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God of War Creator Hates Cutscenes
1up has a short piece talking about God of War creator David Jaffe's commentary on game cinematics. From the article: "Jaffe isn't saying players don't welcome this style, but claims it's not the best approach. 'It's almost like you appreciate the creativity but as a game it doesn't work,' he says in his latest video blog, citing Super Mario 64 as a good example of a game that works without cinematics. 'Obviously Mario 64 doesn't evoke a lot of emotion and political ideas, but it keeps you in the game.'" One of the reasons RE4 has been so well received, I think, is that it give you some interactivity during what would otherwise be a passive experience.
Xenosaga
You don't so much play Xenosaga as help Xenosaga play itself
Game companies love cut scenes. They are easy to make, they stretch "playing time", and they provide much prettier material for the marketing department than the actual gameplay does.
I don't mind them so much, as long as I can hit a button to skip them. It's also nice if the planned it well enough so you watch the cut-scene while data is loading. (That seems to almost never happen anymore though. It's: wait for the cut-scene to load, watch cut-scene, wait for the level to load. That is t3h suck..)
Then there are games like that dreadful Lord of the Rings series on the X-Box, which seem to be 90% cut scenes (and those are actually just low-ish resolution clips from the movie.) Bleah.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Also, problems arise when the ratio of game content to cutscene gets too high. Players don't want to watch their games, they want to play them.
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Me too. I'll only play games where you can click through these. I won't play games where there is a clue or something else to be learned from these silly movies. (Warcraft III was a nice game in this regard. If you wanted to watch a little clip, you could, but if you just wanted to get back to the action you could skip all the weepy crap about this or that pointless character dying, etc.)
Cutscenes are typically in place to move the plot forward or explain some complexity to the player. In general, there's a few ways that cutscenes have worked for me in the past:
- Thief & Splinter Cell. In stealth games, you can often overhear NPCs talking to each other as you go about your business. Information is passed along, yet the action doesn't stop.
- Sheer beauty. Some games have cutscenes that are almost a reward. The cinematics of Diablo were stunning and a fun point in the game.
- Respite. In games that are non-stop action, having a cutscene to give the player to take a breath can be most welcome.
- Short and Necessary Sometimes there's critical information that you simply must give to the player. Keeping them short and to the point works best.
Where cutscenes don't work well is if the game forces them to be repeated upon failure, they're not skippable, and if they take too much time away from the primary gameplay.Cutscenes are another plague of the game industry. There is a very simple rule that game makers need to follow much more often: Never take control away from the player.
People need to do whatever they want in games (or they'd watch a movie), but very few game developers realize that really open games are what sell the most (GTA anyone?).
The best way to do cutscenes I found was in the old "Way of the Samurai" game, where you could just walk away from someone talking to you most of the time, or tell them to shut up... None of this stupidly unproductive dialogue where you just put the controller down for 30 minutes while someone yaps on and on.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
It'd be nice if I could have an effect on the cut scene. We're almost at the point where cut scenes animation is only a little better than the in game graphics... so why not render part of it and then let me have my choice of reactions and follow up with ending cut scenes based on my reactions.
But all in all, I hate cut scenes. I go to the movies for that.
I'm a big fan of cutscenes, myself. IMHO, one of the best parts about the Soul Reaver series was that the cutscenes were a sort of reward. You got a chance to take a breather and watch more of the intriguing story unfold with awesome voice acting to boot. In fact, I played those games through faster than I normally would just so I could see what the next scene was!
However, in games like Resident Evil 4, I was very surprised and pleased with the inclusion of interactive cutscenes. There are times where I wish I could be doing the things my character's doing in those scenes, and having an option for (albeit limited) interactivity was refreshing.
The interactive cutscene formula can't be used everywhere, though. There are some games where this just wouldn't work and would break you out of the experience. Resi 4 balanced this just right, IMHO (the knife fight with Krauser was pretty intense compared to the others).
Cutscenes that aren't interactive should be skippable, and ones that are should give you the option to skip them if you fail, say, 5 times.
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
...it depends.
