Cutscenes:video games::intertitles:silent movies
November 6, 2013 6:31 AM   Subscribe

Hitbox Team (creators of DustForce) (previously) explore designing game narrative.
posted by a snickering nuthatch (25 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm absolutely of the opinion that they should be used sparingly For flavor if at all - the should not be the main event. Whenever possible whatever storytelling is done should be done in the normal game mode, with the player still in the driving seat - and even the most scripted of ingane events is better than kicking you out of the game. Half Life and Portal series show that there's ways to do that for pretty much the entire duration.

Also QTEs should be banned by international law.
posted by Artw at 7:07 AM on November 6, 2013


Cutscenes can be good. Hire writers. Respect them. Listen to them. Allow them to be a part of the development process, instead of being the wordmonkeys who are supposed to justify the gameplay shifting from A Jungle Zone to An Ice Level. Start structuring games around narrative; allow the narrative and the mechanics to be symbiotic. Have someone there who will have the courage to say, "You know, sometimes less is more... Sometimes more is less... Sometimes more is good...." See: Silent Hill 2.

I freaking promise you words-in-games would be better.
posted by byanyothername at 7:09 AM on November 6, 2013 [2 favorites]


Definitely a nice article.

Mostly I want to chime in though and say man, Dustforce is a fantastic game. I got it with a Humble Indie Bundle and didn't play it for a while due to what I perceived as a goofy pretext, but after 5 minutes of playing I was completely hooked.

It pushed me in an even further direction than Super Meat Boy did in terms of demanding a certain kind of zen. To master the hardest levels, at first of course you need to be very conscious and try to figure out your strategy and plan out your attack. Then, after practicing it for a bit though, you have to turn your mind really, really off. You do not have time to react mentally to the precision that is demanded from you. The only thing that's going to get you through is reflex and muscle memory.

Really a brilliant game.
posted by Alex404 at 7:11 AM on November 6, 2013


Cutscenes can be good. Hire writers. Respect them. Listen to them.

Here's the thing though - it's Absolutly possible to have those writers work on the game rather than on in-game movies.
posted by Artw at 7:11 AM on November 6, 2013 [4 favorites]


Ideally, they should be! But narrative driven games do need some non-interactive parts here and there. Ideally, those should be well written, well directed and fit snugly enough (not perfectly; there will always be a disconnect, or some abstraction, and that's fine) with the interactive parts.

Instead, mostly, writing in games is just kind of...bad. Across the board. Respecting writing would go a long way to making games not...embarrassing. The anti-cutscene brigade is hurting that respect, I think, by kind of bordering uncomfortably on the idea that narrative driven games shouldn't even be made.

Another thing that should happen but doesn't: developers need to think about whether their game is narratively driven. Not every game needs cutscenes, or an involving story, and many game premises are hurt by trying to shoehorn one in. It'd be fine for a Sonic game to be about running and music and colors, and a Castlevania game to be about pretty men in capes running from left to right whipping at monsters. Crafting a narrative layer over premises like these takes more work than anyone is going to reasonably invest, so better to just allow them to be about what they are. Ditto with narrative games, though: allow them to be about telling a story, and work that into both the interactivity and the noninteractive bits.
posted by byanyothername at 7:18 AM on November 6, 2013 [2 favorites]


For an example of cut scenes blended almost seamlessly with gameplay, see the most recent Grand Theft Auto.

There are no jarring cuts at all. You'll be walking along the sidewalk, an NPC will speak up, getting your attention in the most natural way, the camera zooms in just a bit and lifts over the shoulder, and before you know it you're in a scripted moment that just happens right there in the normal game world.

There are lots of little flourishes in GTA:V which pull you into the characters' lives and invite the player to become a willing partner in telling the story. Very compelling.
posted by General Tonic at 7:22 AM on November 6, 2013


I like well done cutscenes. The ones in Warcraft II were amazing in their time.

The ones that really irritate me are when they are just before a big battle and the transition is from cutscene to the fight without any setup or chance to save and are impossible to skip. So, you get double punished if you have to take a few attempts at the encounter.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:02 AM on November 6, 2013 [2 favorites]


I got Dustforce a while back and barely played any of it - because of its complete lack of any narrative. Looks nice, full of really sweet platforming action, but absolutely nothing to compel you to move deeper into the game beyond "I want some more of this sweet platforming". And that turned out to not be enough to hold me.

