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Pre-rendered cinematics are a common standard in almost every kind of story-driven videogame. Traditionally, story-driven games alternate interactive gameplay with non-interactive storytelling such as pre-rendered cinematics or plain-text narration.
It works pretty well in lots of videogames, from Gears of War to Silent Hill. There are lots of advantages to pre-rendered cinematics: they’re cheap, cosmetically beautiful, familiar and, above all, they’ve been proven very successful on the market. Why should we abandon this convention?
For the greater good of interactive storytelling.
It’s within the fundamental nature of videogames. Let's face it upfront. Videogames are highly interactive software. Story-driven videogames are highly interactive software with a story.
My point is that story-driven games should go towards a highly interactive gameplay with a highly interactive storytelling. Players enjoy experiencing control over the game story. But a total player control over the story can be prohibitive and even destroy the entire game experience.
How can we solve it?
I've been playing traditional role playing games since I can remember. Note that I’m not talking about computer-RPGs but their old paper and pencil ancestors. One of the best lessons that role playing games can teach you is that interactive story-driven games are based both in character development and story templates.
Character development, commonly seen as the "D&D leveling up system", includes all gameplay systems which model the character growth over the story. Call of Cthulhu sanity loss system, for instance, models the psychological character growth (the slowly but inevitable descent to madness) in the horror stories by H.P. Lovecraft.
All character development systems are playable, i.e., interactive. Some character development systems are deep and moral such as Vampire the Masquerade's humanity loss system. There are lots of great character development systems out there for you to find! And, of course, you can always design your own character development systems, fitting your specific taste and requirements.
Story templates are the basic story structures that fit a certain type of interactive storytelling. In other words, a story template is the story behind all possible game stories. A typical D&D story template features a group of adventurers which explore a dungeon, collecting loot and slaying enemies, eventually confronting a dragon.
Call of Cthulhu story template, for instance, models the most common structures of Lovecraftian horror stories: a group of investigators adventure deep into the occult, discovering a terrifying truth and eventually escaping the untied ultra-terrenal horror. All story templates are flexible and interactive, allowing the players to influence the story and the gamemaster/narrator to re-build the story in real time.
So there’s no need of pre-rendered cinematics to advance the story at expense of interactivity. Go design your interactive story-driven videogame and let your players enjoy the experience. They’ll come back for more!
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On the other hand, in the single player scenario, the cinematics between maps were a big distraction, and I'm guessing that this is what you are talking about. For all the effort and money spent generating them, they were a view once item that would be skipped over on replay. This probably represents development time/money/effort that could be better spent elsewhere.
The latest Dawn of War offering seems to handle this better. Instead of providing cinematic sequences to move the story line along, the player is presented with more of a mission planning format, where necessary information is given that can be absorbed at the players own pace, and then terminates when the next scenario begins. I found this method to be less intrusive.
Two recent strong examples:
Company of Heroes. The mission is presented cinematically, with the cinematics and camera movements ending in the default camera position for the player. At the end of the cinematic, you can now take control of the soldiers without any visual cut; the positions they are in and the camera angle is exactly the same as the last frame of the cinematic. I find this to be a very powerful means of pulling the player into the mission.
World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King, the Battle of the Wrathgate. This is a prerendered cinematic (though Blizzard made sure the character models and animations are similar to in-game) that is triggered when the player has completed a complex series of quests and triggers the "final quest" in the chain. Though the player is not involved in the action portrayed (which is a fact some people don't like), the "wrapper" is the fact that the lead-up quests and the player's actions therein are what led up to the events at the Wrathgate. If you ask players who have made it all the way to max level what the coolest moment in Wrath of the Lich King is, they will almost inevitably refer to the Battle of the Wrathgate and the quest that immediately follows. Even though it's a directed (linear) experience without much int he way of player "choices", people really seem to enjoy it.
It's not the cinematic. It's the wrapper. Clumsily-integrated cinematics, especially in the middle of a mission or level when they are more of an interruption than anything else, are what give cinematics a bad name. Like any other tool, the prerendered cinematic can be used for good or for awesome. And if it's not, it's not the tool's fault.
Done right, there's no problem with them. Quite frankly, attempts at making interactive cinematics with quick time events is rather overdone and not terribly immersive. As physics and processing improves, we'll surely have less need of them for directing the plot and all, but they're also necessary down time and quite fun if done right.
I'm not saying that cinematics aren't over-used in some situations, and aren't done badly in others (sometimes they're both), but they have a place in games. The belief that "everything" should be interactive should be taken with a pinch of salt, not everything in this world is interactive, the player can't affect everything they come across. What about cinematics as a reward, these are often satisfying, and even if they break immersion somewhat often encourage a player to continue playing. Final fantasy and devil may cry are good examples of this. Final Fantasy notably being an RPG....
