They're not part of the game - they're apart from it. Cutscenes, in an interactive medium, are the equivalent of exposition. Yes, there are cutscenes, but they're kept to a minimum, because they understand that one of the prime rules of cinema is Show Don't Tell. What both Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Last of Us have in common is that their storytelling extends into the gameplay there's no jarring shift from one to another. All of Far Cry New Dawn's storytelling is done via cutscenes, and the examples above, both good and bad, have finally gotten to the core of why I've disliked cutscenes ever since they started becoming a thing. I felt nothing, other than a bit of confusion, and impatience, because I wanted to get back to the gameplay.Īnd I'll tell you why this is: cut-scenes.

I didn't know who he was, I didn't know a thing about him, I didn't understand why it was being treated as a major turning point in the story. Indeed, my character was so enraged by this, that he turned into a sort of Incredible Hulk, and started punching the dead characters' murderers. Clearly, the creators of the game felt this would heighten the tragedy when he was then shot in the face. In New Dawn, the dead character's deadness was preceded by him being tortured. It was a shock, and I was shocked that I was shocked, because I'm so used to not caring what happens to video game characters. In both those cases I didn't want anything bad to happen to those characters. Likewise that bit in The Last of Us, when Joel (spoilers) gets impaled on a bit of rebar. In that, when a certain character died, I felt genuine sadness.

In fact, I just got annoyed that they were telling me that this was a major turning point in the game, rather than giving me what I needed to feel it.Ĭontrast this with Red Dead Redemption 2. Other characters were all sad and that.Īnd I didn't have a clue who the dead guy was. It marked the end of one chapter of the story. So, I was playing Far Cry New Dawn, and a non-player character died.

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