think pre-rendered cinematics are great. They give a sort of 'ultimate' perspective of what he protagonist of a game behaves like or the world at large. Some of my favourite gaming memories are cut-scenes; the Mark of Chaos trailer and Assassin's Creed Revelations trailers are works of art.
As an aside I'm pretty sure Digic are the coolest guys on the planet, but I'm owed a beer by somebody there, so I may be biased
Defining the perfect game seems a little backwards to me. As somebody mentioned, games deliver varied experiences. For me, Starcraft/Brood War is still the best game ever. The story enhanced the coolness of the characters, the cinematics enhanced the story and the multiplayer (which is obviously pure gameplay) always felt like an extension of the universe that I loved. There are also games like Mirror's Edge, which I always felt played pretty badly but was such a memorable experience I'd call it one of my favourites.
To me, cinematics can be unskippable if they enhance the experience. Trapping you in a lift and playing a voiceover is probably slightly smoother way of keeping you in the world but it's all relative. If you have a fast paced death match game, then stay the hell away from cinematics, it's all about the game play. If you have a linear narrative that is being enhanced by well directed set pieces, I'd say go for it. The argument can be made that it's something of a cop-out to not include it in the natural course of playing but you could also look at it as the developers setting themselves an incredible hurdle - keep the player entertained and engrossed while putting the game on hold. Successful instances should be applauded.
Theres a difference between the story, the overarching narrative which is what you the player create based on your observations and interactions... and the character progression.
One could make the claim that yes, Gordon Freeman was shallow because he didnt really say anything...you dont "see" his character progression in the form of character.
But thats the point, YOU the player are what dictates what the growth is...it is your reaction your appreciation to the characters and the world around you...how you react is the development of the character.
The world tells its story around you, you can choose to stare it down, or look off to the side and hear it in the background.
It was really the firs time any game really told its story in the world space it occurs in while you still remain in control of the character. Since then we have seen more of it in various forms, but it also pointed out that theres no need for cinematics as they often just pull the player out of that mode to show them something and then put them back into the role of the character. In a way, its alienating.
But games with cutscenes are there for a reason. They are part of the game the game developers created and want you to experience as a whole, not some disjointed collection of parts. Video games are not sandwiches you get to customize to your personal liking because your like, ewwwwwww lettuce and tomatoes, I just want bacon! If you dont like whats in the game simply find a different game to play that has stuff in it you like. There are tons of options out there for you.
Why do gamers feel so entitled to have everything they want there way and bitch and say game developers are too arrogant for not making everything so customizeable for there own personal preference? "I dont want to level, let me skip it" "I dont want to watch cutscenes let me skip it" "I dont want to do the quest to unlock this area, let me skip it"
As to why there are cutscenes in a game...
Story
Loading screens
Rest in between action
Change time of day
Change of location in the world
Now dont get me wrong, there are some TERRIBLY done cutscenes that go on forever without any real point (MGS5 is the best example) or cutscenes right before a boss fight and if you die you have to watch the cutscene again. Those are a failure on the part of the game developer.
Once you watch a cutscene once or beat the game, cutscenes should be skipable. No one likes dying on a boss just to watch the game cutscene over and over again. Thats bad design.
As for credits, once they go through the list of the main studio that created the game, ie Bungie, Blizzard Team 1, Irrational you should be able to skip or speed up the credits. But three or four min to give credit to the main people who killed themselves to make that game shouldn't be too much to ask for.
Well, the whole level skipping thing is a whole other discussion, but regarding cutscenes : for me it's mostly because time is a precious thing ... and also because not all cutscenes of all games are worth watching. I often want to skip a cutscene simply because it annoys me for some reason or another : bad acting, poorly written dialogue, bad cinematography - all of which are especially common within the subset of games "trying to be like movies".
From there I do find unskippable cutscenes to be pretentious : just because their director believes that they are great, it doesn't mean that they actually are
Another feature I'd like to see actually happen is "autoplay". Basically just press start, and let the game play itself. Now one could argue, what's the point of that ? Yet the popularity of Let's Plays on youtube just show that even if there is no "point" in watching a game being played by someone else, it can still be very entertaining. If games could autoplay themselves but also give me invincibility and full stats/amo so that I could just take control of the avatar at any and mess around freely and safely, I think I would buy more of them ! The only game that I know of offering that option is REZ - which happens to be a very tight, hardcore game that not everybody might be able to play.
