Gameplay elements, evolution, and enjoyment not for everyone? [2019+] *spawn*
- Thread starter orangpelupa
- Start date
... which i see as indication cutscenes in games are wrong. The better you are connected to the virtual world, the less they work.
I think everybody understood that you didnt mean "movie" in it's literal sense.
The people who disagree with you relied on the idea you tried to convey that their gameplay value or enjoyment is minimal and the meat of the experience comes mostly from the cut scenes which is not true.
You would have been better off if you expressed that cinematic games are not your cup of tea.
Just as many people dont like games like Bloodborne while others love them.
Some love shooters like COD while others hate them (me included).
Some dont like cute looking games like Zelda or Mario but love more mature games with cinematic elements.
Some love 2D pixel art games while others love 3D state of the art visuals.
There is literally nothing wrong with any of them and they all need to be played to be enjoyed.
Games like Heavy Rain and Detroit are closer to the type you criticized GoW, SpiderMan or Uncharted for.
But HR and Detroit are special cases and limited examples. It is good to have those too sometimes. Sometimes.
In general it would have been bad if most games tried to follow a standardized formula. Even if the formula were from games like Bloodborne, Super Mario, Zelda, Witcher, Halo etc all. It doesn't matter how awesome these games are when everyone is trying to mimic a specific formula of one type of game. Regardless of the amount of cutscenes or gameplay.
It also makes sense to express a distaste for a game that tries too much to be something but fails. A good example of this is Tomb Raider. As much as I enjoyed Uncharted, Tomb Raider's efforts to mimic it's competitor's cinematic experience for me failed and ruined it. The cinematic elements are shoved in and disconnected with no proper pacing. Whereas my experience with Uncharted was smooth, in Tomb Raider the cut scenes were intrusive and shoved in to force over the top drama. It is trying too much to be something like Uncharted when it didn't have to.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Bringing Sports into this is a valid analogy actually, although maybe not in the way you intend. Sports are all about gameplay, but they are also watchable. Does someone voicing an opinion that X team sucks means it's invalid if he hasn't played that team?
I haven't played baseball, basketball, or football (both types
) since High School which was decades ago. Does that mean I can't comment on those sports?Or to put it into relevance with where this whole thing started.
Sports are a viewing event for me not a gameplay event. I understand that for some people, they'd rather play the sport than watch it. Who is correct? Are my opinions on a sport less valid because I don't play it and only watch it?
Lots of people here like to watch F1 racing and even comment on which races sucked or didn't suck. They didn't actually drive in those races so are their opinions valid?
This is like someone commenting on say, God of War (2016) or Halo 5 after watching various people play them but without ever playing it themselves.
For some people obviously there is enjoyment in playing those games. Hence the game has gameplay for them.
For other people, they don't find enjoyment in playing those games. However, they do find enjoyment in the stories that those games tell. Just like sports. I enjoy watching Australian rules football, but I'd never played it and have absolutely no desire to ever play it.
I enjoyed watching someone play HZD, but I have absolutely no desire to play the game because I find the gameplay loop in it rather boring. The story on the other hand was fascinating.
OTOH, there are plenty of games I had no interest in until I watched someone playing it. Watching them play it revealed gameplay that looked enjoyable to play. And thus I end up discovering many games I wouldn't have discounted otherwise.
But that goes hand in hand with watching a game I thought I wanted to play only to see gameplay that I don't find interesting. And I generally don't have to play the game to figure that out. And at the end of the day, I still get to enjoy the story that is told.
TLOU and HZD are great examples of this for me. I'd puke if I had to trudge through that gameplay in order to experience the story. But luckily I don't have to. I could just watch someone play it.
Just like The Witcher series, I own every one of those games but I haven't finished any of them. The furthest I ever got was Act 2 in The Witcher 2 before losing interest in the gameplay.
Doesn't mean they weren't good games, they are. But as far as I'm concerned TLOU, HZD, and The Witcher series were just glorified movies for me because the gameplay in them can't hold my interest. Again, that's ME...my opinion. I know other people find the gameplay loop in those games absolutely entrancing. Doesn't change a single whit that I can't stand playing them for more than a few hours to a day at most, however.
