There are few things more frustrating than being able to use your powers in the gameplay like blinking a great distance or being able to fling a ranged attack, or teleport or turn invisible, etc, only for your character to forget he can do that in cutscenes and allows bad things to happen.
There are numerous examples I can think of. Why do you think this happens? Are the writers just unable to be assed to engineer the bad thing so that it happens far enough away from the player, or justify why the player is inhibited/prevented from being able to interfere in time? Or, does the customizeable nature of games (particularly games with multiple different classes/spells/abilities/weapons/items/etc to choose from) create for there being too many possibilities that could be used to resolve a problem for the writer to account for?
Last edited by Val the Moofia Boss on March 15th, 2025, 21:30, edited 3 times in total.
In case of FFXIV it is more incompetence, I never once saw the Main Character being the badass that he/she is during gameplay. Or wait, it is probably laziness because there are dozen of classes and they'd have to make these scenes recognize it and also show your character use the appropriate skills.
Yes, writers are just bad. But ultimately, it's a pretty hard challenge to beat. Gamers are fundamentally about winning: Figuring out how to beat the system. If you create an unkillable monster, someone's gonna figure out how to kill it (Lord British Postulate). And since games generally have railroaded plots that must progress to a fixed, final conclusion, we can't have people derailing the train. Plus, fictional characters are consistently ******* stupid. Just see the plot of every horror movie, which involves a group of incompetents being horribly killed. How often do you see characters actually be prepared and deal with the situation appropriately? Probably never, right? I show these movies to my kids a lesson in how not to go through life.
Mostly bad writing and unnecessary development time as the audience for the most part doesn't care.
Hack writers want to have their cake and eat it too and/or are not aware of how the game will actually play so they are ignorant of the resources and/or power level the character has at the point of the cutscene.
And, while I do understand big games have huge teams and most likely the writers are not fully aware on what the devs are doing and vice versa, I've seen this kind of ******** in shows and other forms of media outside of videogames to understand its most of the times just terrible writing.
You can point at almost any action show and point out cutscene incompetence. Specially for stuff like superheroes and speedsters. No, really. Even supersonic speed would be absolutely broken if the writers knew anything about how that would actually have to work. Let's take Red Rush, the Flash expy of the Invincible show and comic. He specifically states that his life sucks because his mind also works and process data as fast as he can run, which makes sense as he has to be able to properly assess where he is while moving super fast in order to not just crash on any obstacle on the street on wherever he is running. This establishes that in canon, he should be untouchable as he would see a fist or kick coming from miles away since he established his mind essentially perceives the world in slow motion. I am using this example since Red Rush specifically points this out out loud in conversation, but every single speedster in fiction would have to work like this in order to be able to use their powers. Now, the argument here would be that Nolan, as a Superman expy, is also superfast so he can hit Red Rush with his own superspeed.
The problem comes all the other times Nolan has been tagged by stuff that most definitely does not have superspeed, and there lies the cutscene incompetence. For example, the re-animen at the end of season 1 of the show. As strong as the show wanks them to be, they do not have superspeed so there is no way they should be able to lay a finger on Nolan. Or, the other way around. If Nolan does not have the "heightened awareness" of a true speedster like Red Rush then the cutscene incompetence would come from when Red Rush loses to Nolan as he would be untouchable when fighting Nolan.
I honestly let this slide because no one, not even DC which invented Flash who is arguably the codifier for the archetype of the speedster superhero, does this. You have comics where Flash is getting clapped by Catwoman, who doesn't even have powers, so no "oh she has pre-cognition powers" or some ********. And even with pre-cog, its not enough being able to realize and see the punch coming, your body needs to be able to react.
This is something I've seen that I am in the minority of opinion, as I would rather have a piece of fiction that is internally consistent, even if that means the power level of stuff has to be low and very close to IRL, but 99% of folks just prefer to see "zomg kewl action fight scenes!" so that's why every writer just pulls stuff out of their *** without thinking and gives powers and abilities to both heroes and villains in their stories without actually understanding what that means for the setting and what that means for their fights.
You see this all the time in media, as well. Where the bad guy shows an absolute ridiculous power and/or ability when its time to kill faceless red shirts, but somehow when its time to use that devastating power against a named character, they don't do it. So, its essentially a **** tease the writer pulls on the audience by first showing the villain to be a real threat that puts the question for the audience on how would they win against such a devastating power, and then just chickens out.
Specifically for videogames with customization of skills, meaning your character could be able to teleport, phase through solid matter or just be super strong and escape the tentacle monster's grab, it would require the devs to raise flags for those skills/abilities being present and adapt the cutscene accordingly. This should be the desired outcome and what we should demand, but no one does it because, as I said, 99% people are OK with the dissonance and suspend disbelief for cutscene incompetence as well as cutscene competence. That's why the Boss character can be terrifying when you fight against it, but when it joins you its lame and doesn't have any of the cool boss stuff. Because people just let it slide, instead of demanding an in-lore reason for it or the same abilities to be had.
Given that almost everyone doesn't care about this, then why should devs spend time, effort and money to pay those man hours into coding all that stuff, when no one would actually cares and gladly suspends disbelief due to how prevalent cutscene incompetence is in media.
