I like cutscenes in games and dont mind if they are long. I love Square/Blizzard CGI and had no problems watching all cutscenes in MGS4 even though I didnt like the game much.

I wouldnt mind the game that favours cutscenes more than the actual gameplay as long as they are well done.

The problem is that a lot of the games with long cutscenes depend of emotional responses and that can't be done through gameplay.  Also, MGS4's story wouldn't be as effective if it was told through gameplay.

I dont like long cutscenes inside the game. I cant keep attention and concentrate on them, I'm not patient enuff. So within the game 30 secs tops.

An opening cutscene is great though, but it should be rufly 3-4 minutes, not more.

And an ending cutscene is mandatory of course. The ending cutscene should be very long, 15 or even 30 minites. Depends on how story driven the game is.

On the whole I'm not a fan. I don't mind a decent intro cutscene and a decent end game cutscene but in-between I prefer them to be fairly short and focused.

Overall, I prefer the Half Life approach though of keeping you in the game and using other approaches to conveying story/narrative.

I think long cutscenes benefit games and are the future of gaming. Video Games are a visual storytelling medium, and if the medium is to be taken seriously, it's narratives need to be on par with that of film or even literature. The ability for games to have long cutscenes (beyond the running length of a movie) gives it the advantage that the storylines can be much more detailed and thematically layered, closer to what a novel is like. I play games predominantly to experience their narratives, and with games such as MGS4 and Heavy Rain in the future, and increased investment for professional writers such as with GeoW2, video game stoytelling -and along with it, cutscenes- is going to be the next big thing. That's actually a quote from some European developer (I forget his name or affiliation) who expects narratives in video games to take priority in the coming years as technology reaches a point of diminishing returns.

I think the only games I've played with *really* long cut-scenes are the MGS games. And possibly FFX although I can't remember them being that long. I wasn't bored for a second in MGS4's cut-scenes. Unlike MGS2. As long as long cut-scenes aren't unskippable I have no problem with them.

I don't mind it as long as the cutscene is:

1) Well done (tone, graphics, cinematography etc)

2) Length is relative to importance in story (If a major plot twist is revealed, I dont' care if it goes for 1 hour, but I don't want to sit there for 30 minutes just to be told I need to go to the next town)

3) Have to be pausable and skippable (unless it's to mask load times, which is forgiveable if there are no loads during a level).

@ kylie dog, so you are suggesting that in my 16 hours of playing the game, 2.5 hours were actually playing the game, and 13.5 hours of it were cut scenes

There are at most 8 hours of cut scenes in the game, and most people took longer than the hour I did, I did not really try and play stealthily

There's actually a few minutes over 9 hours of cutscenes in MGS4.

Really... that is slightly ridiculous, but it is allowed, Kojima has earned it