I hate cutscenes that interrupt gameplay. Especially when they do so in an unrealistic way (I'm in the middle of a battle and I trip the cutscene, rendering my character temporarily invulnerable as monsters hack away at me). These days, these are usually pre-set scenarios rendered by the normal game engine.
Back in the day, when FMV was possible but before 3d engines were as advanced as they are now, cutscenes were great milestone rewards. During a break in the gameplay, after the player has accomplished some feat or mission, it's a great time to sit back, congratulate yourself, and watch the fireworks. Final Fantasy 7 had a few very memorable and very enjoyable cutscenes. However, Half-Life 2 played much better without them.
I guess it mostly depends on how immersive you want the game experience to be. Some games (a bunch of RPGs come to mind) aren't meant to be that immersive.
-Oser
ALL cutscenes should be skippable at ANY time. There's nothing worse than replaying a game and having to watch cutscene after cutscene that you already have memorized.
-Oser
(Bear in mind that I play games almost exclusively on PC, and only play a handful of any given year's releases...I'm hardly authoritative)
Command & Conquer: Generals: Because you can't skip them, and you have to endure some 2+ minutes of bad voice acting and lame action at the beginning of every mission. One quickly learns to save after every scene to avoid repeating them.
Doom 3: Because some genius at id decided that every time you see a creature for the first time, the player should be forced to stand still and not fire at it until it is within five feet of him.
There's another game that was so bad I shelved it a few years ago specifically because the cutscenes were just too frustrating, but I can't even remember what that one was now.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
The opening paragraph quotes the Metal Gear Solid series as a game that SUCCESSFULLY employs cinematic techniques. What? The first game, on PS1, did some remarkable stuff without ripping the player away from the game. However, every title since then has had nearly the same amount of watching as it had for playing! Shadow of the Colossus is just about the only title I can think of that really employed cinematic techniques to real-time, immersive gameplay in a successful, attractive way that actually improved the game, rather than leaving it straddled over the movie/game barrier that some people are so eager to cross...
(-1 obvious)
This is really surprising, considering God of War was nothing but one continuous barely-interactive cutscene. (all the gameplay of a slide projector, woo-hoo!)
This is not a troll. Have you played God of War? At what point did you think you were playing a "game" instead of sitting through a cutscene?
I am not talking about cinematics, I am not talking about scripted events, I am talking about the game itself. The "game" was a cutscene.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Heres a cutscene for you David Jaffe, SHUT UP AND MAKE GOD OF WAR 2.
David Jaffe seems to be talking more about Adventure/Action games like God of War and Mario 64, and I think he's right that immersion in those games might be even more important than in other genres. More importantly, though, the setting and plot of Adventure/Action games can be told through the gameplay, so cutscenes (especially those that cut away from the game engine) should be unnecessary.
But to but it simply, cutscenes in games are almost always less interesting than a good movie, and everyone not looking for an interactive movie would rather just play the game.
In Soviet Russia Xenosaga Plays You
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Half Life 2 had exactly 2 cut scenes, one at the beginning to put you in the action and one at the end to take you out. All the information normally given during a cut scene was achieved through player interaction with npcs, monitors or other props. This is surely the way ahead.
POP has pre-rendered cutscenes that are often unskippable. Shadow of the Colossus has cutscenes that are rendered in-game and are skippable. These two differences have a huge effect. Of course unskippable cutscenes are annoying, especially after you've seen them 5 times, but also annoying are cutscenes in which the entire world suddenly looks completely different. Especially obvious in POP was when you went from the opening movie to the in-game graphics. The graphics are good, but they don't look like the pre-rendered stuff. Really lame.
Shadow of the Colossus handles cutscenes well, but I think they could still be improved. Yes, everybody wants the option of skipping cutscenes, but I think a lot of people want to watch them, too. How come I can't pause the game during cutscenes? What am I supposed to do when a 5 minute ending movie is playing and somebody knocks on the door? I either don't answer the door, or I beat the game again later so I can see what happens. Lame.
My suggestions:
1. No pre-rendered cutscenes
2.Ability to pause the cutscene and bring up a menu with the option to skip
Why are these not universal in modern games? Does anybody disagree with these preferences?
