Let's talk about CINEMATIC GAMES

Disclaimer: I am makin this thread because of my experience with a lot of Sony games, but other publishers and developers use a lot of cinematics as well...but I don't plan on shitting on those games. They're generally quite good and of solid quality and a lot of people like them.

I just don't find myself liking them for a particular reason: cinematics.

I recently purchased Death Stranding because it was on sale for $15 bucks and I thought "Well, this should be interesting" because my only other experience with Kojima is MGS 5 and I thought it was fun enough.

Anyway, I'm playing the game for about two hours and I feel like I've only actually played the game for about 20 minutes.

I watched an intro cinematic...

...played for 10-15 minutes for a bit of tutorial...

...watched some more cinematics...and some more...

...then I took my mom's corpse to the incinerator. Cutscene, cinematic, etc..

Anyway, to the point: I find it all rather de-immersive. It's really hard to enjoy a game when control is constantly yanked away from you and you are forced to watch a cutscene; a cutscene that might provide a lot of important story (so you can't skip it), but is painfully difficult to watch because voiceacting and writing in games tends to be of poor quality (so you want to skip it).

This is a problem I've experience with Uncharted and TLOU; again, likely good games for a lot of people, but I just can't endure the cinematics.

Now, with that said, I must be honest: I think these kinds of games might just not be my cup of tea. I'd rather hunt down written or audio logs (like in Horizon: Zero Dawn, to name one game) to get my fix of background, story, characters, and so forth. I prefer my games to have no cinematics, instead relying on immersive world building and to watch the story unfold around me.

I mean we sit here, decades later, and Half-Life is still one of the best, most immersive games in terms of player involvement in telling its story and it had zero cinematics. Likewise, other games have come along that do a good job of this as well....Prey comes to mind, as do a few others.

What say you?

I despise this common practice and it is most common in Sony games. That doesn't mean that other publishers aren't guilty but it has become a staple of Sony's exclusives. As much as I loved Horizon, it still was plagued with this over use of cinematics. The only thing that saved it was the moments of play were long and the cinematics can be delayed. It is also the reason I lost interest in Ghost of Tsushima because the start of the game is too cinematic with little gameplay.

Too often, I spend my time watching instead of playing. It is almost as if developers forgot why games are games and secretly just wanted to make films. Giving the player control is like an inconvenience. Resident Evil 8 demo was a painful experience because most of the time it was cutscenes with very little engagement. What drives me even more nuts is the walking cutscenes that are worse than unskippable cutscenes because it forces the player to push forward for the sequence to play out. Then there is the other bullshit that is common in Japanese games in which the cutscene is completed and control is given back to the player only for another cutscene to start less than 5 seconds later. 😑 WTF?

But, that is what gamers want. They want more focus on story and non-interactive sequences for the cinematic experience. My question is, why play a game if that is what you enjoy most?🤔

@mrbojangles25: agreed, can't stand em. Its a bad AAA trend. It pushes me to just play more MP games. There are standout games, divinity 2, prey, doom, total war Warhammer, Forza, Nier automata, fire emblem 3 houses, monster hunter, astral chain, honestly most of Nintendo 1st party is safe of this because they go the entire opposite direction.

Cut scenes can be used in better ways, something like splinter cell double agent. I feel that game had a good balance. Sony 1st party does the heavy cinematic thing too much.

Its really pushed me more to MP games and indies tbh. Psychonauts 2 was refreshing, had a cool story but always kept me feeling like I'm playing and progressing in a good way.

I like to feel like I earned a cut scene after completing a mission or chapter. Not have them shoved in my face every 10 minutes.

I have no doubt given the heavier leanings to gameplay in MGS5 that Kojima was forces to do that under duress from his Konami overlords like everyone thought was the case when they shit on the game and praised his departure.

Anyhow, that's typical Kojima. The games suck and his cutscenes/writing drag on too long yet everyone perpetuates this emperor's invisible clothes quality his games have.

