Do you like cutscenes in games?

I was wondering how all you guys felt about cutscenes in games. Over the years they seem to be getting not just longer but more frequently as well. Some games it feels like your watching more then playing. almost interrupting the game.

what is your opinion on cutscenes in general?

 

Depends how often and long they are, and whether they are skippable. I like the Crysis cutscenes. They're short, skippable, and the story sucks anyways but that's not why most of us play it xD

 

Only if it adds some depth, or something else meaningful....(won't give examples as we all have our own tastes/preferences)

 

Yes.
I like movies.

 

If they're perfect like Metal Gear Solid 4

Otherwise, if cutscenes will detract from immersion I rather not (i.e. an FPS game that reverts to third person cutscenes, not good, same goes for third person games).

 

There used to be a behavioral reinforcement to cut-scenes where you were happy to see them as a reward for your hard "work" lol completing a level. Now, it seems like they throw them in anywhere and the cut-scenes are often an unwanted distraction.

 

this is how I feel also. You used to see them as a reward or a introduction to a boss character, now its like they have them all the time.

 

or like Modern warfare 2...

 

If I am really into the game and the story line, like for example CoD MW2, then yes, definitely.

If I am not so much in a game, then not really.

 

Yeah cutscenes IMO are most useful for storyline, but if a game fails to bring such a storyline into light, a cutscene won't really be the most useful IMO.

I like cutscenes which carry depth about storyline without being too extensive(more than 5 minutes is getting long). I also like the idea of them being skipable and if possible, them being "unlocked" in a sort of cutscene bank you can access later if you want to re-view them or if you skipped one by accident or something.

 

I like cutscenes as it tries to plot stories.

 

Maybe it's me but the days of long and involved cutscenes for games are long past with most games content to focus more on core gameplay rather than flesh out a plot (whatever it is).

C&C series with its nice lengthy briefing cutscenes always struck me as an archetypal example of long game cutscenes.

 

C&C, Starcraft, and Diablo II I think set the bar for cutscene quality that all major games ought to look up to, yet each of them worked in a different way.

C&C was cheesy as hell, but in a "so-bad-it's-good" kind of way.

Starcraft had humorous ones, but also story-centered ones, and they helped set the mood for the otherwise graphically lifeless game.

Diablo II just had good action, and that's about it - the story sucked anyway - but they helped to draw you into the game better than its modest 2d graphics could.

Since those titles? Not much has really stood out to me. Cutscenes that run in the same environment as the game are often obnoxious (i.e., the in-game cutscenes in WC3) because the graphics become distracting when it stops being a game and tries to be a movie - the Starcraft briefing rooms, with very limited graphical effects, conveyed emotions, actions, and conversations much better than most in-game cutscenes. On the other hand, if the graphics aren't distracting (as in e.g. Crysis), then it can work.

Cutscenes can entertain in ways the game itself can't. But just like anything else, they can add to the experience or they can just get in the way.

And there is NO excuse for unskippable cutscenes.

For MST3K-style mocking of cutscenes, check out the video series Unskippable over at www.escapistmagazine.com. Worth a watch.

--Edit:

Just remembered a game with fantastic in-game cutscenes: Bioshock. There's nothing like that into scene - I felt like I was actually in danger of drowning or getting hit by debris at the beginning, and then taking the plunge with the bathysphere, seeing the city for the first time after watching the cheesy propaganda flick, with the dramatic music booming, and a bit of frantic radio chatter in the background regarding your former plane - I loved every bit of it.

 

Cutscenes in Mass Effect were ANNOYING

 

Do you like cutscenes in games?

Only if there's hot chics and explosions involved.

 

I like cutscenes if they're skippable.

 

To touch on a couple of games mentioned so far, Metal Gear Solid 4 is half-game, half-movie. I really liked it though because the plot was intricate and engrossing. Many of the characters in the game drew emotions out of the audience better than many movies do. It might be my favorite video game experience, and when it does that good of a job, the long pauses between gameplay don't bother me at all and are enjoyable in terms of being able to take a break.

Diablo II's cutscenes were completely lacking in emotion, but that's because you're just there to clean up the mess that Marius made (I'm amazed I remember his name). The gameplay, addictive as it was, actually hurts plot development. The game is a click-fest. There are a lot of people who played Diablo II that have done Baal runs until the break of dawn, but couldn't tell you the nicknames of the prime evils. The game experience is completely separate from the plot and watching the cutscenes on YouTube now as I type, I realize remember I don't really remember the cutscenes from the middle acts at all.

