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Kubrick, Kundera, and why cinematics in gaming suck balls

Trashos

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(this thread needs a warning at the beginning, but I am not sure what the warning should be.)

Ask any serious cinephile about the crowning achievements of cinema, and you will invariably get Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey among the answers. Space Odyssey may be an acquired taste, and may be a movie that is hard to understand. But there is no doubt that it is real *cinema*. It could not have been a great book, for example. As a matter of fact, there was a book written for the movie by Arthur C Clarke, but it is not considered a masterpiece or of much importance. The book was just another book. The movie, now the movie was a freaking masterpiece of cinema.

But what makes me say that Space Odyssey is "real cinema"? What is "real cinema"? Real cinema is movies that are movies, and could not have been books, games or anything else.

So let's explain this important concept. I am going to borrow Milan Kundera's ideas on what is a real novel (or, in Kundera's own words, what is an "ethical novel") and extend them to other media. According to Kundera, an ethical novel is a novel that does what only a novel can do. In other words, if there is something a writer can do with a novel that a director cannot do with a movie, a musician cannot do with music, a developer cannot do with a game, then that is exactly what he should be doing.

So let's get back to Space Odyssey. Do you think you can describe what it is about and do it justice? Do you think it could have been a book as important as the movie is? Or take one of the masterpieces of literature, say Gabriel Garcia Marquez's A Hundred Years of Solitude. Try to make a movie out of THAT without making a fool of yourself. Yeah, good luck. That is an ethical novel, a real novel. Try to transport it to another medium, and it will fall apart.

So now let's talk about gaming. Gaming has writing, sound, it has moving images, it has gameplay. GAMEPLAY. That's the distinguishing characteristic of gaming. In real gaming, in ethical gaming, you are supposed to be interacting with the content in ways that you cannot achieve in other media! Now, you can have writing, you can have sound, you can have impressive images, but they all should be in the service of gameplay.

Cinematics in games, on the other hand, make games that would rather have been movies. In light of my argument (or Kundera's argument rather) above, cinematics in gaming are UNETHICAL.


TL;DR: Novels are supposed to be doing what only novels can do. Movies are supposed to be doing what only movies can do. Games are supposed to be doing what only games can do. Take your cinematics and stick them up your ass.
 

Thal

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You are correct. This is also the reason why older, uglier, clunkier games, such as Ultima Underworld and UFO: Enemy Unknown, are better games than new ones that are objectively better than them in all of those categories. I disagree, however, that cinematics have no place in gaming. Take the ending of Fallout, for example. Taking the control away from player only enhances the bitterness of the ending. Staying in the isometric perspective would have been the wrong choice in my opinion.

A game is an unique medium, because it can contain and mix elements from other media, be it writing, voice acting, cinema, etc. What matters is whether these elements are made to serve the game instead of detracting from it. More and more they have begun to detract from it, particularly cinematics as you have pointed out, but that does not mean that these elements by themselves are bad.

Interestingly cinematics used the have a different role in gaming when memory and processing power were limited. Basically they were used either for setting the stage (intro) or as a "reward" for the player after beating the game or completing a difficult task. But in many cases, what was shown was actually what the player did. Take for example Descent, where you had to blow the reactor and escape back to the exit. You got the cinematic as a reward for succeeding, but only after you had escaped in the gameplay mode. Same thing with the ending of Freespace 2, a game that intelligently also saved the most pivotal moments for missions, where they became truly memorable.
 
Last edited:

Shinji

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I'm ok with cinematics as long as they don't interrupt the gameplay every ten minutes or so.

If they happen only at the beginning/end of a mission (e.g. Thief) even better.
 

vazha

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meh, wasted my time reading this. You speak in imperatives - if every movie has to measure up to Space freaking Odyssey to be considered real cinema, then the lists' gonna be rather short. There are pretty decent game cinematics out there - Warcraft / WoW ones just to mention a few. John Hillcoat (The Proposition, The Road) did a wonderful machinima on RDR.
 

cvv

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I get where you coming from but the OP needs some rewriting. Just two corrections, first, the reason Kubrick's Space Odyssey is a defining masterpiece isn't that it's hard to understand. Because it's not THAT inscrutable, the overarching theme - musings on human evolution in the past, present and future - is quite clear. The keys to it's greatness are uncompromising philosophical vision and unrivalled, mindblowing cinematography.