Lets also mention that something that's "story" driven, has to have a direction. Often making such scenes interactive can derail that story line (as GMs well know), and making such scenes interactive can often feel cheesy or wrong because they don't fit the stories context. What breaks immersion more, being forced to listen to you're characters conversation with someone, or killing that someone when you're character is a good aligned.
My point, abandoning cinematics would be wrong, and would deprive games of one of thier most potent tools. If it doesn't feel natural or serve a point, don't make it interactive, make it a cutscene/cinematic or remove it from the game altogether.
Interaction is important in a video game, but it does not have to spread to every facet of the game.
I’m not talking about interactive cinematics. I'm talking about interactive storytelling. Playing your story instead of watching your story. Cinematics are in some cases overused, emotionless or simply useless technical show-offs. In those cases, my opinion is that cinematics should be simply removed from the videogame.
Story exposition through cinematics (either for the introduction of gameplay or as a reward after gameplay) is completely OK but is not interactive. Movies excel at linear storytelling. Games excel at interactivity. Cinematics are not a native videogame tool. They’re borrowed from cinema, just like plain-text exposition is borrowed from literacy. It’s OK to borrow techniques from other media, but videogames should strive to create their own tools.
And you're right, cinematics are not cheap. I meant they're cheaper than thinking other way to advance the story.
My point about RPG’s interactive storytelling is: Videogames excel at enforcing rules in gameplay and can be also used to enforce a concrete story structure, leaving room for the player to control the story within its boundaries. Just like a game master/narrator enforces that the player’s interactive story doesn’t end in a total mess. Obviously, a videogame has no imagination and it’s hard to program the story knowledge that a game master/narrator uses during a RPG session. It’s hard but it’s not impossible. How to build all this story knowledge into a videogame? I'm still working on it. I'll explain the details as soon as I have something running properly. But my bet is that character dev systems and story structures can help in the task of developing a good story through gameplay.
Maybe a simple example illustrates the case. Let’s say I’m working on a horror themed videogame. The main character is a pretty young girl who has lost her only family: her older brother. Option A: I can do pre-rendered cinematics on the main story events: the girl finds her brother, he’s lost his memories and confronts her, … Option B: I can program the story as a horror themed story. Depending on the player’s actions, the girl can actively find her brother or he can suddenly find her. Depending on the player’s actions, the brother can confront the girl for personal or moral concerns. Depending on the player’s actions, the story flows by a concrete structure which is designed and experienced just as gameplay rules are designed and experienced.
First point I have to make is that this isn't particularly practical. Yes, you have an example, but how - exactly - do you structure that in a way that we can program into a computer? It sounds very much like you're talking about branching storylines, which aren't a terrible idea, but are plagued with issues of their own! Not only can they simply confound the issues of cinematics, but they also exponentially increase the workload for the developers.
Secondly, what you're talking about is "shared authorship", which has been talked about a lot recently. Warren Spector in particular has some very choice words to say on the subject. His "string of pearls" storytelling analogy summed it up best - people want to be led through a story, but that string must be able to adapt and bend to the whim of the player. There's a balance between the emergent and scripted that players crave, a sweet spot where players have the opportunity to express themselves within the confines of a story.
You're also touching on the issue of what (I believe) Clint Hocking called "ludo-narrative dissonance": the relation between the story you're telling and the game you're making. How do you make the interactions of a game reflect the story you're telling with the game? Character dev is always an issue here for me - I feel its often added because "thats what you do in an RPG" rather than, as you so rightly pointed out with reference to Call of The Cthulhu, tying it to the story.
Example: when I'm playing Knights Of The Old Republic, what difference does it make to the game how fast my character moves? Yes, its nice that I can adapt the way that my character fights, but how much would it alter the overall experience to remove that factor, and focus more on the moral choices I'm making? In this case, you're also talking of ludo-narrative balance: is it more important that the fun come from my story, or the gameplay?
All in all, a good post, but - like I said - this debate is already raging! Keep up! ;)
More importantly, you bring up an excellent point about paper-and-pen RPGs. I was just planning a blog post myself (alanjack.co.uk/gaming/) about something that happened to me yesterday - when someone, in a discussion about the lack of structured critical & academic study of games design, pulled out that old chestnut about how games have only been around for 25-30 years. I should have corrected him when I had the chance - games have been around longer than any other medium, its only now that we've commericalised the world of computer games that people are seriously looking at them. The Mayans built their religion around a game! Admittedly, it involved death, violence and the losers were beheaded. If only they'd had high-speed broadband and Counter Strike, their mythology might have been so different ...
