Josh Hayes Says: I Don’t Like Cutscenes

I miss the days when you just put in a cartridge and started your game up. All you got was a gentleman standing in front of a castle holding his whip. Somehow everybody knew what was going on. I couldn’t say the same about every old game, but for the most part, you could figure it out without all the cutscenes.

If you’ve not played the first Castlevania, you’re probably lost on that first scene. It happened when you started the game up, it lasted all of 10 seconds and then you were just dropped into that game. You had a jump button, an attack button and you could move around; that was all you needed to play. Things felt so much better when I didn’t have to have a cutscene explain to me how to move and attack.

Games these days have such a reliance on their stupid cutscenes. I’ve been hit with cutscene after cutscene in some games and it shows no signs of stopping, as if the “save the world, you’re a hero” wasn’t enough storyline for me. Even games like Gears of War have an unnecessary amount of cutscenes trying to explain its storyline. I have absolutely no idea where we are or what we’re doing, but they sure want to keep showing cutscenes trying to explain it. Isn’t “Go shoot every bad guy and save the day” enough?

Ninja Gaiden on the original Nintendo Entertainment System is the appropriate way to do a cutscene. The start of a level has a scene, then you play your level and at the end, you see a new cutscene. That was all you needed. They felt like these nice rewards for playing the game, but at some point around 1998, cutscenes started to show up everywhere in games.

Metal Gear Solid was a big success for the cutscene. Really well done, action movie style videos with lots of talking. Of course, that was over ten years ago and every game I’ve played with a storyline since feels like it’s trying to do what Metal Gear did. It’s like they saw the success of it, how well respected it was and just mercilessly tried to rip it off, failing constantly with every attempt to create a storyline.

The storyline of Metal Gear Solid 2 was so confusing to the point where they had to retroactively change some things within the story in the fourth game. To actually go back and say “well actually, we told you the story wrong” makes me mad. They do that in comic books often as well and it makes me want to shove pineapples into the pee holes of these jerk writers. First of all for getting me to pay attention to your cutscene and then saying what I watched intently was wrong.

Of all the games ever in existence, the one with the worst cutscenes has to be Final Fantasy VII – Dirge of Cerberus. I’ll just describe one scene: You fight a helicopter. Cool, huh? Now instead of just fighting it, you have to watch several cutscenes throughout the fight. Unskippable cutscenes. You go to attack and a cutscene plays! Your guy, of course, does things you can’t do in the game and it gets to that point where the game becomes less playing and more watching.

Role playing games, like Final Fantasy, feel like you walk to the next cutscene with as few battles as possible between them. After seeing twenty minutes of cutscenes to every five minutes of gameplay, it starts to get annoying. They have become, essentially, choose-your-own-adventure DVDs. Why take the game out of a videogame?

Why can’t more games present the story like Star Fox 64? Star Fox is told the story throughout the game by his crew and others talking to him. They don’t intrude you playing, they just never shut up. At the bottom of the screen you’ll see a face and some words, but things are said aloud for you. If you really need storyline, there is some, but it’s easily skipped before every bit. Just a big wall of text and a guy talking.

That’s what I want from games. Do I get that? No. I get unnecessarily long scenes of Devil May Cry‘s jerk lead character doing things much more interesting than what you actually do in-game. Swords and guns are great when I’m using them in the game, but if I wanted to watch an action movie, I would have rented a movie! I wanted to be the hero. Playing this sword-slashing and gun-shooting possibly emotional devil is what I signed up for! Instead, I get to watch him talk about prophecies and their evil father. Thanks for being so original with that; I’ve never seen anything feature a chosen one or father drama before.

Even Mario has cutscenes and talking now. Really? I can’t just go straight into the game? I have to walk over, watch Boswer destroy things, and then get to play a bit? Oh, I have to talk to some new girl who looks a lot like the old princess? Nonsense! Having storyline shoved up my nostrils at every turn is unacceptable! And these storybook sections that interrupt you every so often are the worst offenders.

Every cutscene should be skippable. Have you tried to replay an old RPG lately? A more recent Final Fantasy was unplayable for me. I remembered everything about the story and just wanted to replay the game. Could I do that by just playing the game? Nope! I had to sit through every scene over and over again. No thanks! I love playing games and playing games I previously enjoyed, but cutscenes have driven me into madness. Yes, I get it. This is the hero, these are his friends. Can we just play the game already?