Decline This is what is wrong with cRpgs today

[the_shadow]

Ever since completing Witcher 2, and being rather disappointed with it, I've managed to identify why playing that game is like pulling teeth. It's a common problem with a lot of cRpgs, and games in general. No, it's not skill trees, regenerating health, tumbling, or any of that stuff (which can be fine if implemented well). It's this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiejupbcF5A

*6 hours* of cutscenes. I've complained about games shitting you through the plot in the past, but Witcher 2 was more like shitting you from one cutscene to another. Games are becoming over-saturated with cutscenes. I'd argue that it detracts from the gameplay, but it's actually worse than that. It *removes* the gameplay element. You spend more time watching a episode of 'Game of Thrones' than actually playing a game.

Cutscenes should be used sparingly when other techniques can't be used to convey required plot information. They are OK when used as an introduction, and can be useful for tying up the end of a story. But shoving them into a game at every opportunity is just lazy and kills the fun. This is the cause of decline in video games.

 

[Jools]

Ever since completing Witcher 2, and being rather disappointed with it, I've managed to identify why playing that game is like pulling teeth. It's a common problem with a lot of cRpgs, and games in general. No, it's not skill trees, regenerating health, tumbling, or any of that stuff (which can be fine if implemented well). It's this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiejupbcF5A

*6 hours* of cutscenes. I've complained about games shitting you through the plot in the past, but Witcher 2 was more like shitting you from one cutscene to another. Games are becoming over-saturated with cutscenes. I'd argue that it detracts from the gameplay, but it's actually worse than that. It *removes* the gameplay element. You spend more time watching a episode of 'Game of Thrones' than actually playing a game.

Cutscenes should be used sparingly when other techniques can't be used to convey required plot information. They are OK when used as an introduction, and can be useful for tying up the end of a story. But shoving them into a game at every opportunity is just lazy and kills the fun. This is the cause of decline in video games.

I sort of agree. My latest playthrough, on Dark difficulty, made me notice this way more than my previous completion of the game. TW2 is an alright game but makes a very poor RPG, and it indeed feels like an endless series of cutsenes with combat in-between (see my thread where I rant about the "forced combat outcome", too...). The stats and skills don't really make that much of a difference, sadly. It's just combat and cutscenes. I really would like people to stop branding every "action game with skillpoints" an RPG: such games are "RPG" as much as CoD4 is (although actually, the perks in CoD4 do make a huge difference in the gameplay...).

Althouth, in truth, not that many games are so heavy on cutscenes: even a popamole RPG like Skyrim basically had no cutscenes at all, the not-so-well-received Risen 1 and 2 are very moderate in that respect. The bioware newfag titles are slightly more cutscene-oriented, but despite my loathing for them, I must admit they still don't have as much cutscene-time as TW2 does (also, let's hope they "fix" this in TW3). Or do they? I haven't played any of them since ME2.

 

[bozia2012]

You spend more time watching a episode of 'Game of Thrones' than actually playing a game.

I like Game of Thrones.

 

[Ebonsword]

Games are becoming over-saturated with cutscenes.

"Becoming"? Where have you been for the past 15 years?

 

[dnf]

Maybe you should read books instead? Seriously tough, cutscenes are just a tool.It's just that rpg makers are really bad at crafting cutscenes...

 

[J_C]

Ever since completing Witcher 2, and being rather disappointed with it, I've managed to identify why playing that game is like pulling teeth. It's a common problem with a lot of cRpgs, and games in general. No, it's not skill trees, regenerating health, tumbling, or any of that stuff (which can be fine if implemented well).
.

Actually these are the things which are wrong with cRPGs today.

And cutscenes are not a problem. Are you saying that if an RPGt has great story, great, character system, great everything, but if it has cutscenes, than it is shit? And on the otherhand, if the game is not using cutscenes, but everything else is dumbed down popamole piece of shit, than it is allright. Hell no. Cutscenes are just telling the story. Of course if they are overdone than they can be annoying, but I take 6 hours of cutscenes in a mechanically great game, over a shit game with no cutscenes (and I'm talking in general, not about the Witcher 2).

