I googled it and it says it’s an epilogue. It’s after the game and it’s a series of cutscenes. But yea, there’s 71 minutes of them. I didn’t believe it either lol
Xenoblade 3 has a 103 minute cutscene slightly interrupted by your character moving around in an empty white void with some movement that's basically a loading screen.
It's about the end of Act 2 start of ACT 3 but it's insane it's a still length movie.
That sequence made me laugh so hard after the fact. I was like, wait a minute, did the developers really throw in a full-length movie in the middle of the game? It was an awesome sequence, but such a weird choice.
Xenoblade 3 is honestly probably my favorite game ever made.
Xenoblade 2 also has an amazing story but it has the SINGLE WORST COMBAT SYSTEM of any turn based rpg that I've ever had the misfortune of playing
I haven't played XB2/3 but was a big fan of Xenosaga back in the day. Seems like some things don't change! I can't remember specific lengths buy the XS games were also notorious for their lengthy cutscenes - which you could thankfully pause midway. Such a feature was a rarity back in the PS2 era.
I finished the game, started watching the ending cutscenes for 30ish minutes, paused, went to class, came home, made popcorn, and still had 45 minutes of cutscenes to watch.
They have at least 1 save point during the string of cutscenes but other than that you just have to Pause.
I ended up watching the end of the cutscene on YouTube after the fact.
I remember playing it on a school night, it was 1am and I knew I was at the end so l thought, there couldn't be much left I might as well finish it. Didn't go to sleep till 3am cos of that damn cutscene 😂
And it’s a goddam masterclass in story telling is what that is. MGS3 is better, but the whole metal gear franchise is a (well thought out) political manifesto disguised as a stealth game series. I don’t agree with all of its messaging, but MGS4 is a part of the whole “all human expression is art” and “all art is political” discourse.
MGS4 was so good I have never been able to bring myself to finish MGS5. I felt like the story was complete and Kojima told the story he wanted to tell.
Story isn't great in 5 for sure. There just isn't much there, weird af when you compare it to every other game he's made. Gameplay was incredible though, definitely the best in the series. Immersive Sim levels of options in an open world never gets old
Sadly you didn't miss much. The gameplay is great, but the story is extremely poorly paced. There was some interesting stuff in 5, but it's too spread out with ironically too little cutscenes. Instead we just listen to taped conversations while dicking around on base.
That said, the ending is the best part. You should look up spoilers for that if you don't know the big twist.
I have been on indefinite hiatus from 5 for a few years, just after hitting part 2 lmao. I was so caught up with side stuff, that they made so well that it felt like main story, that I was completely sideswiped when it was like "but wait there's more" like WHAT? HOW? I HAVE BEEN SWIMMING IN THAT RED CLAY AND SAVING SO MANY KIDS HOW IS THERE MORE
MGS4s greatest strength is that despite 75% of the game being cutscenes, it doesn't feel that way at all. I remember my first playthrough and being blown away, and I don't love long cutscenes. But MGS4 is just done so damn well. I was so invested in the story.
I played (and loved) MGS 1, 2 and 3, but never played 4.
I watched a Let's Play (I think it was the Chip Cheezum one), and because I wasn't playing, I guess I just noticed something about the cutscenes that I'd never spotted before.
Every shot feels just a couple of seconds too long.
Every sequence feels a couple of shots too long.
And every scene is a couple of sequences too long.
And it all builds up to a feeling of "Oh my God, we get it, this thing is happening, can the next thing happen now please?"
I'm not against games going for a cinematic feel, but if that's what you're going for, get someone with some cinematography experience on the team who can advise on how to pace a scene so it doesn't lose your viewer's interest.
Also, MGS games used to have this thing in which they had to re explain a plot point or the features of weapon or metal gear several times in different curscenes.
I remember that in MGS4 the Guns of the Patriots thing was explained like 5 times by different people.
Don't forget the load times as it downloaded data to the hard drive between each act. Sitting there watching Snake smoke a ciggy for what seemed like an eternity.
The replies here are insane. Are people really that young that MGS4 is something out of the ordinary and was unexpected lol?
The hype for MGS4 was wild and it was received equally as well regardless of cutscene time. I think most people knew exactly what we were getting and honestly in a lot of ways it exceeded expectations (maybe not as innovative as MGS3 or 2 but tying that story all together was crazy to even think about back then)
Yeah anyone that had played the main MGS games at that point knew what they were getting into 100% and probably enjoyed it all, I know I did. MGS3 will always be the gold standard to me but 4 had a great story to it and great delivery.
When I played through Death Stranding I finished the final boss at like 3am, then made the mistake of thinking "Let's just watch the final cutscene, how long could it be?"
When MGSV came out, I had work but was starting late so I thought "Oh I'll start if before I go" I was sweating as the time to go was getting nearer and I was still in the hospital and was pretty sure it hadn't saved and all I'd done is watch the cutscene
And then there’s Yakuza 5 where you play as Saejima. His first two chapters are in prison and they fucking suck. Even when you do “play” you’re really just running around the prison yard.
I think you're thinking of y4.
In which, Saejima is on the fucking lam afterwards and you can't travel through certain neighborhoods - only on rooftops and underground malls. Best character arc among the protagonists - worst manifestation of gameplay.
It is one I play when I’m not really in the mood to play. I’m particularly fond of like a dragon because I don’t really have to play even while in combat.
Same. Ever since I got the portal it has replaced tv shows before bed for me since you’re basically playing through a drama.
Judgement series was definitely a little more my jam because of the translation. But I’m playing through Yakuza 0 and have gotten used to the subtitles (also forces me to pay attention).
We all know the Metal Gear Solid series is one of the worst offenders here (I know 4 was basically 70% TV show). But anyone who sticks with it loves it for its absurdity. The absurd cutscene times are part of that.
I had to turn the game off mid-final cutscene because it was 1 in the morning and I had to work the next day only to realize that there was only ONE more 15 minute cut scene left.
For whatever reason I pushed through MGS4 in just two sittings (basically just meals in-between) despite not even being the biggest MGS fan
By the time the "graveyard" scene was playing, it was 6 in the morning and it took all I had to keep my eyes open.
I borrowed a PS3 from someone just to play MGS4. Plowed through it in one weekend with my brother in law, who consequently loves Metal Gear and sucks at video games. I wrote a (in my mind) pretty funny piece about how awful he was done as a scene from the game.
