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Quicktime Events... Really now?
akeso
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Show of hands, who else hates these damn things?
Furthermore, when did they become a staple of video gaming?
It seems far to often these days that I've been wretched from a happy gaming experience into haphazard button mashing.
Seriously, where did this shit come from and when can I get back to enjoying my game?
If you are a fan of them (as I am not), care to give a defense of their use? I'm seriously interested on seeing if and or why people want them in games. More importantly, if they do, what is it that they enjoy about them?
Furthermore, when did they become a staple of video gaming?
It seems far to often these days that I've been wretched from a happy gaming experience into haphazard button mashing.
Seriously, where did this shit come from and when can I get back to enjoying my game?
If you are a fan of them (as I am not), care to give a defense of their use? I'm seriously interested on seeing if and or why people want them in games. More importantly, if they do, what is it that they enjoy about them?
akeso on
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Seriously, who thought these would ever be a good idea? Pushing a button that flashes on screen at a certain point to watch a scripted cinematic? What is this bullshit? That's barely gameplay. Barely. The barest form.
When I want to play a PC game, I want to interact with the game more then simply pushing down a button when I'm given the fucking cue. That's just fucking Simon Says. If I want to play Simon Says, I'll go out and buy one of those lame ass pads with the four colored buttons on it that you set down on a coffee table and invite the whole family to play, like in one of those ridiculous commercials. I do not want that experience when playing a computer game. There is nothing fun about pressing a button every once in a while. If you're gonna show a cinematic, just fucking show it, without a giant red button in the center ruining it.
Gamers can handle cinematic gameplay, they really can. And it's been pulled off in lots of great ways without QTEs. Just look at Half-Life... very cinematic, very immersive. Or something like Knights of the Old Republic. Great gameplay and storytelling merged together. No fucking QTEs to be seen. It's possible, game developers. You just need to stop being lazy and actually work a little. Quick Time Events are inane, unsatisfying, and completely shallow.
Personally I think we need more.
I say this as somebody who loved 2008's Prince of Persia, so don't get me wrong--they're quite tolerable, even in vast quantities, if there are other things of value to be found within the game. (In PoP's case, great story, art, sound, and music.) Their use never adds value, though, as far as I'm concerned, and they also serve to make the designer look unimaginative and shallow of vision.
Firstly, Shakespeare would like to have some words with you.
Secondly, QTEs are just like any other type of game play. They can be done well (Shenmue) and they can be done poorly (most other games).
On the other hand, I liked the ones used in the recent Tomb Raider games and in Indigo Prophecy, because it was a way to make cutscenes into something more than staring slackjawed at the screen. I'm probably in the minority here, but I'd rather have something less intrusive, as long as it looks cool.
Ka-Chung!
Ka-Chung!
people who make "I hate QTEs" threads have only one statement:
"I hate QTEs"
that's good, but I'm not sure how that's supposed to spark any conversation other than "I agree" and "I like them"
I'll always remember the abomination that was jericho for it's abusive use of quicktime events for example and nothing more.
So, could somebody explain to me how they make a game better?
GT: Tanky the Tank
Black: 1377 6749 7425
Yeah, but why are they still here? Why are developers still using them?
Why are games coming out like Heavy Rain coming out in the "next gen" based almost soley on quicktime events?
I thought it was a pretty much agreed issue that these things suck, but they still are around.
I'm curious if they have some hidden support I'm not aware of, if developers are just lazy, or if they don't understand the concept of fun anymore.
That's what I want to know as well. I would be very interested in hearing a justification for what makes them good or interesting in terms of gameplay value.
But you can go overboard even with almost "okay" QTEs. Mercenaries 2 was just awful with its QTEs.
They are a source of enjoyment for me.
That Samuel Johnson knew what he was talking about; fuck that Shakespeare asshole.
Oh... what is that; who is Samual Johnson, you say?
Perhaps this premise is off...
Care to elaborate?
Because then you can put in cool over the top scripted sequences and still have the player be involved instead of walking away to get a soda. Taking control completely away in the middle of gameplay is a big engagement no-no and why a lot of people really don't like certain RPGs. Alternatively, without the scripted sequence, there's not really a ton that you can do with only 6 buttons or so... unless you want your tired little button smashy action games to suddenly be more complex than most fighters.
They also help you forget that there are only about six different enemies in God of War.
Everything Aroduc just said is correct.
What is there to say? I think it's fun for cutscenes to have a little interactivity.
I don't think it's a matter of making it better so much as being easy to code and producers wanted all their games to have them for a time there because it was the 'in' thing to do.