A recent example of this would be Darksiders 2. I love the art, the gameplay is solid, and the universe is really well put together. However I am not a huge fan of playing the game, because it makes me feel kinda dizzy/motion-sickish (probably something related to the third person camera behavior). So even though I bought the game, I simply stopped playing it after a few hours. Yet had I been able to skip the tedious and/or motion sickness inducing parts, I probably would have "played" the game for a longer time (thus enjoying it more), even if that meant using some kind of "autoplay" or level skipping feature.
In short - devs, please bring back the cheatcodes !!
I have to disagree here too. I personally much rather prefer the more modern option of being able to access the credits at any time from a menu. That way I can take the time to watch them whenever I want, dedicating the appropriate time to closely look at them as they are sometimes very informative. Having to suffer through them at the end of a game can be tedious. Again, when watching a movie at home one always has the option to skip them or FWD them. I don't see any reason why it should be any different for games...
Actually you will find that most games are built around the concept that different players want different things, and some even embrace the fact that players will want to customize their experience entirely.
And as such most games _do_ let players skip cutscenes.
Customers wishes; what they would want in another product that they will pay for in the future.
Well this sort of attitude gave us terrible CoD games and Max Payne 3.
The fact I pay for game, and from that point on, I should have ability to play the game whatever way I want it to play, with boundaries of particular genere.
Do do realize that forced shovling upon player something that is not interactive, in a medium that is by definition interactive is simply awful design ?
if I want to watch non-interactive non-skipable movie, I will just watch one. With quality that is far beyond any game.
Edit:
Reading prior post about autoplay and let's play.
Frankly cut-scene story heavy games are perfect examples of game that are good to watch on youtube. I can't be bother to play something like this, but sometimes ending or some particular scenes are interesting enough to just watch the as movie (which those games pretend to be...).
And those youtube videos do not encourage me to buy game. Why would they if the "game" is more enjoyable to watch when someone else play, than when I would have to play my self ?
Exactly opposite of sandbox games, or games with lots of interaction or simply multiplayer.
I already payed them. If that is not credit enough, then go away and don't ever ask me yo buy your game again.
If you want my respect, you first must respect me or rather my time. I don't ask much don't I ?
If they really want so much control over the end experience, why won't they just make it a screensaver?
Middle ground here would be a splash screen that pops up if you try to skip a tutorial cutscene that says "Do you really wish to skip it? It contains details important to understanding the gameplay" YES or NO. That's it, really easy, right? No need to lock anything, a gamer maybe stupid, but is not an idiot. There's no reason to think that a consumer is a hamster that can't think for itself.
I dont like the some of the repetitive shooting bits in-between the story in uncharted should I be able to skip the shooting bits then just because I find them boring and annoying?
There's even a precedent already for that kind of thing. Alone in the Dark remake did have a "dvr" option in the game that lets you skip any part of the game you want. It worked just fine and I didn't see anyone crying how "gamers didn't experience the game in a way we wanted them to do so". If a game is good, gamer wouldn't want to miss anything. But there's no reason to torture gamers with stuff they find annoying in otherwise amazing games.
If developers really don't want to let gamers skip cutscenes, they can always just put an option checkbox in Options menu so that people who really want to do it could skip scenes they don't want to. I feel like it should be so obvious to any game designer. Just giving players options solves so many problems, and yet video games are so reluctant to give players any options at all. Maybe that's why many gamers think that games are slowly becoming movies.
agreed. gameplay and cutscenes should all be skip/fast-forward-able and let us quicksave/-reload at all times as an option for the casual player. it's not very entertaining having to repeat some frustrating bit over and over again, nor is searching for the save-point when real-life demands your attention.
not everyone has the time, dedication and attention-span to play a videogame like a 12-year old hardcore gamer might. i'd rather treat it like a book, a movie or a tabletop-game, not some fulltime commitment.
and i would prefer to complete it by 'cheating' than putting it down for good at some bossfight mid-way through.
Anything else is masturbation and ego stroking.
Funnily enough, most successful indie games are made that way. So yes, I want to make games for myself.
Juxtapose this thread against the polycount hate for casual games and f2p, it's interesting.