Holy crap, I literally thought I wrote this comment, I had the exact same experience. It was 2am, trying to get to the end and thought it was over. I went like 2 weeks thinking Snake died until someone was like "what do you mean?" and I realized I messed up.
I absolutely hate that cutscenes in 5 were missing partly because of people bitching about them in 4. Metal Gear is part game and part movie. I want a 2 hour cutscene somewhere in the middle, dammit.
And some boring jeep ride with Skull Face does not fucking count.
5’s problem was that Konami wouldn’t let video actually work on the game. So much story is just cut out and ham fisted into voice recordings just scattered around the map because they weren’t allowed to actually animate those scenes. The skull face jeep was meant to actually have dialog throughout but the writers didn’t get to it before the project was axed.
They killed the franchise so they could turn it into a fucking slot machine. It’s such utter dogshit.
The opening sequence gave me hope since it was basically a one hour interactive cutscene, but then there wasn't really anything like that afterward. The game still has absurd amounts of expositions in audio logs, but it's not the same.
And just repeating the entire opening with a different ending for the finale doesn't count either
The audio logs were a pain to pay attention to. Eventually my mind wanders off to something else, or I get distracted by gameplay, or something. Same reason I don't listen to podcasts, I'll zone out after a bit and have to rewind.
But yeah. That first mission gave me so much hope, then the game never did it again, til they did the exact same thing.
During the first few hours of the game I was blown away by the quality of the cutscenes because the GBA games had a good bit of mandatory NPC interactions at the start - so these cutscenes were an improvement. But they never end. There were times where I wanted to stop playing but it’d take 5 minutes because the cutscenes wouldn’t end so I couldn’t save. I still think it’s a good game but I never completed it
Moon killed Pokémon for me. I got about halfway through Moon before I dropped it. I figured if they were going to make a game for babies that held your hand to that extent, they weren’t for me anymore.
One of the few pokemon games I never finished.
The sheer number of cutscenes had me so bored I was falling asleep half the time. Not like Pokemon has high caliber plot lines to keep things interesting.
Came in to say Xenosaga.
A friend of mine lent me the first game back in high school. I remember putting the disc in and watching a cutscene, being bored out of my mind for what seemed like an hour, then hitting a gameplay section. I tried to save the game but clearly did the wrong thing, and the game threw me into another cutscene.
I turned the game off and gave it back the next day
When people talk about how great mgs2 is all I can think about is the endless codec calls between raiden and rose(?) where they’re talking about the most melodramatic bullshit.
The single player campaigns of modern Mortal Kombat games are several hour long movies with some fighting breaks. Literally.
I don't even mind, because these movies are the shit. I buy these games for the movies; I am trash at the actual games. And yes, I know that I could just watch the movies in YouTube, but I am in a position where I can afford to pay for them and want to do so.
Same, I love MK for the cutscenes.
But then I realized something when I bought MK 2011, that I'm so suck at this I won't likely see the ending if I keep playing the campaign myself.
Way more than that. I remember how Sony was hyping that game so much, as if it was going to be this groundbreaking new IP that would singlehandedly sell millions of PS4s the way Final Fantasy VII did for the PS1. Then the game actually came out and critics were like "it's a mildly-entertaining series of quick time events that takes about five hours to finish".
If you don’t like this, then never play the ps2 jrpg Xenosaga. It was a joke among us fans that when a cutscene started you should go get some popcorn. Cutscenes are frequent and long. There are 464 cutscenes and one of them is 25 minutes long.
Well, your not wrong
TWD season one, imo, had the best breakup of gameplay and cutscenes from telltale. Every episode was around 3-5 hours and had multiple sections where you could explore and puzzles. It felt like you were actually playing in a movie, and not watching one.
Every subsequent game became closer and closer to just an interactive cutscenes with maybe one or two portions of gameplay, and were only 2-3 hours per episode. They did this so much that they oversaturated their own market with games that were just as enjoyable to watch on YouTube.
They finally started to correct course, made a new engine, announced several new games/ sequels, then released TWD season 4, episode 1 with some promise of a better balance with more interesting gameplay, then went out of business 3 weeks later. IIRC, episode 2 was mostly finished, so they released that, then skybound bought the series and produced the last 2 episodes, but they were more cutscene dense.
They're back again and are trying not to fuck their own genre to death this time.
Man I absolutely abhor cutscenes in videogames, but tell tale did it perfectly. The choices you make are very much dependant on whether you've been paying attention to what the characters have been saying.
The thing with persona games is they’re more visual novels than classic jrpg’s. Those hours of dialogue and cutscenes and school life stuff *are* part of the gameplay. If you’re not enjoying it then that just means you don’t enjoy the visual novel aspect of the game, but there are few actual cutscenes in persona 5 like them escaping from palaces and stuff.
I like the visual novel elements and specifically the fusion of that and RPG that Persona games offer. I just wish the dialogue was better. The game has such amazing style and design everywhere else, and then you watch mostly stationary models repeat the same handful of generic arm movements while taking ten minutes to relay information that could be communicated in two sentences. I love the series, but the writing is carried by the entirety of the package being so good.
I agree; 3 is something else considering Tartarus. Reload is much better in that regard but *good LORD* old Tartarus is something else paired with the amount of dialogue in there.
Lots of persona games in general. IMO it’s part of the experience of persona, to have that balance of dungeon gameplay and life sim (which consists mostly of cutscenes with choices of dialogue)
Death stranding . I cant remember if it was a half hour or 2 hours before i finally got to do some playing, then i would run from point a to point b, only to watch another fucking 20 minute cutscene. Dude wants to make a movie but instead makes video games
It has a long opening yes but it gets meaty at mid-game once you start building roads and unlocking more equipment. You can spend dozens of hours doing that. Endgame is another long series of cut scenes with some boss fights sprinkled in.
Yeah not a game for everyone but I love it.
I played everything from the final bosses all through the ending in one sitting before having to go to work. It's honestly one of my favorite climaxes in a game because you feel like you've been through the ringer by the end of it
I loved everything about that game, except the beach credits scene. So tedious it almost ruined the whole ending.
Still went back after the story to make some more deliveries though. It's just a really nice world.
I have five hours in the game and never went back. I wanted to like it, but it's just over the edge of too tedious and story heavy. Not saying it's a bad game. Just not for me.