The Half-Life series is interesting, and I mention it because Half-Life 2 is probably still my favorite FPS. It doesn't have cutscenes; it has combat breaks. You can't avoid them, but they deliver the plot. I like them as a tool to keep you active throughout the game and they really emphasize Gordon Freeman's importance to the Half-Life universe, but you can't really ever just sit back and watch and you don't ever see what happens outside of Gordon's point of view.

I guess the bottom line is that I like a game where the plot and gameplay are both good and nicely woven together, whether that be with or without cutscenes. I had an easier time putting down Call of Duty 2 when I got stuck than I did with Metal Gear Solid 4 and Half-Life 2. I also never finished Return to Castle Wolfenstein on two separate occasions due to game crashes—once in 2002 and once about two months ago—and I haven't felt inclined to find a way to continue the game either time. RTCW had very good gameplay, but the plot development and cutscenes lacked depth. The game just felt cold.

 

Short and sweet cutscenes in between 'chapters' are nice. I don't enjoy long winded ones that you can't skip, whether or not it has story to it. A good game has cutscenes that move the story forward a lot, where the gameplay cannot project much story much further.

Although Final Fantasy had nice pretty cutscenes sometimes, would be a mild exception ;D

 

Of course the cutscenes need to be properly made for the game by providing a rest period for the player as well as reinforcing the story/plot/characters. There are multiple ways of employing this, from the FMV extravaganzas of the Final Fantasy series, the very long movie like MGS, or the very immersive 1st person viewpoint that HL2 made a standard of FPSs these days.

Yes I like cutscenes, especially if I really like the story of a game.

 

Anyone played Xenogears for the PSX? The intro itself was an hour... the sheer horror!

 

Re: HL2 cutscenes:

I have somewhat mixed feelings about them. I really liked the concept of being able to walk around, look wherever you wanted, do whatever, but still have characters looking at you and trying to act natural. And I think it worked, mostly.

But I could never shake the image in my head of some ritalin-popping attention-deficit teenager running and jumping around during the cutscenes, corpse-humping the still-alive characters in the cutscene, and just generally dicking around. I don't know why, but the thought that that's how other players probably act during those scenes kinda bothered me.

Then suddenly I'd realize I'd been distracted with these thoughts, and I'd look at the characters in the cutscene, and I'd realize I was standing in a really awkward spot and not looking at them while they were talking to me, and I'd start to feel all socially awkward. I don't think it's good to be feeling socially awkward around preprogrammed virtual robots, though I suppose it says something about the realistic characters those robots portray.

It also eventually starts to bother me that the characters only respond vaguely to my actions. At some point they inevitably take a dive into the deep end of the uncanny valley.

Still, I'd love to see other games make an attempt at the style. It could be a really neat effect (and I'm still of the mind that it worked in HL2, most of the time).

 

starcraft had awesome graphics when it came out.

 

Sort of. They give me a breather in between levels/campaigns.

 

Compared to what?

Graphically, it was just Warcraft in space.

It came out in 1998. Quake II already came out in late '97, and Half Life would come out later in the year. Dune 2000 also came out in '98, and its graphics were probably on par with Starcraft's.

I stand by my claim that it was graphically lifeless, and that the cutscenes were necessary (and sufficient) to offset this weakness.

 

compared to other rts games.

 

Xenogears is only my favorite story in any videogame ever made

LOL But I understand, the cutscenes are long as hell, and unless you get into the story, the cutscenes are a pain to deal with.

 

3 pages already and there's been no mention yet of Max Payne?! That stands out to me, if only because it's been the best game yet to capture the neo-noir style

 

Yes, as long as they are entertaining.

 

MW2 = u lose control and your character dies

 

I disagree. It's exactly the opposite, for me. Cutscenes that are not in-game are obnoxious and distracting and pull you out of the atmosphere by usually looking COMPLETELY different from the game itself (IE: pre-rendered CGI cutscenes in file vs rendering the cutscene in-engine, I'm looking at you resident evil though you mostly fixed it in RE4 and 5). It's immersion breaking and bad design, imo.

 

the cutscenes in dead space really put me in the game. I have to say that really added to the atmosphere