I think the reason why people hate “movie” games the most (besides the plots most of them are based around are total shite) is that control is taken away from the player, and you have to sit there for a good ten minutes. In Half-Life, where everything takes place in game and in real time, controls is rarely taken away from the player during a story event, keeping the pace of the game from changing so much, and thus it succeeds in telling its story to a player while keeping them in control. It’s a shame that most developers haven’t caught on to what made Half-Life work, and instead for on boring cutscenes that drag too long and don’t really move its plot anyway.
tl;dr Half Life did a really good job at conveying itself without being annoying about it and modern games should replicate this.
You're exactly right, but unfortunately game journos and casuals would much rather have their hand held and have all of the story directly fed to them. It also helps that it's much easier to create those kinds of experiences than it is to do something that takes thought
Leo Flores
It's been awhile since I played, but if people are talking in a cutscene, then can't you just kill them? I remember crowbarring a security guard when he was informing me on where to go next.
Parker Bell
Indeed user, luckily you don’t really need NPCs in HL1 to make it through, it just made the experience easier and more immersive, in HL2 the characters are more important so you can’t kill them at all. If you somehow manage to you will get a Termination Game Over.
Matthew Brown
Half Life was even worse because you can't just skip those obnoxious story segments where NPCs talk you wait to get back to the game proper and not just jerk off in a room for a few minutes.
Most people hate "movie" games because they're just bad. Do you see people complaining about the number of cutscenes in something Ocarina of Time? Of course you don't.
There's always going to be a small slice of players that are apparently so ADD that they can't sit through a cutscene of any length or quality. But that doesn't mean developers should cater to their deficiency.
Juan Nelson
retard
Lucas Kelly
*something like
Connor Morgan
Ocarina of Time still has enough (back tracking) gameplay to sustain its big plot. Most people also don’t complain about because it’s pointless, the people who do complain about OOT don’t mention the actual issues with the game and instead pick the “overrated garbage” strawman, or most will unabashedly defend it despite its flaws.
Elijah Russell
But ion maiden hasn't released yet? I don't understand.
Logan Powell
I've played the singleplayer of MW1-BLOPS 2 multiple times save for MW3 and BLOPS 2, played Metro, and enjoy walking simulators like Journey but nothing has ever come close to matching the ungodly amount of boredom I felt with HL. Everything from it's visuals to sounds to enemies is just so bland and uninspired
Liam Collins
but how else are they going to provide a meaningful experience without 10 minutes of exposition for every 30 minutes of "gameplay"?
Caleb Thompson
My point is, the criticism you often get about Half Life and its "unskippable cutscenes" often seems to boil down to the notion that all cutscenes are inherently bad because any moment you're not in control of the game is bad. And I don't see how this argument makes any sense at all unless you have some kind of attention deficiency.
Alexander Hughes
>Do you see people complaining about the number of cutscenes in something Ocarina of Time? Of course you don't. Yes? The...slowly...crawling..text that is unskippable in Ocarina is one of the worst things about it.
Gavin Watson
I’m inherently saying that all cutscenes are bad, but that Half Life did it better. I’m not playing Hitman Bloody Money during a cutscene and pissing my pants over it (mostly because the entire game is about having patience anyway)
Mason Watson
In Half-Life, where everything takes place in game and in real time, controls is rarely taken away from the player during a story event
>people claim half-life is immersive >try to use flashlight in pitch black area >doesn't work for some reason >walk into pitch black area >i get ambushed as part of a scripted setpiece and my weapons get taken away and I am locked into a trash compactor >I realize that the game arbitrarily disabled my flashlight because otherwise I would have interfered with the scripted setpiece
I have been playing games since 98 and I have learned one thing: fuck the gaming community and their shit taste.
Adrian Bell
Elaborate user?
Jackson Davis
>control is taken away for literally 3 seconds in the entire game IMMERSION RUINED
Carson Ross
They were blocking your fleshlight's gama rays with beta rays
Gavin Martinez
>control is taken away for literally 3 seconds in the entire game
Did you forget about the tram ride in the beginning of the game, followed by a lengthy section where you have to wait for scientists to order you around?
It takes like half an hour before you even attack something, which is utterly absurd.
Colton Taylor
Some autist makes half life hate threads plus spamming his Duke mods
Owen Foster
Amen, brother.
Luke Campbell
You still have control
Jace Cooper
It's so weird how HL1 got this right, but HL2 completely missed it
