- 2 months ago
Why are the coolest moves and boss kills ALWAYS in cutscenes??
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00:00While video games have evolved mechanically and visually in a ton of wonderful ways,
00:04they're capable of being as flawed as any medium.
00:07For every revolutionary feature we can't believe nobody thought of earlier,
00:11and genre blend that changes the definition of what games can be,
00:15there are those little painful things we just kinda wish games would stop doing.
00:19We're gonna be getting very granular here, but as much as we celebrate the vast majority
00:24of our favorite games for everything they got right, this is our little safe space to
00:28point the finger at some video game cliches and pitfalls that kinda suck.
00:33I'm Jess from WhatCulture and here are 10 things video games really need to stop doing.
00:38Number 10. Not letting you play the bit that looks really fun to play.
00:43Now we don't like to establish too many must-haves for all video games,
00:46as they're all fascinating and unique creatures in their own right.
00:50That said, if a game is gonna have a character do something incredibly cool,
00:54you better bloody let us do it, and not just sit back limply holding the controller,
00:58thinking about how awesome it would have been to actually play that bit.
01:01The largest offender in this particular category are games that don't let you land the final blow
01:07on that big boss that you've been sweating it out battling for the last hour or so.
01:12Instead, they let you get all the way to the end, and then quietly let you know you can take a back
01:16seat while they enter into a cutscene where your character does something super cool,
01:20finishing off the encounter with an epic blow that you didn't even get to initiate.
01:24It's the equivalent of the video game taking credit for all your hard work while you sit
01:29back and go, okay, yay me. We're simply no longer having it.
01:34Number 9. Invisible Walls. This is one of the features on this list that's gonna come off as
01:40an unfortunate reality for any devs trying to make open world games, but that doesn't stop it from
01:45being immersion-breaking and frustrating. There's nothing quite so unfitting with your sprawling,
01:51gorgeous fantasy world than bumping up against an invisible wall. While, to be fair, this one isn't
01:56so prevalent in games these days, it hasn't entirely gone away. This goes double for games
02:01that show you something exciting off in the distance, but it turns out you can't actually
02:06get there, and it doesn't exist in the game. Morrowind was game-changing for being set on an
02:11island and letting you swim off indefinitely in any direction by spawning repeating water tiles,
02:16if for some reason you wanted to do that. Meanwhile, playing an exploration epic like
02:20Fallout 3 and hitting a certain point and then being told we cannot proceed any further for
02:25reasons was a little frustrating. Number 8. Doors that aren't actually doors.
02:32Last time I did a list in the same vein as this one, I said that if I was a politician,
02:37I'd run on the platform that crap ladders, which your character can't grip onto properly in video
02:41games need to end. For this list, I'll add, let doors be doors, and not just scenery that doesn't
02:47go anywhere. It's pretty standard to accept that a door is a fairly interesting thing in a video game.
02:53Usually home to a quest, chest, or mysterious interior, there's always something to entice us.
02:59Except for when a door is not a door, it's just a fancy piece of wall.
03:03Wandering all the way over to a curious-looking door just to find it's not interactable makes us
03:08second-guess all doors. While it often requires a herculean effort from a hundred-strong developer
03:14team to ensure every door of every domicile is part of the level design and actually goes somewhere,
03:20it does make a difference to the gameplay experience. It's tricky to find an RPG or open-world game that
03:26doesn't have at least a few doors that are just there for aesthetics, but when you can, you'll really
03:31notice it. Number 7. Mandatory long tutorial sections. I'm not here to gatekeep, and I know some
03:38people who pick up a video game might be doing it for the first time and do need to be versed on
03:43the basics, but I think it's about time that tutorials which make us press W to move forward
03:48at least become optional. Spending full minutes learning how to walk and pull out a gun when the
03:54buttons are the same in almost every video game could at least be streamlined to allow for the
03:58majority of gamers who just want to get cracking. There's nothing terribly wrong with these mind-numbingly
04:04detailed tutorials so long as it lets the rest of us skip through them without missing anything
04:08important. While games like Black and White 2, Nier Automata, Pokemon Sun and Moon, and more recently
04:15Deathloop have infamously painful tutorials, at least the latter lets you turn off tutorial messages
04:21if you dig into the menu settings. Bless Far Cry Blood Dragon for including its tutorial called
04:26Military Program for Idiots, which includes gems like Press X to demonstrate your ability to read.