 

[Karwelas]

I agree but this is only part of the true. Look at RPG form the past and today RPG. Almost every game is now create for fucking casuals. I understand game industry like every indrusty is for make money, but seriously? Every game must be created for people who don't know how to even find something in game becouse "I don't have time to read your shitty journal" or "I want to know where is everywhere". Other problem in many games are bad interface, make game fucking corridor simulator (Yes, Bioware. I look at you.) or fucked up game mechanics.

 

[Lilura]

Cutscenes have been with us commonly since 16bit gaming and 8bit instances exist, they've been more prevalent in certain gens, and on some platforms more than others. Anyone remember the FMV fad, when consoles finally got their CD drives? Publishers inflicted hundreds of FMV-based "games" on the public to show off this new storage medium, and they sold like hotcakes.

The Witcher 2 does indeed have too many cutscenes, but if you're gonna play AAA popamoles, then what do you expect? Play something like Warband if you don't like cutscenes.

 

[Jools]

I agree but this is only part of the true. Look at RPG form the past and today RPG. Almost every game is now create for fucking casuals. I understand game industry like every indrusty is for make money, but seriously? Every game must be created for people who don't know how to even find something in game becouse "I don't have time to read your shitty journal" or "I want to know where is everywhere". Other problem in many games are bad interface, make game fucking corridor simulator (Yes, Bioware. I look at you.) or fucked up game mechanics.

There is a difference between the game industry and other industries, though. In most industries, there is a segment of the production that is for casuals, then there is a segment for rich casuals, and then there is a niche of extreme-high-quality stuff, for non-casuals.

Let's take cars, for simplicity. There's your "casual", average brands, then you have the "rich casual" segment (bmw/mercs/audis/etc), and then you got the real fine shit: the latter costs a lot, and performs a lot, and is fucking awesome. On the other hand, in videogames, it's like we get 99% shit for casual, 0.9% "mid" segment (good games), and 0.1% EPIC stuff which still has "flaws". One of the problem with games is that they can't make the latter easily, as they couldn't justify it costing a lot (say, 500£ for a game. Not a kickstarter thing, all their revenues would have to come from the £500 copies), or couldn't justify a horribly high initial funding of the project without guarantees of return.

I mean, even if they made THE PERFECT RPG, how many copies would it actually sell? Thus, no surprise they're not even trying to make it.

Another comparison: how many copies does [insert perfect music album here, Dark Side of the Moon for instance] sell in an year, compared to [insert shitty wub wub wub wigga shit here, eg I dunno, Minaj?]...

 

[the_shadow]

Maybe you should read books instead? Seriously tough, cutscenes are just a tool.It's just that rpg makers are really bad at crafting cutscenes...

What's the difference between a game full of cutscenes, and just watching a movie?

 

[dnf]

Maybe you should read books instead? Seriously tough, cutscenes are just a tool.It's just that rpg makers are really bad at crafting cutscenes...

What's the difference between a game full of cutscenes, and just watching a movie?

In the case of movies, you watch the cutscene all at once.

 

[dnf]

Cutscenes, just like sound, music, text, voice acting, graphics are just tools to give context to your actions in a game. The purpose of these tools is to enhance pleasure in playing the game. It can backfire however. Not all games need these tools, but adding them to your game can enhance the experience and immertion, mechanicsfags be damned.

 

[Jools]

Maybe you should read books instead? Seriously tough, cutscenes are just a tool.It's just that rpg makers are really bad at crafting cutscenes...

What's the difference between a game full of cutscenes, and just watching a movie?

That a game is supposed to be "interactive", and having to sit doing nothing through half of it is, IMHO, annoying: if I wanted to do that, I'd watch an actual movie.

It's a bit as if a movie paused for some scenes and forces the audience to instead read those scenes from a booklet, and then moved back to "movie" format. I personally find the mixing of communicative devices annoying. A few cutscenes in a game are ok, too many just turn the game into a crap movie.

 

[Karwelas]

There is a difference between the game industry and other industries, though. In most industries, there is a segment of the production that is for casuals, then there is a segment for rich casuals, and then there is a niche of extreme-high-quality stuff, for non-casuals.

