Developers, why do you do this?

[fearsomepirate]

Developers sometimes make the most bewildering gameplay decisions. I'm sure all of us have some that come immediately to mind. My question for now is: Why the unskippable cutscenes, especially before a boss? I don't really understand why I have to watch the boss say "Wahaha! You can never defeat me" and watch his transformation 30 times in a row. Mapping some button to "skip cutscene" is a very old invention. Why do some developers refrain from implementing this radical technology? Is there a patent? Or do they want it to be an incentive to beat the boss as quickly as possible?

I'd be much obliged if someone could answer this. Also, I wonder what other things people find excessively aggravating.

 

[Rodéric]

Developers sometimes make the most bewildering gameplay decisions. I'm sure all of us have some that come immediately to mind. My question for now is: Why the unskippable cutscenes, especially before a boss? I don't really understand why I have to watch the boss say "Wahaha! You can never defeat me" and watch his transformation 30 times in a row. Mapping some button to "skip cutscene" is a very old invention. Why do some developers refrain from implementing this radical technology? Is there a patent? Or do they want it to be an incentive to beat the boss as quickly as possible?

I'd be much obliged if someone could answer this. Also, I wonder what other things people find excessively aggravating.

Because they make a game in 7 months and forgot about that feature, but DON'T FEAR ! For a patch will fix it... maybe... sometime... in the far future...

 

[DeanoC]

I'd be much obliged if someone could answer this. Also, I wonder what other things people find excessively aggravating.

I personally hate unskippable cutscenes but if your background loading for 10 seconds, you can either watch a cutscene for 10 seconds or a loading icon... You physically can't skip cos the thing you want to skip too, as it still loading...

 

[Simon F]

I personally hate unskippable cutscenes but if your background loading for 10 seconds, you can either watch a cutscene for 10 seconds or a loading icon...

Perhaps an "icon" of a "make a cup of tea" or "get up an do some exercise and stop DVT" might not be a bad idea

 

[Guden Oden]

Personally I get immensely ticked off every time I find that some kind of an obstacle in a game that is no more than knee-high can totally bar any possibility of passage until I somehow find a way around this insurmountable cliffside...

THAT is beyond stupid.

Also, why is it almost impossible to push stuff around in the world of computer games? Moving crates in half-life for example is an exercise in frustration as the object I want to manipulate has a strong tendency to simply fly off in a general compass direction not of my own choosing unless I am extremely careful. WTH?

 

[_xxx_]

I personally hate unskippable cutscenes but if your background loading for 10 seconds, you can either watch a cutscene for 10 seconds or a loading icon... You physically can't skip cos the thing you want to skip too, as it still loading...

I know many games which will bug you with cutscenes AFTER the level is loaded. Or even where the cutscenes are "levels" as such.

 

[pipo]

I know many games which will bug you with cutscenes AFTER the level is loaded. OR even where the cutscenes are "levels" as such.

Yup. I never liked Dragon's Lair.

 

[N00b]

Unskippable cutscenes are simply a bad design choice and make for a bad user interface. Cutscenes that 'conceal' loading times are ok, but they should provide some sort of progres bar so the user knows he is not forced watch the same cutscene over and over because the developer thinks it's cool but because the system is loading.

A good example of bad design can be found in Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within. Before every boss there is a cut scene. The cut scenes usually contain hints how to kill the boss, so you are forced to view the whole cut scene the first time you encounter the boss (fair enough), when you die you can skip it (good!). But when you die too often and you have to reload, you have to view the dreaded cut scene again (bad!). This is still bearable since most bosses are not that hard and save points are really close to the boss,... except for the last (most difficult) boss. Here the save point is some 20 seconds away and you have to do some moderately difficult jumps to get to the boss. That's not a problem the first time or second time, but after you have reloaded the fifth or sixth time, this simply starts to get annoying and after the tenth time you wish you had 5 minutes alone in a room with the responsible designer/developer.

 

[MrWibble]

Aside from technical grounds such as background streaming, quite often it is actually a deliberate decision to not be able to skip cut-scenes...

Usually IME it'll be down to the designer (occasionally the producer or even an artist, but mostly the designer) who decides that the player really does need to watch all the plot unfolding to experience the game as they intended it. That, and occasionally the justification that players will skip some scenes accidentally if they're hammering the controls and the game drops into a scene - however I find that weak justification as all you need to do is skip using a combination that doesn't crop up in-game, or have the first few seconds be unskippable...

I once worked on a game where we were forced to code it for a 3rd-person view. Everyone largely agreed that 1st person would work better for the gameplay and even technically (at that point an extra single character on-screen was a performance issue...) but the designer insisted because he thought the player to "empathise" with his character and needed to be able to look at him all the time... or some such rubbish.

So essentially, some designers are pretentious idiots

 

[fearsomepirate]

I think the "force you to watch it once, then you can skip it every time you restart from the checkpoint" scenario makes sense. The particular one that was riling me up was in fact from PoP: Two Thrones.

