*THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT Hardcore Casual Gamer*
In my time spent playing video games consistently over the course of the last 15 years, I have gone through more than a few changes in terms of what I love and what I hate. As a child, I was generally content to engage in the simple pleasures of Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt, occasionally dipping into the more involved experiences of Metroid and Earthbound. A little older, just before and barely into my teen years, I preferred playing Party-Style games like Super Smash Bros, Pokemon Stadium, and Mario Kart/Party/Tennis, as they gave me an excuse to invite friends over. Middle and late teens arrived to find me seeking out deeper narrative experiences, looking to Resident Evil, Tales of Symphonia, and Skies of Arcadia while returning to classics like The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Metroid. As an adult, I’m finding my proclivities turning to games that focus on artistic presentation and innovative approaches to standard gaming conventions, such as Child of Light, The Fall, The Swapper, Teslagrad, etc. It’s been a wild and ever-changing ride through the digital medium, and I don’t know much my previous selves would identify with the gamer I am today.
I have recently come to another conclusion that defines what I look for in gaming; having just completed Bayonetta on the Wii U, I have decided that I do NOT like the modern use of cutscenes.
I have nothing against cinematic storytelling and complex narratives, but I have developed a disdain for anything that keeps me from playing the game for longer than five minutes. In days gone by, cutscenes generally served to advance plot point and develop characters as they do today, but they were done in ways that usually kept things within the confines of in-game dialogue, before the cinematics of Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII started to become the norm. As a youngster, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask captivated me with their cutscenes, and I was more than happy to sit back and watch the story unfold in a hands-off manner. Even as a teen, the cutscenes featured in RPGs like Symphonia and Skies of Arcadia were a pleasant treat, as I was completely engrossed in the narrative.
It wasn’t until my later teens/early 20’s that I started to grow tired of cut-away cinematics that put the gameplay on hold. I first noticed during co-occurring playthroughs of Devil May Cry 3 (thanks to my college roommate’s PS2) and Super Paper Mario. DMC3 was a blast to play…when I got to play it. I frequently found myself sighing in exasperation watching Dante pull off feats of impossible acrobatics while cutting down demons or driving motorcycles up buildings…while I, the player, sat back and watched. The dialogue during these segments also grated on me, consisting mostly of one-liners and melodramatic story progression between characters I didn’t particularly care about. All I really wanted to do was get back to eviscerating bad guys with all manner of devilish weaponry, and instead I was watching Dante and Virgil talk about the size of their dcks with stupid sht-eating grins on their faces. In Super Paper Mario, the cutscenes were not as overblown and cinematic, but they were equally annoying to me. The dialogue, while occasionally chuckle-worthy, seemed to go ON AND ON. I realized then (as I do now) that part of the Paper Mario charm is in the clever dialogue, but for some reason the magic had worn off and I found myself quite exhausted by the time the credits started to roll. Still, at that point in my life, the presence of the cutscenes didn’t do much to detract from the overall experience I had with both games; I considered them both to be stand-out entries within their respective genres, and still do.
Where cinematics in gaming really started to fall out of favor with me was between the years of 2010 and 2013. On the handheld front, I was eager to get lost in another RPG like Symphonia, so I purchased Tales of the Abyss. Unfortunately, the characters were not particularly interesting, and while the plot wasn’t bad (even solid), the cutscenes plodded on and on as one talking head after another recalled a snooze-fest backstory or complained about how hard their lives were. I barely finished the game, and the entire time was spent wincing through painful cutscene after cutscene. The same sentiments can be repeated during my time with Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance and Bravely Default (even Fire Emblem: Awakening, which I gave my 2013 GOTY award to). It seems that my love for RPGs has begun to wane…I even tried to go back and replay games like Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, Tales of Symphonia and Xenoblade Chronicles (another game I’ve called my GOTY). Most of them never saw a completed replay, thanks to…once again…my inability to stomach the long cutscenes present therein.
Bayonetta cemented my newfound odium towards cutscenes. Anytime I wandered into a new area, I felt twinges of anxiety nip at the back of my head. Not because I feared the enemies; because I feared the cutscenes. Every bloated stream of mundane conversation juxtaposed against close-up shots of Bayonetta’s spread legs and slow-mo bullets made my thumb hover over the ‘Start Button,’ desperate to ‘Skip Cutscene.’ Unfortunately, my pride prevents me from skipping cutscenes, on the off-chance that I might miss an interesting plot point. Additionally, it doesn’t seem too fair to pass judgment on a game that you’ve skipped through…and I really, really like judging.
So what happened? I suppose the easy answer is that I grew older. I’m almost certain my 15 year old self would have had very few complaints about the lengthy cutscenes in Bayonetta or Devil May Cry. Looking back, there isn’t much difference in the cinematic presentation of Tales of Symphonia and Tales of the Abyss nor the thematic elements, yet my teenage self loved Symphonia while my adult self loathed Abyss. It’s a tired notion, but growing up means having responsibilities; I no longer have as much time in my day to devote to engrossing stories and extended cutscenes. I’m married, have a full-time job, a baby girl…all of which I’m more inclined to devote my time to. When I do get the rare opportunity to sit down and spend an hour or two to play video games each day, I want to squeeze as much GAMING in as I can. I can’t call 40-minutes of watching a cutscene ‘gaming’ and I certainly don’t want to spend the precious few minutes I have to spend with video games listening to two characters flirt with each other or whine about how painful their past is for 10 minutes.
More and more, I find myself attracted to games that highlight gameplay over story. I’ve spent more time playing games like Super Mario 3D World, Rayman Legends, Super Smash Bros 3Ds, and Steamworld Dig than any RPG since Xenoblade Chronicles consumed my life in 2012. When I do enjoy a strong, complex narrative, it’s without the fluff of pre-rendered cutscenes. Child of Light, The Fall, Stick it to the Man!, and The Cave all have fantastic tales to tell, yet they do so with in-game scenes and dialogue cut-aways that last fewer than 5 minutes. Teslagrad features no dialogue at all, yet tells a heartbreaking tale of betrayal and redemption.
There are two games in recent memory that featured cutscenes I was able to stomach: Shin Megami Tensei IV and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Both games featured subject matter I was very interested in, but beside that, the cutscenes required the player’s interaction. Choices had to be made, and Deus Ex in particular puts players in the position of influencing the outcome of encounters (talking down a terrorist, manipulating your boss to reveal information, etc). The cutscenes weren’t simply two or three characters seemingly shooting the breeze, which is what Bayonetta’s cutscenes seemed to consist of. But apart from those two, I’m hard-pressed to give an example of a recent cinema-heavy game that I really enjoyed.
Yes, Enzo, this cutscene is STILL going on…
Maybe in time I will come to appreciate cinematic storytelling in video games…it doesn’t seem unreasonable considering how my preferences have changed since the beginning of my video game playing career. Time will tell…