Cutscenes

As with the Voice Acting post, there are many videos in this one. So again, you may wish to start and quickly pause each of them to allow them to load. I'm also going to throw a disclaimer here so that I don't have to say it before each video: While the Voice Acting clips were usually short, many of these push YouTube's 10 minute limit. I do not expect you to watch the entire thing. I will point out any areas of particular interest and you might just watch up until then, but usually you can get my point within the first minute or two.


So... cutscenes. Almost every game has them in some capacity. Sometimes, they are simply moments where control is taken from the player while the characters do something. Other times, the game completely cuts to a full on movie. The latter was quite odd in appearance near the end of the Playstation 1. Final Fantasy IX for example had standard graphic for a PS1 game, but the cutscenes were amazing quality for the time. This meant that the characters could be jagged pixelated at times, but then suddenly full 3D rendered with complex shadows, and then back again. All in the space of a couple minutes. This was reserved for only the longer cutscenes, but it was jarring to watch.

Typical FFIX Graphics


FFIX Cutscene Graphics: This is the first set of cutscenes strung together. My personal favorite starts at 5:15


The main reason for bringing up cutscenes is that recent games have become rather bloated with them. Particularily guilty is Final Fantasy XIII. The game is on three discs, and despite this, I often feel that the game lacks any real content. Why? Because so much of my time is spent watching cutscenes that usually add very little to the moment. While you're walking around, the other members of your party will often spit out lines like, "I may be a L'Cie now, but I ain't getting any younger." Ok fine, but why not use this mechanic to tell some of the story. Why do we have to stop for five minutes to watch the characters do what I can summarize in the following line, "Hey, the army is trying to surround us." Instead we have to watch the characters watch the soldiers who are watching their radars for us. Too much watching.

The Cutscene I Just Mentioned

(Is it just me, or is it really odd sounding to have a Japanese voice coming out of a black man?)

Cutscenes have, frankly, become overused. Any time a cutscene is rolling, the player is not playing. Time the player is spent watching and not playing is bad time.This is not to say that we should throw cutscenes out, but rather keep them to a minimum. Use them to drive the story forward, quickly! Too often we run into three major problems with cutscenes. Either we have something really fun happening in a cutscene while the player wishes they could be playing this, or we have action sequences where the player has some control, but feel like they are just watching a cutscene anyway. And finally, the third type, cutscenes that add basically nothing, or add way too much useless info.

Cutscenes That Should Be Playable
There is no real way to discuss this without mentioning the Devil May Cry games. DMC is known for stylish combat and cocky, yet lovable, characters. The problem is, it seems the game is afraid that letting you play will cramp that style. Here is the last bit of the opening cinematic from DMC4. Mind you, we have already seen Nero(the main character who looks a hell of a lot like his predecessor Dante(the guy who comes in from the roof)) fight his way through four wave of demons to get here and it is not until after this that the player gets any control.

Devil May Cry 4 Opening. Things get interesting at about 2 minutes in.


Some More Dante and Nero Interaction. At 2 minutes (again) the movie hits scenes after the first video.


And (finally) The Fight Between the Two. Note the "Stylish Pts." meter.


What if we spent more of that time in the combat instead of the cutscenes?

Fights That Are Glorified Cutscenes.
I'm tempted to go straight back to DMC, but I won't. Instead I will start with a JRPG, The Last Remnant. JRPGs usually have turn based combat. Personally, I really like turn based fighting, but lots of people find it slow and complain that the characters look stupid standing there for five minutes while you figure out what attacks to use. Now, in this game you don't select individual attacks for each character. Instead, you give a general order to the squad (which you have multiples of) and "watch the combat play out before you". Sounds interesting, and makes strategy critical, but how does it actually look?

Like This

Mind you, the player did not do anything after confirming that they were ready. Also, that was one typical fight in this game.

Next up is Metal Gear Solid 4. We'll be coming back to this gem later. For now, let me introduce the video that inspired this post. I found this on a forum thread for "Most Epic Final Boss Fight?" and someone linked this video, claiming that this was it. This is the main character Snake VS Liquid Ocelot and is the final battle for the fourth game in the Metal Gear series. The briefly describe the plot, Snake is suffering from accelerated aging and is sent to kill his evil brother, who is dead, but lives on through his possessed arm which has been grafted on to a russian guy. I won't blame you if you need to reread that again. Here is the fight where the two brothers face off. By the way, if you don't know, you are supposed to root for the guy in the full body suit, not the shirtless one.