[javac] 100 errors
When you play a gorgeous, well-designed game, cut-scenes and all, and it glitches and hangs at the end of the final battle.
Then I really hate when you go online to find out that this is a known bug with tons and tons of copies of this game.
Maybe if they had fixed this gigantic error I would care more about what this guy has to say.
I'm not a big gamer, but I do play occasionally. The best use of cut-scenes I've seen so far was in Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. The cut-scenes were never too long, never too often, always skippable. The creators of the game never stopped the game to load a cut-scene. It would be triggered, it would play, and then it would go immediately back to the game. The player never has to wait on loading except when loading a saved game. The Two Thrones also uses a small cut-scene every time the Prince switches between his two sides, but every cut-scene is a little different, and they use the cut-scene to cover the loading of the next area. All-in-all, the game is so well put together, I would even play it again, which is something I never do.
The game wouldn't the same without the cut-scenes, especially seeing how they had just the right amount of them, and used them so well.
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
I hated the way cutscenes work in RE4. Sure it gives you some interaction, but It was kind of surprising. The first couple of times I would set the controller down, grab my drink and see "SMASH (A)", and then WTF I'm dead? It wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't made it look like such an obvious cutscene with the fans camera angles/pans/wipes and whatever. Having to go back and do everything over just because I wasn't paying attention to the usual dull cutscene was kind of annoying.
i could not think of anything clever.
There's one point in Fable with what seemed like 15 minutes of cutscenes in a row... each loading separately. After a pretty intense set of battles, I don't want to be bored into putting the game down once it's just gotten good. - Bad>
Bezerk for Dreamcast played very smoothly with hack & slash action scenes, and healing your numb hands with solid story. Being a fan of the show, it was cool that the game worked itself out to be an extra final episode of the show. - Good
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
That game is legend for having no cutscenes. It's mentioned in so many stories/interviews about/with Valve that it's almost cliche.
No cutscenes to take you out of the story. You ARE Freeman. Not watching him.
Now to be fair, I DO enjoy (well done) cutscenes in single player RTS games, but that's more due to the nature of the game.
Gah, ever since FF7, I've always been annoyed by cutscenes that are vastly superior to in game graphics. Here I am, playing my pixelated avatar when a cutscene intervenes and it just teases me with all it's glorious detail, emotion and realism. That said, as far as cutscenes go, I think it just depends on the game type and the player.
Sure, cutscenes are pretty, they're easier to make (the developer doesn't have to worry about handling adverse behaviour from the player) and they are a convenient way to move the plot forward. Some games, they work well. A game like Metal Gear Solid is a great example. The game was designed to be an interactive movie. Cutscenes are perfect for that type of game. However, the cutscenes in Tetris were superfluous and I'm glad they removed them in the final release. Cutscenes should never block the player from interaction. I can't count how many times where I'm in a difficult situation that is right after a long cutscene. I keep dying and then it wants to start me over before the cutscene. I'm mean sure, I kept dying on purpose so I could watch that cutscene more than 20 times but some players may not want to experience three hours of the same 30-sec cutscene.
One thing i absolutely hate about those cutscenes is that they can't be cut! I really wish i could press the start button to skip the scene with the bosses. I nearly memorized that fight between the prince and the axe/sword monsters.
*growl*
(prince draws his sword)
(prince gets hit from behind)
*growl!*
"Well, i have to admit, i didn't expect that..."
(monster grabs sand and burns the grass around the arena)
(boss fight begins, until you get killed and have to continue the game, to see the stupid scene over and over)
At least the Ubisoft guys could've put a "Skip cutscene? Yes/no" dialog.
On the other hand, for games like Final Fantasy X, I absolutely LOVED the cutscenes. I just kept playing so I could play more cutscenes and see what happened with the story.
See, it's all about if the cutscenes contribute to the story or not. AND if you can skip and later replay them - but PLEASE, PLEASE... allow me to save between cutscenes!
Most games include pre-rendered cut scenes, and even if your character is "part" of the scene, you're usually watching from the camera's point of view, and the rest of the action happens just like the script says.
