Reasons Why Games DON'T let you Skip Cutscenes // [Game Designer Explains]
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- Опубліковано 16 чер 2024
- Cutscene skipping is a common feature of modern gaming, but not every game lets a player do it.
What if I told you there's LEGITIMATE reasons for game developers not allowing players to do that...? Specifically, at least 5 of them.
What exactly is a game developer thinking when they make the decision to allow / disallow such a feature. And is the removal of player choice truly justifiable?
Channel Discord: / discord
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Chapter Timestamps
0:00 - Opening Gag
0:24 - Introduction
3:37 - Reason #1: Technical Limitations
8:29 - Reason #2: Implementation Priority
12:14 - Reason #3: Delivering Gameplay Information
14:36 - Reason #4: Creator's Preferences
18:32 - Reason #5: Force Story Engagement and Player Retention
25:21 - Conclusion: Are these reasons justifiable...?
26:47 - Outro
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Music used
0:24 - Apollo Justice, I'm Fine! [Ace Attorney, Spirit of Justice]
3:37 - 4 Minutes Before Death [Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective]
8:29 - Fate Changed [Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective]
12:14 - COMPLICATION [Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective]
14:36 - Inspector Cabanela, A Lanky Man in Lovely White [Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective]
18:32 - The Last Desperate Struggle [Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective]
25:21 - Reincarnation (2023) [Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective Remastered]
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Ghost Trick is a great game. You should try it. - Ігри
![Why Geeta was made Terrible on Purpose (and why that's a good thing) // [Game Designer Explains]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EghD8e3ziMM/mqdefault.jpg)
![Why Geeta was made Terrible on Purpose (and why that's a good thing) // [Game Designer Explains]](/img/tr.png)
GENSHIN COULD NEVER
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I'm half-expecting to receive angry comments because some people feel so strongly about cutscene skips and any attempt to justify or explain why they're there will just be met with vitriol... Though I suppose reading angry gamer comments is part and parcel of a game developers job. Or at least, it is for whoever got tasked with community management...
To a degree, it's understandable. There's a VERY thin line between "reason" and "excuse", and what exactly tips something over onto either end is somewhat subjective and dependent on a person. Even if a game does have a justifiable reason (e.g. programming), some people will always view it as an excuse.
Yes I do play Genshin and Star Rail, and yes Genshin's lack of skipping also annoys me sometimes. Ironic, considering one of my previous jobs involved developing mobile gacha games (and we did run into this problem, as our internal user data tracking showed people would skip story and complain they don't understand what's happening)
This actually reminds me of something- on a programming channel from a game developer that does a lot of Shorts, they had a short over a complaint they got for a game. The complaint was that they didn't understand what was happening in the plot. When asked if they were skipping over the dialogue, they said they were.
they didn't understand the story because they were skipping the story
@@furiouscorgi6614 Mr. Thor himself.
@furiouscorgi6614 well well well, if it isn't the consequences of my own stupid hypocrisy (literally why would you skip story stuff if you want story? That is beyond stupid)
@@furiouscorgi6614 Funnily enough, we encountered a similar dilemma at the previous project - someone proposed disabling the cutscene skip function to solve it, and it led to a discussion about whether that was worth the cost/benefit.
It was ultimately decided that it wasn’t worth giving up the QoL of Skipping, and we accepted that most mobile gamers notoriously lacked attention span for story anyway. But the fact that it merited an actual evaluation and developer discussion says a lot about how annoying this problem is - it’s really a lose-lose situation
@@furiouscorgi6614this is the part that annoys me. If you want to skip the story, fine. Don’t complain that you don’t understand it afterwards. You skipped it.
If I ever end up making my own JRPG, I want to have an easter egg related to skipping cutscenes. If you skip a lot of cutscenes during your playthrough, the in-battle dialog with the final boss would change to the hero responding to him "I don't even know who you are!".
