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Comparing forms of entertainment |  |
Generally, I’m a big fan of Mike Mearls. After all, this is the guy who designed Iron Heroes, which is probably my favorite example of the d20 System to date. However, I don’t particularly agree with this. The whole post not only seems both preachy and whiny, but ultimately an exercize in futility. It drives me nuts when people compare different forms of entertainment media, lementing why one can’t be more like the other. Why can’t video games be more like paper and pencil RPGs? They could be, if each copy of every game came with a live GM dedicated to the buyer, or an AI more advanced than anything seen in games these days (or likely to be seen in games for a long, long time). Why would most of the player-driven segments of a video game be cut out of the movie version? Seriously? Say they made a movie based off of the Thief games. Do you really want to see three hours of Garret hiding from the guards? Wouldn’t you rather have some story in there? At any rate, the bottom line is that designers use cutscenes because you simply can’t make a video game as wide-open as an RPG. To try is to doom a game to never be released. Wake me up when it’s a perfect world; I’m still waiting for my flying cars and robot butlers.
[Edit: Mr. Mearls has already posted a comment to the above tirade. It can't be more than thirty minutes after I posted it. Pretty cool; color me starstruck.]
October 16th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Ah, but there have been videogames that have done a good job with cutscenes. For instance, the cutscenes in Knights of the Old Republic added to the story. They helped things make sense. Same for Halo I and II.
In contrast, Dead Rising uses cutscenes to arbitrarily force you down specific paths. Good cutscenes explain “This is why this level is important.”
Bad ones say, “This is why you have to play this level.”
It’s all about buy in.
October 16th, 2006 at 7:45 pm
Yeah, and I agree with that. But that’s not what I got out of your post. Your post seemed to say, “All cutscenes are bad, and video games should be more like role-playing games,” which is kind of a nonsensical statement. I do share your dislike (to a point) of cutscenes that force your hand, or that drive the story forward despite player input (as opposed to having the illusion of being because of player input, or being entirely detached from player input like those in KotOR). And for the record, I haven’t played Dead Rising, and I probably won’t (though not because of the cutscene issue, because it really doesn’t bug me as much as it seems to bug you).
And an unrelated aside: Irone Heroes is awesome. I’m going to use it in an upcoming Eberron campaign. Ok, fanboy moment over.