The myth of good graphics in gaming and why cinematic gaming is a scam.

I happened to like those cinematic games when it is good, like Horzion zero dawn, Uncharted, MGS 1to 4, and the last of us and I have been gaming since scared space invade. So Tc I totally disagreed with you.

I'm not a fan of most cinematic games and I definitely think that too many games nowadays are going the cinematic route and I'm sick of it. When I want to watch a story, I'll watch a movie. When I play a game, I want to play a game and not have my gameplay constantly being interrupted with long cinematics.

I'm not saying that there should be no cinematic games, but the number of cinematic games being released needs to be scaled-back and we need more games that are focused on just delivering fun gameplay instead of trying to be a movie. One of the biggest reasons why I spend more time playing retro games than modern games nowadays is to get away from all of the cinematic games that are flooding the modern gaming market and enjoy some games that are all about the gameplay instead of trying to be a movie.

The sad part is, that many of those "cinematic games" also have a pretty bad story xD

I hear what you are saying and don't get me wrong I am not saying cinematic games are a bad thing, I love it. But the shift away from unique gameplay experiences is very apparent this gen.

just like the graphics debate, there's gonna be some misguidance here.

No one really should be saying to do away with Cutscenes in Video games. I'll argue that Cutscenes in some video games are part of what makes video games great.

You did a very lengthy level? Your reward is a cutscene that progresses the Story. After all video games ARE a INTERACTIVE medium, so you gotta have a "reward" for the work you put through. It's not at all like a Book or a Movie, Where in order for you to find out more on a story you just read the lines or sit through the film, in video games, you are a given a challenge and once you've met that challenge you get reward which is usually story progression.

Of course I'm sure the issue the TC is talking about is the act of games acting like their cinematic movies. Games kinda like Metal Gear Solid 4 or The Order 1886. Of course hype is what got MGS4 it's score, but time tells us that game was way over hyped and it's more of a movie then a video game (though video game part of MGS4 was fun). The Order 1886 however was panned as soon as it came out.

In short most people can understand a good game when they play it. It's why so many people who have actually played Super Mario Odyssey this year have unanimously said that this deserves a 10/10 and I wouldn't be too surprised if it wins a GOTY award from the Keighley awards show this week.

But that doesn't mean we should get rid of the Cinematics of Video gaming. Lest we forget the first time we've played the PS1 Final Fantasies and marveled at the jaw dropping Cutscenes that made us feel like we're watching a movie.

What would Bayonetta be without any of it's Cutscenes? Mass Effect and Uncharted won MANY awards purely because of their cinematics, and it also helped that those games were pretty freakin' good too. Halo, The Last of Us, Resident Evil 4, Persona... I think you get the picture. Cinematic Cutscenes in video games are just part of the evolution that current technology has given us.

And Seriously, the Toy Story myth just baffles me, video games have certainly surpassed the graphics quality of the First Toy Story movie. Just look at the Human characters in that movie vs Human characters in video games. The Humans in Toy Story are about as plastic as the Toys themselves! If anything it's because of the advancements of Technology and the experience 3D modelers get from Making Video games that make those movies BETTER now. Now we can see the fur of that Stuff Animal in Toy Story 3, and guess what in Tomb Raider (2013) you can see individual strands of hair!

It's ridiculous to think that Toy Story from 1995 hasn't been surpassed in Video games. That's literally saying that Toy Story is the Peak of Graphic fidelity and hasn't even been surpassed in Film. Which of course is an absolute lie.

@xantufrog said:

@Mercenary848: I didn't agree with that thesis then, and I don't now. It rests solely on specific technical minutiae. When we consider lighting, shadows, and reflections that are more natural in Toy Story, that's all well and good - but that's not how our visual systems work. We are highly specializing holistic image processing machines. Our perceptual systems do not score images based on separate analysis of individual image rendering dimensions. Instead, they rapidly take in a course schematic of the image to recognize the general context, and then fill in, in parallel, details like color, motion, etc to assess the image's "realism". What this means is that "cartoony" graphics are recognized as cartoony. A lack of texture detail is recognized as incorrect. But this is all done through holistic processing - the image feels, in sum, more natural or not. Toy Story winds up delivering soothing light and soft edges. That's it. It's pleasing to the eye, but not represented as realistic.