Here's another one:

Why do I still have to press a button to make dialogue go forward in so many games, espcially RPGs and Adventure games? The cutscenes in Baten Kaitos and Tales of Symphonia just plain wore my thumb out. I realize not everyone reads at the same speed, but that doesn't mean you can't just have the program wait a few seconds and then continue on with the text. I can't leave and go make a sandwich during a long, boring cutscene that I've seen 500 times. No, because when I come back, everyone will still be on the first line of dialogue because I haven't pressed a button! I can't sit there and watch it, either. I have to constantly jam on the button. I guess this immerses me in the event or something. In reality, it just ticks me off.

American developers don't seem to be as bad about this as the Japanese, though.

 

[Angelcurio]

It really sucks when there is this Boss battle and there is a 2 minutes cutscene before it. Then each time you die, you have to replay it again and again and again. Thats a real bad desing choice.

 

[_xxx_]

Yup. I never liked Dragon's Lair.

I was more about ST:Voyager Elite Force or JK2 and such...

 

[MasaC]

I personally hate unskippable cutscenes but if your background loading for 10 seconds, you can either watch a cutscene for 10 seconds or a loading icon... You physically can't skip cos the thing you want to skip too, as it still loading...

Personally I'd prefer watching a load screen for 10 seconds. It can get really annoying watching the same thing ten times over and more than often it has lead me to turn off the game out of sheer frustration. That can't be desirable from a game developer point of view.

I want skippable cutscenes with the option to watch it again immidiateley after if I need to for some reason. A good compromise would be forced to watch once and then skippable with the option to watch again.

 

[AlNom]

I don't really understand why I have to watch the boss say "Wahaha! You can never defeat me" and watch his transformation 30 times in a row.

Because you weren't good enough to beat him/her/it the first time?


At the very least, if the level is being loaded during the cutscene, pressing a button should result in an icon showing up indicating that there is loading being done. Doom 3 on the Xbox does this: The first time you stick in the game, you're forced to watch the intro movie, but pressing a button, "Loading" is shown at the bottom of the screen indicating data transfer. Or skip watching the cutscene and show a blank load screen (I suppose in Microsoft's case, each load screen has some sort of info).

 

[chroniceyestrain]

Speaking of Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within. The excessive backtracking in that game pissed me off. Why base the game around something that nobody likes? Yay, now I get to go through the same area for the third time, in the past!

If you go a week without playing, good luck trying to figure out what you're supposed to be doing, which direction to go, and whether you're supposed to be in the past or present.

 

[Farid]

The answer to the topic question is simple, 95% of the time it's due to shitty game design.

For instance, I played Black for the first time the other day, the opening sequence took forever.
And what was this opening sequence comprised of, Final Fantasy quality CG, a long intro? Nope, it was just a (really) slow changing white text on the bottom left corner of a black screen with an obnoxious "heroic" orchestral tune in the background... Then came a shitty live action intro, which was unskippable as well, like all the other cinematics in the game, and once the oh so captivating video stopped, a load screen kicked in, just to load the menu.

As a side note, Criterion guys are geniuses when it comes to coding a renderer and toolchains, but they really could use some help on the user interface side. All the Burnout games had stupid user interfaces (especially the way the games handled game saves), Black is no exception.

To get back on topic, I'd say that some game designers take the "action movie you play" mantra way too far and way too literally. Sure that cinematics add to the whole experience, but a game designer should think, first and foremost, about the game design, not the story telling.
In other words, if a situation forces a game designer to chose between story telling or the game mechanic, the latter should always be the priority.

That said, I don't see why a good game designer can't mix the best of both worlds - by making the cinematics skippable using a two buttons combination, e.g.: start, than Y/triangle -, unless of course a technical reason makes it impossible, in which case, it still possible to tell the end user that the game is loading when he presses the start button and then let him skip the rest of the cutscene as sson as the next level/room is loaded into the RAM.

Speaking of stupid game design choices - and while I know it's OT, that's why I won't address this subect for too long - I want to say it once again, crappy implemented stealth missions do not bring any variety to your game it brings only hate to it. My hate, amongst others', I'm sure.
Stealh sections this generation, are like the racing sections in action games back in the days. With the difference that most racing parts from the games of yore didn't use to be as bad as today's stealth ones.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Sure that cinematics add to the whole experience, but a game designer should think, first and foremost, about the game design, not the story telling.
In other words, if a situation forces a game designer to chose between story telling or the game mechanic, the latter should always be the priority.

Definitely agree. There's a motion in the industry to raise the artistic quality of games and rival films as an artistic media. Which is all very well, but if I want that sort of experience I can watch a movie. If games head that way and become movie-like, where can I get that gaming experience? That accessible, interactive gameplay? Games are fundamentally about the tasks the player has to do and making sure that's something they want to do. Any developer desperate to create a movie-like experience should probably ditch computer games and grab a HandyCam.

This is made doubly poignant by the fact most games' attempts at cutscenes have weak acting, poor directing, and would have resulted in a flunk out from film academy. Subjecting a person to compulsory cutscenes is bad enough, but when they're second or even third rate it's nigh on criminal.

 

[ChryZ]

I'm still waiting for pause-able cutscenes. For games like MGS it should be mandatory.

 

[Jabjabs]

Personally it is slow menu systems. There is nothing worse than a laggy slow menu system just because they want their fading animations and special effects.

Make it quick and preferably instant.

 

[pc999]

Even worst is when you need to wait for a long loading then you have a big unskippable cutscene then anouther long loading till the game begins, that really make the hate for the game growing very fast.