Games "must be like Hollywood" is the worst decline in gaming

[MerchantKing]

It's from "The Bear Who Loved Me".

Sure it wasn't The Man with the Golden Barrel?

I think it was actually Octopussy.

 

[luj1]

Yes, that's the problem: cutscenes are still prevalent they just changed shape.

Cutscenes should be removed entirely, or at least relegated to between-mission treats.

Remember games like Thief and Tomb Raider? They had cutscenes only between levels. There was absolutely NOTHING getting in your way during gameplay. That's what it should be like.

If your story requires cutscenes, it's not an appropriate story for a video game and you need to rewrite.

Gameplay or cutscenes, choose 1

 

[Reinhardt]

at least japanese ching-chongs regularly show something cool in their cutscenes. in western vidya all i see is "ok, we finished this long dialog. now it's time for a bootiful cutscene where all characters will just stand here and talk some more!" bg3 is worst offender. all cutscenes is just "we talk"

 

[Lord_Potato]

Gameplay or cutscenes, choose 1

 

[Spike]

at least japanese ching-chongs regularly show something cool in their cutscenes. in western vidya all i see is "ok, we finished this long dialog. now it's time for a bootiful cutscene where all characters will just stand here and talk some more!" bg3 is worst offender. all cutscenes is just "we talk"

Nioh 1 and 2 handle this beautifully. The cutscenes are quick and to the point while being beautiful and some times action-packed. And VERY quick. Nothing is wasted, nothing is "chewed". Ideal gaming experience. Thinking about becoming draconian in my attitude toward western offenders: if your cutscene sucks or overstays its welcome, the decline gas chamber for you.

 

[Ranselknulf]

I literally cannot enjoy modern (post-modern) CRPGs anymore

If I wanna watch a fucking movie, I'll go to the cinema. If I wanna read a book, I'll read a book. If I want GAMEPLAY I'll play a GAME.

When I play old school games like Wizardry or Dark Sun, I really feel great

No one is holding your hand. No voice acting. No cutscenes. Just this abstracted gameplay which invokes this dreamlike feeling. Games nowadays are oversimulated.

I understand you completely, but I also feel that graphics and music get in the way of the pure enjoyment of numbers. Pure games just need to be simple autism simulators such as incremental factory.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2449430/Incremental_Factory/

 

[NecroLord]

If your story requires cutscenes, it's not an appropriate story for a video game and you need to rewrite.

Rewrite this, motherfucker.

Nah.
It's a classic!

 

[Spike]

Daily reminder that a good game only has cutscene at the beginning of the level and at the end of the level. Everything else must be 100% gameplay. I myself prefer to play games that have two cutscenes only, one before the game starts and one after the game ends.

I generally agree, though I guess I don't mind if it is peppered with SHORT cutscenes throughout, a la Ratchet and Clank. The cutscenes gave the characters and game more personality than otherwise. However, this is the only acceptable way. Unless you're talented enough to pull a Yakuza/Like a Dragon or Kojima, but just assume you are not. Even then, those are very specific games where the narrative is part of the appeal (which is RARE) and I DO NOT want most games to be like this. Generally, it should be as you said. Beginning and end of level at the very least.

 

[JarlFrank]

If your story requires cutscenes, it's not an appropriate story for a video game and you need to rewrite.

Rewrite this, motherfucker.

This is the ending cutscene. There are no cutscenes during actual gameplay, other than Shodan's reveal, and the intro cutscene.

Having cutscenes at the beginning and end of a game is fine. Having them in the middle, interrupting gameplay, isn't. Luckily System Shock 2 never interrupts gameplay with cutscenes because the devs understood that. Same with Thief, which has briefing cutscenes between missions but never during a mission.

 

[luj1]

Having cutscenes at the beginning and end of a game is fine. Having them in the middle, interrupting gameplay, isn't.

Nowadasy most of our woes come from interrupting gameplay. Not just cutscenes but also Owlcat style intrusive minigames

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Had to think back to games with many cutscenes I played and which ones actually annoy me to come to my conclusion.

Any cutscene that takes control of the character away from me is an instant negative.

After choice cutscenes are fine if it's very quick and simple, but still worse than letting me have control. For example, choosing to kill someone defenceless. ME1 has both examples of this back to back. If you let out the crazed Salarian, you go right back into gameplay after the choice and he rushes you. Right after that are the Salarians who are completely braindead. If you choose to kill them, it happens in a 3 second cutscene. Option 1 is better than option 2.

The deal breakers come in two examples.

1. Talking Sequences

My character should not be talking without my input. This is compounded by the fact that games which do this usually have long, winding cutscene dialogues. Not only do I have to sit through a boring short movie, but I've lost all control of character. Oh don't worry, sometimes you might have to pick a useless dialogue choice so you can't even sit back and let the whole thing play out in one go. Witcher 3, Mass Effect 3 & DA:I (I think) are the games which come to mind with this. I haven't played many AAAs to have a comprehensive list, it annoys me too much.