Let's take cars, for simplicity. There's your "casual", average brands, then you have the "rich casual" segment (bmw/mercs/audis/etc), and then you got the real fine shit: the latter costs a lot, and performs a lot, and is fucking awesome. On the other hand, in videogames, it's like we get 99% shit for casual, 0.9% "mid" segment (good games), and 0.1% EPIC stuff which still has "flaws". One of the problem with games is that they can't make the latter easily, as they couldn't justify it costing a lot (say, 500£ for a game. Not a kickstarter thing, all their revenues would have to come from the £500 copies), or couldn't justify a horribly high initial funding of the project without guarantees of return.

I mean, even if they made THE PERFECT RPG, how many copies would it actually sell? Thus, no surprise they're not even trying to make it.

Another comparison: how many copies does [insert perfect music album here, Dark Side of the Moon for instance] sell in an year, compared to [insert shitty wub wub wub wigga shit here, eg I dunno, Minaj?]...

I see truth here. It just hurt that so many games must to be just simply... shit for the people. But company must have money and this is why they make games. Many companes like Bioware just forget about people who want to be fair with them. I understand that thing - money is everything in world of industry - but can't we just meet halfway? CD Project Red for example don't have 1000 of shitty DLC and every DLC was for free. They have enough money to make new interesting game (Witcher 3) and don't make shitty games. (I know Witcher 1 and 2 are not best in the world, but they are still better then Dragon Age 2 or fucking Oblivion.)

 

[The Bishop]

Maybe you should read books instead? Seriously tough, cutscenes are just a tool.It's just that rpg makers are really bad at crafting cutscenes...

Well, as a counterexample cutscenes in Max Payne 3 are top notch. Didn't stop them from making game significantly shittier than it could be anyway. Having controls taken away from you every 5-10 seconds is incredibly annoying in any type of game regardless of cutscene quality.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Cutscenes must die.

 

[mutonizer]

Cutscenes, just like sound, music, text, voice acting, graphics are just tools to give context to your actions in a game. The purpose of these tools is to enhance pleasure in playing the game. It can backfire however. Not all games need these tools, but adding them to your game can enhance the experience and immertion, mechanicsfags be damned.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure that I personally get more constant context and immersion when playing ASCII Cataclysm DDA than the Witcher 2 and that's with 100% text, no sound, music and whatnot. Don't get me wrong, I like cutscenes and voice acting and all that but in games like the Walking Dead, not in my cRPGs, especially when it takes control of my character away from me to do some shit I wouldn't have done or said otherwise.

Edit:
Problem with cRPGs nowadays?
You got people who should be game designers who think they are artistic primadonas and movie directors and instead of focusing on allowing you, the player, to tell the story of your characters, they want to tell their own stories.

 

[DeepOcean]

Maybe you should read books instead? Seriously tough, cutscenes are just a tool.It's just that rpg makers are really bad at crafting cutscenes...

What's the difference between a game full of cutscenes, and just watching a movie?

One you pay 60 dollars for a shitty storyline by fanfiction writers and do alot of boring, repetitive shit between the cutscenes, the other you pay way less and it doesn't waste your time with a bigger chance of the story be actually good.

 

[dnf]

Cutscenes, just like sound, music, text, voice acting, graphics are just tools to give context to your actions in a game. The purpose of these tools is to enhance pleasure in playing the game. It can backfire however. Not all games need these tools, but adding them to your game can enhance the experience and immertion, mechanicsfags be damned.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure that I personally get more constant context and immersion when playing ASCII Cataclysm DDA than the Witcher 2 and that's with 100% text, no sound, music and whatnot. Don't get me wrong, I like cutscenes and voice acting and all that but in games like the Walking Dead, not in my cRPGs, especially when it takes control of my character away from me to do some shit I wouldn't have done or said otherwise.

Edit:
Problem with cRPGs nowadays?
You got people who should be game designers who think they are artistic primadonas and movie directors and instead of focusing on allowing you, the player, to tell the story of your characters, they want to tell their own stories.

You would get even more immersion if these roguelikes allowed graphics, sound, music, animations, cutscenes etc.

 

[mutonizer]

You would get even more immersion if these roguelikes allowed graphics, sound, music, animations, cutscenes etc.

When I see an ASCII character representing a chair, or when I read about a chair, my mind, my imagination create it's own mental image.
When I see an actual chair, my mind and my imagination becomes useless, the brain simply becoming a storing device to what is presented to me.
Immersion, for me at least, only works when my mind, my imagination, is able, and allowed, to create it. And the more I see, the less it comes from me, and immersion never comes around. It's very personal of course, but that's my experience.

