Extremely Long Cutscenes, What's your take?

[dunno001]

Khuutra said:

dunno001 said:

 Not too many, actually. I'm going to look at 1, 4, and 6, since those are the ones I've played through the most:

1- Crossing the bridge at the beginning of the game is one. It's also the only one that I would count.

4- Death scenes for the bosses were a little long, but otherwise, everything outside the beginning and end were controllable.

6- At this point, some of the summons were a tad long, and while I do wish the opera scene could be sped up, you still did have to remember a few lines for it, which does negate it from the non-interactivity of it. Otherwise, we're back to the opening and ending... of which part of the opening is skippable...

I'm not going to look at remakes, because of the way that many cutscenes were gratuitously added to them.

The cutscenes in the remakes weren't added. They were just given voice acting.

Pressing A to get through dialog does not make a cutscene interactive, and all Final Fantasies have a shit ton of them.

 

 Okay, now I see where the differences are coming from. For me, dialog screens alone doesn't make a cutscene. For me, that's considered talking, which is an old way of doing character development. I consider a cutscene as where you are pulled away, and can not control the pace. Hence why I consider the FF1 bridge to be one, but not, say, the Celes and Cid scene from FF6. The line gets drawn when I am not in control; lines of text don't bother me, but if you want to shift to a scene where you show them talking, you have forcefully changed my POV, and usually, it's either a skip or wait case. I have no control as a player, and that is a cutscene.

Maybe a better way of putting it would be, would I miss something if I have to go to the bathroom? If they're going to talk and ramble on, forcing me to stay, then it's a cutscene. If I can go and come back, staying on the same line, because I didn't tell it to move on, then it's not, at least in my eyes. I can make the characters talk at my pace, and that's what keeps me feeling connected to the game. Likewise, if I have to wait because the game wants to show something off (ala summons), then that counts as one.