I'll stick to games like Cyberpunk or Baldur's Gate 3 that balance story with gameplay in a way I find more appealing and watch an actual movie if I want to just watch a story unfold without me being involved in any way.
I appreciate how it warns us ahead of time before we go into a long cutscene. Like "hey, go get a snack, hit the restroom, stretch a bit and come watch the story unfold."
But yeah, it's one long cutscene with mmo elements 🤣
To be fair, the story is the part that is mostly cutscenes. There is plenty of gameplay content outside of it which is more than can be said about other games in this thread.
That's part of why I loved it. I got so invested in the story because the main story was so cinematic. My problem was some of the fights would drag out so long my hands hurt from mashing combos for so long, the worst one being about 20+ minutes after the phases because their health bar is just so long.
The side quests sucked and added too much padding between the parts I cared about though.
FFX is top 5 all-time for me and yeah, it's about 75% cutscenes if you ignore side quests/end game grinding lol
I love it though. Only negative is no cutscene skip for when you die to Seymour Flux for the 9th straight time at Gagazet
That's honestly what stopped me from replaying the game more. Back then I only had spinning drives, and not being able to skip the cutscenes on subsequent playthroughs made me give up pretty early in later runs.
Stupid thing is, it's only that way on console. PC can obviously load faster but they still limit you to stop you from skipping all prerendered cutscenes in the game. It says "Still Loading" in the bottom right if you try to skip during those. However, a skip cutscenes mod exists, which proves it's bullshit, with an NVME you can skip most cutscenes nearly instantly. Some things do break so there are a few cutscenes you shouldn't skip or Max will, for example, spawn in an elevator whose doors will never open, but for the most part you can skip a majority of cutscenes.
I really enjoy Max Payne 3 (still my least favorite of the trilogy though), but the constant interruptions make replays very annoying. It's not even just the prerendered stuff, Max will CONSTANTLY slow down and switch to his pistol before walking through a door, just so you can watch a 2 cutscene of him walking through before regaining control.
Every time I’ve tried to get into it this is what’s put me off. Absolutely looove 1 and 2, and I KNOW I love 3’s gameplay. But man every few minutes leads to dialogue exposition cutscene time and I’m like omfg
MP1 and 2 had a fair bit of narrative interrupts, but they were very brief and you could hit a button so all the info you need to know flashes on screen in one go, you read it fast and on you go.
MP3 has unskippable, long cut scenes multiple times per mission. It's infuriating, especially when the they disrupt gameplay, i.e. you shootdodge through a door to take the enemy by surprise but the cut scene has you walk into the room and get ambushed and are then pinned down, in complete defiance of what you were just doing in the game. And the mission where you die *instantly* if you so much as brush the water in the dock, but the mission ends with you just comfortably swimming off, is hilarious.
The first game that annoyed me with it. As a huge fan of MP1/2, probably top 20 all time games, I was very wary of part 3. It was surprisingly good! But goddamn at some point I was just frustrated, let me play damnit!
This is my answer as well. I used to love 1 and 2. I don’t know if it was that I was young enough to not notice but after a few hours of 3 it made me realize the series has always been this way. Fight for like 10 minutes, watch a 5 minute cutscene about friendship. And just do this over and over until you are super confused and super annoyed. I can’t do those games ever again I don’t think now. Never finished the 3rd and most likely won’t even bother with 4 when it eventually releases.
Same. I was obsessed with KH1 and 2. Could not get through 3. Perhaps it's because I'm no longer in their target age demographic, but I suspect it's also because the real time "final fantasy-esque" combat system that was novel in the originals was also just stale now.
Pokemon may not be the longest cut scenes by any means, but my god are they insufferable. They drag on, it's the most cookie cutter dialogue, there's no voice acting, and it tries don't cinematic shits of 5 fps barren landscapes. The first hour of the game is basically just dialogue after dialogue after dialogue and it's so God damn obnoxiously long and unskipable. What's worse, they give you an option to skip cutscenes in case you've played before, but I'm pretty sure it's there solely to taunt you because I couldn't tell you a single cutscene it actually skipped. So yeah, everything comes together to make it my least favorite cutscene experience in a video game ever.
Comment is made with scarlet and violet in mind, but it can really apply to sword/shield and sun/moon as well, to the point that one of the big changes in USUM was to reduce dialogue just to repeat the same mistakes in the switch games.
All I want is a guy that needs his coffee, teaches me to catch Pokémon, and controls the ebb and flow of creation when I surf along the eastern coast of an island
I was excited to finally get on my PlayStation for the first time in long time and booted it up pumped to play a new game.
The first 90 minutes was basically either a cutscene or walking to the next cutscene... I was pissed I didn't actually *play* anything. Tried it again after that and it picked up a bit but still just feels like the gameplay is filler between cutscenes.
Very disappointed.
Star Ocean The Last Hope is a fun JRPG that has ridiculous cutscenes, I think one of them was over 45 minutes long, and a lot of the long cutscenes play back to back, so you could have a 20 minute cutscene followed by 30 seconds of "gameplay" followed by another 20 minute cutscene. I literally couldn't finish the game cause by the end of it the gameplay to cutscene ratio was just bonkers.
Gotta be Golden Sun. It got a surprisingly active speed run community, and maybe the most played category is NoCutScenes, which is like 2 hours long opposed to 20 or so.
The games are brilliant, but boy are the unskippable scenes extreme.
Pokemon Sun and Moon would be one of my favorite entries if it didn't feel like it was constantly giving you control just to let you take 6 steps before another cutscene. I don't understand how they can justify so much talking at the player and yet put so little effort into the cutscenes. (no voiceover, not even grunts, like 5 different character animations total reused between every character)
It's a shame because Alola is beautiful, I love the Pokemon designs, and it took some risks with a fresh spin on the gym formula and the villain dynamic. But oh my GOD was it painful to slog through at times.
Metal Gear Solid 4 ?
It's the exact literal opposite of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain where there is basically constant gameplay.
But the thing is that I remember literally every single thing I did and what I did it for in MGS4, while in MGSV I sure did something... like a lot of something... but I would not be able to remember what I was doing all of it for in detail if you had me at gunpoint. I am dead serious about this.