I am curious myself whether it's worse than MGS4 but I really don't want to find out for myself. It had a 3:1 cutscene to gameplay ratio and basically gameplay served as the intermission to the lengthy cutscenes. And that wouldn't be so bad but the cutscenes are soooo boring. There's some interesting ideas in the writing, but the execution is awful.

I don't really mind cutscenes. Kojima San usually makes weird, dumb games so i'm entertained.

It's when they bake it directly into the "gameplay" where emulating a movie comes before the "game".

QTE, forced cinematic walking. Fake tension scripted sequences. That type of shit.

Halflife came out in 1998, we are now in 20something and games still can't seem to do it as well as that old ass game.

Massively superior technoligy, but we have to break the players knee caps for 20 seconds so you can be immersed.

Are you immersed yet, son?

@uninspiredcup: yup it's wild. I find myself playing more old games that relied less on the cinematic stuff. I just want a fun game man, half life told a story, that was immersive while you always had control.

It has definitely gotten worse since the release and success of Uncharted 2. I don't mind some cinematic games, but it has gotten too common here recently. I wish more games let the story be told passively like Bloodborne or had the story be told without cutscenes every 5-20 minutes.

This.

I will never get used to QTE's, scripted linearity, and walk n' talk segments. They are basically cutscenes lying to me. Just be yourself, cutscenes. Don't pretend to be gameplay.

I’m not into them as I used to be. I’ll take interesting cinematics over walking sequences though. F those. Days Gone is a recent one that comes to mind. You should be able to skip those!

I don't mind them, but it's the "cool" thing to hate now so....grrrrr cutscenes, arggghhh or something like that.

Yar, it is way too common, and while I don't mind the occasional cinematic, I think my main gripe is that a.) they are too often, and b.) they occur at the worst time.

For example: I figure out the key to a big, cool-looking door and it opens and I burst in, but instead of seeing for myself what's behind the giant vault door...

...control is taken away from me and a cinematic plays. Ooof. Buzz kill right there. I WANT TO SEARCH THE ROOM FOR M YSELF, DAMMIT!

Wow, 3:1? That's pretty terrible. I remember "watching" MGS4 on Youtube and it's been a while but I remember it being like hours long. I could be mistaken.

Yeah, another game I gave up on. Forgot about Days Gone SMH.

A shame, too, because I heard it was quite good, and I saw the potential for a good game. But the control being taken away from me for the sake of cutscenes just frustrates me to no end.

Skipping is another problem; I want to skip so I can get back to playing, but I don't want to skip because I want story. So that's frustrating, too.

I wouldn't say it's the cool thing to hate on, cutscenes are just a trend that are growing in prevalence with every new game release; if people barely tolerated them before (such as myself), seeing them become more common place sparks more vocal objections.

I don't mind a cutscene at the start of my game to kick off the story and give background, or even a short cutscene at the end of a level or after beating a boss. But cutscenes every few minutes to explain things that could have been explained immersively? That is where I have to draw the line.

There's a fine line. Kojima games are way over the top with cut scenes. Most Playstation exclusives though have a great balance. Uncharted is still my favorite series. Hoping we hear that is continuing next week.

I think it's funny that Kojima thinks we're there for the story.... Lol.

@Telekill: I'll be super sad if naughty dog is spending resources on more uncharted. We both know they can make something better.

When it comes to cinematic games I don't mind David Cage games, I loved Indigo Prophecy in its time and Heavy Rain was so-so, though for its time graphically top notch, but it kind of lost its appeal after the mystery was solved, and it didn't take many playthroughs to get the most ideal one for me. Whereas Indigo Prophecy took a good number of tries for me and the endings felt a lot more varied along the way. Beyond Two Souls was partially a letdown because the game lacked the choice-consequence system of previous games and outcomes never seemed to matter as much and felt minimal, but damn, I loved the story anyways. I really enjoyed Until Dawn but I really dislike this whole anthology thing the devs are doing for being unpolished and having key features locked behind pre-orders.

