One thing: To all game devs out there that might be reading this. Please, for the love of all that is good, make your cutscenes pausable. There's nothing more annoying than missing a story moment because you have to answer your phone or something.

I, personally, have always loved boss introduction cutscenes. I feel they give a sense of doom.

I love cutscenes...I can't remember the last time I played a game without cutscenes that really blew me away.

What I dread more than cutscenes are the, "We don't have cutscenes" approach where the player is simply locked in a room, still in control but with nothing to do, while NPCs act out a cutscene around them until the exposition dump is over. If you're going to do that, just make it a cutscene and let me skip it the second+ time through. :/

Why I hate cut-scenes is that they are almost always a different portion of the game universe then the game-play. No matter how well you can play the game, a bullet is worth ten times more in a cut-scene. In a stealth game you can work as hard as possible to kill no one, (Crysis 3 is what comes to mind) and then the character in the cut-scene in no way reflects that. No matter how careful you are to check corners and watch for traps, in a cut-scene your character can be captured with often minimal effort by your enemies. These kinds of moments almost immediately take me out of the experience. When they're done right i'll love them but so many games need to further their story that they betray how the character in the cut-scene and in the game play are supposed to be the same character

I like cutscenes that can be paused. I skipped a lot of The Witcher 3 cutscenes just because mom was walking behind me.

I think there's another valid use for cut-scenes; to show another time or place. The entirety of the game's story doesn't always happen where and when the player happens to be. Sometimes you'll need a flashback to give context to future events. Sometimes the villain will be plotting in their secret lair, far away from the player and the gameplay. Given that there is no game to play in such scenes, a cut scene is really the best option.

Ironically, MGSV actually managed to get complaints that there weren't enough cutscenes.

I ask myself one question when judging cutscenes: "Is this something that could be done with gameplay?" If the game has a combat sytem (99% of games now), and the protagonist fights in a cutscene, you have failed.

I usually prefer it when the cutscenes and in-game graphics are close to each other, or when they're rendered by the game. I've always thought it looks weird and inconsistent when the cutscenes are super high quality while the actual gameplay looks much worse, even though it can be really cool. Luckily, they automatically end up looking closer to the gameplay now because of console hardware being better.

I love cutscenes, especially after you've gotten past a very difficult part in the game, like you said, a reward. I love seeing an amazing cutscene after I beat a game, it's sometimes the reason I even play the game, I want to know what happens at the end. If the game just said, "you won! the end", I'd be pretty pissed. Yeah, I want to see the next part of the story, but cutscenes tend to be the best way to deliver the story. If I beat a game and in the end the guy marries the girl and they live happily ever after, I'd also be pissed if I just got a black screen that said "guy marries girl and live happily ever after". It's much better to actually get a scene depicting it so you can actually feel a connection to the people you just spent hours playing with. Cutscenes are also a short an efficient way to tell the story. You can get an entire story across in a 30 second cutscene if done right. Like you said, it's great at the beginning to set context, it prevents the player from needing hours of dialog boxes to set the context.

In my experience, cutscenes seem to serve mainly as plot devices wherein the character is forced into errors that the player potentially could have avoided if they were in control (miss a jump, step out from cover and get shot, lose quest macguffin or escortee, blunder into a room without checking for traps or ambush, etc.). And then the player is tossed back into the actual game to deal with that situation, now with the full knowledge that their previous efforts were pre-planned to be futile by the developers. This even has the effect of making the player's *actual* errors and missteps seem less real and significant, because the game doesn't take notice of them in the same way. No thanks, I'd rather retain immersion and protagonist status if it's all the same to you.

OH MY GOD HE'S RIGHT!!! WE SHOULD'VE BEEN ABLE TO USE A PHOENIX DOWN ON AERITH!!!