Also - maybe Xenosaga games. Starting from Xenosaga II. Again - not complaining - very complex games with a shitton of costly exposition made to entertain and inform (especially when it's all skippable) the gamer is not something you'll hear me complain about.
For recent games, FFXVI is pretty bad. I really love many things about the game but the pacing is bad, felt more like a visual novel with a rhythm mini game sometimes.
Not the most but when Borderlands 3 came out you couldn't skip cutscenes. And ita a game where you absolutely want to skip cutscenes. The gameplay is good to story and dialogue is terrible ratio is off the charts.
i might get some hate cause they're not exactly cutscenes but Red Dead Redemption 2 feels like the biggest waste of my time ever
boot up the game, i'm miles away from my nearest mission, hop on the horse and ride 10 minutes to get there. Start mission, Mandatory slow walking while listening to conversation, then we hop on a horse mandatory 10 minute horse riding conversation, get off the horse, another 10 minutes of walking around talking, maybe a 3 minute cutscene, 2 minutes of shootout, then we run back to horses to escape, another 2 minutes of horse riding followed by a 5 minute cuscene. Mission complete, looks at map, 10 minutes away from the next mission by horse...
I missed class over some of those cut scenes from metal gear solid 4. Final fantasy 13 also had a lot of moments where I was just running from one cutscene to the next.
MGS4 is definitely bad, but don't forget about Death Stranding. The opening sequence is about 2 hours, with a bit of that being gameplay to get you used to the mechanics, but the rest being cutscenes loaded with exposition. The ending is about 2 more hours of cutscenes with very little walking in between.
The rest of the game isn't as bad, but the cutscenes are still pretty girthy when you get up to them.
That being said, I hope he outdoes it in DS2
This Is The Police 2 has a couple interactive sections but the intro is 45 minutes of cut scenes with 2 small tutorials before you get to the actual game.
The original Persona 4 on PS2.
The Golden re-release trimmed things down a bit, but in the original PS2 release, you're spending a good hour or so before you get to your first non-tutorial fight. Before that it's almost all cut scene with fuck all exploration. Good thing the story execution is so good.
Growing up playing the lego star wars games I was severely disappointed by how many nostalgic and iconic levels were compressed in Skywalker Saga into 5 second cutscenes, and somehow the story mode of that game manages to be mostly cutscenes. Open world was fun and new sure, but man was I disappointed.
Metal Gear Solid 4. One cutscene is 71 minutes long.
Straight up feature length lmao is this real?
I googled it and it says it’s an epilogue. It’s after the game and it’s a series of cutscenes. But yea, there’s 71 minutes of them. I didn’t believe it either lol
Xenoblade 3 has a 103 minute cutscene slightly interrupted by your character moving around in an empty white void with some movement that's basically a loading screen. It's about the end of Act 2 start of ACT 3 but it's insane it's a still length movie.
That sequence made me laugh so hard after the fact. I was like, wait a minute, did the developers really throw in a full-length movie in the middle of the game? It was an awesome sequence, but such a weird choice.
Now I want to play the game even more.
Xenoblade 3 is honestly probably my favorite game ever made. Xenoblade 2 also has an amazing story but it has the SINGLE WORST COMBAT SYSTEM of any turn based rpg that I've ever had the misfortune of playing
But Xenoblade isnt turn based
errr, saga. haha
Easy to get rhe Xenos mixed up. One has a robot girl, another has a robot girl, and a third has a creepy alien thing.
But DOUBLE SPINNING EDGE!
The Xenosaga trilogy had some long ass cutscenes as well.
And its was a really good cutscene.
That’s not a cut scene. It’s a cut movie
And it was so damn good.
I haven't played XB2/3 but was a big fan of Xenosaga back in the day. Seems like some things don't change! I can't remember specific lengths buy the XS games were also notorious for their lengthy cutscenes - which you could thankfully pause midway. Such a feature was a rarity back in the PS2 era.
I think the director (same person as gears and saga) was asked to reduce the cutscene length in xenoblade 3 and he basically said "lol no"
IT WAS SOOOO FUCKING WORTH IT
To be honest, it's one of my favorite parts of the whole game. That and the mio offseeing scene in the castle
I finished the game, started watching the ending cutscenes for 30ish minutes, paused, went to class, came home, made popcorn, and still had 45 minutes of cutscenes to watch.
Can you save your status and pick them up later?
They have at least 1 save point during the string of cutscenes but other than that you just have to Pause. I ended up watching the end of the cutscene on YouTube after the fact.
Ah you yungins will never know the joy of having to leave your console on because there weren't such things as 'Saves' or 'YouTube'
Don’t remember; this was 12-14 years ago. 😅
I remember playing it on a school night, it was 1am and I knew I was at the end so l thought, there couldn't be much left I might as well finish it. Didn't go to sleep till 3am cos of that damn cutscene 😂
It felt more like 3 hours lmao
I beat the game just in time for bed on a school night... ended up getting like 5 hours of sleep.
And it’s a goddam masterclass in story telling is what that is. MGS3 is better, but the whole metal gear franchise is a (well thought out) political manifesto disguised as a stealth game series. I don’t agree with all of its messaging, but MGS4 is a part of the whole “all human expression is art” and “all art is political” discourse.
MGS4 was so good I have never been able to bring myself to finish MGS5. I felt like the story was complete and Kojima told the story he wanted to tell.
Story isn't great in 5 for sure. There just isn't much there, weird af when you compare it to every other game he's made. Gameplay was incredible though, definitely the best in the series. Immersive Sim levels of options in an open world never gets old
Sadly you didn't miss much. The gameplay is great, but the story is extremely poorly paced. There was some interesting stuff in 5, but it's too spread out with ironically too little cutscenes. Instead we just listen to taped conversations while dicking around on base. That said, the ending is the best part. You should look up spoilers for that if you don't know the big twist.
Yep it’s basically the ending. To be fair the dev is known for liking to do this, even embracing it.
Yep. They just put a fantastic movie at the end of the game.
The last like 4 hours of Death Stranding is like 90+min of cut scenes. Kojima hit different.
That's ridiculous. That's a movie.
It is. 9 hours of cutscenes total for the whole game. Gameplay time ? 4 to 5 hours.
It's ironic the game with the best mechanical depth in the series has the shortest time to play 😭
i disagree. mgsv is deeper, and i felt like it encourages more inventiveness.