I liked the Telltale games mostly, the Walking Dead games especially. Even stand-alone games like Tales of the Borderlands were excellent. Game of Thrones was a downer and like the series always seemed to end in tragedy and if there were a pay-off on the way they never got to it as they only had one season. I also liked the two Batman games.

For big AAA games I don't mind if the gameplay is gratifying, and cutscenes don't drag out. For games like GTA or RDR2 I feel the craziness I had come to love from from those games got left in the cutscenes while actual gameplay felt more tame. That's why I feel series like Saints Row do what GTA used to do but better. The RDR series is still fun and immersive but I did wish the kind of set piece craziness that Revolver had would come back as itjust disappeared with the first Redemption.

I don’t mind cinematic cutscenes myself. Obviously it has to be telling me a story that I’m interested in of course.

@TheEroica: They'll never make anything better. Besides, rumor for the last couple years is that Sony moved Uncharted to another... new... first party studio.

Yup, that.

Game can have all the cutscenes they want, as long as I can skip the shit and the gameplay itself isn't suffering in service to the story or cinematic presentation.

Not to say I'm not annoyed when a game bombards you with the shit. But I'm not gonna pass up on some dope gameplay over some stuff I can skip.

Kojima stuff specifically, for as much effort as he puts into the cinematics, still shows much more love for the gameplay. And can go straight from some super serious cinematic into doing the dumbest shit ever in the sandboxes he provides. No regard for ludonarrative dissonance, guy gives no fucks.

This used to be well understood of various games with cinematic presentation around mid 90s to mid 2000s. Enter Sonys new take on 1st party with ambassador Uncharted, the formula it popularized and types of games it spawned, and now gamers lumping every cinematic game into the same "movie game" category. Which is wtf, should be judging the game on its gameplay merits. Not comparing some shallow rollercoaster ride to a deep sandbox or a mechanical gem because of cutscenes lol.

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As for Death Stranding OP, I feel ya. It's the same issue as MGSV. Both games are bookended with exposition dumps. Don't care what they choose to do with an ending, but should never be that frontloaded. Found the opening hours extremely frustrating on my first play, almost quit.

Though fortunately (again, like MGSV) it does open into a big ass game where you'll go hours on end without interruption. You're looking at about 40 to 100+ hours of gameplay depending on how much you get into it. Not to excuse that intro, absolutely valid crit, but it gets much better.

As long as it's skippable, it's fine by me. But I do greatly prefer if the "cutscenes" were incorporated in-game, something like what Valve does with their games.

I appreciate cinematically driven games for what they are.

Will I make an argument that they qualify as good “games” as those more adept at providing more player agency and adhering to this medium’s core strength? No, but I find them enjoyable nonetheless as long as I approach them with an open mind.

What conan said.

Kojima has always been the worst offender of going overboard with the heavy cinematics that always put your controllers to sleep.

I hate games that have too many cinematic cutscenes. It just ruins them and makes them more like shitty movies than actual games.

@mrbojangles25: I totally agree.

Especially as I get older, I'm finding most AAA games nowadays are too cinematic and basically play themselves (ie. Sony first party). I used to like these kinds of games in the past, but it's just not what I want in a game anymore (I'll still play one every now & then, but not often).

For me now, the games I enjoy most are ones that have engaging gameplay. Hence why I find myself drawn to the indie scene much more, and Nintendo's first party.

Yeah, it is kind of funny when you think about it. Guy is the king of convoluted writing. If there is a frustrating opposite of dramatic irony, Kojima is a master of it.

PS has no gameplay

Yeah my tastes in games has changed dramatically in the last 10, 20, and 30 years. I used to be all about classic RPG's and loved story-driven games. In my 20's I was all about value and quality; played Diablo 2, Counter-Strike, and Team Fortress for about 10 years straight and got into WoW, too.

