Does anyone else feel the same way I do?

I like playing video games of all kinds, but whenever there's dialogue or an in-game movie, it's either cheesy, cliche, poorly acted or just plain terrible. I find myself more often than not, just skipping past the cinematics and running through text messages. In fact, if the game doesn't have some way of clearly telling me what to do after skipping a movie, I stop playing.

My roommate lent me Black Ops and he walked in while I was skipping a cut scene and he said "Oh, you've already seen this part?" To which, I responded "No, I always skip the movies" He thought I was nuts. "How are you going to know what's going on or what you're fighting for?" I answered, "I just want to shoot people."

He couldn't believe that I didn't want to see the "amazing" story (note: this guy is an idiot, he went with me to the bookstore and at the checkout he looked at a copy of Oliver Twist and said to me "Hey look! They made the movie into a book!" No, he was not joking.)

I guess it could just be me, considering I don't really like watching movies in general. How about you guys? Anyone else just move from point A to B without a care as to why?

 

I take it you don't play RPGs then since RPGs are 90% story.

 

Yes I do, I love turn based battles, especially. And RPGs are the worst when it comes to bad stories.

Some of my favourite games are RPGs, I just don't know what happened half of the time or who I'm fighting. If I can't skip a movie (a common RPG issue) I'll sometimes leave the room or play on my phone

 

hmm, no. I live every game I play like there's not another universe at all.

I'm one of those that "sit" just to listen to music. (No cellphone or browser games for me)

maybe you are experimenting an unusual moment in your life so you can't concentrate on gaming

 

It's not unusual. As you said, some games have storys that are not that interesting and you are more interested in the gameplay than cinematics. I never cared about the story or even the Campaign in general in Call of Duty.

 

I only find that to be an issue when I play a game in front of other people.

A perfect example is metal gear. I love metal gear. When I'm alone, the cutscenes are interesting and engaging. When someone else is in the room, I can't get past that every one of Snakes lines is just the last thing the other guy said, with a question mark...

 

Nope.

 

I feel that way about games that have crappy stories - but then again if a game has a crappy story and it's a really important part of the game, then it usually sucks as a game and I stop playing it. There are some games that have a story, but nobody cares about it *cough*DOA*cough* and yet it's not really intrusive in the overall experience.

But on the positive side of it, a good game with a good story can be very enjoyable and satisfying to play. A game doesn't need a story to be good, but if it's made into an important part of the experience, then it can add a lot to it. I believe we've had this discussion before.

 

This is why storytelling in games is degrading. You just want to "shoot people", so why should the game developer bother with the story? :banghead:

 

Call me weird but I am always itching to get to the next cutscene in games just so I can find out what happens.

 

Not all video game designers are a Steven Spielberg at heart :lol:

 

I usually watch all cut scenes in games, unless they're just getting boring. Dead or Alive: Dimensions which I really enjoyed, all cut scenes had my full attention and I actually started to understand DOA's back story more than ever.

Some games need cut scenes in order to explain the story more, there are games out there that can really do without any of it.

Directly at your original post, well depends on the game. Some I skip, some I don't.

 

Thinking back to stuff like the original Resident Evil titles and MGS series I sat and watched through everything! [even struggled through the epic stuff towards the end of MGS4]

Other games like the recent Driver title, and often FPS games, I will just mash the pad to skip through to the next mission ... I guess it comes down to the narrative direction and quality of each particular game.

 

I used to look forward to cutscenes because they used to look soo much nicer than the actual game. It was like your reward for putting up with crappy PS1/PS2 graphics, if you played long enough you'd get a nice, pre-rendered CG cutscene. Now almost every game I play just uses the in game visuals. Lost Odyssey was probably the last game I played with impressive CG cinematics and man, they were gorgeous!

 

Nope, you're a weirdo

J/k, COD while it has a shitty transformers-like plot still has some good cutscenes that dont get that much in the way of playing the game.

On the other hand watching the cutscenes from metalgear or sonic games should be considered a form of torture: the dialog is weak and uninspired, the characters never sound serious and when they try it gets worse, and the few jokes are really bad or just awkward.

It doesnt get any weirder than when that guy grabbed raiden's crotch in MGS2...

 

Most videogames, even RPGs (more like especially JRPGs), have an embarrassingly bad and cliche-ridden plot with paper-thin characters that can barely compare to a generic action movie (or cliched anime in the case of Japanese games).
"Transformers-like plot"? 99.99% of video games don't have a plot even as good (bad) as the Transformers movies...

I usually don't skip cutscenes though, but in most cases, they feel like a chore to watch rather than something that's essential to the game.

 

I don't mean this as an insult but

Something is seriously wrong with you ;-)

 

This is what I'm talking about. Most games have a horrible story and even worse acting, but I always hear people saying "Oh, man, this story is amazing!" and I just don't get it. I watch it and I can see the cliche'd lines coming a mile away and the predicitlbe plot is laughable. I just wanted to see if anyone else thought so.

 

I'd say it's purely subjective to the game. Just to be dated about things, compare Conker's Bad Fur Day to Sonic Adventure.

The ability to skip cutscenes would be a good thing overall, though. It used to make owning 3/4-disc RPGs a very difficult thing. I'm probably on my 3rd copy of FFVIII now because of unskippable cutscenes that freeze once the discs get scratched enough. Of course, there's also the lesson of being careful who you lend things to.

 

I agree with the fact that many games have either boring, or poorly made scenes/story; however if you do this with every game, you will never know if the story was good...