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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

Subject: "A thought on losing in the cut scene"     Previous Topic | Next Topic
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Peter Eng
Charter Member
2219 posts		 Aug-03-26, 11:24 PM (EDT)
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"A thought on losing in the cut scene"
 
   Jason Pargin posted a reel on Facebook in which he pointed out that an action scene that is not the climax of a story should always derail the hero's plan, and even the final action scene shouldn't go perfectly. As an example, take the opening of Star-Crossed. Gryphon has a plan - buy the SPARTAN laser, fly it back to Eight-Ball One, go on with his Exile life. Then he gets ambushed outside Omega, the hyperdrive gets damaged, and he crash-lands. I've reviewed the story in my memory, and as far as I can tell, every action scene derails his plans. He gets things, but they're never what he wants.

The problem is, this doesn't translate to games. Midnight Suns tries it constantly, while missing the point that the action sequence has to be won. Everything that goes against the player has to be driven from outside the action segments by an existing mechanic, not editorial declaration.

Peter Eng
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Insert humorous comment here.


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Spectrum
Member since Dec-25-13
913 posts		 Aug-03-26, 11:41 PM (EDT)
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1. "RE: A thought on losing in the cut scene"
In response to message #0
 
   I think my main complaint is that often losing in a cutscenes has three central common failures:
1) It makes the antagonist look stupid for not finishing you off when they have you at their mercy (barring the gambiting antagonists who are counting on the party being alive later to do something else for their master plan)
2) It makes the protagonists look like chumps only alive because of their opponent's stupidity or laziness, or constantly getting bailed out by someone else
3) It frustrates the player if they are actually good at the game mechanically if they trivially defeat the boss in the game but then lose in the cutscene


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Kendra Kirai
Member since May-22-16
1033 posts		 Aug-04-26, 02:55 AM (EDT)
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2. "RE: A thought on losing in the cut scene"
In response to message #1
 
   What really super sucks is that it's never 'you can just lose this battle because you lose it canonically anyway'.

It's always 'You need to absolutely crush the enemy, just slap them around and make them call you mommy. THEN you can get your shit pushed in in the cutscene because you didn't actually do any of the shit you just had to play through for the last forty five minutes and all of that was actually just padding to make this game longer so you won't/can't refund it.'

Losing in the cutscene when it is directly connected to an ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY victory is absolutely intolerable, and any writer who says it has to be done doesn't know how to write interactive media and I might even argue doesn't know what actual interactive media is.


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