That's actually the best idea ever. And it would piss of Garnt from Trash Taste so much (I assume you know them, because it seems like you are referencing ProZD)
Sounds devilish. I like it 😈
Good ol’ developer shenanigans. It’s fairly doable too - you’d need to implement a counter that checks either how often the player presses the Skip button, or if the pressed it for specific scenes (or both)
Implementing special exceptions behavior for big moments like final bosses is doable and adds to the memorability of the experience. A good example of such is Chronos in Hades 2, who has an exception that lets him unpause your pause screen (complete with snarky insult)
If I end up making my own JRPG, I want to pull these types of jokes on the player from time to time. Potential examples:
- A quest with implied urgency will _actually record_ how much time you spent before completing it (and judge you accordingly)
- A character may call you out for skipping through their dialogue
If someone skips everything, how would they know that this resulted in a character lampshading this. They would just skip that too.
I like story, and I will watch them.
But not giving the option to skip the cutscenes *destroys* replayability.
Facts
Yes, because people never watch movies twice, re-read books, or listen to the same song again and again…… oh wait
@@intergalactic92 And those are different mediums. You're comparing apples to oranges here.
@@intergalactic92 would you willingly watch/play a speedrun that’s more cutscene than game?
@@intergalactic92Genshin is an interactive game, not a song or movie thus replayability isn't always about seeing the story again, but to make alternate accounts or speedrunning. I mean even with movies we sometimes skip bits that seem annoying.
Genshin dosent give you cut scenes they give you lectures.
The fact that the little gestures and movements that pcs do in cutscenes DELAY your ability to skip the dialogue is frustrating. Even the little ones...
If the cutscenes weren’t so cookie-cutter ass boring and long I would have the patience, but we have been seeing the exact same NPC models and animations for 4 years now and only some of them are even voiced. Staring at text for 20 min, while only BGM is playing (with occasional sound effects for clicking) is torture.
@@SAMU039 we all agree that those npcis really ugly like could they at least try that some look unique because of their role like the girl from the aranara quest is a npc and she got a vision it was the perfect quest to introduce a decent looking character but no let's use female_npc_355.png
It doesn't help that freaking Paimon talks like 2/3 of the time. I just want her to dissappear. I would actually cheer if she dies, becomes the enemy (hence cannot follows us) or just becomes a mute.
And more than a third of them are filler.
You know, I did not know that some of the cutscenes were just loading time covers... that is super interesting...
Oldest trick in the book. The vast majority of short animations before starting an event are covers for load times. IE: Pokemon encounter animations.
One cutscene that comes to mind is Ludwig in Bloodborne, his phase transition cutscene exist to swap the boss model from phase 1 to phase 2.
@@legeul That's a great example actually. And again, it's one nobody really actively thinks about because they're still high on adrenaline from the boss fight
@@GoldenOwl_UA-cam Yes, and thank you for telling us that...
That's still not really an excuse to not allow you to skip them. Skylanders Swap Force was the first game I encountered that used cutscenes as loading time covers, and it would let you skip the rest of the cutscene after the area had loaded.
traveler slowly getting electrocuted to death mid-cutscene and being able to do nothing about it is hilarious
i was thinking the same thing XD
Genshin's problem is not disallowing skipping the entire cutscene, but rather that they make player feel like they need to skip it.
There are some pretty pointless cutscenes that drag so hard, prevent you from advancing the text before you watch the minor animations, usually are unvoiced, and are filled with wordy explanations filled with jargon that just gate you out of timed events. It really does not respect your time and that's the core problem.
Temporary Event dialogue and cutscenes need to be abbreviated or skipped. Main story stuff is fine.
I personally don't mind cutscenes, but what I will say is it can really feel tedious when I'm not allowed to skip things that do not feel as important. Like, for example, a lot of Genshin side quests can drag on the dialogue with banter-- banter that can at times be humorous and charming but when you factor in how many quests have a lot of the same running gag and you're just trying to keep things moving along, it can make otherwise fun quests feel like a chore. I also have a friend who has chronic wrist/hand pain, and for him having to repeatedly tap through long dialogue makes the experience worse for him; I feel really bad that with that in mind, cutscenes in extremely slow and dialogue-heavy moments in Genshin that aren't as important (especially when the game incentivizes you to do the sidequests for primogems and other awards) don't have a skip. It's made me appreciate games that do allow for a skip, but provide ways of recapping/summarizing the information should players need to access it later, as well as games that can expedite the text progression process by selecting a "I understand/I have no questions" option to keep things moving faster, or games that have dialogue as you're actively doing stuff rather than sitting around. As I said, I myself don't mind cutscenes, but I definitely appreciate games that go the extra mile to have a better flow, allow player choice, or have taken the time to decide what cutscenes are or are not important.
