Tag: video game cut scenes

On Videogame Cut Scenes and Filmmaking

Mass Effect 2

Over the years, the advancements in video game technology and the bigger budgets associated with AAA games have helped the games industry compete with movies in terms of their appeal and their business. The experiences are bigger, bolder and more akin to Hollywood blockbusters than ever. We expect more out of games these days – and a lot of that mindset is owed to the cut scenes that were introduced several generations ago. Cut scenes stretched our idea of what games could be. But do games still do cut scenes right?

That’s the question Wired asks in a new piece titled 5 Film-School Violations in Videogame Cut Scenes. In it, writer Jason Schreier takes a look at some of the things that modern cut scenes still get wrong, even after all these years. While I think the list is sort of ill aimed (it’s more about writing and editing than actual direction), Schreier raises some great issues. In terms of writing, many games just can’t seem to cut it compared to the movies they’re trying so desperately to be.

While I’d have to disagree with him on Mass Effect 2 (one of my friends was a cinematic designer on that game and knows his crap), I’ve long maintained that many game cut scenes don’t really know what they’re doing in terms of the actual craft of film – shots are set up all wrong, and are more about flash and spectacle than about the story itself. To me, one of the most grievous recent examples is Final Fantasy XIII. For all the flack that the game takes, I felt like very little of it was directed at its cut scenes, which were often a jumbled mess. During action sequences, I often found it hard to follow what exactly was going on in the scene, to the point where I had to re-watch them several times.

So how do you guys feel about this list? How do you feel about cut scenes in gaming? Which games do it right and which ones do it wrong?

Source – Wired

Where You Thought Gaming Would Be

Back to the Future 2Over the last few weeks, I’ve been on something of a Back to the Future kick. I suppose this may have something to do with the classic trilogy’s recent release on Blu-ray, or simply because I am a science fiction nut that loves awesome movies. Regardless, there is something about the movies that always strikes me when I watch them, especially when dealing with Back to the Future II’s projections about the future.

If for some reason you’re not remember correctly, or a large rock fell on your head and deleted megabytes from your brain, Back to the Future II has some fairly outlandish predictions about where humanity’s technology and sense of style was supposed to be in the year 2015. The notable (and laughable) examples would be that of shoes that tie themselves, flying cars, and home fusion reactors.

While this movie is obviously a comedy, it’s still something that I think that people tend to do in general when we talk about the future: in some ways we wildly over project, and in others we are floored by things we never thought of. The same is true for video games. Continue reading Where You Thought Gaming Would Be

GamerSushi Asks: The Cut Scene?

mgs41A few days ago, I beat Metal Gear Solid 4, excited about having finished the game. I figured, hey, I’ll go to bed after this is over. Having heard it was long, I estimated that this would be about 20 or 30 minutes later, and I would be tucked away and dreaming after seeing Snake & Co’s fate. Boy, was I wrong. The ending was nearly an hour and a half long. Leaving me tired and disheveled at work the next day.

This got me thinking. I do that sometimes. I remember an age in gaming when cutscenes were welcome with anticipation. Hell, part of the draw of the original PSX hits like Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid were the spectacular cut scenes, because it brought gaming to a new level in that generation. But then you have a game like Portal or Left 4 Dead which uses little to no cut scenes in order to fully immerse you in the gameplay, and it works just as well.

So- what’s the perfect kind of cut scene in gaming? While we can all probably agree that an hour and a half is much too long, what’s too short? What should a cut scene accomplish? What are your thoughts about cut scenes in video games? And what are your favorite examples? Answer away!