Because the Japs don't give a **** about ludo-narrative dissonance. They're perfectly content to mentally separate gameplay ability from narrative ability, which is why they can give you truck loads of phoenix downs, but it will never come up as an option to use on Aeris.
Often the story and gameplay are developed separately. This is one of the reason things like these happen. Realistically, any game with a revival mechanic should never be able to have a tragic death scene, so those mechanics exist purely on a gameplay level (see: FF7 with Aerith). Also, experiened mages/warriors/veterans who join your party at level 1 fall also into this category: due to how character growth works they would steamroll the entire first half of the game if you let them into the party.
So I consider many of those things to be acceptable breaks from reality. What I don't tolerate are actions that go against an established characterization: a genius constantly not seeing the obvious soltion to a problem in his area of expertise for example. Those are writing ****-ups and yes, the writers should get criticism for them.
The writers get too washed down with possibilities. For example; in Devil May Cry 1, after you defeat Nero Angelo, he beats the **** out of Dante in a cutscene right after. Which might be plausible on your first playthrough where you're bound to get beaten up a lot. Even if you beat Nero without taking a single point of damage, the cutscene feels jarring since Dante went from having total control over the fight to being tossed around like a ragdoll. DMC4 had the same issue as well.
It was just impossible for the writers to account for player skill and that's why the cutscenes stays as it is. Ultimately a slight break in immersion is a small price to pay for going wherever the story is heading.
It was just impossible for the writers to account for player skill and that's why the cutscenes stays as it is. Ultimately a slight break in immersion is a small price to pay for going wherever the story is heading.
If the story is going somewhere that requires cutscene incompetence, it should be written differently. One of my favorite moments in Trails in the Sky First Chapter was a fight that you're meant to lose against a very tough opponent―but you can win, and the game acknowledges it if you do. It doesn't change the overall outcome of the story, but it shifts the context of that scene from "fearsome bad guy casually prevents you from attaining your goal" to "fearsome bad guy fights tooth and nail to barely succeed in a delaying action before fleeing".
It was just impossible for the writers to account for player skill and that's why the cutscenes stays as it is. Ultimately a slight break in immersion is a small price to pay for going wherever the story is heading.
If the story is going somewhere that requires cutscene incompetence, it should be written differently. One of my favorite moments in Trails in the Sky First Chapter was a fight that you're meant to lose against a very tough opponent―but you can win, and the game acknowledges it if you do. It doesn't change the overall outcome of the story, but it shifts the context of that scene from "fearsome bad guy casually prevents you from attaining your goal" to "fearsome bad guy fights tooth and nail to barely succeed in a delaying action before fleeing".
Exactly. This is the right way to do it. Even if the writing has to bottleneck the outcome, so as you say in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter if you win or lose, having that variation is the way it should be done so there is narrative consistency.
That's the problem with "essential NPCs". The game should account for their deaths and, if there is no way for the quest to be resolved without the NPC, then let the Player fail the quest or just mark it as complete. But, again, you have to have people that actually care for their videogame to spend the effort and time to account for that and that's why its almost never present in normie slop.
Trails series, specially Sky since it was the first, had a lot of love and passion into it and it shows.
Because the Japs don't give a **** about ludo-narrative dissonance. They're perfectly content to mentally separate gameplay ability from narrative ability, which is why they can give you truck loads of phoenix downs, but it will never come up as an option to use on Aeris.
It'd be cool if they actually DID let you try, only to find that it only works when your target is only MOSTLY dead, not when they're ALL dead.
They could just let tragedy happen without the player's direct involvement. Like your uber-strong character go fishing somewhere, then hear about a dude getting eaten later. You may still not be very happy, but at least you do not feel like role-playing an idiot.
Just experienced this gem in Triangle Strategy: >defeat enemy lord and all his troops
>have him and his bodyguard surrounded and beaten
>bodyguard leaps up, pushes through the ten PCs surrounding them, and both flee through the gap
>the entire party, including the hawk rider with a bow, stands there and does nothing as this happens
>no attempt is made to pursue them
I love cutscenes.
The stupidity of that cutscene is greatly magnified by the fact that in the very next post-battle cutscene, another enemy leader tries to do the same thing and gets mercilessly *teleports behind you* nothing personnel'd by the party assassin.
This even happens in Archolos where you take out a bunch of bad guys and you're still forced to run for your life. Although later on you get another cutscene kind of like this where you can refuse to turn over the macguffin with a nice speech and the bad guy gives you nice marks for bravery...before he kills you.
This even happens in Archolos where you take out a bunch of bad guys and you're still forced to run for your life. Although later on you get another cutscene kind of like this where you can refuse to turn over the macguffin with a nice speech and the bad guy gives you nice marks for bravery...before he kills you.
Biggest gripe I had with archolos is the handful of scripted death scenes. Definitely felt out of place.
Just experienced this gem in Triangle Strategy: >defeat enemy lord and all his troops
>have him and his bodyguard surrounded and beaten
>bodyguard leaps up, pushes through the ten PCs surrounding them, and both flee through the gap
>the entire party, including the hawk rider with a bow, stands there and does nothing as this happens
>no attempt is made to pursue them
I love cutscenes.
The stupidity of that cutscene is greatly magnified by the fact that in the very next post-battle cutscene, another enemy leader tries to do the same thing and gets mercilessly *teleports behind you* nothing personnel'd by the party assassin.
