A couple years ago I could be quoted as saying RPG’s were the best video games around with detailed characters, in-depth storylines, and beautiful cinemas. However, it seems most video game companies today pride themselves on having beautifully rendered cinemas in their games. There are video game companies that don’t use cut scenes like Valve but other popular companies like Square-Enix use them constantly. It’s entertaining to look at a video game from a Playstation game and compare the graphics to a new generation console’s output to judge the quality’s improvement. There appears to be a growing trend with video games, RPG’s in particular, with large amounts of cut scenes and limited game play.

The question I pose to you is, “Is too much money and time going to graphical presentation that could be going into other more tangible aspects?”

Cut scenes started to grow popular in the late 90’s and were widely received as excellent pieces to a video game. Watching a beloved character’s death in great detail or seeing a great war played out in front of your eyes was breath taking. Most of the time, these scenes were very short due to limited space on the game cartridge or disc, barely totaling over ten minutes of movie time. Also due to the lack of space, there were very few of these scenes involved in a game.

Players lavished praise on those scenes and that is what leads us to where we are in gaming today. The torn mentality of passivity. There is a large rift between interactive cut scenes where you are still able to maintain control of your character and just pure movies where you put down your controller for several minutes at time. As of recent, I’ve found myself enjoying games where there’s little to no cinemas at all just because the games that do have them overdo it. Real time games such as the Half Life series or pure multiplayer games like Rock Band strike my fancy over my favorite RPG’s. Just because a RPG in this age means an interactive DVD, as the Final Fantasy series started to show me.

I was gifted Eternal Sonata when I first picked up an XBOX 360, but strayed away from it for a few months having read some reviews about how there’s a lot of cut scenes in the game. In the end, I decided it couldn’t be any worst than Final Fantasy X and popped it in last night. I fell in love with the combat system, the graphics, the music, and the characters easily after putting up with the lengthy introduction. Informed by friends that the cut scenes would progressively become shorter, I played through it. I think the real kicker was in the attempt of getting to an area. I came across a bridge, was introduced to a cut scene. Crossing the bridge halfway resulted in another cut scene. After that, I finished crossing the bridge for yet ANOTHER long cut scene. After all of that, I was able to enter the city and was introduced with another mini cut scene.

Now the feature with the game is you’re able to skip most, if not all, of these beautiful cinemas. What really is the point of playing a roleplaying game if you have to skip all of these cinemas to play the game though? I went through an hour’s worth of cinemas last night as I progressed through the first chapter, being bored the entire time. Most of the conversation wasn’t pertained to the situation at hand and was either mindless chatter or insignificant back story. Yet, I fear the instant I skip one of these scenes I will miss something vital.

Whatever happened to RPG meaning roleplaying game? There are several RPG’s where you can get lost just exploring the world and everything, the only interruption being a ten second loading screen. Now it feels like a chore playing through a game just because it feels as though I am messing with a remote to my DVD player the entire time. There is no need for twenty different cut scene conversations where the characters are discussing mundane things, those are easily accomplished in the traditional press ‘A’ to continue manner.

Has the video industry evolved past interaction in a game to just forcing a player to sit through their own detailed narration? Is it really worth the $50-$60 per game we dish out as players when I can easily buy a Disney DVD that is more entertaining with special features for a third of the price? I love beautiful cinemas when they are placed correctly and evenly throughout a game, but now it feels as though video game companies are taking advantage of how well graphics render on their systems and want to show off. I sincerely hope not only for my sake, but for the gamers around me that feel the same frustration, that more companies take advantage of real time cinemas or consider reducing them. Shiny movies aren’t the reason why we play video games; they are just an added bonus.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 1:13 am and is filed under Xbox 360, Video Games, Game Design, Rants, Roleplaying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.