The second god of war remake where you have to ride the absurdly slow yak thing and just endure the angrboda dialogue is one of the most egregious examples of this.
I also wish more games had dialogue skip like some graphic adventure games did.
Like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis had both skippable cutscenes and skippable dialogue as separate actions (period or spacebar for dialogue, escape for cutscenes, if I remember right).
Granted, I get that it's a little extra work for some games, but my gods do I wish it was an industry standard.
Toxic artist egotism. The audacity of the peasant viewer to to enjoy the work in their own way.
There's got to be at least one big game where the companion notes "oh, we're in a rush", then let the player character fail a hostage rescue because they didn't catch a helpful breakdown of the scenario. For that matter, most games don't have involved objectives like the first level of Dues Ex: HR, so the PC should have the option of just running ahead and skipping time.
I like cutscenes but that whole "slow walk" thing really is infuriating. I absolutely hate it.
The worst part is when you can't just take a bathroom break and return when the NPC reached its goal. They just stop and stare at you until you press walk.
Either let me play or make it an actual cutscene.
It's a lazy-ass way for exposition without having to animate or choreograph anything. If you want to cheap out make it a radio transmission or some other background voiceover.
After the PS2 era the industry finally realized that all games should have "skip cutscene" buttons and we were moving to having that option across the board.
Only for them to just remove the cutscenes and force us to watch them even more by making them "interactable." So now I'm forced to deal with it even more than before.
It's a big reason why I hated FF7R (which I pirated, and fucking glad I did so). It's a big reason I'd never consider playing a second run of Last of Us (even though I actually enjoyed the game, fuck its sequel). It's one of the many reasons I'd never pick up Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness (sorry Fiore, your godlike design alone can't sell a game).
Dying Light and the Dead Island games also did a lot of this shit to excess. Just remembered how long and annoying all of the sequences for radioing in with your handler in Dying Light was.
Also, can I just say that I have yet to see an escort mission in a modern game that I haven't outright hated? Which is doubly hilarious given how those were some of my favorite kind of missions in the X-Wing series. (Granted, I guess it's easier to make that less of a pain in the ass in open space)
you're supposed to stare in amazement at the animations playing in front of you. It's like the devs are going clockwork orange and going "APPRECIATE OUR WORK! APPRECIATE IT!"
That's mostly likely it. The gameplay hours thing makes less sense because you know they would still count the cutscenes even if they were skippable. No, it's because the devs don't want you to skip their beautiful handiwork. I think this is why we don't get complex branching storylines in most games either. What I appreciate is when there are entire sections of the game you can miss because you took a different path from somebody else. Now lots of players don't like that either, and that's one reason we don't get it often. But another is that it's not acceptable to most developers to put in work that players won't see.
Total number of fun hours - total number of bullshit filler hours.
Once you think of game length like that you realize most games are wasting you time. I’d rather play a 10 hour game that is all fun than a 20 hour game that has 15 hours of filler.
I straight up don’t play “cinematic” games anymore. The writing is trash in addition to being woke. I’m trying to play video games, not watch bad movies.
It can work when the devs and writers are actually down to Earth and understand you know, people.
But this isn't something you can reasonably expect from large corporate managed studios that have almost no real human creativity behind the helm and/or you have development teams that are just overrife with deranged narcissistic nutjobs who live in their own little bubble.with
I was talking with my cousin the other night why we liked games like Rocket Knight Adventures or Star Fox. We came to the shared conclusion that even though these games have moments that are set up to be very scripted and cinematic in nature, the player is still in complete control the whole time. It may be set up like a movie, but the player is the lead actor, and their improv and personal expression is what makes the scene.
These new games are movies where the player doesn't have any expression. Everything is curated and controlled to the point that everyone has the exact same experience. Nothing stands out because it's no longer personal. You didn't do anything to make the experience your own.
These new games are movies where the player doesn't have any expression. Everything is curated and controlled to the point that everyone has the exact same experience. Nothing stands out because it's no longer personal. You didn't do anything to make the experience your own.
That's precisely it. They strip you of any individual control -- your playthrough is identical to everyone else's playthrough. Any individual expression is muted through that carefully curated "interactive" experience.
It's why I stopped buying AAA games a while back. I did enjoy Death Stranding, though -- the first 10 hours fits into that carefully curated experience, but once the game starts opening up more I like how you can make use of so many different ways to play the game, and that I enjoyed a lot.
