Well folks, lets have a discussion. Please, take a seat.

Today's Discussion is on Cutscenes. Cutscene's are a wonderful tool in a developer's arsenal. They often give a break to the action and allow the player to sit back and enjoy some development in a game's story, character development, comedic scenes, or amazing action scenes. However, if you've played Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 4, Star Ocean 4, or any other title that has really long cut-scenes. Don't you feel that it often feels like it drags the gameplay down to a screeching halt?

I recently bought Star Ocean 4, I've been enjoying the game. Action has been intense and enjoyable when it comes to battle. But near the end of the game, I was treated to a 36 minute cutscene. Holy smokes. That entirely broke up the action and I fell asleep to it, not that I missed anything. Watching it on youtube it was pretty much space combat, character drama, more space combat and... you guessed it. MORE space combat.

The worst part of it, is that 36 minutes is fairly minor in comparison to what some other games can offer.

Kinda bored me.

I play video games to PLAY them. Not to watch them.

Kinda ridicious if you ask me. But then again, thats me. What's your take on this VGChartz?

I personally dislike long ones. I can only handle 5 - 10 minute cutscenes.......any longer than that and I start to get antsy. I don't know why more developers don't implement being able to skip cutscenes. That way the people who want to watch them can enjoy them, and those of us that can't stand them, can get on with the game.

I don't care so long as they're not boring.

MGS4 was a mixed bag. Some of them were entertaining and some of them had me checking my watch every few minutes (mission briefs in particular).
FFX wasn't too bad. Eternal Sonata was just torture.

So yeah, it depends.

i love long nice looking cg cutscenes....but i can't stand long in-game cutscenes....

I personally love long cut scenes, but the SO4 ones I saw when I watched esegk playing often were so ridiculesly written and executed, that I was really hoping they'd end soon (ok maybe it was because I was extremely tired at the time he got to the long ones aswell).

@ KLucifer )

yea, I feel you there

long ingame cutscenes kinda always keep me on the fence, because there could be some dumb QTE or they could abrubtly end or sth. so I always feel kinda nervous during them (making them feel tiring to me), while when there is a CGI scene I know I can just lean back, relax and enjoy the eye candy

I'd consider anything longer than 5 minutes way too long, unless it's the opening or final vid. I don't play video games to watch cutscenes. I play video games to PLAY video games. But I'm not really that in to story driven games.

Rule of thumb is that being concise is better. That doesn't mean short, but it means there's no time wasted. No such thing as a long cutscene for the sake of length.

And don't just show me something that would be much cooler to play.

If you would rather ignore the plot of said games and skip to all the sexy violence, then you are given the option to skip the cutscenes. For those of us that like our games with plot, we can watch.

My love affair with cutscenes began with Ninja Gaiden and Astyanax on the Nes. From that point on, I LOVED cinematics. Then, Xenosaga came along........

I still love cutscenes but now I know there's such a thing as cutscene overkill.

And let me add that cinematics like the one at the beginning of Okami (10 minutes of reading) is a huge turn off. If developers need to give us a cutscene, they need to do it right.