Blogs Thoughts on Cutscenes

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2010/05/12/thoughts-on-cutscenes/

 

I find its down to the game type as well as the audience its aimed at.

if youve just played an RPG lasting 80 hours a 2 min ending seems a piss take, but suprisingly a 42 min ending (Xenosaga 3) seems perfectly fine, well it did to me.

imagine if they did that in MW2? youd have more cutscene then game.

 

We all love escapable/skip able intro/cut scenes.
We all hate games where you can not skip scenes or introductions.

That's basically it!

And do not touch Halflife, that game will rule forever.

 

If you want utterly superfluous HD cut scenes and terrible cheesy acting then C&C is the franchise for you. Having said that (with a very big exception to C&C4,) the cut scenes are something I came to expect from this game. IMO They didn't make much difference to what story there was but lets face it, EA butchered the C&C saga long ago.

 

I prefer the way HL does it from a first-person perspective. Whenever a game skips to a cutscene it immediately loses my attention and my mind drifts off or I go to make a cup of tea or whatever. If it stays in that first-person perspective like it tells the rest of the story whilst you're playing it then it makes for a more seamless experience.

I still haven't decided whether I like the cutscenes in MGS4 though. They were often largely irrelevant to the overall story, but I always watched them all the way through because I knew they would be 10 or 20 minutes long and were always well made. I hate games which over-use cutscenes unnecessarily, where they would be a few minutes long or just a few seconds, so you don't know if you should be paying attention or not. Having played Just Cause 2 recently, that game could be used as a prime example of how not to do cutscenes.

 

No one lifes forever! also one of my fav FPS!

*searches for it on Steam*

not on steam

NOLF cutsenes are kay, as it's got planty of funny moments. it really depends on whether you are playing for the first time or replaying it.

 

Biggest culprit of the overly long drawn out essay of a cut-scene: Metal Gear Solid...

Wasn't one of them 40 minutes long? I can't play that game again because I refuse to skip story, but I also refuse to watch a short film in the middle of my game. Especially one where people just talk on a damn plane...

 

There are far worse examples of bad cutscenes. most of which can be watched with a MST3k backing track, courtesy of the 'LoadingReadyRun' crew on Unskippable which i thoroughly recommend watching

 

Funny things opinions, my feeling for the early C&C/Tiberian games is the exact opposite to yours. I always felt the actors, writers, designers involved in these games were having a laugh, a gigantic laugh while messing around having fun. 'Come in' said the game, 'join us, this will be a blast'

Finally, I agree. The end of the series, the final few games were pitiful.

 

He playable only experienced C&C zero hour after, where in my opinion when it went wrong.
The original C&C and red alert cut scenes were ace in my book.

Thats the same for most games now really, in days gone past they had to rely on a good storyline to make a great game. Now they skip the story and focus making the actual gameplay graphics as cutting edge as can be.

 

final fantasy had some good ones imo.. yeah it depends on the game- like I thought velvet assassin was done very well until the ending.. what the hell was that

I didn't know how to feel about it as you worked through the whole story to basically lose.. I hate games like that, but at the same time the game itself was great.. they just decided (or ran out of money maybe) to say ok games over no great ending for you..

witcher had one of the best end cutscenes I've seen in a game.. thief was good- even older games like freelancer (even though that game was all about the multiplayer) had scenes that were memorable from the single player story

 

Increasingly what is a "cutscene" and what isn't is becoming increasingly blurred. Take Mass Effect 2: arguably the game is 2/3 interactive cutscene, but I don't recall anyone complaining it was light on gameplay.

This change is mostly down to the game engines: games of old simply couldn't do cutscenes in the same engine as the gameplay, they had to be seperate. Sometimes this worked (C&C, Jedi Knight), often it didn't.

Today though, with one engine for all, developers can flip between "cutscene" and "gameplay" at the drop of a hat, often so smoothly that they don't even seem like cutscenes if done well. Look at something like COD: MW2.

On that subject though, I'm going to add something to your "never have cutscenes show the player doing something they can't in game": "never have cutscenes show the player succumbing to something they don't in game".

In MW2, I can shrug off thousands of rifle rounds to the face by simply catching my breath, but I die in a cutscene thanks to a single pistol shot to the head? That really affected my enjoyment of the game.

 

Fix'd.

 

i dont mind cutscenes as long as thye are skippable, unskippable cutscenes are just unforgivable
especially when you dont have a savepoint right afterwards
when you get a hard bit of a game after a cutscene and have to watch the same **** repeatedly its just awful

also Red Alert cutscenes are amazing and a big chunk of why i buy RA games
c&c always took itself more seriously than RA and while the cutscenes there are still fun they arent in the same league

 

Thief and Thief 2 are my favourite games of all-time. The graphics might have aged, but the gameplay and atmosphere is still pitch-perfect.

Is Thief 4 in the works?

 

Yes, but I really hope they drop the Thi4f logo before release.

 

Thief 2 on hard was one of the best games ever! So difficult it would make your head bleed.

I thought the cut scenes worked well on it personally though, I like the perspective it gave and the cynical voice over worked well.

I think cut scened add something to games but you should be able to skip them at the press of a button in all cases!

 

I remember playing through one game on the 360 and the cut scene was so long the joypad switched off (think it was in Eternal Sonata)

 

Aaaaaargh. Aaaaargh. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

 

I hate/loath unskippable cut scenes, games are ment to be interactive if I wanted to watch a film I would of rented/bought one. I feel when developers put long cut scenes into their games they are hiding the fact there is little actual game content.

COD6:MW2 "No Russian" is even worse than a cut-scene I cannot skip, it was a cut-scene that I have to play thro'. Nothing more boring that moving at 1mph thro' an airport mopping up civilians. Sure there was a skip option but that was more due to the content than offering us a way out of the forced playable-cut-scene.

Where cut-scenes are important the developers should allow people to skip them but offer a simple summary screen to keep you up to date.