Because that’s not a game, it’s a movie or TV show, making cutscenes unskippable takes away agency from the player, IMO an unforgiveable sin in a game. It’s why I never got into JRPG’s.
Fuck unskippable cutscenes, I will not sit through a video telling a story to get to the next bit of a game. if you can’t tell your story IN THE GAME, I’m not interested.
Yeah, cutscenes shouldn’t be relied on massively to be the info dump.
Started playing Total War Warhammer 3, definitely enjoying the game, surprisingly, considering i’m not really into Warhammer. It’s definitely EXTREMELY more difficult and more of a challenge. Only really annoying situation is that there’s so much DLC for races that it’ll cost a fortune to unlock everything.
That’s a shame. Rob’s you of some absolutely amazing games, tbh.
FWIW, I reckon it pretty rare to see a game with cutscenes that really impact player agency, these days. They’re usually used for story telling purposes in moments that don’t really take decisions off of the player.
I can accept they may break immersion, much more so than “agency”. But, again, not necessarily. There’s good examples and bad examples.
Indiana Jones (I’m only a few hours in) is a good example, for sure. Its highly interactive. Gives the player a lot of choice. Even more so than the average game of this scope/budget… The (fairly minimal, I thought?) cutscenes blend very well with interactive parts and don’t break the immersion for me.
Takes a lot of the strengths of those Wolfenstein games and files off a lot of the… not so good stuff. Very enjoyable, popcorn game.
Player actions should tell the story, if you let me skip the cutscenes, I retain agency, if you force me to watch your storytelling crutch I have no agency in the telling of the story. Let me skip the cutscenes if I want to and the problem goes away.
I think there’s more to narrative than agency.
With the unskippable aspect, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a technical matter. With such tightly integrated and generally short, real time cutscenes - like in IJ - it’s probably not doable?
The cutscenes only a few seconds long at a time, a minute at most(?), and they have data streaming going on in the back ground. The time saving on skipping a scene and going to a load screen is probably so fractional that it’s not worth it?
Just a theory.
lol, if they can’t interrupt a cutscene they shouldn’t be making games, it’s ridiculously basic.
It’s not about time saving, it’s about choices, and how I like to play my games, if you enjoy them, all power to you, I don’t and I don’t see why I should be forced to stop playing the game I paid for while to watch some clunky exposition compensate for the designers inability to tell a story within the constraints of the game.
We like different things, it’s all good.
I find the best games have cutscenes, but allow you to fast forward dialogue with subtitles. That way you can at least read what they’re saying and understand the story line, yet still don’t have to sit through a 5 minute conversation.
Yeah man I’m not saying you have to like them, I’m just curious why you’re wrong 
The Persona method.
I’m usually if not always exactly like that but with Indiana Jones games i’m ok with it.
Maybe because it’s a change for a moment from what i usually play. I also can endure Star Wars: Jedi survivor and the previous one for the same reasons. Probably because those franchises for me are movie first.
I don’t even know how they’d go about an Indy open world game… Would be a huge undertaking to create a world where you can go anywhere and do anything in that space.
Either way, i’m enjoying it for the nostalgia.
I’m not a Kojima fan boy, but the Mantis cutscene in Metal Gear Solid was pretty epic.
I just noticed…. The cutscenes are skippable.
I have the xbox PC version and the early (university) cutscenes did not seem to be skippable, I uninstalled after that, maybe it changes once you’re through to the gameplay episodes? or may differ by platform.
Here’s another fucking thing I hate, ‘retro’ graphics in modern games. GGF.
Just say you’re a lazy/talentless cunt and you can’t be arsed putting the effort into making modern graphics.
I prefer my games to be good instead of looking good. Havent cared about the never ending chase for better graphics for a while now.
I don’t mind the older graphics, although isn’t it harder to use “retro” graphics using the newer engines than to just accept the higher level graphics? I still accept that half-life 2 and the newer fan-made mods are amazing, despite the dated graphics.
Many (most) developers don’t have the luxury of big enough budgets or teams to make the graphical fidelity of most modern AAA games. It isn’t a lack of talent, it’s a lack of opportunity. In some cases it’s also an intentional design choice to appeal to nostalgia (like a Vampire Survivors or a Balatro for example) where graphical fidelity would take you out of the other choices of the designer. I would so rarely put it down to a lack of talent or laziness.
3 misinterpretations of a simple premise
I didn’t mention ‘better graphics’ I specifically called out ‘retro’ e.g. 8-bit and 16-bit style, I like my games to be good as well, and part of it is not having pixellated shite instead of decent looking graphics. It’s not about substituting graphics for gameplay, it’s about lazy design choices.
Half-life 2 and mods for such games don’t have ‘retro’ graphics, they have the graphics the engine it was developed on allows for.
I never mentioned ‘AAA’ game graphical fidelity.
I do agree that it’s a design choice, and possibly motivated by nostalgia, I just think it’s a shit design choice, don’t you think the teams that made those old 8-bit games would have jumped at the chance to exploit modern game engine capabilities. It is absolutely 100% NOT lack of opportunity, Bodycam, a hyper-realistic shooter was made by two guys using a free version of Unreal Engine 5. There are a ton of small dev teams producing high graphic quality games.
Man I was all aboard the Jubal train when you were talking about stories being told with player agency but I’m off again now.
Pixel art is just a style. You might as well call using the colour green lazy. There’s good and bad art in pixel style just as there’s good and bad full 3D.
So can you give a couple of examples of games you’re thinking of that fit the category of lazy or shit development? I just can’t think of any recent ones, unless your problem is entirely one of design choice in which case horses for courses I guess.