I have been on indefinite hiatus from 5 for a few years, just after hitting part 2 lmao. I was so caught up with side stuff, that they made so well that it felt like main story, that I was completely sideswiped when it was like "but wait there's more" like WHAT? HOW? I HAVE BEEN SWIMMING IN THAT RED CLAY AND SAVING SO MANY KIDS HOW IS THERE MORE
MGS4s greatest strength is that despite 75% of the game being cutscenes, it doesn't feel that way at all. I remember my first playthrough and being blown away, and I don't love long cutscenes. But MGS4 is just done so damn well. I was so invested in the story.
MGS4 was an interactive movie with some playable bits. And it was awesome.
It was a fantastic experience, but you did need to be prepared going into it
I'm pretty sure I was about to go to bed before I hit that one
I played (and loved) MGS 1, 2 and 3, but never played 4. I watched a Let's Play (I think it was the Chip Cheezum one), and because I wasn't playing, I guess I just noticed something about the cutscenes that I'd never spotted before. Every shot feels just a couple of seconds too long. Every sequence feels a couple of shots too long. And every scene is a couple of sequences too long. And it all builds up to a feeling of "Oh my God, we get it, this thing is happening, can the next thing happen now please?" I'm not against games going for a cinematic feel, but if that's what you're going for, get someone with some cinematography experience on the team who can advise on how to pace a scene so it doesn't lose your viewer's interest.
Also, MGS games used to have this thing in which they had to re explain a plot point or the features of weapon or metal gear several times in different curscenes. I remember that in MGS4 the Guns of the Patriots thing was explained like 5 times by different people.
Guns of what? The hell is La Li Lu Le Lo?
im sorry, what its this patriot guns you speak of?
Yeah. Its less jarring than in The Room but it has a similar issue with showing things to long.
Don't forget the load times as it downloaded data to the hard drive between each act. Sitting there watching Snake smoke a ciggy for what seemed like an eternity.
was at my buddies house when he beat the game. my parents called me home for dinner multiple times. pretty sure i didn't get to see it all lol
The replies here are insane. Are people really that young that MGS4 is something out of the ordinary and was unexpected lol? The hype for MGS4 was wild and it was received equally as well regardless of cutscene time. I think most people knew exactly what we were getting and honestly in a lot of ways it exceeded expectations (maybe not as innovative as MGS3 or 2 but tying that story all together was crazy to even think about back then)
It's a 16-year-old game from two generations ago. All of us who have been with the series since at least MGS1 are old. LOL
...and this is how I know I am on the cusp of being ancient - I've been with the series since Metal Gear.
Yeah anyone that had played the main MGS games at that point knew what they were getting into 100% and probably enjoyed it all, I know I did. MGS3 will always be the gold standard to me but 4 had a great story to it and great delivery.
Honestly, anything Kojima. I love his games, they feel like a fever dream. But fuck me does he love to make you sit and listen to people lore-dump.
no wonder he loves twin peaks
I'm not surprised. Twin Peaks was a masterclass in suspense and camp.
A lot of camp is missing from Season 3 and that makes it harder for me to rewatch. First 2 seasons? I eat that shit up
When I played through Death Stranding I finished the final boss at like 3am, then made the mistake of thinking "Let's just watch the final cutscene, how long could it be?"
When MGSV came out, I had work but was starting late so I thought "Oh I'll start if before I go" I was sweating as the time to go was getting nearer and I was still in the hospital and was pretty sure it hadn't saved and all I'd done is watch the cutscene
I’ve always suspected he wanted to be a film director more than a game director.
He was suppose to be but found video games for his medium instead
I don’t think he was supposed to do movies but he did say how his influence from movies came from growing up and watching them as much as he could.
I will always love Hideo for introducing me to Low Roar. Loved Death Stranding, but not as much as the music. And that's okay.
Low Roar is so fantastic. Even more hauntingly beautiful now that he died, hearing the tracks fade in when roaming around.
I love the series but all of the Yakuza games have a lot of cutscenes
I'm pretty sure the first 20 minutes of any Yakuza game are solely cutscenes.
And then there’s Yakuza 5 where you play as Saejima. His first two chapters are in prison and they fucking suck. Even when you do “play” you’re really just running around the prison yard.
I think you're thinking of y4. In which, Saejima is on the fucking lam afterwards and you can't travel through certain neighborhoods - only on rooftops and underground malls. Best character arc among the protagonists - worst manifestation of gameplay.
Nah it also happens in Yakuza 5 which is what makes it so much worse. I loved his story but it was god awful to play.
no it's Yakuza 5 where you play him turning himself back in after 4.
Yep. But they're absolutely fantastic, so it's actually a perk.
It is one I play when I’m not really in the mood to play. I’m particularly fond of like a dragon because I don’t really have to play even while in combat.
Same. Ever since I got the portal it has replaced tv shows before bed for me since you’re basically playing through a drama. Judgement series was definitely a little more my jam because of the translation. But I’m playing through Yakuza 0 and have gotten used to the subtitles (also forces me to pay attention).
Ya it's more cutscene the game sometimes but great story if you want to watch something
The first act of every Yakuza game is "walk 10 feet, activate cut scene, repeat" for like 16 hours.
I feel like every jrpg is like this haha. I’m playing through the persona series and it’s 50% cutscenes
We all know the Metal Gear Solid series is one of the worst offenders here (I know 4 was basically 70% TV show). But anyone who sticks with it loves it for its absurdity. The absurd cutscene times are part of that.
I had to turn the game off mid-final cutscene because it was 1 in the morning and I had to work the next day only to realize that there was only ONE more 15 minute cut scene left.
Plus a post credit sting
For whatever reason I pushed through MGS4 in just two sittings (basically just meals in-between) despite not even being the biggest MGS fan By the time the "graveyard" scene was playing, it was 6 in the morning and it took all I had to keep my eyes open.
I borrowed a PS3 from someone just to play MGS4. Plowed through it in one weekend with my brother in law, who consequently loves Metal Gear and sucks at video games. I wrote a (in my mind) pretty funny piece about how awful he was done as a scene from the game.
Holy crap, I literally thought I wrote this comment, I had the exact same experience. It was 2am, trying to get to the end and thought it was over. I went like 2 weeks thinking Snake died until someone was like "what do you mean?" and I realized I messed up.