Personally I still think one of the best compromises between "game" and "cutscene" is Sonic 3. Super-brief moments where the screen is locked in one place, and the in-engine sprites do a little wordless pantomime that advances the plot.
posted by egypturnash at 8:17 AM on November 6, 2013


I admire a well-done cutscene, but once you make them unskippable, I hate you forever.
posted by nerdler at 8:28 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


I got Dustforce a while back and barely played any of it - because of its complete lack of any narrative.

This is really interesting. Reading this article, I was thinking, "Game developers need to ask themselves, Why does this game have a narrative? Why should my story idea be a game rather than a book or a movie?"

But apparently there are a lot of game players who only enjoy games if there is a narrative hook pulling them along? There's nothing about Dustforce that needs a narrative. I can't imagine those platforming challenges being more satisfying if the character had a name and there was some story about a villain creating the mess that you're sweeping up. It seems really weird to me that there could be someone who doesn't enjoy that game as it is, but would enjoy it if there were a story giving them an incentive to keep playing.
posted by straight at 8:51 AM on November 6, 2013


I read this the other night. It inspired me to think about implementing a mechanic that I was mainly "telling/showing" via narrative into one more tightly integrated into gameplay.

That said, I do think there is a place for cutscenes and similar things. They can be overused in modern game design, that's true, especially for things like shooters.

I eventually want to get a job as a game designer (preferably for adventure/story based games), which mean, implementing story via gameplay is a key goal I want to learn/implement.

Narrative can come in many forms, and I do think the more you integrate it into the gameplay itself, the more coherent an experience you create, which I think can only improve your game. But the core components of each need to be tight on their own. You don't tightly integrate graphics with gameplay. I mean you can, but the gameplay should stand on its own. In more narrative structures it's harder to separate the two, but I do think there needs to be an understanding of when its appropriate to implement integration and when things need to be more loosely coupled.
posted by symbioid at 8:59 AM on November 6, 2013


Pogo_Fuzzybutt: "The ones that really irritate me are when they are just before a big battle and the transition is from cutscene to the fight without any setup or chance to save and are impossible to skip. So, you get double punished if you have to take a few attempts at the encounter."

When I pictured making a Voltron game, I wanted to implement the "Activate interlock! Dynotherms connected! Infracells up! Mega thrusters are go!" line/animation. But I realized how tedious that would get and insisted that any game that was of a similar nature that I would ever design would have skippable scenes after the first time (and even the first time a "fast" option to get to one section of dialog would be implemented)
posted by symbioid at 9:13 AM on November 6, 2013


You don't tightly integrate graphics with gameplay. I mean you can, but the gameplay should stand on its own.

Of course you do. Games like Tomb Raider and Prince of Persia are all about how well the platforming and puzzles are integrated into the visual design. The Batman Arkham games are widely regarded as having some of the best brawling combat ever, but that's almost entirely because of how well the animations transform the fairly simple rhythmic timing challenges into the sense that you are Batman being awesome. First person shooters are all about what you can see, when and how well you can see it.
posted by straight at 9:14 AM on November 6, 2013


I think a big problem is trying to use a book/movie narrative paradigm for a game. It's very hard not to end up on rails. Maybe some people like that kind of game, but it doesn't feel interactive to me.
posted by rikschell at 9:20 AM on November 6, 2013


While I agree with their argument that Brogue is superior to Tomb Raider in game storytelling, I'm not sure they've quite grappled with the question of why so relatively few people see it that way. Games like Journey and Brogue haven't exactly swept away the more clumsily-integrated storytelling of games like Tomb Raider and The Last of Us1 the way that talkies replaced silent films.

But maybe that's not quite true. Tomb Raider sold 4 million copies, but Minecraft has sold 33 million copies and YouTube is overflowing with videos of people showing off the stories that happened to them while they were playing Minecraft.

1From TFA's comments: "In the Last of Us, fatherhood is explored in miniature films between segments of game, which are exploring how well the player can shoot humanoids in the face."
posted by straight at 10:01 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


straight, at first, I thought you meant level design when mentioning TR and PoP, but I think you mean their animations? Same w/Arkham...

