Penny Arcade - Comic - Nod Of Bore: Dragsnarok

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Penny Arcade - Comic - Nod Of Bore: Dragsnarok

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

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bwanie

he went from stage I to terminal boredom in 3 panels.

AraragiKyon

Man, the old "blood pouring from every orifice" that was such a common joke in the 00s! Enough time has passed that it's funny again!

Preacher

Honestly unskippable cut scenes are one reason it sucks when games do an "in game" cutscene where its effectively a cut scene but the player still has agency so you have to wait for it to play out

Grendus

I really enjoyed Ragnarok.

But all those cutscenes were the reason why I didn't start a second playthrough immediately. Gotta wait until I'm ready to see the whole story again.

Lttlefoot

This is why people are throwing money at indie games like brotato, where at any given time you’re either looking at stats or dodging enemies

Preacher

Eh I mean brotato or vampire survivors scratches a different itch. There is a market for a story heavy solo game, but if you have hours of cutscenes give people the option to skip them

RatherDashing

To me the whole point of cutscenes where you still control your character is so that if you're not interested (for instance, if you already saw this part) you can just walk away and keep playing. If the game is going to lock the next door or whatever to keep you listening, then having you control the character is just taking a cutscene and making it unskippable, with bad cinematography because you're controlling the camera, and bad sound because you're walking around making it come and go. Really it's doing the opposite of what a "noncutscene" is supposed to do if you can't get away from it.

If the game wants to make sure you see something, make it a cutscene. And while we're at it, give cutscenes not only a skip button, but pause/rewind buttons. I've almost never seen that in a game but it seems so obvious to me (and is so much better than most games that don't tell you what the skip button even is, so you might skip with Esc because you were trying to bring up a pause menu...)

Preacher

Yeah I worry about the dead space remake because the OG deadspace is full of unskippable cut scenes in that they are cut scenes that play out in game while you are still technically in control. They worked in dead space OG, but again slightly worried about the remake for this.

Lucascraft

Indie is also a very broad spectrum.

Vampire Survivors is just one guy making it. (I think after his massive success he hired a few more, but it started as a solo project.) Stardew Valley is also a solo project. Valheim is a team of like 5 or 6 people. They're tiny. Slightly up from that is a team like Supergiant Games. I don't know what their team size is but they're definitely still indie. But they also have a bigger budget and can afford things like voice acting for their games.

The point of me saying that is this: Indies span the gamut and some games are gameplay-first or gameplay-only, but other indies are still able to deliver both. Heck, if you want to get technical, FromSoftware are indies, and they released the biggest game of the year.

The problem really has nothing to do with size of team or indie or not. The problem is more about ego I think. Santa Monica Studio put all that time and money into mo-cap and voice acting and all that, so they didn't include a skip option. They want you to watch it because they put so much into it. I've seen all the articles about how great the accessibility options are in GOWR. With various colorblind modes, input settings, audio settings, and so forth. They put a shitload of time and effort into making their game as accessible as possible. Which means the fact that you cannot skip cutscenes is very much an intentional decision on their part. Because if they wanted to give players the QoL improvement to skip them, they would have.

Swainwalker

Lucascraft wrote: »

Indie is also a very broad spectrum.

Vampire Survivors is just one guy making it. (I think after his massive success he hired a few more, but it started as a solo project.) Stardew Valley is also a solo project. Valheim is a team of like 5 or 6 people. They're tiny. Slightly up from that is a team like Supergiant Games. I don't know what their team size is but they're definitely still indie. But they also have a bigger budget and can afford things like voice acting for their games.

The point of me saying that is this: Indies span the gamut and some games are gameplay-first or gameplay-only, but other indies are still able to deliver both. Heck, if you want to get technical, FromSoftware are indies, and they released the biggest game of the year.

The problem really has nothing to do with size of team or indie or not. The problem is more about ego I think. Santa Monica Studio put all that time and money into mo-cap and voice acting and all that, so they didn't include a skip option. They want you to watch it because they put so much into it. I've seen all the articles about how great the accessibility options are in GOWR. With various colorblind modes, input settings, audio settings, and so forth. They put a shitload of time and effort into making their game as accessible as possible. Which means the fact that you cannot skip cutscenes is very much an intentional decision on their part. Because if they wanted to give players the QoL improvement to skip them, they would have.

I kinda don't blame the for making them unskippable; the characters and performances are the core of that particular game, IMO.

I saw that they're planning on adding (or already added maybe?) a New Game+ mode; maybe they could make the cutscenes skippable after you've already watched them or you're playing through on NG+.

Lttlefoot

So they’re trying to prevent players from ruining their own experience?

Funny thing is if you’re watching a movie at home (rather than at a cinema) they have no way to stop you fast-forwarding parts of it

Lttlefoot

Does the existence of a skip button make people think they’re supposed to skip? I have no problem leaving a cutscene running if I want to see it. Best solution I’ve seen is that the prompt for the skip button only appears when the user presses a key

Preacher

Sometimes I think devs think too little of players, then again I interact with people everyday who can't tell me what browser they are using.

Lucascraft

I'm a big advocate for player choice.

Using FFXIV as an example, skips and character boosts are available, and I'm glad that they are. I personally would never use those services, because the story (to me) is of utmost importance in that game. But not everybody feels that way. Some people only care about raiding and endgame activities, and to them the 300+ hours of story content to get through just to be able to raid would be an insurmountable obstacle if the skips didn't exist. Am I disappointed when people choose to skip the masterful story of that game? Sure. But I can also respect their own personal opinions and decisions on whether they want to see the story or not.

Same goes for a game like Ragnarok. Not everybody plays God of War for the story and the lore. Some people are just playing it to slay monsters and have frame-perfect action combat. And I think players should be given the choice.

Overkillengine

I just wish I could skip the cutscenes for Castrum/Praetorium. I can understand it not being skippable *if* someone in the party has yet to see it, but it's quite possible for an entire party of sprouts to have done that content enough times that their eyes bleed upon seeing it *again*.

Tofystedeth

I remember back when I played FFXIV when I did Castrum my first time the party was mostly folks from my FC so they were like "oh hang on it's Tofy's first time, everybody RP walk" and it was very nice of them to not rush all the story stuff.