With the rise and now dominance of narrative storytelling in video games,cutscenes are permanently a part of the package.Rarely does a game come out that is devoid of any cutscene, the reason being that they make for both an effective method of conveying a story, and they provide breaks in the gameplay to avoid pacing issues.
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There are some issues with this system though, the primary one being that, on occasion, a game will rely too heavily on cutscenes and break the immersion of its players, either by boring them, distracting them, or frustrating them by taking away control for too long. These next games all suffer from this issue in one way or another, and while it didn’t stop all of them from being good video games, it was stilla blemish on their overall product.
8Tales Of Arise
This could apply to any game in theTalesseries, butTales of Arisetakes cutscenes to another level, even for a JRPG. To be fair, it’s still a great game, but there aren’t just a lot of cutscenes, there are three different kinds of cutscenes.
For reference,Tales of Ariseis about a 40-hour game on average, andthe edited “movie” on YouTubethat is just the cutscenes with no gameplay footage is nearly17 hours long. That’s almost half the total game time. It just becomes an overload while playing. There are standard cutscenes, then there are several character-specific cutscenes, and then there are what the game calls “Skits,” which are basically just cutscenes presented in a comic book style instead of being fully animated.
Skits can show up as a result of exploration, conversations at camp, catching a particular kind of fish, and after finishing or progressing a quest. It’s a good thingthe gameplay itself is so enjoyablebecause it makes wading through the nearly endless cutscenes worthwhile.
7Knack
For a player jumping in blind, it would be fair to expect few to zero cutscenes at all from a game likeKnack. It’s a super basic 3D platformer and beat-em-up whose focus is on environmental problem-solving with some basic “God-of-War-esque” combat thrown in. It’seffectively aCrash Bandicootclonewith a bit more to its combat system.
It was a bit of a shock for players who picked up this title when it was released in 2013 to discover an almost comically complex sci-fi narrative that, at times, is oddly similar toStar Wars. Along with that narrative comes nearly 2 hours of cutscenes in a 10-hour game. It’s not even a bad story, but for a game that really didn’t need any kind of in-depth narrative,Knackwent a bit overboard in this regard.
6Too Human
Anyone who remembersToo Humancan probably only recall a feeling of palpable disappointment with the final product. The game was hyped up for over 9 years while it wastrapped in development hell,and was meant to be a fresh take on the action RPG genre by blending cyberpunk themes with Norse mythology.
The end result was, to say the least, underwhelming. The gameplay and controls wereextremelyclunky and under-polished, and it was clear the developers were aware of this too because they attempted to bury them under a mountain of cutscenes.
For players who didn’t complete every side activity in the game (and who could blame them?), there were more cutscenes than there was gameplay. Needless to say, there probably could have been a few less.
5Metal Gear Solid 4
This won’t be the last time Hideo Kojima makes an appearance on this list, but it would be wrong to ignore the (at the time) “conclusion” of theMetal Gear Solidfranchise. Kojimahas made no secretthat a part of him wants to be making movies, and that’s almost never been more clear than inMetal Gear Solid 4.
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The game’s conclusion alone fills a monstrous 71 minutes of game time with cutscenes, although they are broken up by some brief gameplay. If that wasn’t enough, the game also holds the World Record for the longest in-game cutscene, coming in at 27 minutes long.
It’s hard to argue that any of the cutscenes shouldn’t be in the game, because Kojima is, for better or worse, a visionary. Yet it’s hard to look at those runtimes and not wonder if maybe one or two cutscenes could have been tightened up a little.
4The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
Let’s be clear,Ocarina of Timeis still one of the all-time greatest games ever made. What it did for 3D exploration alone revolutionized the entire gaming industry, and that can’t ever be dismissed.It’s a foundational video gamefor millions of current gamers. With that said, returning to it nearly 25 years later, the game leansheavilyon a lot of short but frequently repeating cutscenes.
There’s a cutscene whenever Link opens a chest, whenever he picks up an item, and whenever he plays the titular Ocarina. There’s a cutscene when Link enters the Temple of Time, another when he plays the Song of Time, another when he walks through the Door of Time, and another when he walks back out of the Temple of Time.
It’s excessive, and while during that era of gaming it was unprecedented to see film techniques recreated in a game engine like that when looking at it with the sensibilities of modern gaming it can get very tedious very quickly.
3Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Much like with theTalesseries, any entry in theXenobladefranchise could find a worthy place on this list. However, the worst offender by quite a large margin isXenoblade Chronicles 2. The third entry in the series, which was released earlier this year, is a close second, but the majority of its excessive cutscene use is front-loaded which just narrowly spared it from making this list.
WhereXenoblade Chronicles 2tries the patience of its players is with just how frequently the cutscenes show up. The first two chapters of the game are rough going; they’re almost entirely cutscenes with very little gameplay, but they’re also introducing a lot of key story elements.
Chapter 3 opens things up though, and players can start to explore the game’s world, but as soon as they start approaching the end of the chapter, the cutscenes start coming in fast again. It continues that way for the whole game. Just when things have opened up, a flurry of cutscenes slows it back down. Yes, this is nothing new for a JRPG, but when some of those cutscenes can be 10 or more minutes long, it becomes a strain.
2Death Stranding
There’s that darned Hideo Kojima again.Death Strandingis considered by many (including Kojima himself) to bethe legendary game director’s magnum opus, and with that comes his magnum opus of cutscenes. Obviously, the game is littered with cutscenes, but there are so many long stretches of meditative gameplay that all the narrative breaks are spread out quite nicely and never become overbearing. That all changes towards the game’s ending.
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Death Stranding’sclimax and closing moments - basically everything before the “one final mission” that closes the game out - is effectively one long cutscene broken up by a few brief moments of gameplay. That sequence runs for almost2 hoursin real-time, with at most 30 minutes of actual gameplay.
The worst offender is a cutscene that is 31 minutes long, shattering Kojima’s previous World Record (although it has yet to be officially recognized by the judges at Guinness). For all intents and purposes, the game’s ending is just a full-length movie, and it definitely feels excessive at some points.
1Final Fantasy 15
This list wouldn’t be complete without featuring at least oneFinal Fantasygame on it. While every entry in the series features a boatload of cutscenes,Final Fantasy 15found a way to sneak them into passive gameplay, making it so thatNoctis and his crewaren’t really doing much in a gameplay sense, but they’re having a conversation in a way that builds the game’s narrative, yet the player still has control.
Much like withTales of Arise, there are cutscenes constantly popping up inFinal Fantasy 15.They play while Noctis and his group are camping, they play while they’re driving (or pushing the car to get gas), they play every time a new side quest becomes available, and of course, there is an extended cutscene during every major story beat. There is a cutscene somewhere in almost every aspect of gameplay.
There are also surprisingly long cutscenes every time Noctis uses a Summon ability, and while they look great, after watching them for the fifteenth time those long moments of suspended gameplay can really drag on.