In that case, I would agree, however, I was working with a different concept of "graphics" (as your case, I believe falls more to the modelling/animation side of things than the graphics side).

As for FPS, I can totally grok that, visually, clarity of targets is important. This can come about via higher resolutions (i.e. seeing smaller/farther away objects), UI elements (highlighting targets via UI elements), etc...

I guess graphics is a bit of a weak word to use as it's too generic...

But apart from the quality of the animations on TR/PoP, what I was specifically referring to was visual quality or style of models, and such. If the gameplay concept is made with cubes and now sweet running, grabbing look - it still works as long as the levels are designed well. It's just more tight and sweet looking with well done animations. You could do cartoony graphics or realistic graphics and the concept would be the same, the gameplay on its own, stands.

Really - I think each project has its own requirements in terms of style, visual fidelity, animations, narrative, control, sound, UI, etc etc etc... The degree of interplay between those elements is ultimately decided by the need of the individual project. That said I feel like I may be making a minor point here that is only tangentially relevant to the greater discussion.
posted by symbioid at 10:06 AM on November 6, 2013


I think a big problem is trying to use a book/movie narrative paradigm for a game. It's very hard not to end up on rails. Maybe some people like that kind of game, but it doesn't feel interactive to me.

An interactive narrative is basically impossible to do well. You can take the Dwarf Fortress/roguelike approach and just build a complex system and let players imagine a story on top of it, but then you have little control of the outcomes.

You can also take the Skyrim approach and have lots and lots of decisions to make, but they rarely interact with each other in sensible ways, and anyway you can't possibly account for every choice that a player could logically want to make. (Plus there's the bigger problem that if choices have serious lasting consequences that determine where the story goes, the people who made choices they regret are going to feel like they didn't get their money's worth, which is unacceptable given the budgets required for big video games.)

What I think is interesting about this is that they're talking about keeping the narrative on rails but trying to integrate it in a more sensible way with the gameplay.
posted by vogon_poet at 10:22 AM on November 6, 2013


The important thing when you create a game is to look at its narrative and ask yourself: 'Is my narrative so overbearing and misogynistic that it will kill the enjoyment of the game and possibly the previous installments, as well as show I'm a bigger misogynist than my collaborators, Team Ninja of boob physics fame?'

If you answer yes, please make changes.
posted by ersatz at 10:37 AM on November 6, 2013 [4 favorites]


symbioid, I meant that some of the best parts of the Tomb Raider / Prince of Persia games are when the route you're supposed to navigate is "hidden" in the art design of the level. That puzzle challenge would disappear if the game was just cubes and the route was completely obvious, and it would be less satisfying if the graphics and art direction sweren't well-executed so that the route is challenging to find, but not too obscure, and well integrated into the art-direction as a whole.

And there are lots of games that involve exploring, finding secrets, and solving puzzles where the art design and graphical fidelity are an essential piece of whether that part of the game works well.

Mirror's Edge does some subtle things with color (if you turn off the bright red signposting) so that sometimes you intuit the right direction to run without consciously knowing why.
posted by straight at 10:37 AM on November 6, 2013 [2 favorites]


This is a great article and the concept of "player story" is really important, but I think it underemphasizes some of the structural challenges in the medium. Basically, we've been stuck using cutscenes and extremely limited actual interactivity because games are far, far too limited and too dumb. Remember text adventures or RPGs with actual you-have-to-type-it-in dialogue? Those actually gave the player more freedom and flexibility than most modern games, in a limited way, simply because you were given more more control over your interaction with the world or other NPCs.

In many ways, it takes a huge amount of both human time and technical effort to craft a world in which stories can take place that give the player real freedom and allow for interactivity--particularly the kind of stories that we identify with emotionally as human beings. And on top of that there is real tension between narrative and interactivity. Cutscenes work because players don't expect to make choices about the plot--only about how they get to the next plot point.

We are going to need far better AI and world interactivity before we can hope to meld narrative and interactivity much better.
posted by ropeladder at 10:40 AM on November 6, 2013 [4 favorites]


I still think Morrowind, Fallout 3, and Fallout NV are great examples of open-world stories. The primary story of those games isn't about you. In Morrowind, it's the Tribunal. In Fallout, it's the struggling community of survivors. Those stories are told via in-world texts, NPC conversations, and set-dressing tableaus.