Just to clarify, I wasn't talking about cutscenes, but rather, I was talking about scripted auto-scrolling moments where the action is set up to play out the same way each time.
Oh, it is almost certainly a cookie cutter templated process, especially when they're churning out sequels.
Which I admit, I can understand from the production side of things when you have a small team, but it is unforgivably lazy when you have the kinds of resources that AAA studios have.
Well you mention "walking simulators" but as I'm sure you know that's a different thing. I can see why you'd hate those too, but any "good" walking simulator is either going to have no dialogue at all, or have monologues in the form of System Shock-esque audio logs. But I agree 100% that the forced "follow and listen to the NPC" gimmick is complete bullshit. Lurker404 said it better than I could. They usually don't even let you go faster than the NPC to get to the next objective. I'd call it one of the mortal sins of game design. There's never an excuse for it. We've had years of games showing us how you can do story telling and exposition in superior and interactive ways. I mean maybe it could be used to cover up a loading screen? But that's generally not the reason.
I recall that Ross Scott discussed how annoying this "feature" always is too in his review of Echo.
Most AAA games can be summed up as:
Linear path moving from point A to point B doing mundane and barely engaging tasks while pressing 'F' to do a thing for 8 - 12 hours.
The game's theme song, done a-capella here, plays over it--and because MGS gets so meta, I repeatedly called other characters on the radio expecting a comment about the music.
Nope.
Not one word.
And because I stopped to call so often...
The song ended long before I reached the top.
If you climb the ladder continuously, the song ends JUST as you reach the top.
I’m pretty sure that was put in as an intentional fuck you over complaints on cutscene length in MGS2, oh you want more gameplay? Here’s a fucking ladder 😂
MoveAI is about $100 a month and let's you use your phone to motion capture. Add in various AI programs and game engines, the indie teams can destroy the AAA when they realize what they have.
The second god of war remake where you have to ride the absurdly slow yak thing and just endure the angrboda dialogue is one of the most egregious examples of this.
This might explain the garbage QC these days. QCed by bots.
I also wish more games had dialogue skip like some graphic adventure games did.
Like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis had both skippable cutscenes and skippable dialogue as separate actions (period or spacebar for dialogue, escape for cutscenes, if I remember right).
Granted, I get that it's a little extra work for some games, but my gods do I wish it was an industry standard.
As much as the OP (and others) hated Cyberpunk, it at least had that going for it. You can fast-forward through almost any dialogue.
Toxic artist egotism. The audacity of the peasant viewer to to enjoy the work in their own way.
There's got to be at least one big game where the companion notes "oh, we're in a rush", then let the player character fail a hostage rescue because they didn't catch a helpful breakdown of the scenario. For that matter, most games don't have involved objectives like the first level of Dues Ex: HR, so the PC should have the option of just running ahead and skipping time.
Every time I read about pretentious artists I think about this.
https://youtu.be/XDxtjVKJ76A
I like cutscenes but that whole "slow walk" thing really is infuriating. I absolutely hate it.
The worst part is when you can't just take a bathroom break and return when the NPC reached its goal. They just stop and stare at you until you press walk.
Either let me play or make it an actual cutscene.
It's a lazy-ass way for exposition without having to animate or choreograph anything. If you want to cheap out make it a radio transmission or some other background voiceover.
After the PS2 era the industry finally realized that all games should have "skip cutscene" buttons and we were moving to having that option across the board.
Only for them to just remove the cutscenes and force us to watch them even more by making them "interactable." So now I'm forced to deal with it even more than before.
It's a big reason why I hated FF7R (which I pirated, and fucking glad I did so). It's a big reason I'd never consider playing a second run of Last of Us (even though I actually enjoyed the game, fuck its sequel). It's one of the many reasons I'd never pick up Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness (sorry Fiore, your godlike design alone can't sell a game).
Dying Light and the Dead Island games also did a lot of this shit to excess. Just remembered how long and annoying all of the sequences for radioing in with your handler in Dying Light was.
Also, can I just say that I have yet to see an escort mission in a modern game that I haven't outright hated? Which is doubly hilarious given how those were some of my favorite kind of missions in the X-Wing series. (Granted, I guess it's easier to make that less of a pain in the ass in open space)
That's mostly likely it. The gameplay hours thing makes less sense because you know they would still count the cutscenes even if they were skippable. No, it's because the devs don't want you to skip their beautiful handiwork. I think this is why we don't get complex branching storylines in most games either. What I appreciate is when there are entire sections of the game you can miss because you took a different path from somebody else. Now lots of players don't like that either, and that's one reason we don't get it often. But another is that it's not acceptable to most developers to put in work that players won't see.
