Cut-Scenes, Then and Now

Too Many Game Developers are Filmmaker Wannabes. There you have it.

Even old antique games had cinematic cut-scenes. Maybe a sprite of a UFO would fly across the screen and capture a Princess by beaming her up against her will. Then the UFO flies away. The purpose of the cut-scene is to show the player what to do and what's at stake: That's the bad guy! Get that S.O.B!

Modern technology has permitted game cut-scenes to be so overblown that they no longer have any useful connection to the game as a game. They're only used as stuffing-holes where the heavy-handed developer can do all their indulgent wannabe filmmaking. The cinematics are intended to spray the screen with drama, with "fleshed out" the characters, and inept amateur camera-work, and to dazzle the gamer with new and spectacularly failed attempts at photorealism. In other words, movie-like sequences serve to make games more movie-like, rather than to enhance the game as a game. Meanwhile, important features suffer from the developer's priorities: lack of controller configuration options, sloppy design mechanics, lack of support for things like co-op, permanent score-keeping and leaderboards, efficient user interfaces, native speed-run support, and all that.)

"Movies are exciting. So why not incorporate some movie-like things into our games?", you say?

OK, sure. Why not. A lot of movies are pretty exciting, aren't they, and all we do is sit back and watch. The problem is that even a crappy box-office bomb is held to a standard of dialog/acting/script/plot/character that is leagues beyond the pathetic internal artistic standard of video games. And even as the dialog, plotting, and editing of game cinematics reeks all over the place and embarrasses you in front of your grandparents and girlfriend, you can still tell how much time and resources they put into the inept cinematic visuals. It's sad.

I'm not going to mention any names.

How about I name some games that did it RIGHT. Call of Duty 4, Thief, and No One Lives Forever had great production values for their cinematics-- possibly the best ever in gaming, or certainly in first-person action. The voice-acting/direction and scripting was superb. System Shock 2 was excellent, and did a good job with writing and voicing. Half-Life used no cut-scenes whatsoever, and was an outstandingly immersive and fun game.

NOW GO AND DO LIKEWISE, GENTS.