More broadly, what this means is artistry and detail density are far more important for whether we trick the mind than sick frame-wise ray tracing. Don't let the numbers on paper fool you, nobody's brain is going to take this

To be as realistic as this

It's simply not how our brains are wired. The sum of the parts is dramatically weighted towards "this is a real location" in games like UC4 thanks to astounding artistry overcoming some smooth edges and better lighting in Pixar's seminal work

Very good post and I will keep that in mind, but the crutch of what I am saying is that as far as a digital media experience we are lacking when compared to cgi movies. We are just getting C list mivie scripts with lack luster visual effects. Gaming was never meant to be an imitation of film, for example the GTA series started going downhill when 4 came out and sacrificed the gameplay for an attempt at being this fake deep analysis of American culture. It not too much to say I want my games to be games, not quick time events, not over the shoulder walks through the human experience, and not pretty tech demos that I can scroll through.

Thank you! I don't no why game writers have suddenly began to take themselves so seriously to imagine that they can write block buster quality stories that can keep the player interested in an 8+ hour game, when most of us cant tolerate a 3 hour movie.

@Mercenary848: I'm with you that on the cinematic side, from effects to script work, games are not in the same league yet as film - although I also like adventure games + puzzlers, which clearly are the antithesis of what is traditionally described as "good gameplay". IDK, personally I like "hardcore" gameplay oriented titles, story-driven experiences, and even point and click adventures. Variety is the spice of life

@Mercenary848: Um, what? Your OP was pretty far removed from indicating that you “love it” in reference to cinematic games. Same with the thread title. lol Not really sure where you see this apparent shift away from gameplay to cinematic either.

I always thought the cinematic gaming nonsense is just an excuse for poor optimization and low frame rates.

It sometimes is, especially if they take the cinematic excuse for their 30 fps games.

I was more complaining about the over saturation. Like even God of War is a cinematic Last of Us clone now.

I see I did not explain this keypoint well, I am not saying do away with cinematic gaming; but don't base the whole medium on being a pale film imitation.

You know, I find it very weird that the majority would agree that most Video game stories have "C list movie scripts", but if that was true, then why do almost all Video Game Based Movies either suck or not get the source material at all? If these games have such easy script why is it so hard to adapt to another medium? Comics don't even have this big of problem and some stories you find in Marvel and DC are about as corny or dumb as you would find in Video games. And don't tell me Book adaptations are any better, I mean just look at the Twilight Series.

I'm beginning to wonder if people just say "Video games have C list movie scripts" probably play games with shitty stories in them already. I don't see a huge difference in the Story of Uncharted then something like Indiana Jones or National Treasure. Or even the Plot line of Batman Arkham Asylum to Batman (1989), I'm not sure what makes the plot of Tim Burton's Batman more acceptable then the plot of Rocksteady's Arkham Asylum in this context.

Hell why stop at Movies? Why not TV shows? If Video games aren't good enough for Movies, then surely they would be good enough for TV Show quality. In fact that may be more true then we think, there's more Video Game Adapted Cartoons out there then Movies and they're WAY more faithful then the Movie counter parts. and Yes I'm even counting the American Saturday Morning crap like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Hell people are still thinking that SATam Sonic is the best Sonic.

In short I think we're all just watching the wrong shows/movies and playing the wrong games. I still think the Warcraft movie is the best Video Game adaptation I have seen in a long time, but with so much lore and understanding the Warcraft series has to offer, it probably would have been better if it was an HBO show instead. But something like Halo could work out in a Film like environment, I mean look at Tomb Raider, they trying that again and it looks pretty faithful to the source material as did the Angelina Jolie version, to an extent. But what can you say, you can't please everyone.

I treasure escapism in the movies. I tirelessly quote Pauline Kael: The movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have no reason to go. I admired "Spider-Man 2," "Superman," and many of the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, James Bond and Harry Potter films. The idea, I think, is to value what is good at whatever level you find it. "Spider-Man 2" is one of the great comic superhero movies but it is not great art.

- Roger Ebert, July 21, 2007

I feel like video game writing is more similar to comic book writing. It is afforded a lot of plot holes and the payoff is the investment of time and immersion you gradually build spending time with the material. If Legend of Zelda was originally released as a 2 hour movie then the story would be your typical fantasy drivel of adventure to save princess from evil wizard and no one would care. But because you have invested so much time exploring this world and these dungeons you have the expectation that the movie will be able to recapture that, which is something movie adaptions of film can't do. Two hours of a linear movie as opposed to 20+ hours of non linear exploration.

@Mercenary848: Then what of Lord of the Rings? Surely there had been movies about a band of adventurers going forth to end evil before?

I get what you're saying, but I feel that's more of the fault of the director and well the writer of the script.

You can take something like Avatar The Last Airbender, a cartoon show beloved by fans everywhere, and turn it into some sort of snooze fest that is M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender.

Sometimes it isn't just the plot that makes it "boring".

