Konami/Kojima/Kojima Productions for the Metal Gear Solid series for me. They invented and perfected the stealth-action genre.
While sending good video game story telling back about 20 years.
I enjoy Metal Gear Solids story telling, it is unique in the video game market. Sure the cutscenes are a little long, but nobody complains about movies having too much movie, and MGS is like a blend of the two.
Bullfrog
Titus
Interplay
Sensible
Eidos
VALVE, just about the only company that’s staying true to it’s PC gaming roots
:hmph:
Yes they do. If you have terribly long and unnecessary dialogue, unnecessary scenes, and a general feel of “tell not show”, you have a terrible movie, and MGS had that (largely 4). Not to mention it is not a movie. A video game should reveal its plot in game and through gameplay (you’re on the site for the remake of the game that created this concept, so I’ll assume you understand it), which means from a video game perspective the games have terrible storytelling.
I didn’t mean to word it as I did, and I agree with you that MGS4’s cutscenes do drag on to some extent(they probably add up to half of the total game time) but that is some of the appeal. I love Half-Life, and prefer it’s story telling style to that of MGS, but that doesn’t mean I dislike games like MGS.
Imagine you were watching a badass movie, during it you wish you were doing the stuff or at least playing a game similar. MGS shows you a great cutscene to advance the story(which is a great story by the way, even if you disagree with the way it is told) then puts you in an action or stealth situation. Not all games have to tell the story from the gameplay(in all honesty, how many games do?)
I just consider telling a story through gameplay more compelling for me. Half-Life 2 has a pretty meh story, but I prefer it to most other games simply because it is told through gameplay and you actually experience it. Cutscenes, no matter how well done, are just lazy when you could be including the player (i.e. the most important part of a game) in the story, not just letting him watch it. And it cannot be said that they are exclusively used to advance the plot, as they are peppered with action scenes, scenes which should almost always have been played out by the player instead of watched.
In short, cutscenes are lazy storytelling in video games, plain and simple. They’re like having a text intro to a movie, which is OK in moderation, but MGS4 is like having a movie that is half text.
Cutscenes aren’t really lazy considering how much fucking work gets put into them (the good ones)
I especially enjoy cutscenes that are shot well.
I mean, showing characters talking is one thing, but doing it in a dynamic and interesting fashion is what makes a good cutscene. I hate to mention it here, but I don’t give a fuck. Halo reach’s cutscenes are shot beautifully. They took full creative advantage of the splitting of the medium there.
And hell, if you aren’t going to make an cutscene good in that respect, your dialog needs to be ON FUCKING POINT. Uncharted is a great example of that (even though they were all composed pretty well too). Even with the glassy eyed faces (with nice skin shaders tho) and jittery mocap the story flowed incredibly well, and the characters were all believable.
As for MGS… well… Cutscenes that long must me somewhat difficult to do no matter what the quality so… they got that going…
They are lazy video game storytelling, even if they are hard to do. To me, the best form of story telling in an interactive media is interactive. Cutscenes are by definition not interactive. This is not to say they are worthless or shouldn’t exist, but they are overused and often could be replaced.
Well put, cutscenes are indeed not lazy. Well, when done right. You have to take into consideration the extra work that goes on to place the camera, and render the close ups. Look at HL2, brilliant way of telling a story but do you honestly think it was harder to do that than the stuff you see in MGS4 or and game with good cutscenes? Kojima is a brilliant director, his shots are all done very well and add real style to the storytelling. However, there is alot of action cutscenes which could have easily been gameplay.
Edit: I agree to some extent, but how do you suppose you have story telling for bits that can’t be told just by chatter or by an action sequence? HL2 does it brilliantly, but it is well suited for that sort of style, I can’t see how you could tell MGS’s story ingame.
Well thats the point. With effort, MGS’ story could be told in game, if the devs put thought into it and came up with something new. As is, they just defaulted to cutscenes, which, no matter how high quality, simply cannot convey the same feel as experiencing the event as the player, which to me is the biggest benefit video games have over other mediums. As far as I’m concerned, if a video game story can be told just as well in a movie, and I have no doubt MGS’ could, it just isn’t a good video game story. Its a great story, but not a good video game story.
As far as I’m concerned thats why cutscenes are lazy. You are spending effort making a nice finished product, yes, but you aren’t innovating. You aren’t thinking about problems.
Well, you could tell MGS’ story in game, but it would have to sacrifice alot of plot elements, not to mention the style that the series is known for.
MGS was one of the founders of deep cutscenes that weren’t just put there to show a door opening, or a little dialogue. They didn’t just decide to go for the default of cutscenes, it was an active decision over other methods.
You could argue that any game story could be told in a movie, including Half-Life’s, but I know where you are coming from. However, MGS would be a terrible movie in all likeliness, as it’s story is very video-game like to begin with. It has all the cheesy villians and leads to game type action sequences, it would be a very low rated movie.
Ultimately I think that the MGS story told through gameplay would be an improvement over the present game just as the Half Life story told through cutscenes would be a step back. It all comes down to personal preference, but I personally think that as video games are a new medium, they are deserving of a unique method of storytelling, and the MGS franchise does absolutely nothing to even use the already established new methods, let alone push that front forward.
For a start, MGS was quite an early game in a time where telling cutscenes was the standard method of conveying a story. Half-Life was really unique for it’s time, and it didn’t have much of a story to begin with. The main plot elements were told by Gman to Gordon at the finale, which was in many ways like a cutscene. However, Half-Life kept that style and perfected in during the Half-Life 2 saga. I would never expect MGS to change it’s style however, I think it is done perfectly for that type of game…not all games work as an in game story line. I much prefer it in FPS games by the way, I do not like seeing the camera flick to third person for some cinematics. However third person games, one of which MGS is, are completely different.
Its all down to personal preference, so there is no real use in this argument.
I agree completely, I was just trying to get the point across that both are valid methods…though that is also much down to personal opinion.