Here's something a lot of people omit to mention when discussing this issue. What about games that present an illusion of gameplay when really you're playing a cutscene? To me that's worse. Let me elaborate: People always like to mention Metal Gear in this debate. But you know what? When the cutscene in an MGS game stops the rest is PURE gameplay. You control the character, his interaction with the environment and where you want him to go. Yes you have a goal but how you reach it is entirely up to you. Now look at the Call of Duty franchise. A lot of people will mention its awesome set-pieces in the single player as a good thing. Is it really a good thing when an objective marker is always present? Is it really good how when you replay the game, the EXACT same thing happens over and over? Call of Duty single player is basically one entire cutscene. You are constantly going mindlessly from point A to point B expecting cool cinematic stuff to happen. And yeah a lot technically impressive stuff do happen. (Like the Eiffel Tower collapsing in MW3) But are you really in control over that stuff?

Fire emblem awakening shows what cutscenes can be. The cutscenes in that game are amazing!!!

"Why did my character die from one bullet when he was soaking them up like a sponge in that last boss fight?" T_T The pain. The irritation. The gamey-ness.

Dark Souls used cutscenes to great effect. The reveal of Anor Londo wouldn't have been nearly as powerful without the camera motion and angles used in the cutscene. Same thing with pretty much all of the boss reveals.

I love the way that the Borderlands games handle this kind of thing. Most of the parts that could be described as cutscenes are in-game, and unlike most games, you can walk away from the characters and continue playing while still hearing the conversation through the echo recorder. I wish more games would do that.

I agree, they need to be used sparingly and need to be *skipable.* Skyrim's intro should have been a fifth as long. There are games I haven't played because reviewers said cut-scenes were 90% of the game and I don't feel like watching a movie when I want to play a game.

an amazing gaming experience for me is 50/50 gameplay to cut scenes, whilst I'm playing I want to learn a story to feel more immersed in the game I'm playing and give me a reason to progress. or be used to transition between different areas/ levels of a game. if there where no cutscenes the game would have to be completely linear or have loading screens all the time, also there would be no time for a player to take a short break without pausing the game. the best example of why 50/50 is important is the LAST OF US, that wouldn't be the same game without cutscenes. I think the argument of cutscenes are good or bad is ridiculous and a no brainer!

For once I actually have to disagree with Dan: I fucking love cutscenes. Finally, a nice break for my aching fingers, time to see my beloved companions at the height of their beauty and detail, and take roughly 3 billion screenshots, whilst being delivered the story in the easiest-to-consume way possible. All aces here ^^ lol

I don't see a problem with cutscenes. What however boils my blood in utter rage are unskippable cutscenes. Especially in a game that has no save option other than sparse checkpoints right before a cutscene and crashes a lot, while a cutscene at the game launch takes a few minutes and is alsounskippable.

A game isn't bad just because it is half cutscene either. Games like MGS4 should still exist. There is nowhere for that piece of art to go other than gaming. I do think there should options in how we execute narrative in games, but games with long cut-scenes should still exist if the creator feels that it is necessary.

Phoenix Downs are for characters that are DOWN not dead, Aeris was dead not unconscious

..like asking a game to abandon brown or grey... Shit man, that's a bleak thought. The entire FPS genre would collapse in on itself.

MGS is my favorite saga because of the in-depth world that gets told through cutscenes (that I honestly can't imagine being built through gameplay). How would we know Sniper Wolf was good person if not by being told that via Otacon, or her sad story as she's dying? How would The Boss explain herself without pausing the gameplay and giving her time (since the character, Naked Snake, is its own entity separate from the player with its own feelings)? And I know cutscenes are more beneficial when done to emphasize the player's actions. In MGS3, it was ME, the player, who had to pull the trigger in the flower field. It was ME who was struggling against the will of Minerva (or whoever) in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood to not kill whatsherbucket. These were powerful feelings inspired from just having no control to having full control over the inevitable action that must happen. What awful feelings they were! But strong feelings nonetheless, and only possible by having been juxtaposed to a cutscene. But then there's always the "Why couldn't I have just played that instead" part of cutscenes that I don't like. For example, Halo 5's first mission has your team win a 'boss battle' in a cutscene, and I'm like "wtf, I wanted to do that!" It looked cool to ambush the leader and take him out, and I was robbed the ability to do that thing. Even the mountain-running, Power Rangers-esque intro scene could've been playable and would have kicked lots of ass! There is a place for cutscenes, but I feel they are more beneficial and aren't a 50/50 "good sometimes" tool, but closer to a 70/30 "only when they aren't robbing the player of stuff they could do."

