With the rise and now dominance of narrative storytelling in video games, cutscenes are a permanent part of the package. Rarely does a game come out that doesn’t have a cutscene, the reason being that they are both an effective method of conveying a story, and they provide pauses in the gameplay to avoid tempo issues.
However, there are some issues with this system, the main one being that sometimes a game relies too much on cutscenes and breaks the immersion of its players, either by boring them, distracting them, or frustrating them by taking away control. take for too long. These subsequent games all suffer from this problem in one way or another, and while it didn’t stop them all from being good video games, it was still a blemish on their overall product.
8 Stories of origin
This can apply to any game in the stories series, but Stories of origin takes cutscenes to another level, even for a JRPG. To be fair, it’s still a great game, but not only are there a lot of cutscenes, there are three different types of cutscenes.
As a reference, Stories of origin is a 40 hour game on average, and the edited “movie” on YouTube, which are just the cutscenes with no gameplay footage, is almost 17 hours long. That is almost half of the total playing time. It just becomes an overload while playing. There are basic cutscenes, then there are several character-specific cutscenes, and then there are what the game calls “Skits,” which are basically just cutscenes presented in a comic book style rather than being fully animated.
Skits can appear as a result of exploration, camp conversations, catching a certain type of fish, and after completing or progressing on a quest. It’s a good thing the gameplay itself is so much fun, because it makes wading through the nearly endless cutscenes worth it.
7 dexterity
For a player who jumps blind, it would be reasonable to expect little to zero cutscenes from a game like dexterity. It’s a super simple 3D platformer and beat-em-up that focuses on solving environmental problems with some basic “God-of-War-esque” combat. It is in fact a Crash Bandicoot clone with a bit more to his combat system.
It was a bit of a shock to players who picked up this title when it was released in 2013 to discover an almost comically complex sci-fi story that at times seems strangely like star wars. Along with that story comes almost 2 hours of cutscenes in a 10 hour game. It’s not even a bad story, but for a game that really didn’t need an in-depth story, dexterity went a bit overboard in this regard.
6 too human
Anyone who remembers too human can probably only remember a sense of palpable disappointment with the final product. The game was hyped for over 9 years while stuck in development hell, and was intended to be a fresh take on the action RPG genre by mixing cyberpunk themes with Norse mythology.
The end result was disappointing to say the least. The gameplay and controls were extreme clunky and underpolished, and it was clear the developers were aware of this too as they tried to bury them under a mountain of cutscenes.
For players who didn’t complete all of the side activities in the game (and who can blame them?), there were more cutscenes than gameplay. Needless to say there probably could have been a few less.
This won’t be the last time Hideo Kojima appears on this list, but it would be wrong to take the (at that point) “conclusion” of the Metal Gear Solid franchisee. Kojima has made no secret of the fact that part of him wants to make movies, and that has hardly ever been more evident than in Metal Gear Solid 4.
The game’s conclusion alone fills a monstrous 71-minute playtime with cutscenes, though they’re punctuated by a short gameplay. As if that wasn’t enough, the game also holds the world record for the longest in-game cutscene, at 27 minutes in length.
It’s hard to argue that one of the cutscenes shouldn’t be in the game, because for better or for worse, Kojima is a visionary. Still, it’s hard to look at those run times and not wonder if maybe one or two cutscenes could have been sharpened up a bit.
4 The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
Let’s be clear, Ocarina of Time is still one of the best games ever made. What it did for 3D exploration alone revolutionized the entire gaming industry, and that can never be denied. It is a fundamental video game for millions of current gamers. That said, when we return to it nearly 25 years later, the game leans heavy on many short but often repetitive cutscenes.
There is a cutscene when Link opens a chest, when he picks up an item, and when he plays the titular Ocarina. There’s a cutscene when Link enters the Temple of Time, another when he plays the Song of Time, another when he walks through the Door of Time, and another when he walks back out of the Temple of Time.
It’s an exaggeration, and while it was unprecedented in that era of gaming to see movie techniques recreated in a game engine like that, it can get really annoying very quickly when you look at it with the sensibilities of modern gaming.
3 Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Just like with the stories series, any entry in the xenoblade franchise could find a worthy place on this list. However, the worst offender by a fairly wide margin is: Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The third entry in the series, released earlier this year, is a close second, but most of the excessive use of cutscenes is front-loaded, which just saved it from making this list.
Where Xenoblade Chronicles 2 tries its players’ patience with how often the cutscenes appear. The first two chapters of the game are rough; they are almost entirely cutscenes with very little gameplay, but they also introduce a lot of important story elements.
However, Chapter 3 opens things up and players can start exploring the world of the game, but once they approach the end of the chapter, the cutscenes start rolling in again quickly. It goes like this throughout the game. Just when things open up, a flurry of cutscenes slows the weather down. Yes, this is nothing new for a JRPG, but when some of those cutscenes can go on for 10 minutes or more, it becomes a nuisance.
2 Death Stranding
There’s that damn Hideo Kojima again. Death Stranding is considered by many (including Kojima himself) to be the legendary game director’s magnum opus, and with that comes his magnum opus of cutscenes. Obviously the game is riddled with cutscenes, but there are so many long stretches of meditative gameplay that all the story breaks are spread out pretty well and never get overbearing. That all changes towards the end of the game.
Death Stranding’s climax and closing moments – basically everything for the “one last mission” that closes the game – is basically a long cutscene, punctuated by a few short moments of gameplay. That series is almost over two o’clock in real time, with up to 30 minutes of actual gameplay.
The worst offender is a 31-minute video that shatters Kojima’s previous world record (though it has yet to be officially recognized by the judges in Guinness). By all accounts, the ending of the game is just a full-length movie, and it definitely feels overdone at some points.
1 Final Fantasy 15
This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning at least one Final Fantasy play on it. While each entry in the series contains a boatload of cutscenes, Final Fantasy 15 found a way to sneak them into passive gameplay, which leaves Noctis and his crew not really doing much in a gameplay sense, but they have a conversation in a way that builds the game’s story, but the player is still in control.
much like with Stories of origincutscenes appear in it all the time Final Fantasy 15. They play while Noctis and his group are camping, they play while they drive (or push the car to refuel), they play every time a new side quest becomes available, and of course there is an extended cutscene during each major story is correct. There is a cutscene somewhere in almost every aspect of the gameplay.
There are also surprisingly long cutscenes every time Noctis uses a Summon ability, and while they look great, those long moments of interrupted gameplay can really drag on after watching them for the 15th time.
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