Gameplay elements, evolution, and enjoyment not for everyone? [2019+] *spawn*

The golden days of pure experimental gameplay titles are more or less over (PS2 ending/ PC time) and we're into these narrative titles.

True, it's what makes for the most sales and best marketing. When playing the order for the first time at launch i had that feeling, this is where we are heading.

And gameplay, honestly, could be pretty secondary for a lot of people today.

True, dunno the numbers for other platforms, but in one of shifty's posts it shows that about 10% of the PS4 owners atleast like it (10m copies sold/100m user base).

pros and cons. I think we should appreciate the new modern style, but I think we should also recognize that some players are just looking to master video gameplay mechanics; speed run etc. There is variety in modern narrative games, but it's a fraction of what it used to be as far as I can see. Anyone can boot up an older classic title and see the difference in game design. Something as simple as System Shock 2 or Diablo. Or comparing narrative titles; looking at Sierra titles or LucasArts Monkey Island ones; or the excellent space sims like X-Wing and Tie Fighter, Descent Freespace etc.

Older titles were designed to be lean. Everything felt like it had a purpose.

Thank you for explaining this, with your whole post. Can't explain it like that myself, when i try i get all the sony people over me. Mainly play MP games but when i do SP it are mostly Sony exclusives, besides i don't have the patience to play SP more then that.

https://segmentnext.com/2018/04/24/god-of-war-speedruns-are-hours-long-with-cutscenes/

''As you know it’s full of monsters, bosses, mysteries, and cutscenes. But most of the time is taken up by cutscenes.''

No idea if he's lying or not, played 3/4 hours into the game myself and it i got the idea there was quite much of watching. And when you play, the cinematic approach of things is liked by many but not all do.
The game is said to be about 17hours long, how many of those are cutscenes then?

https://games.slashdot.org/story/06/02/02/172213/god-of-war-creator-hates-cutscenes

That must be a joke, dated 2006.
 
all humans appreciate a good story
Geuss everybody agrees with this, but still there is this complaint against cutscens / scripted or missing gameplay coming from many people since decades.

So we need to ask what's wrong with it? To me the answer is quite simple:
Games are interactive, movies are not.
We want to tell stories, so we need characters. The only way to show believable characters is static animation and capturing real life actors. Realistic graphics only amplify this.
So the more focus on story / characters, the less the game appears as believable interactive reality where the player is free to be creative and do what he wants. Even if we want to create a linear experience (just one story), players feel restricted which is always bad in any case.

How can we do better? Here it becomes difficult.
1. Replace animation with simulation or procedural animation. (Examples: Natural Motion, Boston Dynamics, recent ML research) It's hard, but costs would reduce a lot, and more important: Abilities of game characters could increase dramatically. (Imagine walking, running, dancing, sports, operating tools etc., all without a need for having animation handy. This would create truely new kinds of games i guess.)
2. Replace recorded languge and written text with speech synthesis, chatbots (https://www.pandorabots.com/mitsuku/ as a good example), procedural stories? (I really doubt this myself. Ofc. for MP real people could take this part. I guess until we have solved point 1 SP might be dead anyways.)

I know many game devs disagree with me here - they say this goes too far, and animation / scripts is exactly this smoke and mirrors that makes a game.
It's just, for me this is no fun. I want a virtual world that obeys some laws of physics, feels functional and interactive even (or most importantly) in ways the game does not intend or require. Minecraft would be a good example, even with its simplicity.
Cutscenes, recorded real life actors would be still possible and welcome - i do not say those things are bad, they are just not enough to move the medium forward in utilizing it's unique property which is interactivity.

(I hope i can finish this lighting crap before i die so i can continue to work on 1. :D )
 
''As you know it’s full of monsters, bosses, mysteries, and cutscenes. But most of the time is taken up by cutscenes.''

No idea if he's lying or not, played 3/4 hours into the game myself and it i got the idea there was quite much of watching. And when you play, the cinematic approach of things is liked by many but not all do.
The game is said to be about 17hours long, how many of those are cutscenes then?
I cant seem to recall that most of my time was taken by cutscenes in the game. It manages very well to make the cinematic experience as non-intrusive as possible. The beginning of the game maybe has a little bit more since it is the introduction and wants to set up the context.
 