Great video by the way!
You will mind them once you went through them at least 4-5 times already.
@@damsen978 I did almost every quest there is in the game without any issues. I don't mind cutscenes and dialogues if you can't bear with it I suggest you stop playing or at least for a while. Genshin targets certain type of players, you don't seem to be this person but that's fine. It's a story based game with too much lore and quests they take time to make everything it's just legitimate for them not to want it to be skipped
If people don't want to do them they shouldn't do them, I don't care, they can go away
@@arielmk7612 genshin cutscenes sucks, seeing emotionless sticks without any expresion breaks the immersion of learning the lore of the game, there are better ways to introduce lore to a player that doesnt destroy the immersion
@@arielmk7612 yeah but what about the people that want to play for the characters the combat or the gacha and dont want to just go play another game? i for example love the main story and i pay attention to it but there are side quests that are completely unnecessary and a waste of time ,and the same goes for things in the story it self best example paimon....she talks wayyy too much and they could easily cut down the dialog for it to be way more bearable and enjoyable without the need of a skip button,but thats just my opinion also there are story based games with skip buttons cuz they do respect the players choice of not being forced to watch something they dont want to and i feel like having it as an option is not a but thing
I think it's also important to remember that in the past, having cutscenes at all was kind of a novelty, so skipping them might not have crossed the minds of most people. Older Dragon Quest games used to advertise how much new text the newer entries had
i think the desire to skip cutscenes started during the time that came later on when developers started putting so much much emphasis on storytelling to the point that games being made were more so just movies rather than what the audience would consider an actual game
@@gusty7153To the point where it's 80% cutscenes or dialogues and 20% gameplay
My problem with not being able to skip things is that I read fast. By the time they're halfway through the sentence, I already got the gist of it and want to move on.
For this reason, Genshin's dialogue is so frustrating... Because they let you skip to the next sentence, sometimes. But EVERY TIME one of the characters or npcs _moves_ it will NOT. LET. YOU. SKIP until _after_ they finish the animation. Its maddening.
Breath of the Wild's dialogue system is leagues better, because you can just spam the B button to skip anything you don't care the hear/read. I can actually speed-read what they say without needing to sit through a long drawn-out animation of them standing and talking.
I'm also incredibly grateful for the Pokemon games, which often have settings to effect text speed and turn off battle animations.
Worst is when the movement is just the head rotating 5 degrees.
I have the same issue. I can read at the speed of button mashing and yet there is random dialogue that is suddenly unskippable.
So turn off the subtitles.
That's why I love Ace Attorney games. Starting from Dual Destinies, they give you the option to speed up dialogue that you haven't yet seen from the start, so if you read fast or just don't care about the inflections a character has on their textbox (slower reading, sound effects, stuttering, etc), then you can just move to the next textbox. They even speed up any animations they show to 2 times if you're speeding up the dialogue.
Exactly why `voiced` dialogue runs into so many pit-falls i believe.
1. Having it go `too slow` or be `too long`, especially if either the text crawls on screen as they talk or the text appears first. Leads to people just do what i do with some online comics of any form and end up speed reading it ridiculously fast with ease.
2. Usually its better for them to simply say the first few words of dialogue, such as a snappy transition for those mashing the X button to speed things along a smidge. Because if the dialogue is not some auto scroll or done `during` an action sequence instead, its easy to bore people, especially if its a mobile game, where the whole point of mobile games are to be some fast and quick enjoyable experience, usually to fiddle with when say, riding on a train, enjoying during your lunch break if you still have several minutes before you have to get back to work or even just playing it in the comfort of your bed-sheets, if you dont wanna sit at your computer desk or chair to game on the beeg screen.
3. Breath of the wild because it goes for the `animal crossing speak` atleast outside of cinematic stuff for the most part was a good way to make things simple and smooth to get thru.