Final Showdown. I recommend hanging in until 2:40. Seeing Snake get slow-mo punched in the face never gets old.

Splendid, Brother! Also, is my head the only one that splits everytime Snake punches him so hard that his head bounces off the metal floor?

Maybe it's because I'm missing the background from the previous games, or because I havn't watched the hours of cutscenes in this installment alone, but I don't find that fight epic. Mind you, it's far from the worst I've seen, but I've seen better.

Cutscenes That Add Nothing or Too Much

I said that I would come back to MGS4, and you may have also noticed that I said "the hours of cutscenes in this installment alone." The MGS games are known for being poorly written, and MGS4 is padded with more exposition than is needed by any stretch of the imagination. Take for example the first cutscene in this movie. It comprises the first four minutes of this "Cutscene Walkthrough" (yeah, someone had to make a walkthrough for the cutscene alone). This is Act 1, Part 6... out of 5 Acts. This is one I'm going to ask you to watch all four minutes of. I'm not dealing with the other scenes in this video but feel free to watch them if you want. There are two things to note while watching: 1) How much of this moves the story forward? 2) The tone of the whole scene changes VERY suddenly and drastically at about 3:30. The first time I saw that part, I thought it was a joke someone was editing into the video, but apparently that's the real deal.

One of a Mini Series Worth of Cutscenes


After doing a little research (as in reading the comments on the video) I found that you helped the rookies' father in MGS2, who also had tummy trouble. Runs in the family, pun intended.

These last examples hits upon a point I have not mentioned yet, let the player skip the cutscene. There are few things more annoying than watching a five minute cutscene before a boss fight, only to lose and be forced to watch it again. Kingdom Hearts 1 did this to me, took me about 900 tries and just as many near Gorilla shootings, but I did finally kill Clayton. One of the games that was guiltiest was Golden Sun. One of my favorite games, the final boss was blocked by 10 minutes of unskippable cutscene, a whimpy fight, and another two and a half minutes of unskippable scene before the real fight. That last fight is HARD and so I was forced to mash the A button several thousand times. Here is a video, which leaves all but the tail end of the first cutscene before the fight, and then has the two back to back fights with the scene inbetween. Imagine having to listen to those voice effects over and over again? I suppose I should have turned the sound off....

Golden Sun Final Boss. Note that this player is extremely low level for this fight, late 20s in a fight I did at about level 50. This means the fights are long, notably the first one which I usually beat in two or three turns. The mid cutscene starts at about 5:00 if you want to jump ahead after the first fight starts.


Last, we have Valkyria Chronicles. VC took an interesting approach to letting playrs skip a cutscene. Whenever a scene would come up, the game would kick you to the main menu and ask if you would like to skip it. If not, you watched the whole thing because you passed up your chance. If you did skip it, the game said good day and left you on the main menu. You HAD to watch the scene to continue, so why did it bother asking? Here is the opening sequence from VC and while watching ask yourself, is this setting the scene of the game and establishing the characters? Or is most of this useless?

Valkyria Chronicles Opening Sequence

I wonder what would happen if the fish asked him how the air was?

When you make your cutscene unskippable you toss it into the pointless catagory. A player should never have to watch something a second time, unless they choose to. Your scene might be quite nice, but after a third attempt at the boss, it has lost its value.

Let's review: Always give your players the option to skip. Make your cutscenes drive the story onward in ways the gameplay explicitly can't. And remember that cutscene time, is not play time. Give the player the most play time you can.

And no, I don't think Assassin's Creed answer to this problem (no skipping, but able to walk around and change the camera angle) is a solution. Particularily since this is only possible in a few cut scenes, the rest are flat out movies.

Talking With Your Boss


And the biggest question AC raised, how does someone talk for long after their throat has been cut?

A Typical Unskippable Assassination Monologue. Starts at 2:30


Thoughts?

Snake sneaks up on some well hidden gameplay!