Best example I could give is this:
If you only read The Lord of the Ring trilogy, you'll have your own images of everything described in the books, your own faces, all created from references to your personal experiences that the author used in his writing and descriptions. This will vary from person to person, because the links, the references and the interpretation of the words will be slightly different within each reader, since they are constructed from our own personal experiences. I can become really immersed into a book because of this, my entire mind working to re-create the world and context I'm reading about. That happens to me quite often.
Once you see the movies, it becomes almost impossible to see anything else but the exact scenes visualized in the movies themselves. Even reading the books afterwards you will only see the actors faces through the characters descriptions, the amazing visuals through the written scenes. I never was immersed into a movie and reading the book afterwards, I find it very hard to to do, even if I could before seeing the movie. That's mainly because my mind doesn't create anything, it's just copy/pasting stored memories from the movie itself.

Edit:
As a note, music helps a lot, as it puts your mind back into gear even with visuals presented to you. But I play all games without any music whatsoever, and read books without musics either. How many movies remain relevant once you remove the music? How many games keep you invested without any music?
To me, usually the good ones

 

[Raghar]

Well, garage games had stories which were written by people not hired from movie industry. They were often far above W2 writing.

 

[turbo elephant]

*6 hours* of cutscenes. I've complained about games shitting you through the plot in the past, but Witcher 2 was more like shitting you from one cutscene to another.(..)

Cutscenes should be used sparingly when other techniques can't be used to convey required plot information. They are OK when used as an introduction, and can be useful for tying up the end of a story. But shoving them into a game at every opportunity is just lazy and kills the fun. This is the cause of decline in video games.

Agree I've bought Twitcher 2 on Linux for like 4 euro so one could argue "For 4 euro one gets 2 free movies" but in vidya games this doesn't work for me. So I stopped playing, it was too annoying.

It's sort of like something AWESOME haz to happen every 2 minutes without even having to press a button....yeah no it's fucking tedious.

 

[DalekFlay]

I definitely think games are overstuffed with cutscenes. It's definitely making me sour more and more on modern action games especially. I am as into movies as I am games, and movies are where I get my non-interactive stories. I don't need that shit for 20 minutes between shooter levels. It's just absurd.

In an RPG it should really be a dialog tree, not a cutscene, to keep the interactivity and role-playing going. I think its rare an RPG really screws this up. I don't remember Witcher 2 being that bad, but maybe it was.

 

[dryan]

Instead of wasting a lot of resources with a cinematic prologue and mid-game cut scenes, they could just use them to make several cinematic endings, and don't break the game's interactivity at all.

 

[dnf]

You would get even more immersion if these roguelikes allowed graphics, sound, music, animations, cutscenes etc.

When I see an ASCII character representing a chair, or when I read about a chair, my mind, my imagination create it's own mental image.
When I see an actual chair, my mind and my imagination becomes useless, the brain simply becoming a storing device to what is presented to me.
Immersion, for me at least, only works when my mind, my imagination, is able, and allowed, to create it. And the more I see, the less it comes from me, and immersion never comes around. It's very personal of course, but that's my experience.

Best example I could give is this:
If you only read The Lord of the Ring trilogy, you'll have your own images of everything described in the books, your own faces, all created from references to your personal experiences that the author used in his writing and descriptions. This will vary from person to person, because the links, the references and the interpretation of the words will be slightly different within each reader, since they are constructed from our own personal experiences. I can become really immersed into a book because of this, my entire mind working to re-create the world and context I'm reading about. That happens to me quite often.
Once you see the movies, it becomes almost impossible to see anything else but the exact scenes visualized in the movies themselves. Even reading the books afterwards you will only see the actors faces through the characters descriptions, the amazing visuals through the written scenes. I never was immersed into a movie and reading the book afterwards, I find it very hard to to do, even if I could before seeing the movie. That's mainly because my mind doesn't create anything, it's just copy/pasting stored memories from the movie itself.

Edit:
As a note, music helps a lot, as it puts your mind back into gear even with visuals presented to you. But I play all games without any music whatsoever, and read books without musics either. How many movies remain relevant once you remove the music? How many games keep you invested without any music?
To me, usually the good ones

Uhm, i think this goes best for children who have a more fertile imagination.