(Originally posted for The Voice Of Heard on February 20, 2012)
During the course of my research for my entry on the history of
UK-based video game developer Ninja Theory, I have noticed a pattern among
their games they have made so far. These games,
Kung Fu Chaos,
Heavenly
Sword, and
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, have an Asian theme
and their design is generally influenced by cinema. Speaking of cinema,
the two latter next-generation games have received critical acclaim mainly for
their cinematic storytelling, environmental design, character modeling, motion
capture, voice acting, and production values similar to those of Hollywood
movies. The gameplay in both games, meanwhile, have been described as
having limited depth and is therefore standard or average. In fact, in
most of the reviews on
Heavenly Sword and
Enslaved I’ve
read, including those at Gamespot, IGN, and 1up, the cinematics and
presentation have received more attention than the gameplay. This
observation leads me to ask this question: When it comes to making and selling
video games, is it a good idea to place more emphasis on cinematics,
storytelling, and spectacle than gameplay, the core of video games? I doubt
anybody who has been buying games like
Super Mario Brothers,
Sonic
the Hedgehog,
Metroid,
Zelda,
Street
Fighter,
Mortal Kombat,
Call of Duty,
Battlefield,
Gears
of War,
God of War,
Tekken,
Resident Evil,
and many other titles would do so just to watch spectacles. And to the
best of my knowledge, my older brother and my oldest nephew would be a few of
those people who just want to play a game. There were a couple of
occasions when he or I played
Metal Gear Solid 2 and
3 on
the PlayStation 2 at a time when we shared the same room. He would
complain about the number of cutscenes overlapping the gameplay of both games,
which did not sit well for him. On those occasions, I remember him
exclaiming “Less movies! More kicking ass!” When I play fighting
games with my nephew, he would often skip the character introductions, which
last for a few seconds, in order to get to the fight, which is obviously the
meat of fighting games. Now I wonder what he would think and how he would
feel if he is unable to skip the intros, forcing him to watch them for a few
seconds, a few minutes, ten minutes, or even twenty minutes. Based on
those observations, I am positive that my brother and nephew would agree with
David Jaffe.
Recently, I have read on a
1up
article that at last week’s Design Innovate Communicate Entertain
(D.I.C.E.) summit, game developer David Jaffe, known as the mastermind behind
the
Twisted Metal and
God of War franchises,
expressed his feelings that the video game industry is wasting time and money
on story-driven games, which are a disservice to gamers. He argued that by
making video games like movies and books, it would take away the one aspect
that makes the medium special in the first place: interactivity. The full
details of Jaffe’s philosophy can be found in
this
interview conducted by the game developer website Gamasutra a week after his
appearance at the D.I.C.E. summit (
Warning: The interview
contains strong language. Reader discretion is strongly advised).
As a gamer, I would have to agree with Jaffe on many of the points he
made. Video games are not movies nor should they ever be even though most
of the former have cutscenes that function like the latter. The main
reason most people buy video games is that they want to play with them, plain
and simple. And interactivity is the key. Now before moving on, I would
like to briefly discuss video games in terms of cinematics and
storytelling. In that regard, they can be divided into three categories:
games with a lot of cutscenes, games with less and brief cutscenes
that generally last no more than five minutes, and games that use
either very few cutscenes or none at all. From off the top of my head,
video games that fit the first category are Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs
for short), likeXenosaga, Final Fantasy, Valkyria
Chronicles, and the tactical espionage action series Metal Gear
Solid. While the cutscenes and storytelling generally don’t overlap
the gameplay, they form the core of their respective titles alongside the
gameplay. While those games are good enough for the fans, the vast amount
of cutscenes just don’t sit well with casual gamers. Video games that have cutscenes
lasting at least five minutes include Resistance, Halo, Killzone, Ninja
Gaiden, and the story mode of the most recent incarnation of the fighting
game Mortal Kombat. While the cutscenes, cinematics, and
storytelling in those games are generally good, they do not detract from the
action and gameplay, which are placed in higher importance. The third
category can be divided into two sub-categories: games that have very little
cutscenes and games with none at all. Games that would fit neatly into the former
include fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken because
cinematics take a backseat while the gameplay dominates the show. The two
best examples of the latter sub-category I can think of are the first-person,
third-person shooter, RPG hybrid sci-fi game Fallout 3 and the
third-person sci-fi horror franchise Dead Space. From a
storytelling perspective, cinematic cutscenes are unnecessary in those games.
There is one more factor in video games that I think is of as important
as storytelling, presentation, and gameplay combined: replay value. If you
enjoyed the experience of a game, would you go through it again at higher
difficulty levels, uncover secrets you may have missed, beat it faster, and
enjoy the cinematics and story they present? Is one or more of the said
reasons enough to justify the game’s shelf life? Or would you prefer to
play the game with other people for a different experience, whether they are
sitting next to you or online? What type of game would you prefer? A
game that places cinematics, storytelling, and spectacle above gameplay, a game
that balances all of these aspects, or a game that makes gameplay the highest
priority? Your thoughts on these questions as gamers would be of great
interest to me as a gamer. And you are free to express those thoughts in the
comments section below, as always.