And second correction, Clarke's 2001 absolutely IS considered one of the greatest works of SF of all time. You just don't hear about it so much anymore because it's a classical, hard SF and the genre has been taken over by the wokesters, with their deep emotional themes and character studies and other estrogen bullshit.

Overall though I tend to agree, many games, especially the Western AAA ones, aren't building on the real strength of gaming - the gameplay - and instead of rely on cinematography. Sometimes it might work - Mass Effect, Witcher - but in general it's a blind alley.
 

Curratum

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I've never seen someone try so hard to appear educated and knowledgeable, only to come up with a retarded opinion in such short order afterwards.
 

Tigranes

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Soooooooo......

You're basically saying, "Remember the whole INTERACTIVITY buzz from the 90s? Software is INTERACTIVE and that's what makes it special and that's what we should focus on? Yeah, that."

It's not that the argument is wrong. But that's not where anybody is stuck on. The real problem is working out what the fuck we should be doing with that interactivity/gameplay to create a truly good game. The bar isn't just "do things only a game can do and a movie or book can't do". You could just design a game that rolls a random number generator to arrange pixels, and fulfil that criteria, but nobody would care.

It's like everyone is trying to make delicious ice cream, and you just busted into the room and screamed, "I've got it! An ice cream must be cold to be considered a true ice cream, rather than a cookie or some other delicacy." Yeah, sure, but that wasn't where we were stuck.
 

Morpheus Kitami

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It's not that the argument is wrong. But that's not where anybody is stuck on. The real problem is working out what the fuck we should be doing with that interactivity/gameplay to create a truly good game. The bar isn't just "do things only a game can do and a movie or book can't do". You could just design a game that rolls a random number generator to arrange pixels, and fulfil that criteria, but nobody would care.
I'm not sure that's entirely true, since so many people seem interested in making movies or books, focusing too much on a static narrative with some gameplay sprinkled in because they have to. Though those people couldn't be made to see any kind of reason on that subject, since they don't really care to begin with.
 
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Soooooooo......

You're basically saying, "Remember the whole INTERACTIVITY buzz from the 90s? Software is INTERACTIVE and that's what makes it special and that's what we should focus on? Yeah, that."

It's not that the argument is wrong. But that's not where anybody is stuck on. The real problem is working out what the fuck we should be doing with that interactivity/gameplay to create a truly good game. The bar isn't just "do things only a game can do and a movie or book can't do". You could just design a game that rolls a random number generator to arrange pixels, and fulfil that criteria, but nobody would care.
wizardry-proving-grounds-of-the-mad-overlord_9.png


imagen-classic-tetris-0big.jpg





It's like everyone is trying to make delicious ice cream, and you just busted into the room and screamed, "I've got it! An ice cream must be cold to be considered a true ice cream, rather than a cookie or some other delicacy." Yeah, sure, but that wasn't where we were stuck.
Except that a lot of ice cream manufacturers aren't trying to make delicious ice cream. They are trying to earn profits for their shareholders, cater to the whims of focus groups, managers, committees, journalists, etc., to the point that some ice cream makers have lost touch with even a basic sense of what an ice cream brand is supposed to be doing.

Literally this:

stonetoss9.png
 

markec

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Nothing wrong with cinematics if utilized in a right way, take for an example open world games like Elder Scrolls or Gothic. Those games are about letting player have freedom to fully explore massive open world without any linearity or cinematics getting in the way.

NuBethesda starts its games with very lengthy linear segments that are used both as a tutorial and a introduction to the story. Problem with this is that it creates a a segment of the game that forces a player to endure something thats total opposite in spirit of the real game. Every time you start a nuBethesda game it feels like you need to spend half hour to unwrap a present to only to find out inside is just a piece of shit.

