General Modern Gameplay Interrupting Cutscenes

[Salem]

first of all, apologies if this topic was brought up to death before.

To be clear I'm not talking about storyline cutscenes, those are another issues entirely.

What I'm talking about are the cutscenes that happen following or during the discovered secret jingle or whatever. They happen when you're trapped in a room and when you kill all enemies, or press the right switch the game stops and the camera pans to show you that the door have been unsealed or a treasure chest have appeared.

Personally, I'm sick of these things, there're boring and they waste time.

This plague usually only happens to the 3d games, but recently they put it on the ds titles, you know considering they have a TOP DOWN perspective where they wouldn't have an excuse to pause the game but they did anyway.

What do you guys think? should they be removed or kept

one last thing, can they be skipped in any on the games?

 

[Ventus]

I think they should be removed entirely; just have the jingle while still allowing us to continue on with the quest. Zelda is not a hard series to figure out; I do not think we need to be told "look, the door to your RIGHT just opened up!!!" with a cutscene. Maybe have the bars unlocking jingle play while allowing us to continue on? Stuff like that would be better as it'd create a more immersive title, rather than all of these pauses ripping control out of your hands every other room.

I do believe they can be skipped, some of them anyway, in Twilight Princess by pressing Start/Minus.

 

[JuicieJ]

So you're saying we shouldn't be shown what just happened across the room after activating a switch or something? Yeah, no.

 

[Salem]

I would understand if what we have done in the current room affects something in a different room that the game has to show it to us, but when it's in the same room its alms always obvious, of the room seals itself on Link, if killing the enemies didn't unlock the doors, these obviously a switch somewhere.

They could have instructions appear on the screen that tells us that a door opened or a chest alongside the sound appeared without pausing the game.

 

[Mercedes]

Well, it works with some games. A few games never really wrestle control away from you, like Half Life, and instead the AI and level themselves are designed to always show you where exactly to go. But, I don't think it's very Zelda-like; this isn't really a detriment to the game experience. It's actually quite helpful. So, I think they should be kept, it's hardly a flaw that ruins Zelda afterall.

 

[Salem]

Well, it works with some games. A few games never really wrestle control away from you, like Half Life, and instead the AI and level themselves are designed to always show you where exactly to go. But, I don't think it's very Zelda-like; this isn't really a detriment to the game experience. It's actually quite helpful. So, I think they should be kept, it's hardly a flaw that ruins Zelda afterall.

The original Loz for the nes the game never gets interrupted expect when the old people and shop keeper talk.

 

[Ventus]

The original Loz for the nes the game never gets interrupted expect when he old people and shop keeper talk.

Even htough I agree, you have to remember that no one likes the old Zelda games; they're all modern Zelda fans which means the conventions used in the newer titles are the only ones to exist. In reality, modern Zelda is the "not very Zelda-like" because foundations were set on non-intrusive gameplay; catchy music; nonlinearity etc but the fact of the matter is, the install base for Zelda nowadays is the modern set.

 

[SpiritGerudo]

I know that I for one a lot of the time step on switches, then realize I need to go and do a puzzle to get them to stay down. So you might be pressing the switch multiple times. I think for a situation like this, they should definitely show you the cutscene the first time. Every time after that, once you know what the switch does, it isn't necessary to interrupt the game to show something you already know. I think some switches do this already, but if I'm remembering correctly, a lot of them don't as well.

As for top-down style games, it really depends. A lot of the time, you're in a room in which you can see all of the walls (and thus all of the doors) and in this case we don't need the game to pause to watch the door unlock or whatever happens. But I know that a lot of rooms also go off the screen that you can see at one time, and so if a door opens in part of the room that you can't see, you wouldn't know. As for this, I'd say that the best thing to do would be to move the screen to whatever is happening, but still give the player control. That way, it wouldn't affect rooms that are small enough to see where you are, and in larger rooms you could see what is happening without necessarily impeding movement, if you're say, just of the edge of where the screen would scroll to.

 

[Salem]

Even htough I agree, you have to remember that no one likes the old Zelda games; they're all modern Zelda fans which means the conventions used in the newer titles are the only ones to exist. In reality, modern Zelda is the "not very Zelda-like" because foundations were set on non-intrusive gameplay; catchy music; nonlinearity etc but the fact of the matter is, the install base for Zelda nowadays is the modern set.

The first time I "properly" played the nes loz was just last summer, it was suprisely addictive, I couldn't put down easily, the reason I put of playing it since I bought it on virtual console is because I thought it might be to confusing to navigate and frustrating but i was pleasantly surprised, I had a nes but not a zelda cartridge on it.

 

[Dragoncat]

I don't mind the "look, the door opened" ones, but the mailman in TP...ugh. How does he make the monsters freeze like that, and how does he know it's Link, even when he's in wolf form? Unrealistic and annoying. One time I had to stop recording the game because of him. I was going to mess with the guards in castle town and record the results, and he has to go ruin it and make me start over. -.-

 

[Salem]

^Its the zelda mailmen in general, even the DS games have them, I CAN READ MY OWN MESSEAGE thank you very much, they're don't deserve to be.

 

[Mellow Ezlo]

Some of them are Okay. In fact, most of them are pretty much essential. For instance, in the DS games, when you solve a puzzle and a door opens, sometimes it is on the other side of the floor, and not everybody looks at the map to see where the door opened. Also, it is pretty useful if you are busy and would not notice something happening in the room. Not everybody is that observant.

That said, I do not think we need to see a cutscene of the bars moving off the door when we are literally two feet from the door. That, I do indeed find to be slightly annoying. But that is a small detail, and only takes up like 2 seconds of time, so it is kind of pointless to hate it. It is really not a nuisance. The only ones I really don't like are the ones that take forever. But, like I said above, sometimes they are useful!

 

[Salem]

these kind of scenes can be disorienting when they finally let go of you, and sometimes I forget what I was doing and where was I going, I even miss items from enemies.