But take the best example of QTE in my mind- Indigo Prophecy. It worked because it was an adventure game, less demanding for reaction times than a lot of the other games featuring QTE, but it also used it in interesting ways, so that it wasn't simply a direction push or 'hit A' now, but playing guitar or struggling not to stab someone.
I guess for me the QTE rests on whether or not you're emotionally invested in the game. If you are, then you care about the story continuing and finding out what happens next. If you're not, then it's just a distraction from the gameplay you're trying to get back to.
Ka-Chung!
Ka-Chung!
a) Shorten it or cut it entirely
and/or
b) Make it better so that people are, you know, engaged
Plastering a bunch of simplistic button-presses over it does not seem like a good solution to me. Plus, the whole idea of having a cutscene of an action sequence feels entirely loathsome and wrong to me, which is what almost any QTE-based cutscene is going to be. If there's action, let me be in control of it.
True, but I get the feeling QT's serve more to distance a player from the action and gameplay than bring them into it. Instead of absorbing a story, you have to focus more on potential cues. Yeah, you get to see that cool cutscene, but you aren't able to actually watch it because you're too busy trying to complete it. And god forbid if you fail said cool QT, because what may have been an awesome moment or cutscene is now an exercise in tedium.
But QTE's don't actually give you any meaningful control. It boils down to either you hit the button in time and win, or you didn't and you lose. Its not a a meaningful decision, and its certainly not an interesting one.
I can understand integrating something like a quick-time event in the middle of gameplay, but sticking it into a cutscene where you have no other means of controlling your character just feels like it cheapens the experience.
GT: Tanky the Tank
Black: 1377 6749 7425
Let's use Star Wars: The Force Unleashed as an example here.
AT-ST's. The chicken-walkers. You have to fight these. Once you get them down to a certain amount of health, a QTE starts. If you do the sequence correctly, your character jumps up on the hull, does some crazy shit with his lightsaber, and ends it with slicing it in half.
There is no button combination that could possibly do something this complicated, and if you beat him legitimately (without the QTE), it's far less exciting.
The point of a QTE is to take a complex action that would otherwise be impossible to control with a gamepad and simplify it so the gamer is in control.
TFU's quick time events were a little better than most because they were mostly short and if you failed, you didn't fail the whole thing, you just had to try that segment again, immediately and without any loading or a death sequence. They were still unnecessary and didn't add anything to the game, though, I felt.
But the gamer is not in control--not over the action that's happening on the screen, anyway. They're in control of a Simon Says minigame over the action that's happening on the screen.
It also shows a failure of imagination. You can't think of a good way to translate your vision of a complex, badass action scene into real gameplay, so you make it a cutscene and put a QTE over it.
PRESS A
Honestly, I would have preferred RE4 not to have any cutscenes or QTEs. The less I had to partake in that game's story, the less my head hurt.
And really, if you didn't like RE4's cutscenes I don't know what else to say.
As it turns out, you are statistically insignificant.
To argue against what you were probably trying to say, if you were engaged in the game, then you wouldn't even notice nor care about what it threw at you because you're viscerally connected to what's going on. If you're sitting back and pondering what's the screen, cerebrally thinking about life, the universe, and why you're playing the game, then you're not engaged and the game has already failed to entertain you before it resorted to button prompts. Congratulations, you're complaining about the half-eaten nuts on top of your compost sundae.
You're right, it's like a lobotomized version of Simon Says. It has less complexity than that children's game.
I responded to what he said precisely. If you, as the designer, can't come up with a way to frame the complexity of action you're envisioning within actual gameplay, the solution is to simplify that action, cut it out, or quit your job and let somebody with better vision design the game. The solution is not to use a QTE.
I guess I can understand how some people like having something to do while watching cutscenes, but I just enjoy a clear separation between 'cutscene' mode and 'gameplay' mode, because QTEs never have anything resembling compelling gameplay.
edit: I can't complain about poor gameplay elements? Being 'viscerally connected to a game' means, for me, forgetting that I'm controlling the character with a gamepad from my couch. I can't imagine anything that destroys this faster than suddenly having the game tell me which buttons to hit.
GT: Tanky the Tank
Black: 1377 6749 7425
Thank fuck you're not an actual game designer.
The insanity of the QTE's in the Bourne game demo was why I waited until I found it new for $10 rather than blow $60 on it.
So characters and story in a game should be confined to restrictive gameplay elements.
Gotcha!
As far as being less complex than a child's game that's the whole point.
The characters and story in the game can be whatever. QTEs or the lack thereof have no effect on the story, other than to distract from it, if they take place over actual story development. Most of the time, they take place over superfluous action sequences within cutscenes.
And why would you want to play something less complex than a child's game?