04:32Of course, not every game can turn its tutorial into a joke, so for that, we'll tip our hats to
04:38games like Half-Life and Deus Ex that house their tutorials in training ground areas or menus,
04:43where you can get caught up in the basics if you need them, but they exist separately from the main
04:48game. All of that being said, if it's not the tutorial to Driver, at least we know it can always get worse.
04:55Number 6. Characters in cutscenes having different skill sets than in gameplay.
04:59This one sort of exists in counter to our earlier entry about not getting to actually play the cool
05:05bits in cutscenes, but they revolve around the same issue, which is, sometimes the character we're
05:10playing doesn't match up with the character in cutscenes. Whether it's their personality,
05:14equipment, or skill set, there are a few occasions where the ludonarrative dissonance hits a little
05:19too hard. If you're not familiar with that one, it's basically when the story and gameplay mechanics
05:24don't line up with each other. For instance, Red Dead Redemption 2, fantastic as it is,
05:30falls into this trap, as the whole story revolves around the Vandalin gang repeatedly putting themselves
05:35in harm's way to scrounge together enough money to hightail it off to Tahiti. Which is fine,
05:41except if you've been busy off earning money as Arthur, you've got plenty of cash to throw
05:45everybody's way and solve any problem that comes up, but the game needs to ignore that so the story
05:50makes sense. Other prime examples of characters acting curiously differently in cutscenes include
05:56Cloud getting cornered by Shinra soldiers in Final Fantasy VII, even though he's blasted through the
06:02dudes without breaking a sweat for the last hour, and infamously hated Mass Effect 3 baddie Kai Leng
06:07donning unparalleled plot armor despite Shepard taking down entire Reapers by this point.
06:12Then there's watching your level-capped beastly hero get sucker punched just so it can initiate
06:18the villain's last stand. Number 5. Binary Morality System
06:23Morality systems are exciting in role-playing games because they let you choose how you want
06:27to engage with the NPCs around you and the narrative as a whole. While that's all well and good,
06:33there's a difference between creating a choice-based morality system that's nuanced and one that's
06:38incredibly binary. Usually, it's the latter. Take Knights of the Old Republic, where you're either
06:43the ultimate light-side saviour and boy scout giving all your money away to the poor and saving
06:48the universe, or you're a murdery, pure evil Sith Lord right up there with a cartoon villain.
06:53A lot of these games boil down to being everybody's errand boy or killing anybody that looks at you
06:59sideways and then they slap a morality system label on it and call it a day.
07:03Sure, it's still nice to have a choice, but if it's like Mass Effect where you're either sucking
07:08up to everybody or smashing that renegade action to punch NPCs in the face, it's a little basic.