True, it's what makes for the most sales and best marketing. When playing the order for the first time at launch i had that feeling, this is where we are heading.



True, dunno the numbers for other platforms, but in one of shifty's posts it shows that about 10% of the PS4 owners atleast like it (10m copies sold/100m user base).



Thank you for explaining this, with your whole post. Can't explain it like that myself, when i try i get all the sony people over me. Mainly play MP games but when i do SP it are mostly Sony exclusives, besides i don't have the patience to play SP more then that.

https://segmentnext.com/2018/04/24/god-of-war-speedruns-are-hours-long-with-cutscenes/

''As you know it’s full of monsters, bosses, mysteries, and cutscenes. But most of the time is taken up by cutscenes.''

No idea if he's lying or not, played 3/4 hours into the game myself and it i got the idea there was quite much of watching. And when you play, the cinematic approach of things is liked by many but not all do.
The game is said to be about 17hours long, how many of those are cutscenes then?

https://games.slashdot.org/story/06/02/02/172213/god-of-war-creator-hates-cutscenes

That must be a joke, dated 2006.
I already told you. You played a very small part of the game, your opinion about the game is wrong and you shouldn't talk about it like if you knew the whole game (particularly here).
 
a game with 30h of gameplay + 10h of cinematics is not less of a game as another game with 20h of gameplay and no cinematic.

It all depends on the person.

  • Some people prefer gameplay with little to no cinematics and get extremely frustrated if they can't immediate skip cinematics as soon as they appear on screen. If they can't skip the cinematics then they don't really think of it as a game.
  • Some people hate games that feature a lot of dialog and get really pissed off if they can't immediately skip the dialog as soon as it starts.
  • Some people prefer lengthy dialog and exposition regardless of whether there is significant gameplay attached to it.
  • Some people prefer the story and would rather not do any of the gameplay (Nier: Automata is a great example of a lot of people enabling auto-combat so they can just experience the story).
  • Some people consider pointing and clicking on various object on the screen as gameplay while others don't.
  • Some people consider making a choice every few minutes in a Visual Novel a game, some don't.
  • Etc, etc.

It's why GoW (2016) hasn't sold 50+ million copies. Not everyone thinks it's a game that is nearly as good as other games that they play.

If everyone had the same tastes in games then you would have games that sell to nearly 100% of the userbase of any given gaming device. That doesn't happen though.

I always find it bizarre when discussions like this come up as it can be highly subjective.

Regards,
SB
 
There is a trend towards expository gameplay, which I'd define as sections of the game where you hold the control stick or periodically press buttons while listening to the characters talk, without any real meaningful interaction or game systems. For example, you're walking through a cave so you can enjoy the scenery, but you cannot pass/fail, live/die, earn points etc. The point of the segment is just to allow the characters time to talk to each other, monologue or reveal the locale. More and more time in games is spent in this type of "gameplay." I do enjoy it some times, but in short linear games it is diminishing the time spent interacting or "gaming." It offers you the illusion of gameplay, but usually these segments could be replaced with cut-scenes and there would essentially be no difference.

Other games bombard you with mini-cutscenes (Tomb Raider, Uncharted) that last maybe five to ten seconds to show you the most exciting scripted action that removes the control from your hands. I'd view this trend as negative, but it is obviously enjoyed my many people and I don't have a huge issue with it as long as it's done in moderation.

Then you have Kojima making 1+ hour cut-scenes and I'd rather cut off my own head than watch them.
 
It all depends on the person.

  • Some people prefer gameplay with little to no cinematics and get extremely frustrated if they can't immediate skip cinematics as soon as they appear on screen. If they can't skip the cinematics then they don't really think of it as a game.
  • Some people hate games that feature a lot of dialog and get really pissed off if they can't immediately skip the dialog as soon as it starts.
  • Some people prefer lengthy dialog and exposition regardless of whether there is significant gameplay attached to it.
  • Some people prefer the story and would rather not do any of the gameplay (Nier: Automata is a great example of a lot of people enabling auto-combat so they can just experience the story).
  • Some people consider pointing and clicking on various object on the screen as gameplay while others don't.
  • Some people consider making a choice every few minutes in a Visual Novel a game, some don't.
  • Etc, etc.

It's why GoW (2016) hasn't sold 50+ million copies. Not everyone thinks it's a game that is nearly as good as other games that they play.