Just because they are successful, doesn't mean that it's the right way to do things. Gamers will never change if devs' way of thinking stays the same.
And why should I bow to your personal issues? I'd rather have a thousand fans that care about the game as much as I do than a million people who just see my products as a casual diversion.
If you don't want people skipping your stuff, just make better stuff so they wouldn't want to skip it.
Well, you've convinced me on one point. I'm skipping this thread.
One could argue that "the customer is always right" and that this is a selfish mindset, but I disagree. Successful games aren't successful because a developer listened to all the ideas of his or her fans, they are successful because the developer made a game that they wanted to play, that also happened to be a game that thousands of others also wanted to play.
The developer is spending tons of time and money making a game whereas customers are spending $60. For a medium that allows you to get many hours out of a single purchase, I'd say gamers are pretty damn lucky. If you don't like a game, speak with your wallet and not your mouth.
As Justin said, I'd rather have a thousand dedicated fans that love my game and my ideas rather than a million fans that think my ideas are shitty and just want to skip the content I created to distract themselves.
As for your point on "making better stuff" it's basically impossible to please everybody. There is a ton of high quality content that people want to skip, just look earlier in this thread.
I believe somebody else said it earlier, but the fact is, nobody is forcing you to play a specific game. If you find the need to skip parts of the game, then chances are you got the wrong game in the first place. There are thousands of games out there designed with a "gameplay first" mindset in which cutscenes and "non-interactive" parts are limited or non-existent, why not just play those and leave the cutscene-filled gamed to the people who love them? As for pior's point on having a game play itself, I really don't see the point in that. I enjoy watching games as "movies" on youtube every now and then, but I don't see why that should be a feature, especially when the time spent making that could be used elsewhere.
I don't know about the other people here, but I love cutscenes. I'm playing through Persona 3:FES again in anticipation for Persona 5 next year and my favorite part of the game is when I'm taken out of the gameplay to watch a high quality animated cutscene. I also love watching both intros every time I start the game, and the credits of all of the Persona games always evoke feelings of sadness because the game is over.
In fact, I'd say cutscenes create some of the most memorable moments in games for me. Getting rid of them would be quite silly, and people who skip them are just missing out on important aspects of a game. You COULD skip chapters in a book, but why would you? If you lack the time to sit down and read the chapter or play a level, then why not just play later when you have more time?
It's far more annoying to me watching people play a game whilst skipping through all the text and dialogue and then bumbling around for hours completely clueless as to what they're meant to be doing. The devs just tried to tell you, ffs!
I'd have thought people blasting 60 bucks on games would want to get their money's worth rather than just rushing to get to the end as quickly as possible. Maybe we should just start giving people the last level without any shitty art to slow them down or distract them, whilst we're throwing perfectly valid and still obviously quite necessary narrative tools out of the window?
Someone wanting to skip a part of a game doesn't necessarily mean that this player wants to blindly rush through the game. It simply means that for whatever reason, a given part of the game might not be to this player liking. (there could be multiple reasons for this - a drop in quality ; bad writing ; bad gamedesign ; anything really).
Again - it happened to me multiple times, even if I enjoyed a game overall. I remember playing FFXII on PS2, using two savefiles : my own, following my own "proper" progress, taking in the story (and cutscenes !) and doing things in order ; and a downloaded save file with everything completed, giving me access to all the town teleports. That way I could tease myself (!) with the awesome scenery of the later parts of the world, while still working on the game like originally intended. I ended up putting way more hours in the game thanks to that, and it made me appreciate it even more. I think I remember doing the exact same with Doom3, and it was great !
Also it is worth noting that this kind of approach is not incompatible with the appreciation of very "hardcore" games. Someone wanting to skip tedious cutscenes or specific parts of a given game does not necessarily want to have an Easy mode in Super Meat Boy, Megaman or Dark Souls. Different games = different ways to appreciate them.
I was pithily responding more to the "cutscenes = your game is a failure" and "everything should be skippable" line of comments. I don't get how the mere presence of cutscenes makes a game a failure? I'm personally fine with skipping cutscenes, I just think a few people were too quick to dismiss cutscenes or tutorials or dialogue or QTE's entirely as 'junk content' just because it irritated them in a few instances.
I don't personally think we're at a point yet where we can effectively tell every kind of story or relay every complex instruction in every kind of game without some kind of loss-of-control for a player - often because people seem to be in too much of a hurry to take anything in and they need to be forcibly stopped in their tracks to get the message across.
