Can’t live with them and … actually we can live without them, but it’s like living without chocolate: sure, you don’t miss it for a while, but then you start having blackouts, the neighborhood pets start disappearing with no explanation, you notice you unknowingly bought a chainsaw and that you suddenly feel attracted by the full moon. So let’s just leave the cutscene where they are for now, at least until I finish with this tiny text-pill and then you can do whatever you wish with them.

Cutscenes appeared as a by-product of some game-developer’s need to tell us more of the stage on which his characters perform, about their emotions and needs, about the story and about some other things we never actually care about. Sure, text worked for a while, until we got bored and realized that if we are talking about text and the joy that comes out of reading, we’re better off with a book – we still are, but I don’t want to get into it just now. So, drastic measures were taken, lab rats sacrificed and eventually some very brilliant mind, much like the sun, only smaller, came up with something like “a picture is worth a thousand words.” I’m pretty sure he wasn’t referring to Shakespeare’s words, but on large enough scale he was right. And the problem was apparently solved until someone pointed out that game cutscenes were missing the “motion” out of “motion picture”. From that point on the next steps were just following the footmarks of cinematography.

This is important for a couple of reasons. First off all, as I’ve previously mentioned in another post, it’s only natural for things to evolve and games make no exception. Like movies, which evolved from a silly form of black and white with no sound, to the panoply of special effects and sound effects which they are today, game and game cutscenes went up the same ladder and deserve the same appreciation. Second, some cutscenes, contrary to what grandma says, come to enrich the game experience. You can still play the game without them, but you’re missing on some of the fun. Following the same movies-games parallel, you can turn the sound off when watching some new Hollywood block buster and just read the subtitles, but I doubt the result will be the same (unless it’s a freak form of some Woody Allen film).

So in conclusion, cutscenes are good, unless they are mandatory. This is where the whole tricky part is and this is also where developers are more inclined towards making the biggest mistake of all and this is why there is a show on The Escapist Magazine called UnSkippable – which is great show by the way and if you are not watching it, you should: lack of a skip button during cutscene should be punishable by law. In the history of gaming lack of it has led to countless bloody murders of tv sets and monitors, because no matter what happens they usually take the fall for whatever the console or the computer did – subject to be debated in future post. The frustrated gamers who commit such vicious assaults can’t be prosecuted due to temporary insanity, the developers shrug and life goes on. But the solution is simple: give players the choice. We all understand why cutscenes are there, we are all passionate about fantasy stories – yes, I know we’re not, but just go with the flow for a second here – and we highly appreciate small movie-like cutscenes in which developers sink enough money to feed a small country for unlimited time. But the truth is that in most cases they break the flow of the game or at least of the gameplay and this leads to uncontrollable acts of violence, verbal at least. Giving the players the choice of skipping the whole thing would turn this into a non-issue. Looking it from another perspective, you can actually say it increases the replay value of the game, keeps more players happy which means more money for developers and in the long run… saves the planet. See? A win-win situation!