If everyone had the same tastes in games then you would have games that sell to nearly 100% of the userbase of any given gaming device. That doesn't happen though.

I always find it bizarre when discussions like this come up as it can be highly subjective.

Regards,
SB

I'im not saying People cannot dislike à game with lots of cutscenes. But they cannot call it an "interactive movie" if it still has a lot of gameplay ! Something like detroit or until dawn could be called as such. Not death stranding or metal gear.
 
Thank you for explaining this, with your whole post. Can't explain it like that myself, when i try i get all the sony people over me.

What's with the Sony people comment? This seems to be an underlying theme with your posts.
 
What's with the Sony people comment? This seems to be an underlying theme with your posts.

I’m trying to explain what others do regarding certain games these days, it’s nothing personal yet i see people getting quite offended by a personal opinion about games taking a direction not everyone praises as shown here.

I'im not saying People cannot dislike à game with lots of cutscenes. But they cannot call it an "interactive movie" if it still has a lot of gameplay ! Something like detroit or until dawn could be called as such. Not death stranding or metal gear.

They are taking a cinematic approach, lenghty non-playable scenes, or like explained by scott-arm, scripted events where you press a button while two are talking, or the rise of motion blurring. Interactive movies is maybe the wrong wording for it. Though the order is getting quite close to that i think.

No idea how many hours of gow are non playable, according to the link more then half (speedrun?), there’s gameplay lots of it but also lots of that isn’t, and what is is taking a cinematic approach to things, motion blurring, scripted events etc. I think that’s where the general conception of ’interactive movies’ comes from around the net.
It’s all about economics in the end, it does make for better tv ads, marketing and finally sales.
 
i game since the age of 3 (since 1983)
gameplay was basic and games, once figured out, could be finished in less than an hour for most, with just a "congratulations" screen at the end.
Gameplay has become more and more elaborated, varied, with so many things to do and discover. Adding a lot of cutscenes does not hide the fact that gameplay is a lot more sophisticated than before for the majority of games. Cutscenes took a movielike design for sure, but not at the expense of gameplay, except a few titles, like i cited before.

So yeah to me interactive movie is deeply wrong, interactive movie is something like Space Ace or Dragon's lair, road avenger etc...
 
It offers you the illusion of gameplay, but usually these segments could be replaced with cut-scenes and there would essentially be no difference.
more and more when I see this type of thing these are deliberately placed to mask loading. a 2 in 1. At first it seems genius; but then it becomes aggravating and tedious. And then downright assaulting to playing the game as you are not actually playing the game at all.

I personally would have preferred a cut scene I could skip than to mull through walking slowly through an area.

no; I would prefer a loading screen.
I will give a perfect example of what constitutes good gameplay flow and design such that I would want to play a game again. Just recently released The Outer Worlds. A no frills low budget production game.
No fancy animations, no cutscenes, chock full of loading screens.
But control is never wrestled away from the player. The player is NEVER asked to do meaningless actions for the sake of masking a loading screen. So none of this hitting a wall three times with a pick axe and squeeze through a narrow space.
None of the taking control away to force the player to look at a vista or to make the player they are supposed to look at this objective or that objective. No quick time events.

Everything the player needs to do in terms of the gameplay is distilled to purely the gameplay that they want you to focus on.

Fast travel routes everywhere. They removed any sort of space traversal. They removed as many animations as possible.

And that means they respect my time. The game is designed so that the player gets to where they want to go right away, without control being wrestled away from the player to hide loading screens or whatever else the developer wants me to see. Their game is distilled down to combat skills; non combat skills; dialog skills. That’s it. And it’s absolutely full of being able to use all three. You are constantly allowed to see the effect of your skill tree decisions as well as your choices for arming yourself and your companions.

that’s an important distinction and I hope with the new SSDs we are no longer seeing this type of stuff. Because it’s frankly a flow killer. And when games are designed with these fake gameplay actions to mask loading or to up the coolness factor I see this as pure tedious because they show up everywhere. These little QTE actions that have nothing to do with the gameplay of the game.

I once saw a quick gameplay snippet in UC4 where they have to drive the Jeep to section, get out of the car and bring the pulley out of the Jeep. Wrap it around two trees and lock it. Go back into the car. Drive it up. And unlock it. I’m guessing players have had to do that more than once.
That’s painful; I’m surprised that people don’t get aggravated over things like that. Because that’s not gameplay. The gameplay is the shooting and cover fire.