4. Though its nice that maybe pokemon may of never had voice dialogue in its main games, it could of definitely took a BotW cinematic scene part, likely with short quips that could be akin to a pokemon`s cry, such as a gym leader or elite four or your rival saying a short voiced line that could of add a smidge more pizza to things.
5. Ultimately depending on the game itself is what determines how `ok` it can be with heavy on the text, but most are gonna likely want, as long as there is literally no reason why you are unable to move your character during a `fancied up loading screen`, then thar better be an option to skip the dialogue, maybe just have it where it shows a `loading icon` during the dialogue which could REVEAL the skip option is now avail for the impatient audience that got places to be and gotta get fast then be a turtle slower then beegs the cat.
Its also worth noting, hoyo games are fairly likely because they want to punish having alternate accounts and make it more tedious
Same reason they have the occulous
I've always thought this was the reason too
Oh that's interesting did they say why they dont want people to have alt accounts? (Also why would you want an alt account for genshin it feels like a game designed to only be played once lol) Also what do the oculi have to do with that aren't they just collectables
@@GrassFudge7 it's a gacha game. u can't really get all the limited characters if you're f2p. that's why someone might want to make an alt account to pull the characters they didn't pull on their main one instead of spending money on banners. which is something you might find annoying if you are the creator of such a game :)
i've... never thought of that. dang, thats actually a very good reason
@@BlueRay7989 it does sounds reasonable, but it is stupidly/poorly executed. i would hope they find other alternative a better one and efficient to prevent user have multi acc, instead making the ui design and exploration sucks and tedious ( if that the actual reason they dont make skip button)
I remember hearing about a theory that cutscenes and stories are unskippable because they also add to the overall playtime for the game, which is a good statistic for the market since players are spending more time on the game as a result.
Probably what genshin is doing
skipping should always be available when possible but it should be hard to accidentally skip. Just very convenient for if say im redoing something because i lost my save or am on a different platform or what have you
No it shou be IMPOSSIBLE to accidentally skip.
@@algotkristoffersson15 maybe it's a button combo like L + R?
@@mertensiam3384my favorite solution to this is Celeste, which hides the skip cutscene button in the pause menu
@@algotkristoffersson15
If it's possible to do, it's possible to do mistakenly. Designers shouldn't overcomplicate things in a vain effort to avoid edge cases.
@@mertensiam3384 SRW J do that. It's combination of L or R with A. One is fast forwards and the other is total skip.
I am honestly suprised that there are people who skip cutscenes and dialogues for games that they haven't played before. It just never crossed my mind.
I only know if a game has skippable cutscenes or not, when I have played them more than twice.
In my opinion games with a lot of replay value should have skippable cutscenes but I wouldn't be that upset if they didn't.
Other than that it is a great video and I hope you keep it up.
I think it depends on the gamer. I personally will skip scenes in certain games, and watch them in others. I almost never skip in an RPG, but I might skip in a platformer or shooter.
My brother will spam A through all the dialogue, and then have no idea where to go… he’s done this for years, and I don’t know how he hasn’t learned to just read the dialogue by now. xD
I found out that there is a great number of players who seem to be completely illiterate.
I mean, I was going to watch a Kingdom Hearts let's play labeled as "story mode" and the player would skip the cutscenes or talk on top of them.
Some players are people stuck working full time jobs or are college students and don't have time to watch the story.
@@JesseProwerfacts
For Genshin it's gotten to the point where it's disastrous to accidentally trigger a quest because you'll get trapped in a 10 minute cutscene. I've startes avoiding new content for this reason.
With Genshin it's a combination of Paimon taking away MCs voice, repeated gags about treasure or Paimon being scared, too much meanigless padding, and quests automatically starting or progressing with no option to pause or adjust settings.
There was a contest back in Ver.4.5 between Zajef77, Gacha Gamer, BranOnline, and a few other CCs that involved performing various tasks in-game (it was also an elaborate ad for a new Samsung phone, but I digress). Completing those tasks awarded points and whoever got the most points won a cash prize.