Odd that they mention Final Fantasy and Metal Gear when those are series with unreal fanbases. They mention that some people love cutscenes toward the beginning of the video, then spend the rest of it acting like nobody likes them. The fact of the matter is, there's a sizable audience of people who want games with a huge amount of cutscenes and dialogue, and those people don't want those games made into movies or TV series. We saw Spirits Within, and whether or not you liked it, it wasn't the same as playing a Final Fantasy game. You can't pretend that audience isn't huge simply because you don't want it to be, and you can't rob them of the experiences they want simply because you don't want those experiences. Oddly, Extra Credits seem to love Mass Effect, one of the most dialogue heavy games ever made. Don't get me wrong, I love it too, but it seems strange for them to criticize the use of a lot of dialogue and then turn around and praise BioWare games.

I'm far from a hardcore gamer, but cutscene are truly important to me, especially in what is my favorite game, FFX. My parents got me this game when I was about 12, and when I saw the box, I was like, "what is this sh*t, looks slow paced, full of effeminate characters,...". I had never played an RPG before, and I would have never bought the game myself. Then, the second I put the disk in, I was mesmerized: the campfire around the ruins of the city, then the blitzball game in Zanarkand and its destruction by Sin, meeting stange characters (Auron, the kid-like Fayth). After only 30 minutes, I was hooked. And I don't think any gameplay mechanics could have made for such an amazing experience. And when playing the game, I definitely remember hoping to end the grinding by moving to the next cutscene. Actually, I played the game recently again for the first time in like 5 years. I didn't remember all the areas, or the side quests or even some of the game's most important Bosses, but I still remembered vividly most of the cutscenes, and I was very moved. I know the medium is different, but for me, that filmographic aspect is still crucial in games, and I don't feel like relying mostly on game mechanics can fully capture the story or even the game's atmosphere. I'd say though that back when this game came out (around 2001), graphically, the difference between the cutscene and the rest of the game was huge, and shots of Bevelle, Sin or Zanarkand couldn't have been rendered through the games's graphic. But now, the difference between in-game graphics and cutscene is smaller, and a simple shift in cameras allows for a transition between the two. So the effect of cutscenes today might be diminished...

How many people here have played(first spelled plade) Xenoblade? Monolith Soft's use of cut-scenes in that game are pretty well done (Regardless of either the action style or speaking style) to reinforce not only how powerless you are to do things (Fiora's death in the opening Act has you in a cutscene where all of the characters are paralyzed/bound) and to reinforce the fact that you CAN be powerful (Learning that new Monodo art just in time to save Ryen) despite one or two cutscenes that don't follow the rules of the game (Monodo speed only affects one party member instead of the whole party that the cutscene introducing it showed and it doesn't grant the enchant ability.)

They are rewards in battleblock theater

best guest artist ever

I have an idea. I want to use it, to make a game with it. Let's say you have a game that has a very charged epic ambiance to it. The game starts with a cinematic. There's a lot happening, and you all see it trough your character's eyes. You gradually gain the ability to look and the move around. This moment serves as a first tutorial. Until the actual starting point of the story happens. (someone important dies? a war is declared while you were peeking? a horrific monster walls out of a portal in front of you and your friends?) At that moment, the game gives you one last broad view of where you are and what's happening, then boom, you have all the controls. You right away get to make a decision about how you will initially evade the dangers that you just saw pop in the world. And then the game only uses cinematics when stuff is happening elsewhere (maybe you have divination powers? maybe someone's telling you a story while you're tied up or stuck in a cell?). There. Cinematics. Amazing. Marketeable. Not too frequent or intense, but still impactful and immersive. By the way, did anyone ever think of writing the sleleton of their game story as if it was a "book of which you are the hero"? Cause I just started doing it and it really makes me feel like I'm myself playing the game, forcing myself to think "What else could a player decide to do in this moment?", "Does this really feel like a choice?" while still being the one writing the story.

