| sundin13 said: It was a question out of curiousity...I was mostly just wondering how you would answer it and your answer was interesting. I personally don't dislike narrative in games, the problem is with "cinematic" games and I think that is an important distinction. Narrative can be presented in an infinite number of formats...it can be presented in the gameplay or through dialogue or through the environment you are in. The cinematic approach to narrative is the approach that focuses on turning the game into a movie where the player typically doesn't have much agency in the story and your actions play a more passive role than an active role. I don't think anyone has complaints about narrative, the complaint is with cinematic games. That complaint flows into the problem with cutscenes. First of all, I would like to say a few things. Yes, walls of text are lazy, but they are essentially the antiquated/low budget way of doing cutscenes. They both serve to dump the story on the player while leaving the player as a passive observer instead of an active participant. I really think the comparison with exposition dumps is spot on, because, while it may be important information, if it was worked into the game more organically, it would be better for everyone. Also, I need to make the distinction that when I say it is "lazy" I mean that strictly from a storytelling perspective. Cutscenes may cost tons of money and take tons of time to animate, but the overall design is lazy. It can also be seen as a bit of a lazy solution for a problem you mentioned yourself...mediocre animation in gameplay and a lack of parity between cutscene quality and game quality. Using cutscenes is a simple way to control these parameters, and it doesn't work as well from a gameplay perspective, however, it is a makeshift solution to this problem. The true goal should be improving the in game animations and making them more organic and realistic. I personally love small details like when a character runs its hand along a wall they are walking next to, or when they move in a way that is indicative of some physical problem. I think the movement in Evil Within is really interesting and The Phantom Pain trailer (before we knew it was MGS) in the hospital is an extremely interesting way of allowing the player to try to move around with a character who is physically impaired (I'm not sure if it was actual gameplay, but I'm making the assumption that it is). I think that is so much more powerful than just showing the player something. Additionally, cutscenes are often used to present dialogue. I don't see any reason why this requires a cutscene. Why do we need to lose control for some characters to talk? Games like Mass Effect can get away with it because the player is actively engaged in that dialogue and the control is required to be on selecting dialogue options instead of just listening to characters talk, but that isn't really a cutscene... Additionally, there are so many ways to tell a narrative in games without resorting to dialogue. I'm not really saying that cutscenes are bad, just that they can (often) be replaced with something better than can make narrative based games even more engaging. Cutscenes do have a place, generally in level intros/outros and when the character you are playing has no physical control for one reason or another, however they are so often used in ways that make me feel like "there is so much more you could do with this scene". I gave an example in a discussion of The Order before, saying how much more powerful that first meeting with a Lycan would be if you the player got to experience that fear and mystery and confusion of how to handle this situation. Giving the player options makes them think about how the world works and come up with solutions to problems on the fly and see the game's reaction to that problem. It can still be a linear experience and send the player down the same path no matter what(although variation is an obvious bonus), but it would give the player the illusion of choice if not giving choice itself and make the player think "what if I reacted differently". All of these emotions are lost in cutscenes, which can just say "this is how you should be feeling and this is how you should be reacting". So often cutscenes and the general desire to make games more like movies, just feels like wasted potential and that makes me think about all the things the game could have been if it used the tools at its disposal instead of trying to fit a square peg (movies) into a round hole (games). As always, Extra Credits has a great video on cutscenes which discusses a lot of the complaints that I've made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXIR2dlktc |
Posts like this are the reason I still visit vgchartz/gamrconnect. Very well put. Now I know what you mean and agree with many of your points.