As an adult I count game play hours as this:
Total number of fun hours - total number of bullshit filler hours.
Once you think of game length like that you realize most games are wasting you time. I’d rather play a 10 hour game that is all fun than a 20 hour game that has 15 hours of filler.
I straight up don’t play “cinematic” games anymore. The writing is trash in addition to being woke. I’m trying to play video games, not watch bad movies.
It can work when the devs and writers are actually down to Earth and understand you know, people.
But this isn't something you can reasonably expect from large corporate managed studios that have almost no real human creativity behind the helm and/or you have development teams that are just overrife with deranged narcissistic nutjobs who live in their own little bubble.with
I was talking with my cousin the other night why we liked games like Rocket Knight Adventures or Star Fox. We came to the shared conclusion that even though these games have moments that are set up to be very scripted and cinematic in nature, the player is still in complete control the whole time. It may be set up like a movie, but the player is the lead actor, and their improv and personal expression is what makes the scene.
These new games are movies where the player doesn't have any expression. Everything is curated and controlled to the point that everyone has the exact same experience. Nothing stands out because it's no longer personal. You didn't do anything to make the experience your own.
That's precisely it. They strip you of any individual control -- your playthrough is identical to everyone else's playthrough. Any individual expression is muted through that carefully curated "interactive" experience.
It's why I stopped buying AAA games a while back. I did enjoy Death Stranding, though -- the first 10 hours fits into that carefully curated experience, but once the game starts opening up more I like how you can make use of so many different ways to play the game, and that I enjoyed a lot.
Just to clarify, I wasn't talking about cutscenes, but rather, I was talking about scripted auto-scrolling moments where the action is set up to play out the same way each time.
Oh, it is almost certainly a cookie cutter templated process, especially when they're churning out sequels.
Which I admit, I can understand from the production side of things when you have a small team, but it is unforgivably lazy when you have the kinds of resources that AAA studios have.
Well you mention "walking simulators" but as I'm sure you know that's a different thing. I can see why you'd hate those too, but any "good" walking simulator is either going to have no dialogue at all, or have monologues in the form of System Shock-esque audio logs. But I agree 100% that the forced "follow and listen to the NPC" gimmick is complete bullshit. Lurker404 said it better than I could. They usually don't even let you go faster than the NPC to get to the next objective. I'd call it one of the mortal sins of game design. There's never an excuse for it. We've had years of games showing us how you can do story telling and exposition in superior and interactive ways. I mean maybe it could be used to cover up a loading screen? But that's generally not the reason.
I recall that Ross Scott discussed how annoying this "feature" always is too in his review of Echo.
Most AAA games can be summed up as: Linear path moving from point A to point B doing mundane and barely engaging tasks while pressing 'F' to do a thing for 8 - 12 hours.
Metal Gear Solid 3.
The looooong ladder climb.
The game's theme song, done a-capella here, plays over it--and because MGS gets so meta, I repeatedly called other characters on the radio expecting a comment about the music.
Nope.
Not one word.
And because I stopped to call so often...
The song ended long before I reached the top.
If you climb the ladder continuously, the song ends JUST as you reach the top.
It is solely meant to distract you.
But the series goes meta all the time.
You expect a comment.
You call everyone expecting one.
Nope.
Not one word.
So you climb.
Dead silence.
Booooooooooooriiiiiiiiiiiiing
I’m pretty sure that was put in as an intentional fuck you over complaints on cutscene length in MGS2, oh you want more gameplay? Here’s a fucking ladder 😂
And then MGS4 set the Guinness World Record for longest single cutscene length.
I forget the exact length, but it was over an hour.
Pretty sure that MGS4 was a movie with interactive mini games 😂
Huh, I had actually forgotten about that one because I found the music so enjoyable. But I can see how it would get annoying.
I know how it's supposed to go NOW, but my first time, that was my experience.
A Persian flaw in an otherwise fantastic game.
MoveAI is about $100 a month and let's you use your phone to motion capture. Add in various AI programs and game engines, the indie teams can destroy the AAA when they realize what they have.