here is my side to this argument Ratchet & Clank the game-play & cutscenes (for some odd reason it says I spelled cutscenses wrong) are amazing in this series especially since they don't drag on for to long & they decide to keep the player inversed? (I guess that is the right word for it) in the game by providing the player an added reason to do things or search for hidden objects

WCIII cinematics were awesome. The Return of Arthas, The Destruction of Dalaran or The Death of Mannoroth. All of them great.

Just wanted to point out how much I love the closing art. Having the host still connected to his podium in a situation where it's obviously out of place is great stuff.

I agree with your story hypothesis. You can see it in how many "movies" of video games you can find on KZfaq that are just all the cut scenes that tell the actual story of the game. I like cut scenes. They're often beautiful and usually help ease forward the story or enhance characters. 💜

No, you're cutscene hypothesis is right, for me, at least. I don't do it for the cutscenes, I do it for the stories. Hell, if cutscenes were in game, I wouldn't care. A lot of games have really cool story lines, some better than movies and books, and we need more of this, not necessarily in cutscenes, but just in general. We need more narrative/plot in Games!

people that hate them are no friends of mine, i hate it when i ask a (former) friend about shocking, iconic, hilarious or awesome cut scene game we played, he just skips the cutscenes then has no idea or context of whats going on no idea what he is missing. not like it was C or B+(?) list game, horrible voice acting, writing best used as TP, or reasonably dive straight into multiplayer.

The Last of Us has used cutscenes in the best way I have seen a video game use them. Every cutscene is an emotional trip that makes you know what the characters are thinking and how they are feeling in a way in-game dialogue can't. The Last if Us shows how well video games can show a meaningful and emotional story.

Films will always be better at being films than games? Blizzard disagrees :)

I actually really like cut scene heavy and cinematic games. Sure gameplay focused games are great, I love Dark Souls but I also love Mass Effect and The Last Of Us.

A game is which is really well made without cutscenes is Half-Life. Infact, all games from Valve have no cutscenes.

I love me an epic cutscene after an awesome boss fight, in between levels, etc.

I think that everything they said in this video affects only for games whose's narrative is important for the gameplay. Antichamber, for example, is a puzzle game with almost no narrative (at least not explicitly) and the only cut-scene there is is the credits. But this game is still my favorite game.

monster hunter 4 actually uses cutscenes really well. when you're on a mission where you're fighting a monster you haven't encountered before, they give a cutscene where the monster does its special attack while your character runs away from it

I play Assassins Creed for the story as much as the gameplay. I love getting to a cutscenes.

Mentioning the Andrew Ryan encounter, I think what made that moment so powerful is that you are brought to the realization that you were never playing as Jack, rather you were playing as Andrew's willed control over Jack.

"Orcs Must Die" versus "Space Marine" for me - his example was spot on my actual experience

I love Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn's cutscenes. It mainly uses one per act (about 10 chapters) and is beautiful as a cool reward.

Blizzard Cutscenes are Awesome and i never get annoyed when one shows up

The opening cutscene for Final Fantasy X-2 is EPIC! It introduces the characters, is upbeat and gets you ready for the action, shows you that this Yuna is not the old Yuna...I love it :D

loved the art at the end where Dan Floyd's shooting a dinosaur

The 'official' Attack on Titan game uses WAAAAYYYY too many cutscenes. It's like watching the show, but the emotional impact that the show had is ruined by the actual 'game'. The actual 'game' is QTE heavy and ruins the pacing of the story. Maybe if the actual 'gameplay' was long enough it wouldn't be so bad, but you're always on a timer that is 5 minutes or less, but often you've completed the section within 2 minutes. Then you're back to watching 10 minutes of the show. I did not actually play the game, but watching a Let's Play confirmed my fears and actually was worse than I imagined. The person playing it hadn't seen the show before, and he actually LAUGHED during one part where a Titan caught a character midair in its mouth because looked so ridiculous. When I had watched the show the same scene was heart wrenching, but the easy QTE gameplay ruined the feeling you were supposed to have at that moment because the cut scenes and the 'gameplay' were inconsistent with each other. The game was making you OP, but the cutscenes were making the people around you look like morons rather than victims because the game is too easy. One of these don't belong. You're either OP, or doomed. Pick one developers!

