31st January 2005, 7:44 PM
You need to find a healthy medium between gameplay and cinematics to make a great game. Though there are cases where a completely mindless game like Tetris or Katamari Damacy that can be great, great fun. For game with actual stories though , cutscenes are important, no, vital. In moderation, that is. I was heavily turned off by Xenosaga when I had to sit through an hour of a cutscene with bad voice acting and even worse character models. That was the BEGINNING of the game! If I'm not mistaken, I'm going wager that the longest cutscene in MGSII was right after saving the president. That scene included lots of codec talking and movies. That is my one gripe with that otherwise great game. That very scene.
I'm a fan of Final Fantasy X (anyone who knows me knows this), and I think that FFX attains a perfect balance of gameplay and cinematics. You play through plenty of fighting and exploring, but when the time comes to advance the story, a well-placed, well-timed cinematic does what it needs to and and then sends you back on your way. Resident Evil 4 and MGS3 attain this great balance as well.
Some games have no need for cinematics, but any game worth it's $50 deserves a good story and great scenes for it to unfold through. To suggest that cutscenes in games are making them worse is absurd. I find myself in awe watching some of the scenes in FFX, RE4, or MGS3, and find myself eager to continue afterwards, to see what else the game has in store for me.
I'm a fan of Final Fantasy X (anyone who knows me knows this), and I think that FFX attains a perfect balance of gameplay and cinematics. You play through plenty of fighting and exploring, but when the time comes to advance the story, a well-placed, well-timed cinematic does what it needs to and and then sends you back on your way. Resident Evil 4 and MGS3 attain this great balance as well.
Some games have no need for cinematics, but any game worth it's $50 deserves a good story and great scenes for it to unfold through. To suggest that cutscenes in games are making them worse is absurd. I find myself in awe watching some of the scenes in FFX, RE4, or MGS3, and find myself eager to continue afterwards, to see what else the game has in store for me.
The Earthworker Race has ended. Everybody wins.