I have been playing "Need For Speed: Most Wanted" for a few weeks now. One of the pieces that I have been enjoying is the cutscenes, which actually include my customized car in them. They are done on the fly, and aren't necessarily the same each time you watch them.
"Put your message in a modem, and throw it into the cyber-sea." - Rush
God of War... had ... cut scenes..... so I don't understand.
of course it was all scripted. What makes a beat'em up cool is how much cool stuff you can do in each scene, and God of War had tons of it. If you want to see how a good beat'em up is meant to be played go here and download the Streets of Rage 2 run. Gezz, next thing you'll be saying Space Invaders was a bad game because it was all scripted!
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Well done cut-scenes using the in-game engine.
Advanced the plot, great cinematics, fun to watch, easily skippable.
That's how they should always be!
I have played God of War, and while it was linear, it was still very much a "game". Learning new moves and stringing combos together was really fun for that genre, and being able to kill different enemies in different ways to get life or mana instead of experience was a nice touch. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I want to play it -- so I have to disagree with you, this game has fantastic gameplay. Have you played God of War?
And I find it funny that David Jaffe doesn't like cutscenes, when GoW's were some of the best I've ever seen. Aside from the quality of them, the story was great -- a man whose skin is white because it's covered in the ashes of his dead family? That shit is just good!
I must say I am really surprised no one mentioned FFX yet, although I enjoyed the game most of the time I felt like I was watrching a 30 hour movie that made me run from point a to point b to get to the next aprt of the movie. Ah well at least it was a half decent 30 hour movie :-).
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If you can make a movie by removing the entire game from itself, its pretty obvious what's not needed.
Don't get me wrong. MGS3 is a great game, but everytime I grabbed the controller I half expected someone to shout "down in front!" At least this way we can now all "play" MGS3 and eat popcorn at the same time.
I'm probably one of the few who have been pleased by the lack of Japanese developer support for the original Xbox.
This has absolutely nothing to do with prejudices but rather trends in game development that are simply a turn-off for me.
The PS2 is notorious for games with cutscene overload. In-game cinematics are adored by many developers in Japan (who tend to develop for the PS2 more than any other platform), to the point where many were miffed at the lack of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD on the Xbox 360 simply because they were pressed for space to squeeze in more pre-rendered cutscenes. With this trend, actual gameplay itself has seemingly become secondary to having the player sit there and admire their non-interactive (and usually non-skippable) indulgences.
U.S. developers did the same thing a little over a decade ago, and gamers everywhere still roll their eyes over the mention of "FMV" which was an equally-detrimental addition to games that was wisely abandoned by most developers.
All of this is simply my opinion, and little more. That being said, cutscenes are merely an example of being led down the path that the developers choose to have you follow. They add a rigid structure to a game, and when they are over-used, it seems as if you are just going through the motions and not really playing, as you are firmly attached to the rails provided for you to follow.
Cinematics also act as padding. Hiring a bunch of artists to create a cutscnes is easier and much faster than finding a good group of level designers to put together well-balanced, quality interactive levels.
mafia would have been a hard game to make without them, the cinematic aspect is a big aspect to it, if everything is in mirst person all the time its harder to deliver movie style dynamics
Fable really laid on the cutscenes thick, to the point where they seriously affect gameplay. Somehow certain game publishers think that if a cutscene is rendered using the in-game engine it detracts less from the experience. Why they think that I can't imagine. The Fable would have been more enojoyable without all the slowdowns IMHO.
;)
To me, a cutscene is analogous to a narrator moving the story of a play between acts (with some visuals, I guess, but do they match the imagination?). I don't know about you, but a play with 1000 acts is not much of a play.
The best cutscenes are build-ups to a game scene, or rewards for a job well done. The cited Super Mario 64 has mini-cutscenes where Mario does a little dance when he finds a star to reward the gamer. There's also the "Bowser laughing" mini-cutscenes that tell you a boss level is coming your way. They're long enough to rest your thumbs, and that's all.