I'd also like to add that the interpretation of "interactivity" varies just as the interpretation of "game" does. Interactivity does not require physical interaction; there is also emotional / mental interactivity. Cinematics are excellent tools for the latter, and that is why I play story- and character-driven games.
Consider a really lame example of a popular game franchise that uses a poor method to accomplish physical interactivity during cinematics: Tomb Raider. Simply having a well-presented cinematic that creates an emotionally interactive empathy with the player wasn't acceptable; instead we have a truly lame process of "press the right button when it flashes on the screen". With all due respect to Eidos, this is a prime example of breaking the player's immersion in the story and forcing them to face the fact that "this is just a game". As a counter example, consider the gripping cinematics in a game like Xenosaga. The emotional connection is established and maintained with the player by presenting them with involving, evolving incidents surrounding the characters of the story. Immersion is maintained because emotional connection is maintained. Anything that breaks that connection is negative in the playing experience.
This is also why the concept of "challenge" is very out of place for a story- and character-driven game, or at least any type of physical challenge (cerebral challenges may be okay depending on the implementation). If a game is intended to present a story and make emotional connections between the player and character(s), the last thing that is desired by the player is to have "challenging" obstacles placed in the way of the continuation of the story. That type of approach leads to frustration for the player and ends with the player leaving the game for other stories that do not frustrate them (including passive stories in media such as movies or books, of course). Players who want a challenge have plenty of game options to choose from that are not focused on story and character development. Let players who want to play and enjoy a great story experience your work while other games who desire a challenge can enjoy numerous other options (sports, fighting, etc). Games are not restricted in this regard, so game developers should not restrict their perceptions of what games have to offer to the player.
So, if you think that challenges are out of place in a game, don't you just want a movie? Or are you talking about games as an interactive story?
I think what you're talking about here is a known failure games have to tie their gameplay to the story that they're telling. Clint Hocking uses the term "ludo-narrative dissonance" to refer to it. Its where there's a great story - and, possibly a great game - but the two simply do not marry up. Most games up until now that have carried some kind of story have had an issue with it, but that doesn't mean that games should not feature that kind of thing.
You're absolutely right, I just think the problem isn't that we need to make less challenges, but that if we want the game to offer a deep, meaningful experience to the player, we have to work out how to create a deep, meaningful interactivity in our environment, and this is where we fall down. Its much easier to make an environment that reacts to violence or non-violence because its a simple, binary interaction. Either you punch a man in the face, or you turn the other cheek. Choosing whether or not you love or trust that man is another thing entirely.
We're now veering off into the games-as-violence debate. Funny how almost all debates about games bleed into one another after a while, isn't it?
When I think back on Final Fantasy VII I don't remember the cartoonish and pixellated in-game version of Cloud Strife. I remember a badass fighter with crazy hair and a giant sword - because that amazing opening cinematic provided for me that binocular effect, which I carried throughout the game. It's the same thing elaborate box art used to do for Atari games. My imagination provided detail that the game could not.
The argument could be made that games now are getting so good that we don't need binoculars any more, but I still have yet to see in-game interactivity that can manage exactly what a good cutscene can do.
Cinematics can actually allow for _more_ immersion in the game, if done correctly. As with everything under the sun, if done badly, it will suck the life out of a game.
Well if you look at Final Fantasy games they have never been hard, and I think that is what Dave is referring to. You don't want to make your game too hard if it is that story driven. What happens if the player goes through this long conversation, maybe a cinematic or two then they die on a boss. They have to do all that over again at that point.
So you are naturally thinking well put a save before any bosses, and that sucks the perceived challenge out of the game for the player. For instance, now they go through a conversation, a cinematic or two then they save then they go on to the boss. That save in between breaks the immersion of the moment in a way because they know that nothing is at stake for them the player even though it may be a moment where the world is at stake for their character. So you don't need to make your game a challenge, but I believe it needs to have a perceived challenge if it is devoid of actual challenge, save points prior to challenges isn't a sufficient fix.
One good perceived challenge I can remember in RPG games is the attack a boss does that hits all your characters for all of their HP except for 1. For that moment the player is really nervous because they are so close to game over, but really they should have a sufficient way to heal their entire party before the next attack, it really isn't a challenge, but being on the brink of a game over when your last save point was prior to the conversation and cinematics leading up to there makes that moment as important for you as it is to your character without actually presenting a true Ninja Gaiden-esque challenge.