I think Life is Strange did a great job with cutscenes and interaction.

around 7:15 when you were talking about the context and how the game disiners wanted to have the art style in that way but because of graphical limitaltions they couldn't well look at the persona series that's another great example of who that works.

I don't necessarily have a problem with cutscenes. I like having that break in tension where I can put down the controller, turn up the volume, and go get a drink without missing anything important. (I am still listening, that's what the volume remark was for)

I would argue that things like Metal gear have a place as interactive movies.

WC3 or rather Blizzard cutszenes are so damn good.

The return of Arthas is one of the coolest cinematics in the Warcraft franchise

I just wanna say, I really like the drawings in this episode. Very expressive

HEY! The cutscenes in MGS are great! Nice video though. Oh, and its a shame they did this video before The Last of Us came out. Those cutscenes are amazing.

Fire emblem cutscenes are awesome! And when U get the high graphic epic scenes u feel like you've earned something and it feels epic and then I cry cuz Fire emblem's stories are sad as fuck.

The amount of Ren & Stimpy used in this episode pleases me greatly.

There's definitely something to this, the part about playing for each cutscene. I felt like Ni-No-Kuni's greatest asset were the fantastic animated cut-scenes and were one of the main reasons I invested so much time in the game.

I think good cutscenes can make games better. Take, for instance, Kingdom Hearts 1. Sure, it's mechanics are very solid, but the cutscenes are well crafted to make you want to see more.

Breaking the flow of play is vital. Never a bad thing. However excellent your shooting or platforming is, however varied your enemies and environments, I will burn out within half an hour if I feel stuck in a loop of mindless gameplay without any narrative, exposition, progression or worldbuilding. I WANT the flow of gameplay broken up.

i love the way guest artist draws arms lol

I would agree with you, but, my favorite game ever made (legend of dragoon for the ps1) breaks practically every rule you just mentioned and I STILL go back and play that game.

Sonic 3 and Knuckles anyone?

Good cutscenes are in: Undertale (I'm biased, what can I say...) Stanley Parable Aaaaaaand that's all I know. :-|

3:50 "That's just my own hypothesis..." I know this has nothing to do with the actual subject, but EXTRA CREDIT TO EXTRA CREDITS for finally using the right word for that situation!

I'd say that things like the opening and closing tram ride, where even if you have free control of your character, you're unable to progress until the scripted events have played out outside the windows, are cutscenes. 1st person cutscenes, that don't break immersion as badly as bad 3rd person ones, but they are still cutscenes.

I dont pay $60 for a third of my game to be a fucken movie

Dark Souls does a pretty good job with there cutscenes

One of the many reasons i love the "God Eater" games are indeed in the contest created by the cutscenes, the intro cutscene is made like an anime opening and give a great feeling of the game world populated by giant monsters to battle everyday. And the other cutscenes in the game have the character you create and customize interacting with the other characters during the story, it made me feel like i was actually in the game.

The art on this episode is my favorite in the whole series.

I'm not sure why people complain so much about cut scenes. In Metal Gear Solid 3 I thought they were great, as it helped drive the story forward and they were always entertaining. For those gamers who don't like cut scenes, go play COD, I personally can't stand games that focus too much on all action, action, action, Michael Bay explosions. It's just boring. Cut scenes make it possible to understand the story without too much in game reading like in Dragon Age.

I love Metal Gear, but i really think a LOT of cutscenes could work better at scripted sequence

cut scenes are what got me excited to play the subspace emissary.