What can "The Legend of Zelda" do that the Movie "Legend" didn't already in Film? That's the question isn't it?

except there are way more unique experiences now days. Just because you think people are fixated on cinematic games which by the way when a game is cinematic it doesnt automatically means it strays away from quality gameplay or that is a bad game ( and a very obvious evidence of this is the Witcher 3 ) doesnt mean is true

Nowdays you have pretty much every non mainstream unique experience you had in the past and then some . The planet coaster, the portal the Just cause, the Dragon dogma, the cities skylines, the age of wonders type of unique gameplay experiences are still there and stronger than ever and on top of that you have myriads of unique indie games such as starbound, braid, botanicula, Fez ( which btw all sold really really well ) so i dont get exactly your point on this threa

Agreed. If you don't like said games don't play them. Don't write this long, pointless ass essay lol

True, a lot of devs are guilty of this, cinematics tends to take precedence over game play nowadays, look at the new God of War for example, action hack and slash stripped away for something that is VERY much a cinematic experience.

Activision and EA have abused this.

No. FIRST THINGS FIRST, if you want to tell other human beings what they should want, defect to North Korea.

Your definitions mean Jack and shit to me and others. Jack is out of town so...............

People act like the devs DONT want to make the games they make. Like they are being forced to do so.

Two of my favourite games ever are cinematic but the industry have unlearned so much since they launched.

Both Wing Commander 3 and 4 were FMV with the likes of Roddy McDowell, John Rys Davies, Mark Hamill, Ginger Lynn (80's porn star), Thomas F. Wilson (Biff from Back to the future) and more. The thing is the story is branching and you'd get different video sequences depending on what had happen previously. For example if Biff (his character was called Maniac and was core NPC) died in a mission, he's dead Jim, the end, he's gone but the game continued on and could still be completed just without the Maniac story line. Some characters would like you and some wouldn't, these would result in different story arcs for those NPC's as well

This was 1994, modern cinematic games just can't compare. Great game play and a good (for a video game) story and far, far more complex, immersive and open than modern AAA games,

Hopefully, if C.I.G., gets Squadron 42 right (no reason to think they won't, it's Chris Roberts after all) and we'll see how cinematic gaming should have evolved.

@xantufrog:

I agree. There's enough variety in games so that it's pointless to grumble about games that are not to someone's tastes.

Don't like it? Play something else. That or learn to code so that whoever's grumbling can make the perfect game.

cinematic games are fun, they are not a scam, plenty of us actually like them

if you don't like uncharted or TLOU, then don't play them, simple as that

@jun_aka_pekto: funny enough, a major cornerstone of my career was built around me wanting to make my own game when I was little. I was so inspired by Myst that I spent a ton of time trying to make my own - it never went anywhere, but the tools I developed for myself were used for all my graduate work, and now a decade later I'm having my graduate student learning this stuff... he's basically learning how to make Myst for his own research and the cycle continues :-P

The problem is most stories and the characters involved or created for them don't have meaningful conflict or a 3 dimensional basis along with the cliche factor. Games like Uncharted, where the character is a sardonic, accidentally heroic character have been done to death, and not only that, but you don't feel any tension. No one ever dies, and you never feel like anyone is ever in danger, thus removing any tension from the plot. Also, we don't care about the characters because they don't have any internal conflict.

For a character to be truly multi dimensional, they must require multiple conflicts, ie. self vs nature, self vs self, self vs other. People can sympathize with this, and it allows people to attach themselves to characters, thus giving people a reason to care about the plot. In many video games, we know the hero and their friends are never going to die, and on top of that, most characters are perfect as is; that's why Half Life Ep 2 was emotional for some, not expecting what happened in the end--no one ever thought he was going to die.

The problem is writers don't take risks now-a-days, and go for the easy out of making sequel after sequel, so you know the story will never end, thus killing any sort of closure. That's also why people become fatigued with the same crap over and over, again. But, most people don't see these things as art to begin with; they just want to shut off their brains and watch some people fight it out or race fast cars and produce big explosions. The art of creating characters and the struggles of the psyche have been lost on many producers and writers, whom just want to create action/sex scenes that draw people into the theater, game or whatever medium they are going for.

In short, it seems the value of art has dribbled out of the window with the takeover of big corporate payouts.

At least, you got to mess around with good tools. Me? The closest I got to making games was copying BASIC code for Moon Lander (text-based) to my Tandy TRS-80 PC3 Portable.

I understand, but I am talkin about within the core of AAA gaming.

There is a lot more cinematic, orange and blue colour graded mediocrity being churned out by shareholders.

The kind of thing you play and beat watch over a weekend then never touch again.

The rest is bollocks though, PC has everything in spades.

I love cinematic games and i welcome them more than anything. Im part of games story, i might trigger events that will change/shape a world, an ending, a specific characters future, an outcome etc. Things you wont ever trigger in any movie. In movies you are not participating, you just watching a story.