Now I just want to play sandbox games like turn-based strategy, city-builders, and factory/management games (Factorio, Satisfactory).

Back in the day I probably would have loved me a game like Days Gone or Uncharted. All shiny and sexy and polished, with great writing and good heroes and villains. There's a lot to like, on the surface. Problem is deep down they just don't feel like games.

These days, the less narrative, the less handholding, the better.

They definitely are abused by some in the industry and are just used as a cruch. many devs seem terrified that the player might miss a cool thing (or what they think is a cool thing)so they make a cutscene.

they can be a useful tool for the story telling side though. they can also be a nice way to mark a milestone.

As long as they are generally short (less than 2 minutes) and not too plentiful (one at the start and end of a chapter in the game if applicable for example) and skippable i dont think they are generally a bad thing though.

also they should never do the cool thing (the kicking in the door example above). always let the player to the cool thing.

I do love it when games use a more elegant approach to story telling though. the metroid prime, dark souls, half life, zelda BOTW approach (to name a few) for example.

Kojima loves long cutscenes that's for sure, he also loves other story telling elements, that disrupt gameplay. You played MGS5, the game where he tried to get away from all that, kinda. If you had played his previous games, especially MGS4 you would have been more prepared. I still haven't touched Death Stranding myself.

As long as the cinematic moments and cut-scenes are not overwhelming and integrated well with the gameplay, I do not have an issue with these type of games. I enjoy both games and movies. A mix of the two can lead to some pretty great entertainment.

@Telekill: they'll never make anything better than uncharted? Yikes!

@simple-facts: Go ahead Bluestars, prove that statement for us all.

this subject always makes me think of the jurassic park quote

game studios now have the tech, talent and budget to create games that borderline impersonate movies, but just because they can doesn't mean they should.

the lessons of game design taught by greats like half life and co in decades past seem to have gotten lost over time, that movies and action oriented video games are two very separate mediums, and plot and narrative delivery should be treated differently in each.

less is more in video game stories. cut scenes are necessary, but keep them brief and to the point. if a game dev finds themselves having to constantly wrestle control back from the player to tell a story it should be a red flag. stop and rethink. the amount of pointless narrative bloat and interactive forced walking cut scenes in some games is staggering. days gone i'm looking at you. not sure whether it's naivety, lazy game design or studios under pressure to play it safe when games cost so much to make these days. or a bit of each.

tlou2 is frustrating because there's some relatively short sequences quite early on in the game in seattle which have fantastically atmospheric and tense gameplay sections. i'd absolutely love nd to take all their huge budgets and incredible talent and build a game whose focus is that kind of gameplay with the cinematics and story taking a back seat

@TheEroica: Correct. Uncharted 2 was their pinnacle for releasing a complete package without skimping on anything. Their graphical capabilities will obviously improve over time but other aspects will always be left out.

Kojima is his own genre 😛.

I think cutscenes can be fine. It’s a matter of balance. If there is enough gameplay and freedom, then putting down the controller is not an issue. I think both God of War and Uncharted are well balanced in general (even though the last Uncharted had a few stretches without enough gameplay).

I think audiologs can work, but they can also be a bit annoying as well. I am not able to play and listen at the same time, so I have to stop while they are playing. In some parts of Horizon you entered rooms with 5+ audiologs which brought the game to a halt. They are also not good at telling stories in the present.

So tldr: I don’t think any of the standard narrative tools are good/bad per se. It’s about how well balanced and paced the overall experience is.

The term "movie game" used in a derogatory manner, has surely picked up traction over the years and I hear people well beyond the crevices of internet forums, using such terminology.

To really define what makes a "movie game", I think it's worth examining how such words get used, and when. I realize the movie game criticism is really a form of resistance to the AAA market.

People are getting fatigued over AAA games as much as people get fatigued over comic book movies; there's an oversaturated market.