There's not a single example where taking this control away from a player is a good thing in an RPG

2. Action Sequences

Technically my example of shooting Salarians counts as this, but it's short enough to be bearable. But anything longer than 5 seconds should always be gameplay. Sitting back watching a cutscene of your character in a fight or escaping is not the way to go. If it's a Single Character RPG, I'm fine with watching a (brief) cutscene of other people, if it's psrty-based and any of your companions are involved, you should have control of them.

There's not a single example where taking this control away from a player is a good thing in an RPG x2


The only counterpoint I've heard in my life for those 2 types of cutscenes being good are *muh immersion*. Immersion is going a whole game having control, not having to sit back in your chair every 10mins to watch a cutscene.

 

[Spike]

Having cutscenes at the beginning and end of a game is fine. Having them in the middle, interrupting gameplay, isn't.

Nowadasy most of our woes come from interrupting gameplay. Not just cutscenes but also Owlcat style intrusive minigames

The only thing worse than cutescenes would be MINIGAMES that have nothing to do with the skill of the game or the reason you bought the game in the first place. Looking at you, PS2 era platformers and Spyro 3 and Crash 3.

 

[JarlFrank]

My character should not be talking without my input. This is compounded by the fact that games which do this usually have long, winding cutscene dialogues. Not only do I have to sit through a boring short movie, but I've lost all control of character. Oh don't worry, sometimes you might have to pick a useless dialogue choice so you can't even sit back and let the whole thing play out in one go. Witcher 3, Mass Effect 3 & DA:I (I think) are the games which come to mind with this. I haven't played many AAAs to have a comprehensive list, it annoys me too much.

There's not a single example where taking this control away from a player is a good thing in an RPG

This is the main reason I have a hard time getting into JRPGs because every single dialog is like this.

 

[Viata]

My character should not be talking without my input. This is compounded by the fact that games which do this usually have long, winding cutscene dialogues. Not only do I have to sit through a boring short movie, but I've lost all control of character. Oh don't worry, sometimes you might have to pick a useless dialogue choice so you can't even sit back and let the whole thing play out in one go. Witcher 3, Mass Effect 3 & DA:I (I think) are the games which come to mind with this. I haven't played many AAAs to have a comprehensive list, it annoys me too much.

There's not a single example where taking this control away from a player is a good thing in an RPG

This is the main reason I have a hard time getting into JRPGs because every single dialog is like this.

I like the good clones of Wizardry because MC doesn't talk. At all. Sadly, not only JRPGs does that now, the silent protagonist is being killed from modern RPGs.

 

[JarlFrank]

Japanese dungeon crawlers can be good, yes, but whenever the Japanese add a detailed story it's always delivered in lengthy, banter-filled cutscenes.

 

[Viata]

Japanese dungeon crawlers can be good, yes, but whenever the Japanese add a detailed story it's always delivered in lengthy, banter-filled cutscenes.

I blame FF for that.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

If your story requires cutscenes, it's not an appropriate story for a video game and you need to rewrite.

Rewrite this, motherfucker.

This is the ending cutscene. There are no cutscenes during actual gameplay, other than Shodan's reveal, and the intro cutscene.

Having cutscenes at the beginning and end of a game is fine. Having them in the middle, interrupting gameplay, isn't. Luckily System Shock 2 never interrupts gameplay with cutscenes because the devs understood that. Same with Thief, which has briefing cutscenes between missions but never during a mission.

I found a lot of my Final Fantasy playthroughs infuriated me, because cutscenes would happen inside gameplay/missions, sometimes actually shifting your character, cutting you off from where you were just exporing, or changing your party. Utterly unforgiveable. I just can't play JRPGs any more; it's too fucking aggravating and shit.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

at least japanese ching-chongs regularly show something cool in their cutscenes. in western vidya all i see is "ok, we finished this long dialog. now it's time for a bootiful cutscene where all characters will just stand here and talk some more!" bg3 is worst offender. all cutscenes is just "we talk"

Have you played a Tales game this millennia? You regularly have cut scenes with completely meaningless dialog interrupting gameplay. Every time you enter a dungeon you get 8 characters going "Lets go that way!" "OKAY!" "YEA! "LETS DO IT!" "uhhh I don't care" "UWU I'M A CATGIRL AND I AGREE UWU!" "YEA!" "OKAY BOSS!" It's infuriating they can't let you enter a dungeon and just explore or go into a town without the entire cast cheer leading everything said. They add so much extra useless dialog to skip or slowly walking away in unskippable ways. Pokemon has become a poster child for this.

Japanese dungeon crawlers can be good, yes, but whenever the Japanese add a detailed story it's always delivered in lengthy, banter-filled cutscenes.

They're not even banter filled. Most the banter in the English translation is done in translation. I played Persona 5 for a bit and even with my limited (may god forgive me) weebanese I've picked up over the years I can tell you 90% of the banter is finding ways to translate the same "okay" response for damn near everything. Translations are massively changing the script and some times personality to find ways to ignore the elephant in the room. Japanese people are pretty fucking boring, their language is overly complex for saying the most bland thing possible. "Lets get along together" is translated in 50 different ways because there's no good way to translate something meaning you're going to take care of each other without sounding like an autistic homo every time you greet someone new. PS1 era translations were often awkward of had bad one liners slipped in but Persona takes it to a whole new level of Tumblr given a writing pen.

 

[Viata]

Nah nah, mate. It's already confirmed that if you don't know Japanese and want to play Japanese games, I pray you don't play JRPGs or any story-heavy game. Go play old console games that have almost no dialogue at all. Either that or enjoying eating some goyslop at the level of Working Designs. If not the translator putting his political ideas into the plot with the excuse of "I'm making the dialogues better".

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Nah nah, mate. It's already confirmed that if you don't know Japanese and want to play Japanese games, I pray you don't play JRPGs or any story-heavy game. Go play old console games that have almost no dialogue at all. Either that or enjoying eating some goyslop at the level of Working Designs. If not the translator putting his political ideas into the plot with the excuse of "I'm making the dialogues better".

Not all of it is the translators unfortunately. I was in a stream where a translator joined for a niche-but well known title with a large fanbase. Everyone asked why the translation had random name changes and stuff. The translator said Bandai namco demanded they change names for no reason and handed them a massive spreadsheet with none of the lines having context of being matched up. Some of them aren't trying to screw up, they're being handed a plate full of shit and told to make sense of it.

 

[Vic]

Have you played a Tales game this millennia? You regularly have cut scenes with completely meaningless dialog interrupting gameplay. Every time you enter a dungeon you get 8 characters going "Lets go that way!" "OKAY!" "YEA! "LETS DO IT!" "uhhh I don't care" "UWU I'M A CATGIRL AND I AGREE UWU!" "YEA!" "OKAY BOSS!" It's infuriating they can't let you enter a dungeon and just explore or go into a town without the entire cast cheer leading everything said. They add so much extra useless dialog to skip or slowly walking away in unskippable ways. Pokemon has become a poster child for this.

if you think a 30 second skit is so annoying you should probably never play a visual novel, there you have hours of this type of dialogue. It's character development for when something interesting in the story happens you are more invested in the characters.

 

[Viata]

Nah nah, mate. It's already confirmed that if you don't know Japanese and want to play Japanese games, I pray you don't play JRPGs or any story-heavy game. Go play old console games that have almost no dialogue at all. Either that or enjoying eating some goyslop at the level of Working Designs. If not the translator putting his political ideas into the plot with the excuse of "I'm making the dialogues better".

Not all of it is the translators unfortunately. I was in a stream where a translator joined for a niche-but well known title with a large fanbase. Everyone asked why the translation had random name changes and stuff. The translator said Bandai namco demanded they change names for no reason and handed them a massive spreadsheet with none of the lines having context of being matched up. Some of them aren't trying to screw up, they're being handed a plate full of shit and told to make sense of it.

Whoever is at fault here doesn't matter, learn Japanese or enjoy such goyslop translation.

 

[Viata]

Have you played a Tales game this millennia? You regularly have cut scenes with completely meaningless dialog interrupting gameplay. Every time you enter a dungeon you get 8 characters going "Lets go that way!" "OKAY!" "YEA! "LETS DO IT!" "uhhh I don't care" "UWU I'M A CATGIRL AND I AGREE UWU!" "YEA!" "OKAY BOSS!" It's infuriating they can't let you enter a dungeon and just explore or go into a town without the entire cast cheer leading everything said. They add so much extra useless dialog to skip or slowly walking away in unskippable ways. Pokemon has become a poster child for this.

if you think a 30 second skit is so annoying you should probably never play a visual novel, there you have hours of this type of dialogue. It's character development for when something interesting in the story happens you are more invested in the characters.

But that is a visual novel, so he is expected to read far more than to play. If I'm playin a game, I hope they are not taking the gameplay away from me to waste my time with shit dialogue every other minute.

 

[Vic]

Have you played a Tales game this millennia? You regularly have cut scenes with completely meaningless dialog interrupting gameplay. Every time you enter a dungeon you get 8 characters going "Lets go that way!" "OKAY!" "YEA! "LETS DO IT!" "uhhh I don't care" "UWU I'M A CATGIRL AND I AGREE UWU!" "YEA!" "OKAY BOSS!" It's infuriating they can't let you enter a dungeon and just explore or go into a town without the entire cast cheer leading everything said. They add so much extra useless dialog to skip or slowly walking away in unskippable ways. Pokemon has become a poster child for this.

if you think a 30 second skit is so annoying you should probably never play a visual novel, there you have hours of this type of dialogue. It's character development for when something interesting in the story happens you are more invested in the characters.

But that is a visual novel, so he is expected to read far more than to play. If I'm playin a game, I hope they are not taking the gameplay away from me to waste my time with shit dialogue every other minute.

he mentioned persona, which is part visual novel

 

[Viata]

Only if you "play" shitty visual novel.