Interactive cinematics in Resident Evil 4

I have been enjoying Resident Evil 4 for a few days now and it is a pure joy to play. The mood, visuals and gameplay is nearly perfect. So, what about the storytelling then? I am not entirely sure yet. I have played up to the encounter with the gigant cave-troll-like fellow so there’s still a long way to go. However…

I have thought a bit about the cut-scenes in the game. For those of you who have not yet played RE4, I must urge you to do so. I had a hard time with previous RE installments, mostly because of the controls (which I really hate). Interestingly, almost the same controls feel so much better in this game, due to the positioning of the camera. The cut-scenes in the game are fairly nicely done. They do nothing out of the ordinary – except that they add a moment of interaction.

For the game that I am currently working on, we are designing interactive cinematics. Our idea is that the player should have some control over the on-screen character at all times (I’ll dig into the philosophy behind that idea separately). In RE4, they have done things differently. My first reaction to the movies in RE4 was “Oh, my God. This is Dragon’s Lair all over again.” You see, without any prior warning, the game can suddenly urge you to tap the A button frenetically to run, or pull the shoulder buttons to dodge. And this can happen in the middle of a cinematic. For example, there is a scene early in the game where the hero runs down a path with a huge boulder chasing him (hmmm… familiar?). Here, the player must tap A to run and then perfom an additional maneuver to jump to the side and evade the rock. Fail to tap A rapidly enough and you’re dead. Simple and very much what “Dragon’s Lair” was all about.

So, Initially I did not really care for this stunt and though that it added nothing to the game other than a sense of sillyness. Besides, I wondered how much work that went into the production of these short moments of “interaction”. Then, as I played along, I began to notice a strange thing…

Now, every time the game starts playing a cut-scene, I tend to follow it very closely. I actually pay attention!!! And that is definitely not the usual thing for me when it comes to movie-sequences in games. So, there we have it: a seemingly brilliant and simple suspension-tool that actually makes it worth sitting through cutscenes. Or, like in RE4, punishes you if you don’t pay attention. Hmmm… There are obviously both likes and dislikes about this.

There are some slight annoyances with the RE4 implementation as I see it. For example, I tend to have a cup of tea besides me while playing and one in a while I press “pause” and take a sip. If a cut-scene is played, I also lean back and drink some tea, unless they are possible to skip. RE4 changes this totally. I am no longer free to do whatever I want during a cutscene. This means that such a scene must be possible to pause (when I come to think of it, I haven’t tried pausing a cutscene in RE4). Maybe this is not such a big problem then? But then I think about Final Fantasy X cut-scene orgy galore. If all those were itnteractive I’d pray for a pause function. Moreover, I think the game would be better off with some tutorial moment that tought the player the rules of interactive cutscenes. Now, you just get the whole thing thrown to your face as you play along. That is what RE4 does and it’s kind of cool, it works with the simple design they have, but how could you take this further? I believe that this is a one-game only design that needs to be altered to survive.

Overall, I am actually thinking that the team behind RE4 are on to a good thing that is worth investigating further. If you have to resort to cinematics, I think you should think about what they accomplish in RE4 and how they do it. There are probably ways to get the same results by other means. Better means? Perhaps even means that are cheaper production-wise?

Well, I will continue to play the game and think about how it affects me and what could be learned from it…. Resident Evil 4 is undoubtedly an interesting and thrilling ride…

— sicher