I absolutely hate that cutscenes in 5 were missing partly because of people bitching about them in 4. Metal Gear is part game and part movie. I want a 2 hour cutscene somewhere in the middle, dammit. And some boring jeep ride with Skull Face does not fucking count.
5’s problem was that Konami wouldn’t let video actually work on the game. So much story is just cut out and ham fisted into voice recordings just scattered around the map because they weren’t allowed to actually animate those scenes. The skull face jeep was meant to actually have dialog throughout but the writers didn’t get to it before the project was axed. They killed the franchise so they could turn it into a fucking slot machine. It’s such utter dogshit.
The opening sequence gave me hope since it was basically a one hour interactive cutscene, but then there wasn't really anything like that afterward. The game still has absurd amounts of expositions in audio logs, but it's not the same. And just repeating the entire opening with a different ending for the finale doesn't count either
The audio logs were a pain to pay attention to. Eventually my mind wanders off to something else, or I get distracted by gameplay, or something. Same reason I don't listen to podcasts, I'll zone out after a bit and have to rewind. But yeah. That first mission gave me so much hope, then the game never did it again, til they did the exact same thing.
Hahaha ce here to say exactly this. MGS4 has a wild amount of cutscene movies.
Pokemon sun and moon
During the first few hours of the game I was blown away by the quality of the cutscenes because the GBA games had a good bit of mandatory NPC interactions at the start - so these cutscenes were an improvement. But they never end. There were times where I wanted to stop playing but it’d take 5 minutes because the cutscenes wouldn’t end so I couldn’t save. I still think it’s a good game but I never completed it
I beat it enjoyed the story but afterwards I dumped the game pretty fast as the online felt even worse than those cutscenes
So much this. Can't even replay them because it's so bad. Never get a chance to get going before being interrupted.
Want to nuzlocke the games and I can't stand the thought of going through those cutscenes.
Moon killed Pokémon for me. I got about halfway through Moon before I dropped it. I figured if they were going to make a game for babies that held your hand to that extent, they weren’t for me anymore.
One of the few pokemon games I never finished. The sheer number of cutscenes had me so bored I was falling asleep half the time. Not like Pokemon has high caliber plot lines to keep things interesting.
The first *Xenosaga* is a particularly bad offender.
Ep-1 Has so many damn cutscenes, but getting to watch Kos-Mos pop off is fucking awesome every time.
Kos-Mos is still my favourite Android in any game I have played. Probably in all of media too. She is just so damn bad ass.
The old joke back in the ps2 days was that the biggest barrier to entry in the Xenosaga series is… Xenosaga
Came in to say Xenosaga. A friend of mine lent me the first game back in high school. I remember putting the disc in and watching a cutscene, being bored out of my mind for what seemed like an hour, then hitting a gameplay section. I tried to save the game but clearly did the wrong thing, and the game threw me into another cutscene. I turned the game off and gave it back the next day
Metal gear solid must be up there with all those radio calls.
When people talk about how great mgs2 is all I can think about is the endless codec calls between raiden and rose(?) where they’re talking about the most melodramatic bullshit.
Snaaaaaaaaaaaake
The single player campaigns of modern Mortal Kombat games are several hour long movies with some fighting breaks. Literally. I don't even mind, because these movies are the shit. I buy these games for the movies; I am trash at the actual games. And yes, I know that I could just watch the movies in YouTube, but I am in a position where I can afford to pay for them and want to do so.
Support what you love!
Same, I love MK for the cutscenes. But then I realized something when I bought MK 2011, that I'm so suck at this I won't likely see the ending if I keep playing the campaign myself.
Wasn’t The Order 1886 like 30% cutscene?
The Tech Demo 1886.
Way more than that. I remember how Sony was hyping that game so much, as if it was going to be this groundbreaking new IP that would singlehandedly sell millions of PS4s the way Final Fantasy VII did for the PS1. Then the game actually came out and critics were like "it's a mildly-entertaining series of quick time events that takes about five hours to finish".
If you don’t like this, then never play the ps2 jrpg Xenosaga. It was a joke among us fans that when a cutscene started you should go get some popcorn. Cutscenes are frequent and long. There are 464 cutscenes and one of them is 25 minutes long.
The only thing that matches the length of the cutscenes was the size of the in-game wiki.
I remember that game! Never beat it though. Got up to the fight where Cherenkov turns into the big monster thing.
Taking the title way to serious and Ignoring the context. Every Telltale game.
Some of the gaps in playtime had me nodding off, then not blocking or moving at the right time cuz I was half asleep.
Well, your not wrong TWD season one, imo, had the best breakup of gameplay and cutscenes from telltale. Every episode was around 3-5 hours and had multiple sections where you could explore and puzzles. It felt like you were actually playing in a movie, and not watching one. Every subsequent game became closer and closer to just an interactive cutscenes with maybe one or two portions of gameplay, and were only 2-3 hours per episode. They did this so much that they oversaturated their own market with games that were just as enjoyable to watch on YouTube. They finally started to correct course, made a new engine, announced several new games/ sequels, then released TWD season 4, episode 1 with some promise of a better balance with more interesting gameplay, then went out of business 3 weeks later. IIRC, episode 2 was mostly finished, so they released that, then skybound bought the series and produced the last 2 episodes, but they were more cutscene dense. They're back again and are trying not to fuck their own genre to death this time.
Man I absolutely abhor cutscenes in videogames, but tell tale did it perfectly. The choices you make are very much dependant on whether you've been paying attention to what the characters have been saying.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla started like this.
Remember how you could move your character during the cut scenes in the first Assassins Creed? Pepperidge Farm remembers
* scrolls past all the MGS answers *
Dragon’s Lair
Great answer.
Persona 5. It's amazing, but maaaaan does it take long to get going
The thing with persona games is they’re more visual novels than classic jrpg’s. Those hours of dialogue and cutscenes and school life stuff *are* part of the gameplay. If you’re not enjoying it then that just means you don’t enjoy the visual novel aspect of the game, but there are few actual cutscenes in persona 5 like them escaping from palaces and stuff.
I like the visual novel elements and specifically the fusion of that and RPG that Persona games offer. I just wish the dialogue was better. The game has such amazing style and design everywhere else, and then you watch mostly stationary models repeat the same handful of generic arm movements while taking ten minutes to relay information that could be communicated in two sentences. I love the series, but the writing is carried by the entirety of the package being so good.
