I can't understand why game cutscenes still perform the same way they did in the 1990s when they were introduced. You have two options: Watch it or skip it. How about giving people options to rewind a cutscene? On a console, this would be easy enough for the two front shoulder buttons, and on PC, it could be the left and right arrow buttons. And how about being able to turn on and off subtitles without having to leave the game without saving, restart your game, beat the same content again, and re-watch it? We have been given full control over almost all of our digital video media with the introduction of TiVo, DVRs, YouTube, and video MP3 players to the staple DVD and now BluRay. Why can't we get the same full control in games? I know that some games allow you to go back and view cutscenes you have unlocked through the game menu, but this isn't sufficient to me, because it still breaks the flow of the game. It would be wonderful (and not that hard to implement in my opinion) to give full DRV-like control in live gameplay, with the ability to alter any options that would affect the cutscenes, including subtitles and language. I can't count how many times someone has said something to me during a cutscene, or I could not understand something said and the subtitles are defaulted to off. It just seems like the right control to give to the players.

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Original post by jackolantern1 I can't understand why game cutscenes still perform the same way they did in the 1990s when they were introduced. You have two options: Watch it or skip it. How about giving people options to rewind a cutscene?

I love it! Seriously. You're absolutely right. They should include the ability to bring up a little Movie Player control panel. I slap my forehead for not having thought of it myself.
Very good idea.

Rewinding would be pretty useful. Sometimes I wish to go back because I got distracted or the phone rang, and I don't wanna reload.

There is some innovation around, but not much. Uncharted allows you to switch the subtitles on and off during a cutscene, for instance. Assassin's Creed made it possible to switch the camera but for some retarded reason would not let you skip the cutscene (a major step back, really fun when you're playing it for the 3rd time). Most interesting was Metal Gear Solid 4. Not only can you switch the camera or zoom in, during some cutscenes you can switch over to view stock prices or to control a small robot scurrying on the ground looking for powerups and such. Of course, that was almost mandatory since that game has somewhere along the lines of nine hours of cutscenes (fortunately, you can skip them).

This is an excellent observation. I wonder if there are any examples of games that allow this? I know Super Smash Bros. Brawl allows you to replay the cutscenes in the story mode, but it's a fairly rudimentary story mode, and the controls aren't half so sophisticated as you describe here. It's funny, when games like Halo 3 offer rewind and slo-mo and various other "movie" controls on the match replay feature, nobody seems to have thought to include it for cinematics.

I always figure it to be because more and more cutscenes nowadays are in game graphics. Where it's not just a video, therefore they have to give the objects in game directives to follow, and flipping through like you would a video would be a horrible mess. Or so I would think atleast.

As for other cutscenes... while sounds like a good idea, I don't find it a neccessary thing, atleast while playing, maybe in a theater mode outside of the real game, but if you do that, you might as well.

I think this could actually make a neat gameplay mechanic.

For instance if you were playing a game where you were sherlock holmes solving a case, whenever there was a cutscene, if you could control the camera position, playback, etc you could look for clues like people fidgeting when someone else said a certain word, or someone very subtly slipping something from a table into their pocket.

it could be pretty cool (:

It would be great to see these sort of things standardised, or at least for there to be a more uniform approach taken than the massively different implementations currently seen.

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Original post by pothb I always figure it to be because more and more cutscenes nowadays are in game graphics. Where it's not just a video, therefore they have to give the objects in game directives to follow, and flipping through like you would a video would be a horrible mess.

In cases where cutscenes are implemented like this it would certainly be more difficult to implement cinematic style playback controls than it would for a simple prerecorded scene, but given you already need to store state and provide instructions to all the objects in the scene it would definitely be possible, and with the correct design even relatively easy to do.

Controls such as switching subtitles or closed captioning on or off would also be uneffected and could potentially make the game a lot more accessible to users, and I personally feel that these should be provided in every game that has the budget to do so.

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As for other cutscenes... while sounds like a good idea, I don't find it a neccessary thing

For the majority of users such functionality probably isn't neccesary, but it could still enhance the gameplay experience, and for those who actually need such functionality (such as people with hearing impairment) taking the time to add these tools could be invaluable.

True enough, but if it's just recapping or hearing what's miss, there are, atleast in a game with good practice, notes or dialogue loggers that records the dialogues for review. Which could be just as good, cept teh cinema. It's also easier to implement. It's what I meant, there are alternatives that can do teh same, and is more than likely easier. Still a good thing to do, like you said, when you have the budget.

When I first read your topic, my initial response was that it was a pretty odd statement. As I got to thinking about it more, however, I realized that you're right!

I guess it just boils down into and money, however. Implementing those features would just take too much time and would cost too much.

That is a great point.

Playing devil's advocate for a moment, a potential argument against providing such controls could be trying to maintain the player's sense of immersion, particularly in a game where the player is intended to feel they're actually in the situation and are being directly address by the character(s) in the cutscene.

Given that such scenes are generally replayable from one of the game's menus in the majority of modern titles and that any important information is can be duplicated through the use of logs, objective checklists, etc. should games that are trying to create this particular feeling still provide a full set of media-player style controls? Perhaps as a compromise they could have controls that only slide in if the mouse is moved near them or a certain hotkey is pressed?