Games like Morrowind, New Vegas or Gothic use short cinematics to give the player brief introduction to the story, while tutorial is provided at the start that feels organic and part of the real game.

To be fair you can provide background information trough dialog but as saying picture is worth thousand words so its a easy and effective way in both setting up the the story, characters and tone then either just dialogs or lengthy forced game segment.
 

urmom

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I thought the in-game cinematics in Homeworld (1999) were noice.

The sequel would interrupt you every 3 mins tho. Grrrr!!
 

Nifft Batuff

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Messages
3,169
Kubrick and 2001 in particular have been never appreciated by zoomers and younger gens. Its influence in modern videogames cinematic is null.
 

CanadianCorndog

Learned
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Feb 2, 2021
Messages
147
Most game developers think they know how to tell a story and how to create great cinema. They do not. They mostly lead boring lives sitting in front of a computer and have nothing to say. They sometimes make great games and fun toys. And that is fine, no shame in that at all. Something like "Baba Is You" is amazing in a way that film or novels can never be.
 

Silverfish

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Nah. I'll take cinematics over "stand around while people exposit at you" or "forced slow walk because something important is happening" every time. Honestly, the negative attitudes toward cinematics in games is akin to saying movies suffered for the addition of sound.
 

gurugeorge

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(this thread needs a warning at the beginning, but I am not sure what the warning should be.)

Ask any serious cinephile about the crowning achievements of cinema, and you will invariably get Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey among the answers. Space Odyssey may be an acquired taste, and may be a movie that is hard to understand. But there is no doubt that it is real *cinema*. It could not have been a great book, for example. As a matter of fact, there was a book written for the movie by Arthur C Clarke, but it is not considered a masterpiece or of much importance. The book was just another book. The movie, now the movie was a freaking masterpiece of cinema.

But what makes me say that Space Odyssey is "real cinema"? What is "real cinema"? Real cinema is movies that are movies, and could not have been books, games or anything else.

So let's explain this important concept. I am going to borrow Milan Kundera's ideas on what is a real novel (or, in Kundera's own words, what is an "ethical novel") and extend them to other media. According to Kundera, an ethical novel is a novel that does what only a novel can do. In other words, if there is something a writer can do with a novel that a director cannot do with a movie, a musician cannot do with music, a developer cannot do with a game, then that is exactly what he should be doing.

So let's get back to Space Odyssey. Do you think you can describe what it is about and do it justice? Do you think it could have been a book as important as the movie is? Or take one of the masterpieces of literature, say Gabriel Garcia Marquez's A Hundred Years of Solitude. Try to make a movie out of THAT without making a fool of yourself. Yeah, good luck. That is an ethical novel, a real novel. Try to transport it to another medium, and it will fall apart.

So now let's talk about gaming. Gaming has writing, sound, it has moving images, it has gameplay. GAMEPLAY. That's the distinguishing characteristic of gaming. In real gaming, in ethical gaming, you are supposed to be interacting with the content in ways that you cannot achieve in other media! Now, you can have writing, you can have sound, you can have impressive images, but they all should be in the service of gameplay.

Cinematics in games, on the other hand, make games that would rather have been movies. In light of my argument (or Kundera's argument rather) above, cinematics in gaming are UNETHICAL.


TL;DR: Novels are supposed to be doing what only novels can do. Movies are supposed to be doing what only movies can do. Games are supposed to be doing what only games can do. Take your cinematics and stick them up your ass.

I don't think autistic essentialism is appropriate wrt man-made objects, it only has meaning and function in relation to natural and organic objects.

Man-made objects "are" whatever men say they are. If you want to have a popup diorama in a book, or stink-o-vision and choice buttons on movie seats in a movie, or a cinematic in a game, knock yourself out. Whether it will "work" or not is your punt, your risk, for any given value of "work."

I'm in agreement with what someone said above: cinematics to introduce and conclude important events are fine, in fact actually quite good. Otherwise they're kind of annoying.