"Movie games" is used by people bitter over the fact that gameplay-focused games aren't the focus anymore in this market.

Gamer's have been making their voices heard, and with the rise of the indie market, either the AAA market will need to adapt or it might be due for a crash. Gamer's want their games back.

Don't really mind cutscenes as long as they are skip-able or not cringe worthy garbage. Don't really care about the length because they are skip-able. What I don't like is the non-existent or run of the mill gameplay in between just so you can see the next cutscene.

I don't necessarily mind cutscenes but I hate it when they're long and frequent. I'm currently playing Horizon ZD and the game is good but the cutscenes tend to drag a little too long and I just end up skipping a lot of stuff.

@lamprey263: What a terribly wrong and salty opinion about the best game ever made.

@Telekill: They already made two vastly superior games - The Last of Us & The Last of Us Part II

If you hate cutscenes that much, just pause and skip them.

There are times when I want to actually play games, and if I'm getting bombarded with cutscenes i'll get impatient and annoyed.

Other times if I'm tired and just want to plop on the couch and relax, I don't mind playing something more scripted with a lot of cutscenes and set pieces, as long as its well done and entertaining. Some games do better with the highly scripted stuff than the actual "gameplay" ala Uncharted. In those games, the set pieces/story stuff is what I want, and the bigger combat arenas and platforming sequences tend to be pretty boring.

Why not watch a movie instead when I'm in this mood? The interactivity helps keep you engaged. I'm definitely someone who can get easily bored during movies/TV shows and being forced to just press a few buttons can help keep me engaged in the experience.

TLDR

I think there is a place for cinematic games, I just need to be in the right mood to enjoy them. As long as they don't take over completely I'm not bothered by them.

Some games do it well some don't. Stuff like Uncharted and TLOU are skippable, albeit it very integral. With the TLOU the gameplay is solid so the abundance of sequences doesn't feel like the main portion of the game, nor do I think they're overly present. Make no mistake though, Half-Life and Half-Life 2 did have cutscenes, they're just disguised as gameplay. They trap you in narrative sequences and corridors where plot and dialogue are advanced through in game engine. It's just done very well so you are fooled into thinking it's not a cut scene.

Yup. What Bojangles, cup, Conan said. Hate that shit.

And thats why I have given up third person games and stick to FPS games. third person less immersive and non cinematic.

although cant wait for next 007 game.

For me that isn't an option because I do enjoy the story to games. I like learning about people, the world, the enemies, and so on. As ham-fisted and corny as video game writing is, it's still very enjoyable lol. So I really do feel forced to sit there and endure these things.

It's not so much that I outright hate cutscenes, I just hate when they are constant and interrupt the gameplay.

I wish developers would try more immersive forms of storytelling in their games. What is that? I don't know, but it's not requiring a cutscene every 10-15 you play the game.

Having in-game "logs" (i.e. books you find, audio recordings, and even videos playing on an in-game screen) are really helpful, for example, as you can get a lot of info about the world that way without having to sit through a 5-minute cutscene where they explain why thngs are the way they are (your character should in theory already know that, so it's super de-immersive having that explained to you).

I mean you're sitting there and the people are like "OK so I know you know this, but just in case you haven't noticed, there's a war going on and it was started by such and such..." let me piece that shit together on my own time.

Again, using Horizon Zero Dawn as an example, they didn't sit you down with a bunch of videos and go "Here is why the world is the way it is" they let you search the land, recover logs, and fill in the holes...it made it more fun. Yes, they had some cutscenes to coalesce the story together at critical points, but they weren't overwhelming or constant.

Hear, hear!!!

I think the term "movie game" is maybe overused but it's a good term for many of these games.

I’m not a fan of long cutscenes and overuse of animations either, I play games because I want to play them, not watch them. I do appreciate a good story but there are ways to have it told without constantly sitting through a long cutscene. I don’t recall ps1 or ps2 games doing this and they were just as enjoyable if not more than games of the current generation.