[Kyrith_Ranger_Pso]

There's been a good deal of talk around the interwebs recently about video games having too many words and cutscenes and not letting them be a part of the game (an easy example being Metal Gear Solid 4) and a lot of people are saying that the least words possible the better and if there are words they need a very good reason for being there. I'm not sure if i agree with that entirely, though I do think too much text is a problem (especially in SRPGS). I happen to enjoy cutscenes in specific games (one example I'm sure i've said a million times is Fragile Dreams). What do you guys think about this topic?

[Randomness]

Good cutscenes are good. Bad cutscenes are bad. MGS4 had too many cutscenes.

Basically, I like cutscenes when they're done well, and aren't placed every five minutes... though sometimes I don't mind that, if it's, say, epic cutscene, save point, epic cutscene>boss fight or something.

[Rock Eastwood]

I think JRPGs should go back to text onry and silent protagonists.

[blace]

That^ and the fact that there seems to be more than one major protagonist, which leads to more backstory and more cutscenes. Hell it's bad enough cutscenes make up most of the time spent playing, but do we really need to know everyones story?

[Sinue_v2]

I don't mind cutscenes provided they are concise, relevant, and adroitly woven into the game's pacing. Properly executed, they can enhance immersion and draw the player more fully into the game world by connecting them with characters and events. It's a more effective tool for most than an arbitrary score, and can ensure sales of sequels within an established fanbase which enjoys not only the mechanics - but the mythos.

Poorly executed, they become little more than an exercise in behavioral conditioning wherein certain actions are elicited in short "game-segments" in order to receive the "reward" of flashy cinematics showing asplosions, acrobatics, and titties. It's a cheap way to distract from poor gameplay by trying to make up for it in cinematics or narrative when often their writers and directors are worse at their jobs than their programmers.

Originally Posted by blace

That^ and the fact that there seems to be more than one major protagonist, which leads to more backstory and more cutscenes. Hell it's bad enough cutscenes make up most of the time spent playing, but do we really need to know everyones story?

No. A major problem with most JRPGs (and anime in general) is that they focus on creating a character type and personality trait first, then fill in the backstory almost as if it were ancillary. This leads to an aggregation of popular (cliche) stereotypes and cookie-cutter protagonists. It's a very top-down and ass-backwards approach. What they should be doing is letting the character's background and motivations shape and define their character's actions and personality. Start from the bottom up and let the character develop by exploring how he or she would react to events and other people in the story. It's more natural that way, and you end up with a much more diverse array of characters pushing the narrative in unique and believable directions.

[Delete]

Cutscenes are awesome. At least for most of the games I play. Here's an example. Halo War's was not my kinda game right? But the cutscenes were awesome so I at least had that to look forward too. Okay not really an example but it counts for something I think.

[Zarode]

The general rule with games is "show, don't tell." and on a higher level it's "interact, not watch."

Now obviously that isn't the perfect golden rule that everyone has to follow (because nobody wants to know joe blows full blown epic story if he dies within the first three minutes of gameplay).

I think the only games where I can say the cutscenes fit were Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. Funny how that works. Super Metroid gave you a primer on the story, and let you experience the rest through your own eyes, and let you interpret it the way you want. Metroid Prime does something similar, and only shows cutscenes where it is necessary (er, 90% of the time at least). I like a good movie, and I love a great story, but if I'm coming into a genre of a game that doesn't have any right to try to be either of these, I'm instantly turned off.

I think cutscenes made me hella jaded as a gamer...

[CupOfCoffee]

I generally hate 'em. I don't mind the ones that are shortish and done with the game's actual graphics engine (see: Ocarina of Time), but the long, drawn out, pre-rendered affairs in the Metal Gear Solids and other such riffraff turn me off. When I'm playing a video game, it's because I'm not in the mood to watch some bad genre story being CGI'd to death for hours on end. I want to push buttons and do things.

[Kent]

A game is worthless if it isn't good as a game first and foremost. Cutscenes can either accent this or detract from it - it depends on the execution.

Two polar opposite styles of doing cutscenes that immediately come to mind are Metal Gear Solid 4 and Gears of War 3.

We've all heard about the former, and its pletheora of long-winded cutscenes (including the string of them after the final battle - which is longer than some feature-length movies, clocking in at around 90 minutes)... The most common thing I hear about the game from level-headed and intelligent individuals, is that they genuinely enjoyed the parts of the game they could play, but the cutscenes break it up just too much. Though I personally feel that the entire saga has a rather interesting story to tell, the absolute mass of cutscenes in MGS4 really detracted from the overall experience - and I think this is the reason there are so many minor interactive elements among them, such as holding a button to see Snake's viewpoint at the moment (which can show some interesting things), or pressing a button to see a quick flashback of an event from a previous game.

On the other end of the cutscene-having spectrum, Gears of War 3 takes an interesting approach. There are no more than a couple cutscenes in the game longer than 45 seconds, by design. This was done because it's one thing to give players a breather between action segments, but it's something else entirely to cause the experience of playing the game to be uneven and bore players who are there to play the game. It tells a story, albeit with some details outright missing, and keeps the important parts actually going forward, and it succeeds pretty well at it.

Of course, if you want to see a particularly-egregious example of cutscenes done in the worst way possible... Just look at the Xenosaga series. Just a tip to developers out there: If you end up feeling it's necessary to prompt someone to save in the midst of a series of cutscenes twice, you're doing something very, very wrong.

But I think the aforementioned example of Metal Gear Solid 4 bears emphasizing the interactive elements they put into the cutscenes. I think it's a particularly interesting way of doing things, because while the cutscene is going on... Surely the player, were he in the shoes of the protagonist, would be very aware of what's going on, and able to look around and notice specific things other than the enemy of the moment regurgitating his life story. In a sense, it's a more artistic take on the Half-Life school of story events - in these games, there are no cutscenes, just parts where story is, essentially, happening, but control is never taken away from the player. I think it'd be interesting if more games, when they came up to story-heavy segments or cutscenes, gave some real control to the player to experience optional things like those. Or maybe even have the action of the player during these scenes affect specific story events in different ways, such as changing the outcome of some incident, leading to some different dialogue and perhaps long-term ramifications.

You know, involving the player more in the storytelling of it all - letting the player actually influence the progression of the game, saying "this is your story, do what you will with it" rather than "this is our story, go here to advance it"... Without resorting to some sandboxy crap that sacrificed gameplay for open-endedness.

Originally Posted by CupOfCoffee

I generally hate 'em. I don't mind the ones that are shortish and done with the game's actual graphics engine (see: Ocarina of Time), but the long, drawn out, pre-rendered affairs in the Metal Gear Solids and other such riffraff turn me off.

Er... You know that Metal Gear Solid is one of the series that's stayed away from pre-rendered video almost entirely, right? It's all in-engine stuff except for a handful of things (like one scene narrated by Otacon about nuclear weapons in the first game, and those uncomfortable commercials at the start of MGS4, and only a few other scenes). Everything else was done in real-time.

[CupOfCoffee]

Haha, well, the last MGS I played was #2, so no, I didn't know that. But I don't care, either. Those cut scenes quickly became unbearable no matter what they were.