To be clear; this is not gameplay.


Those mini actions are the type of tediousness that turned me off Shadow of the Tomb Raider; which I’m almost positive are loading points.

in such a desperate desire to remove loading screens; they’ve put mini elevator games everywhere masked as gameplay. Instead of having good level design where it’s distilled right to what the player wants. Thinking someone wouldn’t catch on; but we all feel it even if we can’t put words to it.

I will take a long elevator or a loading screen over these meaningless action checkpoints anyway. I’ll explain why you should too;
Firstly; the faster the hardware the faster it loads. If PS5 is to believed things drop to < 5 seconds. Elevators would take 5 seconds

secondly; even if you can’t load that fast; I can walk away and do something else while it’s loading. Like taking a drink or using the bathroom.

but these mini checkpoint games. Nothing advances until you complete it. And regardless of how fast the hardware is; you still have to do it. So you are forced to do it.
This winch sequence is 1.5 minutes at least. Nearly 2 minutes. 6x times that’s 12 minutes. 12 minutes you cannot divert.
 
Last edited:
I don't see how that can be construed as anything else.

Yet i didn't say they didn't have any gameplay, maybe i should have said tomb raider if i was aware it was the same there, as it wouldn't have offended anyone i guess. I said mostly, and that's a personal opinion, there's a link i posted to a site where the 'reviewer' said something about GoW having more cutscenes then gameplay measured in time. He could be straight out lying offcourse.

The general coneception maybe comes from the fact that people don't know how to formulate it, and just call them interactive movies or something, which i agree isn't correct term either. Easiest would be to say, games are having more and more cinematic approaches, not just in cut-scenes but also effects (the over-use of motion blur), the way how you interact with enemies, environments etc. The thing is that it makes for spectacular moments, graphics and animation, which results in better marketing and certainly does good for reviews. It's all economics here, like everything else.
There's awfull lot of forum/internet and YT comments about the same topic as we have here, it's a critic that has developed with this generation.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.coam/boards/691087-playstation-4/76019435

Edit: as a comparison, the first Halo to Halo Infinite, i guess the latter will contain much more of this cinematic experiences, i'd be surpirsed if it didn't. On the other hand, if there's a solid multiplayer, it makes up for alot of it, games get more replay value then. Replayig a game with lots of cutscenes isn't my cup of tea, even if i could skip them what's the point then :p
 
I don't see how "the rest could be watched instead" could be seen any other way.

I’m trying to explain what others do regarding certain games these days, it’s nothing personal yet i see people getting quite offended by a personal opinion about games taking a direction not everyone praises as shown here.

There's no need to insinuate that people who disagree with you are " Sony people".
Everyone is entitled to there own opinion but labeling people who disagree with you is not cool and comes across as trolling.

Replying to your latest post about some reviewer saying GOW has more cutscenes than gameplay is nonsense and is why you shouldn't have strong opinions about games you haven't played, I'm not saying you have to play any games you don't want to but don't spread fud in forums unless you have played said game.

There is a reason Sony has targeted cinematic single player games because it's a genre that's underserved by third party developers and it's also what there devs are good at and have lots of experience in.
 
Last edited:
I don't see how "the rest could be watched instead" could be seen any other way.

Well, that's your problem then. I now stated that i did not mean there wasn't any actual meaningfull gameplay.

There's no need to insinuate that people who disagree with you are " Sony people".
Everyone is entitled to there own opinion but labeling people who disagree with you is not cool.

Someone explained it's a general trend, i agreed and said it's not only sony. I didn't play tomb raider cause it does not interest me. It was not my intention to label you or anyone, it was more of a joke also in response to iroboto's post. Wrongly put i agree. On a note i own a PSX, PS2 and PS4.
 
Well, that's your problem then. I now stated that i did not mean there wasn't any actual meaningfull gameplay.
Well it does communicate the idea that these games are mostly watchable than played, or not worth playing because, well....they are mostly movies, which they aren't.
 
Well it does communicate the idea that these games are mostly watchable than played, or not worth playing because, well....they are mostly movies, which they aren't.

What's wrong with that? It's all subjective. Opinions are opinions.

Tommy McClain
 
Back
Top