Narrative designer for Wolfeye Studios, Lucas Loredo, talked to Gamesindustry about how he plans to tell a story without using cutscenes in Weird West.
More information.
Weird West - Interview @Gamesindustry
- Thread starter Silver
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Not entirely convinced. But it's nice to see they're thinking about it.
Cut scenes give a rhythm to the game and make it breathe, if you will. It allows the player to focus on the narrative, rather than being distracted by the scenery.
Cut scenes usually come with dialogs, which are an important side of the game. For instance, that's when the charisma-related game takes place, to extract information or to influence the world through key NPCs. It's also a way to communicate to the game which choices the player wants to make.
It's great to make the world coherent with the story and push the player to observe and explore it, but I hope it's not at the expense of those other important features.
For the dynamics, perhaps a system like Cyberpunk would be interesting (but more difficult to implement). From the videos I watched, the player can continue to move and act during dialogs, even go away.
Cut scenes give a rhythm to the game and make it breathe, if you will. It allows the player to focus on the narrative, rather than being distracted by the scenery.
Cut scenes usually come with dialogs, which are an important side of the game. For instance, that's when the charisma-related game takes place, to extract information or to influence the world through key NPCs. It's also a way to communicate to the game which choices the player wants to make.
It's great to make the world coherent with the story and push the player to observe and explore it, but I hope it's not at the expense of those other important features.
For the dynamics, perhaps a system like Cyberpunk would be interesting (but more difficult to implement). From the videos I watched, the player can continue to move and act during dialogs, even go away.
Carnifex
SasqWatch
They can be effective and informative, especially to the player, yet I agree with Loredo that they aren't always necessary, meaning cut scenes. One can do a lot with dialogue along the journey, and other forms of period updates.
Actually I prefer dialogues than pure cut scenes, just for the format, not the content. Here I considered both as the same feature because the article seems to do the same. Dialogues as in NWN or D:OS2 are less disruptive but give this opportunity for storytelling, focusing on C&C, and using speech craft.
Here Loredo seems to try and tell the story by environmental clues as much as possible ("Loredo's writing needs to account for constants and variables influenced by the player, which means emphasis is placed on environmental storytelling over dialogue"). It could be quite interesting if it's done consistently in the level design. Instead of generic maps with the occasional obvious clue for the player, it's more customized to what happened, to the story (or at least, that's how I understand it). A bit like a detective's crime scene.
I find that cutscenes often break the rhythm rather than add to it, but I guess it depends on the the quality and how often they're being used. The timing is obviously a factor as well.