So many games run into the problem where they stop the game and show you what happens next. It's like you're playing a game and then things switch to a movie for a bit and then back to a game. That would never fly in any other form of storytelling. If your movie stopped at points and just printed a wall of text on the screen it would be a mess. Movies have to remain as movies the whole time. They can't turn into a book at certain intervals. But that's kind of what videogames sometimes do especially titles like Metal Gear Solid 4. They stop at points and turn into something else as if this is the only way to tell a story.
Uh, the scans stopped you from playing the game and revealed plot through text. So, instead of watching a cutscene, players looked at words. Sorry, dude, that's the same thing except I'd rather be watching a cutscene. If I wanted to read, I'd pick up a novel and I do... WHEN I FEEL LIKE READING.
I've been pretty vocal about my opinion on cutscenes. They're just too long and there are too many of them. You can get the same effect or better without all the BS. Sometimes less is more. When I sit down to play a videogame, I want to play, but given the choice, in a videogame, between reading text and watching a cutscene, I choose the latter. Videogames, like movies, are a visual medium. I don't want to read that something exploded, I want to see it.
The unique feature of videogames is that you the audience is controlling the action. You directly experience what is going on. Cutscene heavy games look at this more of a limitation. They can't decide what they want to express if you're driving the car so they take over. Metroid Prime embraces the direct experience of a videogame and uses it to its advantage. You can view the scans or not as only some are mandatory. You can scan them your first time in an area or later, during a fire fight or after you've cleared the enemies out. It's like how it real life if you were discovering something written on a wall. You really read it, the reaction is your reaction and you choose whether to read it or not. Metroid Prime remains a game for almost its entirety. It's not some wannabe movie.
But a wannabe novel instead? Part of what you're describing is QTE and QTE is f*cking terrible. I'd rather just have a shorter cutscene than have to deal with that bullsh*t. Part of the problem is that there's no real way to make exposition engaging. They don't even do that in movies. So, how do you make that interactive? 20-25 years ago games skipped exposition almost entirely. You beat a boss in a desert and suddenly you're in a grassy plain or in the sky or on a mountain. How did you even get there and why were you there? Why are ninjas attacking now instead of robots or street thugs? No one questioned it. If we cared about plot back then as much as we do today, the proper response to that would be "What is this? I don't even....."
An option to skip cutscenes then go watch them whenever you want basically does what you're suggesting. You can watch them or not; watch them later should you so choose. I think Eternal Darkness let you do that. Correct me if I'm wrong as it has been a while, but I believe you could watch any cutscene from any completed level. More games should have this as an option and they should have video playback controls (i.e. fast-foward, rewind, slow etc.).
Topic: "Official" Metroid Prime Trilogy discussion thread ;) (Read 90314 times)