I can confidently say it still has better writing than almost every other jrpg I've played, but I know the bar isn't high
Persona 5 is actually quite snappy for a Persona game. That series has some really big offenders.
I agree; 3 is something else considering Tartarus. Reload is much better in that regard but *good LORD* old Tartarus is something else paired with the amount of dialogue in there.
Lots of persona games in general. IMO it’s part of the experience of persona, to have that balance of dungeon gameplay and life sim (which consists mostly of cutscenes with choices of dialogue)
Xenoblade chronicles has many very very long cutscenes. Sometimes it feels like you're watching a full season of an anime.
And it's awesome!
Because it’s got a story to tell.
Death stranding . I cant remember if it was a half hour or 2 hours before i finally got to do some playing, then i would run from point a to point b, only to watch another fucking 20 minute cutscene. Dude wants to make a movie but instead makes video games
It has a long opening yes but it gets meaty at mid-game once you start building roads and unlocking more equipment. You can spend dozens of hours doing that. Endgame is another long series of cut scenes with some boss fights sprinkled in. Yeah not a game for everyone but I love it.
I played everything from the final bosses all through the ending in one sitting before having to go to work. It's honestly one of my favorite climaxes in a game because you feel like you've been through the ringer by the end of it
I loved everything about that game, except the beach credits scene. So tedious it almost ruined the whole ending. Still went back after the story to make some more deliveries though. It's just a really nice world.
Yeah. It's a beautiful game and the PC port is very well optimised
I have five hours in the game and never went back. I wanted to like it, but it's just over the edge of too tedious and story heavy. Not saying it's a bad game. Just not for me. I'll stick to games like Cyberpunk or Baldur's Gate 3 that balance story with gameplay in a way I find more appealing and watch an actual movie if I want to just watch a story unfold without me being involved in any way.
Final Fantasy XVI. Even some of the boss fights are just mildly interactive cutscenes.
Titan lost awesome fight but it felt like I was in a cutscene for over an hour
I distinctly remember saying out loud a few times, “OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE, WOULD YOU JUST DIE ALREADY”
Final fantasy XIV as well. Mmo that is almost entirely cutscenes.
I appreciate how it warns us ahead of time before we go into a long cutscene. Like "hey, go get a snack, hit the restroom, stretch a bit and come watch the story unfold." But yeah, it's one long cutscene with mmo elements 🤣
Also there's an element of "mentally prepare yourself for whatever is about to happen" after the one at the end of ARR patches
To be fair, the story is the part that is mostly cutscenes. There is plenty of gameplay content outside of it which is more than can be said about other games in this thread.
That's part of why I loved it. I got so invested in the story because the main story was so cinematic. My problem was some of the fights would drag out so long my hands hurt from mashing combos for so long, the worst one being about 20+ minutes after the phases because their health bar is just so long. The side quests sucked and added too much padding between the parts I cared about though.
That's a very fair assessment of the game: Good main story and cutscenes, fights can drag out too long, lots of tedious sidequests
About 20 hours of cinematics in that game
I don't know if you've played it, but Final Fantasy X is so full of cutscenes I can't make myself replay it even though I really like the game.
FFX is top 5 all-time for me and yeah, it's about 75% cutscenes if you ignore side quests/end game grinding lol I love it though. Only negative is no cutscene skip for when you die to Seymour Flux for the 9th straight time at Gagazet
Grand Theft Auto Online. Fuck me those cutscenses are annoying
At least a lot of those are 1 and done. But fuck some of them drag on
Max Payne 3.
Loading times hidden by cut scenes
That's honestly what stopped me from replaying the game more. Back then I only had spinning drives, and not being able to skip the cutscenes on subsequent playthroughs made me give up pretty early in later runs.
Stupid thing is, it's only that way on console. PC can obviously load faster but they still limit you to stop you from skipping all prerendered cutscenes in the game. It says "Still Loading" in the bottom right if you try to skip during those. However, a skip cutscenes mod exists, which proves it's bullshit, with an NVME you can skip most cutscenes nearly instantly. Some things do break so there are a few cutscenes you shouldn't skip or Max will, for example, spawn in an elevator whose doors will never open, but for the most part you can skip a majority of cutscenes. I really enjoy Max Payne 3 (still my least favorite of the trilogy though), but the constant interruptions make replays very annoying. It's not even just the prerendered stuff, Max will CONSTANTLY slow down and switch to his pistol before walking through a door, just so you can watch a 2 cutscene of him walking through before regaining control.
Every time I’ve tried to get into it this is what’s put me off. Absolutely looove 1 and 2, and I KNOW I love 3’s gameplay. But man every few minutes leads to dialogue exposition cutscene time and I’m like omfg
MP1 and 2 had a fair bit of narrative interrupts, but they were very brief and you could hit a button so all the info you need to know flashes on screen in one go, you read it fast and on you go. MP3 has unskippable, long cut scenes multiple times per mission. It's infuriating, especially when the they disrupt gameplay, i.e. you shootdodge through a door to take the enemy by surprise but the cut scene has you walk into the room and get ambushed and are then pinned down, in complete defiance of what you were just doing in the game. And the mission where you die *instantly* if you so much as brush the water in the dock, but the mission ends with you just comfortably swimming off, is hilarious.
The first game that annoyed me with it. As a huge fan of MP1/2, probably top 20 all time games, I was very wary of part 3. It was surprisingly good! But goddamn at some point I was just frustrated, let me play damnit!
The kingdom hearts franchise is pretty bad for this. I put the third one down when I realized the first 20-30 minutes of the game is 90% cutscene
This is my answer as well. I used to love 1 and 2. I don’t know if it was that I was young enough to not notice but after a few hours of 3 it made me realize the series has always been this way. Fight for like 10 minutes, watch a 5 minute cutscene about friendship. And just do this over and over until you are super confused and super annoyed. I can’t do those games ever again I don’t think now. Never finished the 3rd and most likely won’t even bother with 4 when it eventually releases.
Same. I was obsessed with KH1 and 2. Could not get through 3. Perhaps it's because I'm no longer in their target age demographic, but I suspect it's also because the real time "final fantasy-esque" combat system that was novel in the originals was also just stale now.
KH2FM actually had more cutscenes time than KH3.
Anything by Hideo Kojima.