I think Morrowind is brilliant because it rejects the idea of a "canon" story. Books contradict each other and themselves. NPCs have their own religious agendas. Vivec lies or is evasive, and Dagoth Ur (along with many of the other characters trying to manipulate you) doesn't know or care about your relationship to the prophesy. In order to understand what's going on in the world, you need to make choices among competing accounts.

I think the problem with cut-scenes comes down to Umberto Eco's difference between open and closed narratives. I'm playing older RPGs and the sparse line of text in the dialogue trees serves as a summary, a gloss on character interactions. In my imagination, characters of different alignments, races, and genders may pick the same menu item but deliver it in different ways. Cut-scene acted PCs feel very closed to me. I'm always getting someone else's interpretation of the PC, and often the performance differences between between the dialogue "choices" are trivial.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:12 PM on November 6, 2013 [2 favorites]


I also disagree that "real freedom" is necessarily the end goal of game design. Some games need to offer that, other games don't.

But a central problem with narrative in games is that both designers and audiences are still developing the "language" to understand those stories. The novel went through a period of negotiation before people understood them. So did stage plays, cinema, allegorical painting, the three-panel comic strip, the comic book, and the standup comic.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:34 PM on November 6, 2013


We are going to need far better AI and world interactivity before we can hope to meld narrative and interactivity much better.

The real issue is people. There are plenty of games that will give you emergent narratives out of your interaction and conflict with the environment. But if you want an actual story that involves another person besides the player, that has to be authored and probably delivered by something like a cutscene.

Unless it's a multiplayer game. There are lots of great narratives involving human interaction that emerge out of Eve Online that CCP Games had no hand in authoring other than setting the stage.
posted by straight at 4:30 PM on November 6, 2013


There are lots of great narratives involving human interaction that emerge out of Eve Online that CCP Games had no hand in authoring other than setting the stage.

I think you're right-- although other people are problematic also. They frequently detract from setting/immersion, they conflict with the power fantasy at the heart of most of these kinds of games, and their desires are impossible to ignore. After all, part of the fun of games is that nobody really gets hurt. That's not so true in a game like EVE.

It's interesting how the only multiplayer game mentioned by Hitbox, Journey, works by limiting interaction. And it reminds me a little bit of what Dark Souls was trying to do with its faction system-- it was trying to have emergent multiplayer narrative that blended seamlessly with the rest of the game. Parts of that worked, but it's clear that there's a lot more work to be done there. I believe that this line-blurring of single player and multiplayer experiences is going to be experimented with a lot more in the future, and overall, I'm happy about it. (It's also an excuse for a lot of bad DRM, I know.)

What both Journey and Dark Souls remove from people is language. Once you remove language, though, there stops being such a huge line between humans and AI agents. If you want to talk about it in terms of games Hitbox mentions: people ascribe ridiculously deep motivations to their dwarves in Dwarf Fortress, with just a hint of a system to support it. I think that people will bend over backwards to take AI seriously, if developers just give them the tiniest reason to.
posted by nathan v at 11:35 PM on November 6, 2013


Story in games really isn't as important to me as it used to be. I still appreciate it when a totally story-focused game comes along and pulls it off really well by forcing you to make difficult and meaningful decisions, like Telltale's Walking Dead, but I honestly couldn't give less of a crap about story in games which are exercises in gameplay. I feel like I can really put myself in the place of a protagonist and feel vicariously if there's no character and motivation foisted on the avatar I'm controlling. Playing teleglitch, which has an extremely basic story hinted at only through small snippets on computer terminals scattered throughout the game, was one of the best gaming experiences I've had in awhile. It was pretty much nothing but layers of mechanics and teaching and a very steady very challenging curve, where I would run into a seemingly insurmountable obstacle and then trivially bypass it 10 runs later. I'm just not sure story is as integral of a part of a satisfying gaming experience as all the AAA developers/publishers seem to think it is. Give me great gameplay and visuals over story any day.
posted by tehloki at 12:26 AM on November 7, 2013


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