For example last generation i liked Walking Dead game. Call it cheesy, call it a movie. I had a blast till the very end. Same with Last of Us. Engaging, emotional, far deeper connection with the characters than any movie.

Now if you dont like such experiences you can bypass those games. Thank god im one of the lucky ones liking all kind of different gaming experiences out there and my options are multiple.

This nonsense of cinematic games need to go or something is the most idiotic things a true gamer can say. The more options we have in the market the better. If you dont like something you dont have to diss it, just understand that isnt for you and move on to something that is.

For example personally im not into various titles like Call of duty but since there are so many people loving this kind of game so be it, why not ? Why everything has to be Counter Strike GO or Resident Evil 7 ( games i like ). Stop crying about cinematic games and go play something that isnt, there are great games under this criteria out there with the latest being Mario Odyssey. Problem solved.

@Mercenary848:

In defense of cinematic games, they're fun, interactive and have a point A to point B like any other game. To say that they're some kind of toxin is just flat out stupid. Okay, so you don't enjoy them. That's fine. But don't go acting like they're not games.

Like Uncharted. Sure, there's not much depth in them after campaign but the campaign IS enough meat to warrant the purchase.

Remember Mario in the old days? It was just run, jump, and reach the goal line. No one complains about it now or complained about it then. And fast forward to even Super Mario Galaxy, it's STILL just point A to B. The only thing new is the fucking innovative controls.

What are we complaining about here? 4 minute cutscenes? Small QTE moments? If you can stomache the hour long cutscenes in Metal Gear Solid then anything else out there should be a breeze! I have YET to have played a game out there that took THAT much time away from my playthrough to the point where it might as well be considered a fucking movie!

And no, I do not hate Metal Gear Solid. I love the series and played all of them. I just don't go around, writing essays about its existence and other games like it. Games are to be enjoyed, period. If you can enjoy it then you're all set! If it has interactive controls and rules to follow then it's a video game. Simple! Since when did we draw a line in the sand and stated what can qualify or doesn't qualify as a game?

The TC talks like games with cut scenes are endangering what he/she sees as 'proper' games i.e. Nintendo stuff for kids with no cut scenes just a lot of jumping about and collecting stuff. On this basis I'll go ahead and assume the TC is a child, but I'll respond anyway.

The VAST majority of games on every single platform are not games that heavily feature cinematics at the expense of gameplay because these games cost far too much money to make and they are very much the exception not the rule. Particularly on PC there are hundreds of games from every genre and scarcely anything outside of AAA multiplats displaying heavy cinematic scenes overshadowing gameplay. On PS4 for every Uncharted there is a ton of stuff that doesn't have anything like 'movie' game values. On Xbox One even Halo and Gears are much more game oriented than cut scene so I have to conclude that you are just talking out of your arse. On Switch, as mentioned, graphics are childlike for the intended audience, and Nintendo's flat refusal to step into this century technologically a cut scene would probably blow the fucking thing up.

TLDR: the games you complain about taking over the world, have not done so and the minority that represent your worst fears are very easily avoided. My advice? Look, think, specially the latter, thinking is so important, Baldrick.

Plenty of room for both types of games.

There are certain cinematic games I enjoy (ie Xenoblade) but they tend to have strong gameplay foundations to back them up. If a story is really good, and I mean REALLY good, like season one of Walking Dead, then I'm okay with it, but nine times out of ten developers make these cinematic games with absolutely junk stories, thereby defeating the purpose of making it cinematic. We need a big name company to come out with a game that uses the medium to its advantage to tell a story in a unique way so that more developers will imitate them by coming up with interesting ways to tell their stories. Someone other than Fromsoftware since their imitators tend to be relegated more to the indie scene than big games.

People framing their own narrow tastes as industry wide truths. Always stupid, always morons, always loud.

No it doesn't..... it still has high geometry counts and excellent image quality but it's lighting model is well behind what we have available today.

Most AAA+ game engines have better lighting models and PBR materials then Toy Story, in fact from a lighting and shadow point of the view the film is greatly showing it's age with not even SSAO being used.

@Mercenary848: imagine harry potter books without the use of imagery.. do see how dum your logic is now ?

With your logic all pc aaa games are made by lazy ppl since there so realistic

If a good story disconnects you from the game maybe your just simple minded.

Its like shaq and basketball. He gonna always hate 3 pointers because its easier on his head to only value close 2s

Where as ppl with broader talents can see the beauty of blending them together.

Your just a doofy center in this gaming league lol

Well I guess you mean Uncharted and co? If you dont like it, plenty of alternatives, many of them PS4 exclusives and lots of "gameplay" focused 3rd party releases. The biggest issue, the gameplay has stalled and theer are too many games with microtransactions.