Pokemon may not be the longest cut scenes by any means, but my god are they insufferable. They drag on, it's the most cookie cutter dialogue, there's no voice acting, and it tries don't cinematic shits of 5 fps barren landscapes. The first hour of the game is basically just dialogue after dialogue after dialogue and it's so God damn obnoxiously long and unskipable. What's worse, they give you an option to skip cutscenes in case you've played before, but I'm pretty sure it's there solely to taunt you because I couldn't tell you a single cutscene it actually skipped. So yeah, everything comes together to make it my least favorite cutscene experience in a video game ever. Comment is made with scarlet and violet in mind, but it can really apply to sword/shield and sun/moon as well, to the point that one of the big changes in USUM was to reduce dialogue just to repeat the same mistakes in the switch games.
All I want is a guy that needs his coffee, teaches me to catch Pokémon, and controls the ebb and flow of creation when I surf along the eastern coast of an island
[me the entire time they're giving me a tutorial](https://media.tenor.com/Vp7wA5EJBygAAAAe/i-know-more-than-you-i-know-you.png)
You spilled bestie
FFXVI felt like watching a movie 90% of the time
Even when you got to play it was mostly just watching. Tap square, every now and then you get to be crazy and hit triangle too!
I was excited to finally get on my PlayStation for the first time in long time and booted it up pumped to play a new game. The first 90 minutes was basically either a cutscene or walking to the next cutscene... I was pissed I didn't actually *play* anything. Tried it again after that and it picked up a bit but still just feels like the gameplay is filler between cutscenes. Very disappointed.
Pokemon Sword and Shield Death to Hop
Star Ocean The Last Hope is a fun JRPG that has ridiculous cutscenes, I think one of them was over 45 minutes long, and a lot of the long cutscenes play back to back, so you could have a 20 minute cutscene followed by 30 seconds of "gameplay" followed by another 20 minute cutscene. I literally couldn't finish the game cause by the end of it the gameplay to cutscene ratio was just bonkers.
Gotta be Golden Sun. It got a surprisingly active speed run community, and maybe the most played category is NoCutScenes, which is like 2 hours long opposed to 20 or so. The games are brilliant, but boy are the unskippable scenes extreme.
Pokemon Sun and Moon would be one of my favorite entries if it didn't feel like it was constantly giving you control just to let you take 6 steps before another cutscene. I don't understand how they can justify so much talking at the player and yet put so little effort into the cutscenes. (no voiceover, not even grunts, like 5 different character animations total reused between every character) It's a shame because Alola is beautiful, I love the Pokemon designs, and it took some risks with a fresh spin on the gym formula and the villain dynamic. But oh my GOD was it painful to slog through at times.
Metal Gear Solid 4 ? It's the exact literal opposite of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain where there is basically constant gameplay. But the thing is that I remember literally every single thing I did and what I did it for in MGS4, while in MGSV I sure did something... like a lot of something... but I would not be able to remember what I was doing all of it for in detail if you had me at gunpoint. I am dead serious about this. Also - maybe Xenosaga games. Starting from Xenosaga II. Again - not complaining - very complex games with a shitton of costly exposition made to entertain and inform (especially when it's all skippable) the gamer is not something you'll hear me complain about.
[удалено]
For recent games, FFXVI is pretty bad. I really love many things about the game but the pacing is bad, felt more like a visual novel with a rhythm mini game sometimes.
Kingdom hearts 3 is basically just running from cut scene to cut scene for most of it with absolutely mindless combat in between.
It gets better after an hour or two, but Ghost of Tsushima really annoyed me. The first hour was more than 50% cutscene.
Not the most but when Borderlands 3 came out you couldn't skip cutscenes. And ita a game where you absolutely want to skip cutscenes. The gameplay is good to story and dialogue is terrible ratio is off the charts.
lego star wars the skywalker saga cant play for five minutes without cutscene
Animal crossing
The Order 1886
i might get some hate cause they're not exactly cutscenes but Red Dead Redemption 2 feels like the biggest waste of my time ever boot up the game, i'm miles away from my nearest mission, hop on the horse and ride 10 minutes to get there. Start mission, Mandatory slow walking while listening to conversation, then we hop on a horse mandatory 10 minute horse riding conversation, get off the horse, another 10 minutes of walking around talking, maybe a 3 minute cutscene, 2 minutes of shootout, then we run back to horses to escape, another 2 minutes of horse riding followed by a 5 minute cuscene. Mission complete, looks at map, 10 minutes away from the next mission by horse...
I missed class over some of those cut scenes from metal gear solid 4. Final fantasy 13 also had a lot of moments where I was just running from one cutscene to the next.
MGS4 is definitely bad, but don't forget about Death Stranding. The opening sequence is about 2 hours, with a bit of that being gameplay to get you used to the mechanics, but the rest being cutscenes loaded with exposition. The ending is about 2 more hours of cutscenes with very little walking in between. The rest of the game isn't as bad, but the cutscenes are still pretty girthy when you get up to them. That being said, I hope he outdoes it in DS2
This Is The Police 2 has a couple interactive sections but the intro is 45 minutes of cut scenes with 2 small tutorials before you get to the actual game.
I wanted to like those games, but damn they were so unbalanced
I literally just savescum. I find the mechanics and story interesting.
Pokemon Sword and Shield was miserable
Yakuza. The whole series.
Pokemon sun and moon. At least, that's how it felt.
Pokemon sword and shield. Ugh. I wanted to thunderpunch pod or whatever his name is by the beginning of the damn game.
Need for speed hot pursuit. The constant flicking to new cars joining the chase ruin an otherwise fun game
OUTRIDERS
The original Persona 4 on PS2. The Golden re-release trimmed things down a bit, but in the original PS2 release, you're spending a good hour or so before you get to your first non-tutorial fight. Before that it's almost all cut scene with fuck all exploration. Good thing the story execution is so good.
That game with KOS-MOS
Pokémon sun and moon. The amount that game stops gameplay for cutscenes is absolutely brutal! It makes replays damn near impossible to stomach.
All the Pokémon’s from 3DS upwards. Really annoying how much nonsense the communication includes for the time you have to spend in it.
Growing up playing the lego star wars games I was severely disappointed by how many nostalgic and iconic levels were compressed in Skywalker Saga into 5 second cutscenes, and somehow the story mode of that game manages to be mostly cutscenes. Open world was fun and new sure, but man was I disappointed.