The only MGS game I really played was the gameboy color one. Most dialogue could be skipped through, and the memory restrictions meant it was really light on cutscenes. Best argument for cartridges ever!

XENOGEARS!!!!

What about games like Half-Life, where the opening delivers context through a pseudo-cutscene?

Story moment to story moment > cutscene to cutscene. I completely follow that hypothesis because I have done it myself..

Watching this a second or third time after a couple year gap and watching a lot of video game sins: 4:43 -- Immediately start thinking "Losing your weapon in a cutscene means you lose all your weapons."

The World Ends with You had some good use of cutscenes. Watching the action play out (especially on a few specific days that I will not mention due to spoilers) and the emotion some of those drive into you did genuinely make me tear up at times, and even put the game down for a few days because I was devastated by what was going on, and the sad nature the cutscenes portrayed.

I never want Metal Gear to be without cutscenes.

This art style is absolutely *adorable* .

I'm not sure if the old C&C games used exactly cutscenes. But I just loved their cinematics C&C delivered some of the best stories and I felt like it was one of the series' strengths.

I think that Journey did a great job with cut-scenes and narrative. Anyone says otherwise needs to bring a good argument other than "I have not played it yet."

I think that a great example of a game's story using less words to tell the story is Sonic 3 & Knuckles, this story is actually good and is told with no dialogue or contextual text

I'm a CG artist, and yeah, you are right. It's pretty lovely and enjoyable to hit that render button and know that you don't have to fake any GI,AO,etc and know that it will look beautiful

3:43 THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!!! You TOTALLY NAILED IT!!!

The one game where I have been super excited to reach the next cutscene was battleblock theater, and that didn’t exactly have amazing graphics, the comedy in them was golden

Oh my gosh you mentioned Xenogears. Your video is more amazing! (I just played Xenogears from beginning to end in around 24 hours, including every single forced, snail's-pace cutscene, and LOVED EVERY MINUTE.)

I remember playing the first NFS Most Wanted and desperately wanting to see more of the cutscenes. Partly because the delivery of the story through radio messages from other characters whilst driving around got extremely old by the 10th hour. But mostly because those cutscenes were so effective at creating context. That and they were so much fun to watch. I love me a bit of ham acting and that game's cutscenes were like a slice straight from Parma.

To borrow a term from Anime, cutscenes can be used like Sakuga, moments of high fedelity to show how the artists want everything to look, so the artist can seed a bigger picture for us to base the lower quality art being rendered in real time.

Once I played a game that was on sale on steam that goes by the name "Sequence" and it may have been the only time that I actually felt a genuine sense of reward and achievement every time I was given a dose of dialog. The game was drip feeding me small little pieces of dialog and not only did this mean they could funnel a lot of work into the actual quality of the writing (meaning I was never bored reading what was going on) but it actually added to the overall gameplay, not only was I playing because I enjoyed the game but I also was playing to get my nice slice of dialog cake at the end. For those who haven't played Sequence I would highly recommending it if not just to see how you feel about their style of cut scenes, it's a very well priced indie game and when I bought it on steam on sale it was under £1. And for £1 I managed to get a good 11 hours out of that game and still can go back and play it for more due to its replay ability as a completion-ist game as well. Also congratulations for reading all of this, you deserve a sticker.

I love the guest artist, the derpy but cute illistations are great

Well I like cut scenes (like in games like jak and dexter or psyconauts) because they really let us know who the characters are. They show us how they actually act (which is something that video games don't do without cutscenes) but they should only be used in certain places.

My favorite cut scene from any game is probably the very first cut scene from Final Fantasy IX. Where you get to see the main characters deal with their internal views. Vivi's sense of wonder in this new world, Garnet's feelings of loneliness and captivity, and ending with Zidane's sense of adventure, and the cut scene actually melting INTO the gameplay! In my own opinion, one of the best cut scene's ever made ^w^ (and actually ALL the CS's in that game are amazingly good come to think of it)