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The 'Shroom:Issue LXI/Dippy's Matilda: Difference between revisions
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The goal is for gameplay and story to support and enrich – not oppose – one another, and it's hard for them to back each other up when they're separated by a thick wall. Contradictions have always been one of the most blatantly harmful results of relying on cutscenes to tell the story; we've all seen it before, a character has been killed or near-mortally wounded by a bullet in a cutscene when they've been soaking them up in the actual gameplay, or the characters are displaying acrobatics and skills that you're never actually able to use in the game itself. Games like ''Metal Gear Solid'', ''Final Fantasy'', ''Devil May Cry'', and now ''Asura's Wrath'' are representative of these sorts of discrepancies. Huh… a lot of these games are Japanese, aren't they? But uhh, these inconsistencies will usually break immersion for most, or at the very least disappoint the player since the developers have squandered potentially good gameplay mechanics in favour of gaudy pre-rendered presentation. | The goal is for gameplay and story to support and enrich – not oppose – one another, and it's hard for them to back each other up when they're separated by a thick wall. Contradictions have always been one of the most blatantly harmful results of relying on cutscenes to tell the story; we've all seen it before, a character has been killed or near-mortally wounded by a bullet in a cutscene when they've been soaking them up in the actual gameplay, or the characters are displaying acrobatics and skills that you're never actually able to use in the game itself. Games like ''Metal Gear Solid'', ''Final Fantasy'', ''Devil May Cry'', and now ''Asura's Wrath'' are representative of these sorts of discrepancies. Huh… a lot of these games are Japanese, aren't they? But uhh, these inconsistencies will usually break immersion for most, or at the very least disappoint the player since the developers have squandered potentially good gameplay mechanics in favour of gaudy pre-rendered presentation. | ||
[[Image:Cutscenes_image2.jpg|thumb|right|''Half-Life'' was one of the first story-focussed games to severely limit the emphasis on cutscenes, which has carried over into virtually all of Valve's games.]] | [[Image:Cutscenes_image2.jpg|thumb|right|''Half-Life'' was one of the first story-focussed games to severely limit the emphasis on cutscenes, which has carried over into virtually all of Valve's games.]] | ||
Expanding on my hypothesis earlier, I'm sure many people like cutscenes because they give the game a cinematic tone, but there is a significant difference between ''feeling'' like a movie and ''being'' like a movie. The former is just an aesthetic choice that can add a lot to the atmosphere of a game provided it's still within the interactive confines of actual gameplay – see Left 4 Dead'' or ''Prince of Persia: Sands of Time'' for examples – while the latter is applying strict storytelling rules from a non-interactive medium to an interactive one which has different rules for presenting narrative. Some people are going as far as to label them “movie games”, a title I find incredibly disturbing since people should not be playing games to watch movies; films will always be better at being films than games will ever be, and the desire to see games replicate movies would be like someone going to the movie theatre to see text scroll by as if it were a book. As I keep pushing, games are about outstanding gameplay experiences, not cinematic experiences; the story should be core to the game, not the cutscenes. Maybe there's some insecurity present here, that perhaps replicating a long-standing and accepted medium will get video games the same sort of respect; but certainly the goal of video games as a serious medium and especially as an art form is to establish their own identity and gain approval on those merits. There is plenty we can learn from other mediums, and plenty they can learn from us, but that doesn't mean copying; that means analysing what they do to approach narrative and artistic expression, and working out how to apply those methods to the far more interactive gaming medium. | Expanding on my hypothesis earlier, I'm sure many people like cutscenes because they give the game a cinematic tone, but there is a significant difference between ''feeling'' like a movie and ''being'' like a movie. The former is just an aesthetic choice that can add a lot to the atmosphere of a game provided it's still within the interactive confines of actual gameplay – see ''Left 4 Dead'' or ''Prince of Persia: Sands of Time'' for examples – while the latter is applying strict storytelling rules from a non-interactive medium to an interactive one which has different rules for presenting narrative. Some people are going as far as to label them “movie games”, a title I find incredibly disturbing since people should not be playing games to watch movies; films will always be better at being films than games will ever be, and the desire to see games replicate movies would be like someone going to the movie theatre to see text scroll by as if it were a book. As I keep pushing, games are about outstanding gameplay experiences, not cinematic experiences; the story should be core to the game, not the cutscenes. Maybe there's some insecurity present here, that perhaps replicating a long-standing and accepted medium will get video games the same sort of respect; but certainly the goal of video games as a serious medium and especially as an art form is to establish their own identity and gain approval on those merits. There is plenty we can learn from other mediums, and plenty they can learn from us, but that doesn't mean copying; that means analysing what they do to approach narrative and artistic expression, and working out how to apply those methods to the far more interactive gaming medium. | ||
{{llquote|But remember, cutscenes aren't there to deliver narrative. They're better used for creating context, and if they're not doing that, well they may be more trouble than they're worth.|[http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/cutscenes Daniel Floyd], narrator and editor of ''Extra Credits''}} | {{llquote|But remember, cutscenes aren't there to deliver narrative. They're better used for creating context, and if they're not doing that, well they may be more trouble than they're worth.|[http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/cutscenes Daniel Floyd], narrator and editor of ''Extra Credits''}} | ||