Similar to how I love to watch Basketball or Soccer/Football, but I get bored to death playing them in real life.
Regards,
SB
Last edited:
I don't disagree that people should expect their opinions to be challenged, but I hate this take. People get upset when someone expresses their opinion, and then blame the person that expressed their opinion instead of themselves. When someone says, "Witcher is boring and has minimal gameplay because it is nothing more than a glorified movie" they are quite obviously expressing their personal opinion and preferences. You can choose to engage and debate the opinion if you disagree, or if it upsets you, but that's on you.
What's boring is 100% subjective, so personal taste is literally the ONLY argument that can be made in support of whether a game does or does not have boring game design.
Diablo 3 was the most offensively bad game of the last generation. Halo and Metal Gear are the two most overrated video game series of all time besides Final Fantasy, which is the most tedious and horrible game design and story telling ever produced on that budget and scale. Fight me.
Last edited by a moderator:
Cutscenes don't have to be wrong, but hours and hours of them, and the whole cinematic approach during gameplay gets abit much. It does good for marketing though.
Never liked the first last of us either, and two seems to be more of the same. HZD i though was a great game, best game from Guerilla so far, think about it they had games like Shellshock and the first killzone, they have come quite far.
I agree. Vernacular states opinion without generally clarifying it. We don't need all the 'I think' and 'IMO' as that's implied. That's for subjective ideas like 'boring' or 'best'. Other opinions that seem fact-based, like 'greatest earning game', need to be supported or otherwise based on something, and if one doesn't have real data, one should clarify it's their belief, unqualified opinion, gut feeling, etc. Choice of words when expressing an opinion is going to determine how people respond as a result of how they interpret your argument.
Last edited:
Silent_Buddha
Legend
I agree. Vernacular states opinion without generally clarifying it. We don't need all the 'I think' and 'IMO' as that's implied. That's for subjective ideas like 'boring' or 'best'. Other opinions that seem fact-based, like 'greatest earning game', need to be supported or otherwise based on something, and if one doesn't have real data, one should clarify it's their belief, unqualified opinion, got feeling, etc. Choice of words when expressing an opinion is going to determine how people respond as a result of how they interpret your argument.
I realized this long ago on this forum when posting my opinions on some games and then got my butt reamed out for it because people thought I was trying to make a factual claim about the value of X game rather than voicing my opinion.
I've since attempted to litter my posts with "IMO"s and "for me"s and other such things to make it absolutely clear that it's only an opinion.
It's hard to determine intent in posts when you can't hear someone's intonations or see facial expressions. Even worse when you consider just how bad all languages are at conveying what a person actually means. And then throw in the fact that for many here, English isn't their native language.
Although, thinking about it, sometimes it's probably good that people can't see my face or read my body language when I go on a rant.
Regards,
SB
well technically there are already parts in VR games where you just spectate a scene without doing anything. But you're still immersed in the game.
I dont think that is an indication that cut scenes are wrong. Cut scenes in story driven VR games are often replaced with interactive interruptions where your actions are limited and things happen but you have the illusion of gameplay.
A great deal of VR games are very linear almost or completely on rails. Thats worse than the term "walking simulator". And finally you are constantly looking through the character's eyes. The majority of non-VR first person games unfold their story in a similar way. In third person games, you are not the character any more, you are looking at characters and thus cut scenes are executed differently.
Sigfried1977
Legend
I don't really mind cut-scenes. What I do mind are all these "gameplay" sections that are so minimally interactive they might as well be cut-scenes. It's why I don't really mind the MGS games. Sure, they have hours of what are literally just movies, but once you're in the game proper, the shackles come off entirely for 99% of the game. There are no forced walking segments, no I-can't-draw-my-weapons segments and no look-at-this-neat-thing segments either. In fact the game becomes a miniature sandbox the moment a cut-scene ends. Experimentation is highly encouraged. And when the game does limit your means of interactivity, it's usually quite well done. Like when a half-dead Solid Snake has to crawl through a quasi microwave oven in the final chapter of MGS4. Now compare that to Leon's first chapter in Resident Evil 6 in which he cannot run or fire his weapon for about 15 minutes straight, meaning despite this being a horror game I cannot help but feel utterly safe. And then it doesn't let you shoot the dead bodies littering the floor.Dead bodies you know are gonna come back to life.