Call of Duty 2 has done a nice job using lengthier cutscenes effectively. During the level loading period, you get something to read - fine I have to wait for the loading anyway. Before a major campaign, you get some military movie footage. Good buildup, and skippable. After you complete a mission, you get some music fading in and the commander talking up your good work. Good reward, short, and not a painful interruption. You may not think of these as "cutscenes", but I'm tackling the issue as "anything in-game that isn't live action", so if you think that's wrong, fine, keep thinking that way and enjoy the rest of your day.
Anyway, I'd better get my arse back to work and stop writing about video games.
I'm primarily a PC gamer, though I am exposed every once in a while to a console game. I remember playing one of the Metal Gear Solid games once. I started the game, sat through a 3 minute cut scene, played for literally 15 seconds, then sat through another cut scene. I simply quit playing. It was a bad movie interspersed with a bad video game.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
You know what I hate? When guys like David Jaffe stumble ass-backwards into public domain Greek mythology, staple GWAR armor onto everything, dump blood eveywhere, and call it the greatest IP since the world cooled. Maybe if you could tell a story that wasn't completely obvious and boring from the first half-hour (as God of War was), then maybe you'd have more use for cutscenes.
I think there are many gamers who would like "interactive-movies" with good graphics.
That's what the developers of FMV games in the early 1990s thought. Where are they now?
If the industry moves away from cut-scenes, then we'll never get our regular dose of "Bullshot" video game hype!
l lshot
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bu
Unfortunately, instead of being able to rewind time and AVOID THIS ENTIRE BATTLE, since the ambush in a cutscene you and The Prince have to partake in the absolute lowest part of this otherwise stellar game. I found that galavanting around the rooftops was quite cool since you nearly always had a 'lifeline' in the dagger if you screwed up. Likewise, combat was wisely sidestepped with speed kills since straight up combat was never PoP's strong suit.
So in one fell swoop we have the one-two punch of unavoidable combat immediately following an unskippable cutscene in a game where the very premise is that history can be rewritten at the player's whim. Way to go, designers!
All I want to know is--did he really need to use video to tell us how much he hates cutscenes? I was expecting maybe examples of well-done games in the video, at least. The content of the video blog entry would have been better-expressed in text.
...so I gues, on reflection, I hate vlogs for the same reason I hate cutscenes: in the overwhelming majority of cases, the informational or emotional content would have been better expressed some other way.
best rpg ever. ever. and i loved the fighting engine in the game. the second installment was available online (illegally) in the english language. someone DLed it for me and gave it to me as a gift 'cause they knew how much i loved the 1st one. it was a great game as well.
Five or so boring, unskippable minutes of "drama" every damn time you even double-clicked the 'Max Payne' icon. And that "jump from blood-trail to blood-trail" dream/test thing got old real fast.
Well look at Indigo Prophecy, nearly the entire game is an interactive cinematic similar to those found in RE4 and yet it is a lot of fun. Cinematics are definitely here to stay and as they evolve in games like Indigo and RE4 they have the ability to move beyond the confines of simple adventure films and entertain on a whole new level.
A light sprinkling of non-interactivity here and there is fine. It strings the game together and provides you with a quick breather before you get back into the action. The Grand Theft Auto games do it well, for instance.
However, crap like the Metal Gear Solid "games" get it all wrong. When MGS2 came out, it was being hyped to the skies, so I rented it to see what all the fuss was about. I was a bit baffled to find that it was a series of incredibly stilted dialogues with two-minute interactive portions in between. There seemed to be about two hours of actual gameplay in the whole thing, strung together by an abysmal story acted out by planks. It was like Dragon's Lair without the wow factor, or the humour. Really, folks, if I want to watch a movie, I'll watch a movie. And it'll have proper actors and storylines and stuff in. Don't waste my time with this nonsense.
I love um personally. Without um, a game can get dreadfully tedious. I see cutscenes as a reward to gameplay. Finish a level, rewarded with a cutscene. Akin to a game ending...would you people also do away with game ending FMVs? I don't play games to monotonously repeat the same cycle of actions on a slightly different map/board. I enjoy a good story with a good plot and some cool FMVs add to the experience.