Sure, there's a lot of crap cutscenes out there and I'm fine with anyone who wants to skip them, providing there's still some way to relay important information to the player within the game. I just don't get this line of argument that having cutscenes at all means your game is automatically terrible?
It says a monumental amount about a player not the game.
To be as hyperbolic, is narrative no longer valid in games then? Do you want games to be pure gameplay with everything else as superfluous skippable content? Isn't that what most games were like 20 years ago? Why can't I play a game by skipping all the gameplay and just watch the nice narrative parts?
Surely there's room for longform dramatic stories to unfold within your game experience as well as cutscene-less, non-cinematic, dialogue-free, plot-light games in this huge market? How much have you massively lessened the overall experience of something like Skyrim if you view every single dialogue and cutscene as a game-design failure?
Some of the responses make it sound like all games should ideally be played like you're trying to speedrun Sonic 2... which is fun! But we can have more than one kind of game, right? It just seems knee-jerk to me to say that cutscenes automatically equals game design failure. Surely it's a tool that can still be used for good?
What about ... both ?
When I end up leaving a movie theater because a movie irritates me, it simply means that the movie didn't meet my personal criteria of an enjoyable experience. In others words, this says a lot about me as a viewer (picky and easily irritated) and a lot about the movie (sub-par script.) Same for games really.
Anyways - maybe we should turn this thread into something more constructive, by giving personal examples of games we skip parts of (cutscenes, tutorials, anything really ...) and explain why ...
Agreed, I do not want to make games for people like SuperFranky. I honestly don't care that you want to be able to skip every cutscene you don't feel like watching, I don't care that you want to be able to skip levels you don't want to play. Those are not the games I want to make. So that's why I don't make them. I understand you want that, and that is totally fine, there is honestly nothing wrong with that. But I don't have to make games for you. I make games I want to make and if that's not your cup of tea that's fine, I know there are tons of gaming options out there for you.
I am lucky I work at a studio where we make games that we as developers want to play and make. We are not creating games that appeal to everyone, we are not making games that let you do whatever you want, we are not making games that appease every fans desires/complaints. We are creating our game and sharing that with others. If people want to play what we created they can buy it, if they dont want to play it they dont have to.
If you think that is arrogant then you need to look up what arrogant actually means. I am not saying this is the best way to play this game for everyone, not even close as that would be arrogant. But we creating a product we want to make and its your choice to consume that product the we created or not. That is not arrogance at all. That is merely having an idea and creating it and not bending to the wishes of others.
Game development should be about creating games you want to play. All the best game development studios and games are made by people who are making games that THEY want to play. You can see that passion in those games and thats what makes them great.
Both, to a certain extent, but 'monumentally' I'd say it's more player than game.
Just to restate, I'm totally cool with offering people a choice to skip cutscenes, choices are good! I just think it'd be a shame to dismiss them all as fluff or a design flaw.
The points I'm really trying to hone in on from previous posts is the idea that having any one person wanting to skip cutscenes indicates that there is something fundamentally and inarguably wrong with the concept of cutscenes or any game that includes them; to the point that including them in a game indicates a failure on the most basic 'design' level.
To me that's much more about a player's subjective taste - cutscenes form a complex technique within a medium (the game) not really a medium itself, so to marry up with your analogy, it's less a viewer not liking a film for a sub-par script, it's much more a viewer thinking that ANY film that uses a technique like a flashback sequence is inarguably bad and that all flashback sequences should be optional, no matter how important a film-maker believes that sequence to be.
Now, I do think that not liking things for certain techniques is a valid argument for not liking something overall (subjective taste based on a singular element; i.e. it's fine to think that the flashback sequence was lame and ruined the film, etc), but I don't think it's valid as judgement on an entire games' content or overall design (i.e. ALL films that use flashbacks are fundamentally bad or have failed on a basic level).
Hope that sorta makes my point clearer?
However I certainly wish there were less "games trying to be movies" and more cleverly crafted narrative experiences, like Portal 1, Half Life 2 and ... Megaman X, which, by the way, has a few dialog-driven cutscenes
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Autocon - I get your point ... Still my question to you would be : would a "skip level" or "skip sequence" option (or even, a simple invincibility cheatcode like in the good old days ... ) really hurt Uncharted ? I don't think it would remove anything from the overall experience : dedicated gamers could still chose to play the game as intended , while more casual or more busy gamers would be able to enjoy the game just a little bit differently, turning it into an even *more* cinematic experience.
