Are Video Game Cut Scenes Lazy Storytelling? Or Do They Just Make Game Play Irrelevant?

Hello my sweet cherubim children and welcome back to my blog!

Today we are going to talk about one of video games' biggest controversies...

the cut scene. DUN DUN DUN!

I stole this image from SlashGear's article about this very subject, so please click this link to read their article too!

I personally think there is a fine line when using cut scenes in video games to tell story. If you can remove every single cut scene from a game, stitch it together, and have a whole movie without any game play, then is the game really telling a story, or are you just being rewarded with story for playing the game? And if the entire story takes place during cut scenes, does this make the game a culprit of lazy story-telling?

Personally, I feel like cut scenes are more jarring than they are lazy story-telling, and for that reason alone they should be kept to a minimum. Sometimes, cut scenes are necessary, whether it is due to the limitations of a gaming system, or an inconsistency in game mechanics, etc, but when every important moment in the story takes place through cut scene, the player is repeatedly taken out of the story and reminded that they are playing a game, which ruins immersion.

Ultimately, I think the question is not if cut scenes are lazy story-telling, but if cut scenes make game play irrelevant. I will give you an example. I remember watching the cut scene movie of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild before buying the game, and the cut scene movie was one of the main reasons why I bought the game, mostly because it didn't make any sense. The cut scenes gave snippets of the story, but they weren't enough to flesh out what the game was really about. Instead, the majority of the story is told through Link's journey throughout Hyrule, talking to NPC's and playing through missions. If I had been able to watch the entire cut scene movie on YouTube, revealing the entire story, I wouldn't have had to buy the game.

For example, I wouldn't have known this guy's wife left him...

Cut scenes also make game play irrelevant because they remove autonomy from the player. By revealing story through interaction with items and characters during game play, every player gets to have their own experience, go where they want to go, talk to who they want to talk to, individually revealing story and further motivating them to take full advantage of the game mechanics, which ultimately makes the player more invested in the story and characters. This is one of the reasons why Breath of the Wild is so beloved by players who spent so many hours journeying through the game- because personally discovering the game's secrets, lore, and story made the experience so much more immersive and rewarding.

I feel the best literature in video games take place in games where the player gets to decide the story, or if the player is required to discover most of the story with cut scenes interspersed throughout.

Until next time~

ricecakerabbit