I remember a scene on Tex Murphy Overseer where you have to invade the home of a murder with him still inside, there wasn't really complicated puzzles, just moving around and doing very basic inventory based puzzles, the trick was that he moved inside the house with you still inside, first he is taking a shower, then eating, then changing clothes, there was a moment where he suddenly entered on the bathroom with you still inside and you had to think quickly what to do... there wasn't a fucking huge circle pointing where you should click. If he finds you, he has a gun, you not, so bye, bye, there wasn't an easy QTE to save you. You can enter in any room of the house, even if he is in there. There wasn't this very annoying one room/cutscene/one room/cutscene bullshit. TellTale can place as many QTEs as they want, they aren't going to achieve the same tension of that scene. If you are going to make a movie/game, you have to make the game part interact with the movie part, if the scene invokes tension, the gameplay should invoke tension as well. Actually, some FMVs did a much better job at being movie/games even if at that time the production values were laughable, who would thought TellTale would make them look like incline? QTEs cause boredom while you are watching a scene that supposedly should cause tension and adrenaline. If you are investigating a scene, you should need to think a little instead of the character solving everything for you.
I was almost sleeping in the middle of the Woodsman fight, in the middle of a certain chase scene and on another fight scene later. Why those fucking too long and pointless cutscenes? Because it was to show a dramatic fight with big ass red circles that you would miss only if blind and QTEs so easy that makes Farenheit look challenging. Just filler to make an episode longer than it should. I didn't even paid attention to what was going on because I was concentrated in seeing the next QTE. Fuck, even Grey Matter that has easy as fuck puzzles that almost solve themselves for you (I consider it a movie/game as well) was way better in terms of gameplay and I don't think Jane Jensen had even close the money TellTale has now. I don't like TellTale games because they make interactive fiction but because they are lazy as fuck. QTEs is the equivalent of a game designer saying: "Fuck this, I give up." You could see the conflict:
Why we need to bore the player with those long and pointless cutscenes if the story could get to the point way faster?
But we need to give them something to do.
You could make big hotspots where they could click once to see some random commentary of the main character and other cutscenes.Make sure you don't go overboard and allow them to do somehting useful and interesting with those hotspots. You shouldn't let them feeling confused.
But that isn't enough, they are going to end sleeping if they do that stuff all the time. They are going to ask questions, like ask why you can't Interact with the objects on interesting ways?
Yeah, we need to distract them with QTEs to cut the tedium. I just don't like it because we need to shoehorn QTEs everywhere and make scenes that should be short and to the point way too long.
We can use them to extend the length of the episode.
So it will be QTEs and click once on every circle in the screen until something happens?
We can tease them with fake C&C.
But Bioware isn't doing this for years?
Yeah, worked for them, isn't it?
Why people are buying our games?
Because they are desperate to play games where the writing isn't so awful that makes you want to commit suicide from shame of belonging to the human race, so desperate to the point of accepting the things we make. Another possibility is that they like to have a free hand to masturbate themselves at same time as well.
Well, I don't care, as long as they are paying.