I remember enjoying Uncharted 2 about 70% of the way through, but ended up dropping it because of one tedious sequence (and of course, real life getting in the way too). If I had been given the option to skip that part, I would probably have seen more of the game, maybe up to the end credits ...
Similarly, I ended up not buying The Last Of Us because after playing the demo I wasn't sure if I would enjoy it, since it ran at 30fps and this too can easily make me dizzy or give me headaches. So instead of buying the game and not playing it, I ended up watching the whole thing as a Let's Play (basically : several hours of cutscenes and gameplay). This was a very enjoyable and absorbing experience, but the crazy thing is that I wouldn't have been able to get any of that, had I played the "real" game ...
THIS.
I have this same problem with quite a few games. Darksiders 1 and 2, uncharted, final fantasy X...these are all games I love, but I dont have the time or patience to master the combat and beat those really tough or reptitive sections with wave upon wave of enemys.
So I end up giving up about 70% of the way through and watching the cutscenes on youtube just to get some of the experience but its not the same.
Mass effect 3 did something interesting by including a story mode where the combat is dumbed down and the story and cutscenes made more of a feature.
But yeah, my personal preference would always be for finding ways to convey story and information without taking the player out of the game; Half Life did it well, Journey became one of the most 'emotionally affecting media consumption experiences' I've ever had because of how damned well it conveyed a powerful narrative with just visual and audio cues - but even it had to resort to cutscenes or forcing the player's viewpoint occasionally to make the narrative as effective as possible.
I think it's just very hard to pull off immersive events well and not always appropriate depending on the game genre or narrative, and I believe there's still room for well crafted cutscenes - Half Life 1 and 2 had a good few of them using in-game assets where you had no control over your character, even Megaman X has little set-pieces and still frames to convey the plot. I can't see how you could convey certain events in-game without them (strategy games where doing something in-engine would require a major overhaul of the engine's capabilities, as an example).
I definitely agree that games aren't served well by clumsily aping movies, though, and it's good to see people being smarter with how they use games as a medium.
To go back my original original point though, I can't think of many cutscenes in games that go on for more than a minute at most? Is it actually that arduous to sit through them, or is it just the loss of control or immersion that makes people get angry enough to want to skip all of them?
I think having the ability to "skip" a section would hurt the overall experience. But I totally get what you are saying about getting stuck and giving up on games due to some bad sequences and the need to find a solution to fix issues like those.
I feel the new Super Mario World game on 3ds found a fantastic solution that I would love to see become more common place. If you died a few times a box would appear near the start of the level that, if you wanted, would give you a Tanooki suit which was one of the best power ups in the game. If you still died with that little boost you would be given a Stared Tanooki suit allowing you to be invincible to enemy's.
You still had to play through the level but if you were struggling the developers gave you tools to get through a particular difficult section quiet easily. (you could still die by falling off the world, so it wasnt god mode, but close) Taking the Tanooki suit was also totally optional so if you were determined to beat it normally you could and it was the players choice and not the developer just making the enemies easier or something to the effect.
I think this is the best approach and hope more developers do something like this (Naughty Dog included) as I, as well as countless others have been in tough sections that made you quit the game and no one wants that.
The amount of time spent watching cutscenes does add up, there are loads of these "cutscene movies" on youtube and they are often over 1.5 hours. heres amazing spiderman, this game has some of the typical cutscenes I would expect these days https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzQZTGcwi78
Personally the most frustrating cutscenes I have witnessed are ones that take decisions out of the players hands eg not letting you choose to kill an evil bad guy that you know will come back later to kill you. Perhaps that is bad script writing because its so transparent to the player that the guy is going to try to kill you later. Perhaps the frustration is also due to the lack of connection you feel with the character you play in game, I sometimes watch sheperd in mass effect 3 and just think...what a dumbass.
Back in the days of Diablo 1 and Warcraft 2 and Ultima 7 and such, the cutscenes were a reward; you've completed something important within the crude world of the game engine and then you were given a story beat in a much more advanced and effective format. All the cinematic tools of storytelling were suddenly possible to use to maximum effect and it gave a lot of additional weight to those crucial events.
