How important are FMVs/Cutscenes nowadays? What about voice acting?

 Cutscenes I will live with because they are really cool most of the times and they help to tell the story -- the first time.

 I'm talking about times where you die like 10 times and then you have to watch the same 10 minute cutscene over and over again because you can't save after the cutscene? Then it gets annoying.

 I bring up the case with Voice acting because that's a knock on the Zelda franchise. A lot of people complain about it. But think of it this way: The times Zelda uses voice acting, the characters all sound pretty corny.  

 Its not that bad voice acting takes anything away from a game, however-- Resident Evil is one of my favorite franchises but it's infamous for its horrible horrible voice acting!

 And then there are instances where you can totally read faster than the person talking, and usually the person is trying to explain something and you'd rather just read in 30 seconds what it takes the NPC to explain in 5 minutes.  

I don't know if there was a point to this rant; I think I'm frustrated with games where you can't skip all the voice acting and cutscenes!

I like good voice acting, but most of the time I find it more grating then just reading the text.

FMV's sometimes can be fun, but then again I say that because I loved the wing commander series.

Depends genrewise.From RPGs over Shooters to Plattformers for example,it gets less important imo.

I can't imagine any Zelda fans EVER being satisfied with whoever they would cast as Link.

I dislike both.

Voice acting never comes off good, and FMVs take you out of the game... and in some cases just make the rest of the game look like crap.

 FF12 had the worst cutscenes ever, as there was very little difference aside from the hair being more then just one piece.

Cutscenes: I vastly prefer the Half-Life/Metroid Prime/ICO approach to storytelling, wherein the story is incorporated into the world around you, especially to the point where interacting with the game's environment tells a coherent narrative. While occasional cutscenes are okay - and even necessary at times - the over-use of them is one of the greatest blights on modern gaming.

Voice Acting: If you can't do it right, don't do it at all. I'd much rather have no voice acting than terrible voice acting.

Voice Acting yes, FMV...no? RE: UC's cutscenes were sweet...but it did take away from the regular game's graphics a bit. I'd prefer if the game engine were good enough in the first place to do cutscenes without FMV. And as for cutscenes themselves, they fit in some games, not in others.

 are you insane? if done right Voice-Acting is great. Resistance had pretty good voice-acting, Final Fantasy X, X-2, and XII had great voice acting, and Half-Life has the greatest voice acting .I like NPCs that talk instead of having to scroll through 100 lines of text to get to the point.

As for cutscenes, if used as transitions to other areas of the game, side-stories, and teing of the actual story that they can be good. Even Epic in Unreal Tournament 3 did a good job with cut-scenes. 

From what I can tell, the industry has been moving away from pre-rendered cut scenes and toward doing everything in-engine for some time now. That's a good thing since there's no disruptive jump to cut scene and it allows for more flexibility to do things like multiple paths or slight differences in the scene depending on the player's choices.

We must of been laying different FF12 games. I thought the voice acting was horrible. Worst of all was the evil empire who all sounded like people trying really hard to do bad english accents.

 Atleast it's not like anime where every third character is subbed by spike from cowboy bebop.  Though he does do a lot of videogames too.

Also, i read faster then they talk. I perfer real time ingame cutscenes thanks. Keeps it more immersive and makes it more of a real artform in my mind to keep the graphic level consistant.