The classic type of cinematic event that I like is where for example you have a boss fight, and you win, and then it cuts to a cinematic - just at that point of victory, there's something pleasurable about having control taken away and being carried aloft by the cinematic. That works pretty well.

But if you have them every five minutes, like whenever some new character is introduced (for example), then it's just irritating and breaks the flow of immersion rather than enhancing it.
 

JarlFrank

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Nah. I'll take cinematics over "stand around while people exposit at you" or "forced slow walk because something important is happening" every time. Honestly, the negative attitudes toward cinematics in games is akin to saying movies suffered for the addition of sound.

Those are cinematics too, except you can't skip them.

What else would it be? It's a static scene on which you have no influence. Case A would be like Half Life 2's cutscenes where people talk at you for 5 minutes while you can toss objects at their faces or savage Alyx's cunt with your crowbar, but nobody reacts to it. What you do is irrelevant, the scene is 100% linear and will always play out the same way. Therefore, it is functionally a cutscene. Case 2 is not much different: you have to hold down W to walk forward until the scene ends. There is nothing else you can do during that time. It's not really interactive, even though you have to do something to progress (press a single button).

Both of these things ARE cutscenes.
 

DJOGamer PT

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Look I am the first guy to chant that overindulgence in cinematics and other scripted story events are shit exactley because they diminish the intrinsic qualities of videogames to become more like distinct mediums
And that such practices are specially egregious when done under the pretense to "legimise" videogames as a "mature" artform

But cinematics, like CGI for movies, are nothing more than just another tool in the author's array to help him build his work
They aren't bad in and of themselves, and can be used to great effect in the right hands
Either to set up tone, reveal information, frame the begginning/ending of the campgain or even just to entertain

And there's various examples of this
For Dark Souls the beggining cinematic tells the creation myth, which his central in understanding everything else from the game's lore, and not mention is supposed to knowledge every inhabitant of that world is familiar with (including your PC)
DMC 3 first cutscenes, introduce the villains and protagonist, set up the tone of the game, are entertaining to watch and most importantly get you pumped to kill demons. It never gets old
Thief's FMV's also set-up the various jobs Garret is to perform, and also where we get most info on Garret as a character, since during missions he's mostly silent, only occasionally making snarky comments on things of the job he finds amusing
 

OctavianRomulus

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I hear you bro, I love what I'm reading. I've been thinking about this a lot too and two games that exemplify story through gameplay are Gothic and Dark Souls. In those games, the story and gameplay reinforce eachother and are not separate entities like in other games.
 

Black_Willow

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Dear OP, Your argument about "pure cinema" sucks big hairy donkey balls. Why? Look at the opening of Space Odyssey - is it made from "pure cinema"?

No, of course not - we can hear a fragment of "Also sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss. Does containing another art form - music (and, to add, music created without any connection to the movie, many decades earlier) - made the whole movie "unpure", would it be better without the music?
No, such thinking would be absurd. And so is your argument. Video games are a very syncretic medium, and many games were much better thanks to adding cinematics (like Legacy of Kain series, or Myth games). So please, think a bit more before starting such threads.
 
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The idea video games shouldn't have cinematics is dumb. Take Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri for example. Alpha Centauri for my money is one of the best examples of video game storytelling there is; too many games try and be movies, (shitty movies at that) but instead of trying to tell a story in a traditional manner like books and film, Alpha Centauri delivers a nontraditional narrative through its gameplay...but also shapes the story the player is creating themselves with the cinematics that come with research. You strip out those nice well written cinematics from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and you've still got a good fun game, you've even still got half of what it's doing to create a story, but you don't have one of the best examples of what video games can do storytelling wise that other stuff really can't anymore.
 

Silverfish

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Both of these things ARE cutscenes.

Both were implemented specifically to cut down on cinematics, to keep players "in the game" or "in the moment". They serve the same function as proper cinematics, but they couldn't be less similar.
 

deuxhero

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The Rogue Squadron 2 dev commentary (an unlockable in the game itself) has the developers profusely apologize for a single minute and a half long cutscene that can be skipped if you've seen it before (even if you quit or fail the level after it).
 

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