Today the gap is a lot smaller, a well crafted ingame character can be as expressive as anything else, and practically every tool from the box is available to the developers if they are willing to spend the effort. And the engine can deliver the additional emotional effect of keeping the experience contained within the same format. Even Half Life 1 was revolutional in that the character models had a mouth, not to mention the sequel's facial animation that was maybe even a bit ahead of its time (FACS based face rigs, first time in a game). Now it's a common feature to have full performance capture within the engine.
But it doesn't mean that control over the camera and editing, or more advanced rendering couldn't still be an advantage. Even in a realtime cutscene the director has tools to enhance the experience and effectiveness of any event. After all movies aren't sticking to a documentary format either, even if that approach can also be used to achieve great results as well.
Whoops, didn't mean to direct that question to pior, was asking people in general!
That's some awesome info though, thanks! Spiderman there seems like a very good example - did they have to take away player control that often that many times? It's all in-engine cutscenes and they seem very short, but I presume what's annoying is that they stop you in your tracks and try and introduce every fight, enemy, level change, puzzle and directional cue with a new 2 second cutscene?
In this case the cutscenes seem like a design crutch to explain literally everything that happens and needs to happen... but they are arguably also very brief and add a lot of in-universe flavour and information to the game. Given that it's a movie tie-in, they presumably want a lot of acting and set-pieces to make it feel like you're in the film with all your favourite spiderdewd characters and give fans a chance to geek out over the extra dialogue and plot? I remember there being lots of that kind of thing in the Tron movie prequel game thing that I'm sure Tron fans probably got a lot out of.
If you did skip all those in-game cutscenes though... what mechanism do you use to let the player know what's going on or what to do? Wouldn't it feel less immersive and less like the world of the film if everything was just a text fly-over of objectives and map markers and you hardly ever get to see Spiderman smacktalk some rat-chief pre-fight or swoop in for a chat with that young lady he likes? Are text-overlays or GUI's for this kind of game not less immersive? Aren't they also conveying information in a way that's not true to life? How do you show a dramatic situation like a hostage crisis if you let the character wander around freely during dialogue and start poking around in bins trying to find health pickups or firing rockets aimlessly into the air waiting for the enemies to become attackable? Without the cutscenes is it just shoot web, punch dude, repeat until final dude? Isn't there merits in enhancing a simpler game-mechanic with an interesting plot that plays out around the gameplay? Is it even possible to do complex narrative or set-pieces without some kind of cutscene or loss of player control? What happens if your game makes literally no sense without stopping the player and going 'hey, this guy just went down this hole, don't go wandering around randomly for an hour trying to find him, this hole. here'. Sure, you could always say design it better so it's all done via cues, but what if it adds more flavour having some hero animation and dialogue there? What if relying only on visual cues means your are stuck with a narratively and atmospherically shallower game? These cutscenes in Spiderman seem necessary to provide the context, background, stakes and meaning to all of the players actions and encounters. But I do agree, though, that they're excessively used if they stop you to flag every change in an enemies direction. Which they did do at one point in that video....
I wonder what other ways give the feel of the characters' dialogue, the plot and relay objectives in a suitably dramatic way, especially in a game where the character can swing off into the distance at any second, without stopping the character and giving you plot or instructions you need before you can carry on?
It would be really interesting to know what kinds of ways people have felt immersed in stories in games or ways people have enjoyed receiving cues or objectives that didn't rely on cutscenes? What games have you enjoyed that have a complex narrative or interesting set-pieces that didn't involve copious cut-scenery?
Anyway, apologies for the very late night rambling wall of text. I'm really fascinated by how games can develop to become better, more immersive story-telling tools. I'm still not convinced losing cutscenes is the answer though. Definitely smarter use of them, though, and Spiderman gives a good view on how they can become obnoxious when you rely on them for almost everything outside of basic gameplay mechanics.
Honestly ? Before I buy book, I read wikipedia fan forums and all spoilers possible to get idea if I will like it to begin with.
The same with games. That probably explain why I play single player games so rarely now days.
I wish those days back. I could actually play games.
I'm not being nostalgic, I still play those old games, I just wish I have some remakes with improved graphics. Because these looks rather hilarious on HD monitors ;p.