You know the event with Rosaria and all the cats? Well, turned out Gacha Gamer hadn't started it yet, so when the time came for him to go back to Mondstadt for his tasks, he stepped a little close to Good Hunter and guess what happened...?
The best part was his reaction. This is a direct quote from Gacha Gamer: "Oh my god, I just entered a quest...! 😫"
This (T_T)
The amount of times I've been kidnapped into a stupid long cutscene when all I wanted was collecting commission rewards or play with a friend
Yeah, this is the reason why I stopped playing.
The problem with Genshin's dialogues is that a lot of times you just don't say anything and Paimon is there to tell you everything again.
Now granted this could be because from what I heard in Chinese they use an old form of it for everybody around so Paimon exists to tell you everything again in a more modern version of the language (also I only heard this and wasn´t able of confirming this). If that is the case then it´s more about how this doesn´t work in English (so localization problems).
There is also the problem, like with the Aranara quest, sometimes you are forced to do these quests just so you can fully explore. Or even level up a character (Shenhee, Yay Miko needs a whole new map to complete before you get to those lizards). The problem isn´t that they are there. The problem is that you are forced to do them if you want to explore or use a new character fully (especially if you are a long-time player who is max level).
That being said this could have been fixed by now HSR did include a feature where you can play bosses that you haven´t discovered yet (this doesn´t work for the bosses because you only need the boss materiesl for later traces).
Every time the topic of loading in cutscenes is brought up, I'm reminded of the legendary "ladder sequence" in MGS 3, it was practically an interactive cutscene (the player needed to climb the stairs) that served the purpose of hiding a gigantic loading, and seize the opportunity to create anticipation in the player by playing "Snake Eater" and making him think "Damn, whatever it's waiting beyond this ladder is going to be the biggest challenge yet".
I'm more of a story-driven player, so I rarely find it annoying when the game doesn't add a skip cutscene option, when I play games with a heavy focus on the story I'm playing for the story. When I only want action I play a beat'em up or an action shooter (big fan of those genres too).
At the very least because your actually moving while on the ladder, it doesnt feel as stupid as a `text box loading screen` or the step a smidge above a black screen loading screen.
Which i feel those are useful when they can have critical dialogue like maybe a small recap on WTF may of just happened recently, what might be coming up, so despite Final Fantasy 7 Remake/Rebirth doing those, its still being a nice step forward then a slog scroll of text you cant do anything else during. Especially if its say a elevator `cutscene` where you can still move around and are smart enough to embrace older game logic and sneak a mini-game in to pass the time.
Such as FF7 rebirth letting you break boxes during some particular elevator rides, that more then likely `was` a loading screen moment, more then likely.
Sorry to break it to you, there are no hidden loadings during the ladder scene, it was just meant as a cool set piece that reinforced the connection between the player and the environment, granting you context to the high altitude problems and visuals present in the next section.
@@zummone 2+ week old post, Good bye ya zombie prodding nincompoop.
a lot of hack an slash games fixed the loading screen issue by letting the players practice different combos, it was cool af
@@hatsunemei3106 Exactly, its a fine example of having incredibly low demand elements that may of added 2~10 seconds to the loading time, but because your literally `giving a child a rattler to shake around` by letting them be able to `warm up` before progressing to the actual game. it serves as an easy way to properly hide loading screens.
Sonic Frontiers actually employed this trick by having randomized mini-games to practice certain mechanics like you were playing Warioware, which if anyone who played warioware type games, know those 10 or so second quick time event level shenigans are great ways to activate the neurons.
Since Activated neurons are way better at actually gaming then ones that have gotten semi-numb from a moment of silence.
This is also the same logic i employ where i could never get into the appeal of riding a rollercoaster, but if you were to put me in a gokart i would have way much more fun because im actually DOING something instead of doing what is literally the equilvency of sitting still while stuff happens.
Engagement will always trump Binging in that sense, unless you are doing an absurdly bias level of one of the most boring level of engagements versus some cinematic masterpiece.