Third person games are wrong in the same sense, because you do not experience yourself in third person in real life.
So, the argument cutscenes are more justified, or more necessary to be static movies in third person games does not hold for me.
(Gamepads are also terribly wrong. Becasue they have no proper option to look around in the virtual world, there is no way to feel connected to it, and this leads to the need to make most games on console third person games.)
But i do not mean all those things are wrong right now. They are necessaey compromises that need to be made for many reasons, and results can be great games.
I only mean those things are oportunities to make progress. We want all things dynamic, to give the player options and free will, and proper immersion.
Character animation is the most constraining and static limitation ther is left in games. We can simulate weather, rigid bodies, vehicles and all this, but we can't do it for characters. There is constant progress, but seems slower than with graphics for example, because it's a harder problem.
So i do not try to argue against cutscenes, and i do not want to eiminate them completely even in the future. What i want to solve on the long run is that we have no real alternatives here - this is wrong for sure and requires work.
You can't know if the gameplay loop is boring or not since you haven't played it. You can only know if it is boring or not to watch somebody else play it.
We're going in circles. You can't tell him that just because he didn't play it that he can't determine if it's boring for him. If he watches somebody play a game you can be sure he has a pretty good idea if it will be boring to him. You may not be able to determine that after watching somebody else play, but that's you & not somebody else.
Tommy McClain
I just did.
Can you decide if something taste good (for you) by watching other people eat it? You can have a pretty good idea if you think it will taste good or not, but you will never truly know unless you actually try it for yourself.
How high and mighty of you. Guess you know more of what he likes than he does himself.
Tommy McClain
It's fine to have an opinion what I don't understand is why bring it up if you don't want to discuss it? And in that case it's best if you know, have actually played the games.
There's many threads of games or whatever I don't like and I don't even open them on forums because I have know interest in playing those games.
There's many threads of games or whatever I don't like and I don't even open them on forums because I have know interest in playing those games.
How could I know that? I never made that claim.
Third person games have their own charm. They serve a purpose. The cut scenes also serve a purpose which makes them right.
The absence of "cut scenes" in first person games is not proof that cut scenes are wrong. First person games also have their own type of "compromises" with their own type of "cut scenes" where in large sections you are barely allowed to do anything until the game triggers an event that is out of your control.
Half Life's intro is more than 6 minutes of doing nothing, just being on a kart, then walking around exactly where the game wanted you to, so the next event would kick in.
Bioshock does the same. These sections whenerver they occur are unskippable.
At the end they are not really compromises and there is no proof that those cut scenes stole anything from the gameplay. If you dont like the cut scenes skip them. If you dont like the gameplay it is either bad design regardless of cut scene or the particular gameplay is just not your cup of tea. Simple.
There are various types of games out there to satisfy everyone. It doesn't make sense to complain why some games are not "our type" and therefore it makes it a "problem". Obviously those "cinematic" games are part of the whole gaming ecosystem and satisfy a certain experience that is demanded hence why they are being done.
It doesn't make sense.
Under this logic, why not open another debate how games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne are taking a direction that makes games "unfun" and too "hardcore" to be enjoyed?
Or that RPGs have "long and complicated menus", "long dialogues", "tiring turned based fights" and are "dragging" us to pointless missions?
Or how games like Devil May Cry requires you to just kill things and the exploration is bare bones compared to GTA?
Or that open world games have most of their "meat" in the form of "side quests" instead of the main game?
Or how "realistic" sports games are boring because they are a representation of real life and I prefer to watch a real football match with real talents instead of pointless virtual humans mimicking what real players do?
Or how simulation racing games are not fun for a similar reason and arcade racers have more imagination and thrills?
We can find "compromises" or "faults" in pretty much any genre or type of game. It is nonsensical.
We should just pick the type of game we like and enjoy it instead of complaining why a certain portion of games are made differently from the ones that we prefer.
This discussion about "cinematic elements" being a problem is pointless.
It would have made more sense if the discussion was about how games try to mimic too much certain other games just to get sales from the other project's success. Or discuss purely about bad gameplay design.
Last edited: