Cut-Scenes: Not So Evil After All?
I finally understand. I thought I was just going crazy.

I have been pretty vocal in the past about my resentment towards cut-scenes - particularly those long, drawn-out introductory videos which provide you with a two-hundred years of back history before you get to play the game. Final Fantasy XII almost didn't get played at all after their long-winded opening, complete with most of the characters from the intro sequences dying or disappearing before you even start playing with the "real" main character.

I've even gone so far as to explain in great detail how the needs of good storytelling are contradictory to the needs of good gameplay. Cut-scenes, in particular, are the enemy of interactivity, and interactivity is the heart and soul of gaming, I protest!

Yet for all my complaints, I find many of my favorite games are pretty heavy with scenes of limited interactivity: cut-scenes.

Persona 3 FES, which has had me hooked the last couple of weeks, has me playing long stretches at times where the bulk of my interaction consists of choosing where to spend the next five-minute sequence and figuring out where I can actually save my game next in case it railroads me into the next full moon boss battle.

Final Fantasy VII, where most of the time that players spent NOT fighting weird random encounters was watching spiky-haired abstract big-headed characters emote by quivering with an outstretched fist.

Moving away from jRPGs, we had the Wing Commander series, where the movie from the fourth installment was far superior to the actual made-for-the-big-screen movie. But even in the first game, I found myself looking forward to returning to the bar to get into a conversation with fellow pilots and good ol' Shotglass. F.E.A.R., one of my favorite first person shooters, was constantly pulling me out of the game to watch little movies and flashbacks.

Some games have me loving the cut scenes. Others left me cold. Others, like Bioware's Mass Effect, bat around .500.

Apparently, there's a very specific difference between a good cut-scene and a bad cut-scene - and it's all about whether or not is about exposition or emotional connection, according to an analysis sponsored by GamaSutra and Game Developer Magazine.

Gamasutra: FPS Cutscenes Should 'Engage And Connect,' Not Deliver Info

The study was focused on first-person shooters, but I think this applies equally well to virtually any genre of game.

Sitting through a history lesson or pilot briefing is simply not much fun, even with cool animations 'n stuff. But throw in a member of the opposite sex, some romantic tension, the discovery that the arch-villain is actually the main character's father (or, in the case of F.E.A.R., his mother...) - whatever - and it actually compliments the gameplay very well and heightens the player's enjoyment.

Or as Leigh Alexander frequently opines, this time in her defense of Persona 4, which I have not played and am swearing NOT to play until I have finished playing the previous game, particularly because I know I'll love it, the game's storytelling invites the player to invest him or herself emotionally in the context of the game. Once you do that, the player is telling himself the story as much as the game is.

On the other hand, exposition - things that actually help the player understand what is happening in the game and what he is supposed to be doing - is best embedded within the interactivity. This is something educators already know - lecturing isn't half as effective for most students as actual hands-on learning by doing. Yet we are only just now waking up to it as game designers.

So maybe I'm not going to have to turn in my gamer membership card quite yet for daring to admit I enjoy some cut-scenes in games. I still feel that the needs of good storytelling run counter to the needs of good gameplay, but I also still feel there's an appropriate balance where the result may greater than the sum of the two parts. We just need to learn how to make non-interactive or limited-interactivity cut-scenes more compelling, engaging, and emotionally-connecting.

And while we're at it, not as long, too, especially during the intro? Thx!

Labels: Game Design

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:00 AM (Permalink)