Endless Cutscenes

Cutscenes are a common sight in games and have been since the 80s, they can give the players a deeper feel for the story and impart important information, but they are often found as a nuisance by players. We are so used to having cutscenes forcing us to take a break from playing the game that it is often strange to play a game that tries something new without cutscenes.

I originally started thinking about cutscenes after I tried to play Eternal Sonata, as I am not a big fan of the particular style of rpg I was a bit sceptical that I would like any of it but the story was interesting and the fighting was fun. The main reason it is now gathering dust on my shelf is the cutscenes, they are beautiful cutscenes that educate the player on the life of Chopin but I found that they were too long for what they were trying to tell me. 

Eternal Sonata is an extreme case but it made me think about how much time games spend showing me cutscenes instead of letting me experience the narrative and made me ask myself how much I actually pay attention to them. 

Cutscenes feel like they are needed in games they are a quick way of holding down the player and telling them important information but they are also counterintuitive to the interactive idea of video games. Cutscenes can be very powerful if the player is invested in the game they are playing they may not mind that control has been taken away from them, I found Mass Effect did this particularly well. Despite this I feel all too often that I don't pay attention to cutscenes, it has become ingrained in me that it means break time, a time where I can put the controller down and check my emails etc. This is not how a game should be played, the concept of putting down the controller and still be "playing" is not the interactivity asked from a game. 

To counteract the lack of control in cutscenes quick time events can be introduced, these kind of events are often disliked as they can be seen as being lazy or only added to placate the players on the amount of cutscenes. To a certain extent I agree, games can be there to challenge players and quick time events are not really challenging, despite this I find them often fun and means that the character who I'm identifying myself as can do something that as a player it's possible I could never make the character do. 

Assassins Creed tries a different approach to cutscenes, throughout the game you may need to learn more about a situation or receive orders/objectives. Instead of a cutscene they will let you retain full control of the character but you must follow an NPC or be required to stay in one particular spot otherwise you are desynchronised and must do it again. This way gives you the impression that you are still in control even though you are being forced to pay attention similar to the cutscenes.

Personally I think cutscenes are not necessarily essential as proven by games such as Half-Life but I think I would miss them. It might be that the ability to pay attention to them is a problem that I have and my gaming experience would be all the better for watching them.