07:13These morality systems often mean it boils down to being way too nice to everyone or way too mean,
07:19because games like KOTOR punish you for not devoting yourself fully to the light-side or dark-side
07:24lifestyle. Number 4. 3D Platform Is Not Indicating Where You'll Land
07:29This is an entry that doesn't need a lot of explanation. While things are getting better,
07:35especially in the case of studios who've been around the block when it comes to creating stellar
07:38platforming experiences, there are still platformers that are nigh on unplayable because you just can't
07:44be precisely sure about where it is your little guy's gonna land. This is one of those things that
07:50makes it pretty hard to go back and play older platformers, and in 2022, if it's a new game,
07:55it's pretty completely unforgivable. Sonic Unleashed is a great example of a game that
08:01fumbles with this mechanic, as in its night stages, the werehog doesn't have a shadow on the ground,
08:06making the platforming wildly frustrating. As game engines have evolved, this has become way less of
08:12a problem, but enough of us were burned by early 3D platformers that I think we can safely say we
08:17never want to see video games doing this ever again. Number 3. Scripted Fail States
08:24There's something that feels particularly unfair about pulling off a tricky boss encounter or series
08:29of quick-time events only to arrive at a scripted fail state. So tumbling down a waterfall in Tomb
08:35Raider the remake at one moment is an insta-death, but if you do it four quick-time events later when
08:41you're supposed to, voila, you're at the next chapter. Heavy Rain Until Dawn and Uncharted are also
08:47classic offenders of this particular frustration, where you're left wondering why you bother to avoid
08:52certain peril dozens of times, only to fall victim to scripted peril mere moments later.
08:58Outside of quick-time and platforming-heavy sequences, the same thing can happen in boss
09:02fights that you aren't ever supposed to win. When you're absolutely trouncing a boss and the
09:07game interjects with a cutscene showing that you lost, it feels pretty unfair.
09:12A perfect example of this is the sci-fi butthead we've already mentioned once on this list,
09:17Massive X Kai Leng. It doesn't matter how easily you beat him up, the following cutscene has you
09:22lose because of reasons. Number 2. Respawning you without all the stuff you just used in the last
09:30attempt. If you're failing at a game, usually you'd expect more hand-holding, not less. Not so for
09:36games that will let you fail at an attempt once and then keep all the resources that you used in that
09:42attempt. Destiny 2 is a great example of games that screw you over in this particular regard.
09:47Die during a boss fight, and sure, you'll respawn, but you'll do so without the ammo you used in the
09:53last fight. If you're thinking somebody who couldn't pull it off the first time is probably not going to
09:58be able to do it with even less resources at their disposal, you'd be right. If the boss is going to
10:04come back swinging at full health, it feels like the least a game can do is let you have another shot at
10:08it with the arsenal you came in with at the start. On top of this, punishments for dying in general are
10:13pretty crappy, whether it's Dead Island sapping 10% of your money or Borderlands 2 slowly sapping
10:19your ammo and money. While some people are gluttons for punishment with this kind of mechanic,
10:24plenty more of us could happily do without it. Number 1. My superhuman protagonist can't do stuff I can do.
10:32I'm putting this one at number 1 not because it's the most irritating thing video games do or because it
10:37spoils video games that include it, but because it's my favorite tiny annoyance, it's pretty
10:41entertaining and it comes up a lot. Of course, video games have to put limits on what our protagonist
10:47can do, otherwise we just breeze our way through games. But when our incredible Witcher mutant hero
10:53or Souls hero can't step over a three-foot fence, it's a little hard not to notice.
10:59It's instances like this that make games like Breath of the Wild and Assassin's Creed Odyssey stand out as
11:04refreshingly different, as everything is sensibly surmountable. Commander Shepard and Geralt's
11:09inability to step over rubble or climb ledges, or in Geralt's case, get himself out of water and onto
11:14a shore without a ladder or a very generous ramp to help him, is pretty annoying. Add to that things
11:20like Minecraft Steve's inability to climb two blocks without a ladder, The Last of Us's packed
11:25stairwells blocking whole floors, and instances in games like Silent Hill or Resident Evil where a glass
11:31window or wooden door blocks your path even though your backpack is chock full of firepower that could
11:36take care of it. I don't expect video game characters to be able to do everything, but if it's something
11:41an unfit gamer like me could do, it might be something we should revisit. That's the end of our list, but as
11:48always do let me know what you think down in that comment section, and if you can think of any things
11:52that you'd really like video games to stop doing. As always I've been Jess from WhatCulture, thank you so much
11:58for hanging out with me. If you're liking, come say hi to me on my Twitter account where I'm at
12:03JessMcDonald, but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more gaming goodness.
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