Convenient Cinematics
on April 9, 2009 | Videogames | gaming convenience, narrative design
Are you scared of cinematics? I know I have been for years.
I’m not talking here about whether or not cinematics are a valid narrative medium in video games (although it’s a fascinating topic), but about the convenience of cinematics for gamers; when you need to pause a movie, you simply press pause, no second thoughts.
What if you’re playing a game?
Most cinematics are used to relay information, whether it’s mission-critical (briefings) or simply interesting. If an interruption occurs, you have to ask yourself:
- Am I in a cinematic or any kind of scripted event?
- If I press escape, what will happen on this particular game? Skip the sequence, or send me to the menu?
- What if it escapes it, can I restart it in any way? Or is the same information available in-game?
Which doesn’t exactly register as a “reflex action”.
Most games don’t offer the possibility to pause or rewind a cinematic, which violates a general user interface rule in software design: the software is supposed to be forgiving to the user, especially when the response to a particular command (such as pressing ‘escape’ in a jiffy) doesn’t have the same effect everywhere.
So far, sticking a large “Interrupt me at your own risk” sign on my back has worked for me, but this can’t go on – close ones find it aggressive.
April 13th, 2009 on 1:39 pm
My end goal is to create this epic cinematic segment that I dreamt up while driving late at night with my eye’s closed in England.
IF the user has a sudden need to skip/pause the cinematic, then the cinematic is not doing its job. You should be totally enthralled by it, and after its done you can put the fire out in the kitchen!
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April 14th, 2009 on 2:39 pm
Oh, maybe we should have hypnotic cinematics to make sure people remain seated. Just a thought :)
Although, I’m getting your point: cinematics should be so interesting people shouldn’t see them as an interruption. However, it can get a bit difficult with games such as MGS that confuse the medium with cinema’s little brother (although you can pause cinematics in MGS).
Although, the question of having convenient cinematics is only scratching the surface of cinematics’ problem: if we managed to scrap them once and for all, we’d feel much better – and maybe we’d (finally) put a stop to the comparison between videogames and films.
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April 14th, 2009 on 3:22 pm
Nononononono. We are all moving into the direction of increasing the cinematic comparison between the story telling in a movie and the story telling in a game. As technology improves we will make the leap into an seemless interactive cinematic experience. The pinacle of the story telling medium, we will make the user be the star of his story, and now with the visuals to match your imagination.
Currently I see in game cinematics as my reward for saving the world, if you scrap them, then what do I get?
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April 14th, 2009 on 4:18 pm
I think terminology is where we don’t agree. Take a look at Call of Duty 4:
No cinematics to speak of, and yet one of the most memorable cinematic experience to date. How impressive was the detonation of the nuclear warhead? Quite, as you were witnessing it from the eyes of a guy who’s in the blast radius! And you can feel its effect when painfully trying to walk around. Talk about immersion!
What I’m criticizing here are the cinematics as an information-disclosing device, not the cinematic quality of the game experience. Cinematics came to existence to expose information that the game engine couldn’t (facial expressions, complex animations, etc); closing the technological gap means we can have all this in-game. If the characters and worlds around you look and feel alive, you’ll feel just as good (if not more) about saving the world as you did with a cinematic!
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April 16th, 2009 on 2:45 pm
Because of the advances in technology, Cinematics are now being replaced by In-Game Cinematics to tell the story. To sell the story, Movie quality Cinematics are deployed as intro-cinematics. I would also preffer being rewarded by a cinematic at the end of each game or major stage like Diablo II. But I would hate to see the day when I won’t see a new cinematic for a game comming out or [drool] a new Blizzard cinematic any day.
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April 16th, 2009 on 5:46 pm
Sure; Blizzard games are not designed to render characters in closeups, with mocap and facial expressions, so it might be still be useful for this type of games.
Adventure or action games, however, have this possibility. Both cinematics and in-game scripted sequences have the same characteristics then, except for the lack of interactivity of the former. I think developers want more and more to keep the player in control, not less.
When it comes to reward, I can think of other (more meaningful) ways to congratulate the player; finishing the game without killing innocents, for instance, could trigger a “better” ending, story-wise.
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