I think the skip option will depend on the importance of that dialogue. In Genshin, I don't skip dialogues that are related to archon quests and hangout/character events. I just don't read dialogues in event quests that I feel has no relation to the Genshin story. Unfortunately, I was so wrong. I later found out that almost all events, no matter how shallow it seems, are essential in the Genshin story and lore in one way or another. For example, the Golden Archipelago dialogues, I just let them play forward and I just mindlessly click on the 'answers.' And then later, I found out that these Golden Archipelago quests are sort of 'hints' to the incoming lore of the game.
A good example is the current event giving us tidbits about the next area natlan and its saurians.
They've been doing this since pre inazuma.
the feature events (especially voiced ones) are definitely steeped in lore. But the other minor ones, while they do have lore, are generally less significant. The hints don't really add much to the lore since it's stuff you'll learn about eventually.
Solution: when skipping a cutscene a short summary of what happened gets displayed on the confirmation prompt, so you know what they’re talking about. And have an option to see the full cutscenes later, when you are in the mood
It would be interesting to see which kinds of games would implement that. I can see a lot of gamemakers considering a summary as redundant effort or players considering them the same bloat but less interesting, so you'd really have to have an audience in mind
@@pippastrelle gran blue fantasy relink has a summary of the cutscene, I think you can also see them later, I haven’t checked
It's not a fool proof solution because stories tend to excel when it's shown, not told, and skipping this way could work, but it won't be as impactful. To name an example, there's Blue Archive, it allows you to skip with a summary and always have replayable cutscenes if you ever want to read it again.
Blue archive literally did that. When you skip an episode story, there's always the sum of what that story about, then straight up to combat if there's any
Lol afk journey did that
I am really torn of this. Especially as a Genshin Player. In equal parts do I support and hate the lack of a skip-feature. I hate it, because in some parts, I'd really just love to get to whatever's behind the cutscene. But then again, there are many Stories in the game that I probably would've skipped, but in the end I found myself admitting that I found myself happy that I couldn't skip it and actually immersed myself in it.
If the text was faster you probably wouldn't have wanted to skip so bad.
@@foodyrulez It could and should definitely be faster, no arguing that
imagine the enitrity of the fontaine aq being skippable, furina's whole character just thrown away and only appreciated fully by the lore junkies
I feel the same, which is why I believe they should only make World Quests (excluding the Blue WQs) and Commissions skippable because THOSE are tedious as hell
@@nadyanathania3847You forget all of the people who skip dialog anyways.
All things considered, Genshin genuinely has no reason to make everything unskippable, especially with their terribly paced dialogue that goes on forever. Daily quests, event dialogue, short npc quests, vendor dialogue, and world quests should 100% be skippable
There's two kind of cutscenes I don't like:
1. The 15-minute cinematic. I'm sorry the director didn't make it in Hollywood, but this is a video game, not a film.
2. The intro to a very hard boss battle. I don't want to watch that 10 times in a row. Can I please just get to the part where I die again?
What about the one where you have to watch 30-second cutscenes every time you compete the relatively short level (when there's dozens of them) or upgrade a piece of equipment, with basically the same cutscene every time?
@@artman40 Yeah like artifact farming in Genshin Impact, it takes like 20 seconds to get through all the animations+loading screens when the actual battle is 25 seconds💀
it seems like the cutscenes before boss battles and between phases are actually loading screens, otherwise you’d just see a boring loading screen in between
@@outlawsyl there is actually a skip button for domain collection (top right of the screen), and anything else is just your loading time, so thats up to your device.
@@artman40 that one Enkanomiya cutscene 💀
The thing about Pokemon is that it's an over all very replayable game.... but the cutscenes are often so simple you don't really need to watch them again....
That's why Pokemon should just have a replay mode where you can just state you already played the game to skip a lot of the useless stuff....
Yeah, I’ve replayed Pokémon Black/White (I have both versions) so many times that I don’t need any dialogue to know where to go. My current playthrough I’ve spammed through most of it, and only got mixed up once (when I forgot what order two locations go in). A replay mode where I can save my ‘A’ button would be very nice.
this.
One thing that needs to be considered is context. Pokemon is replayable... but they weren't designed with intent to be replayed.
Back then, they expected people to play through the cartridge once. After all, you spent all that time bonding and caring for your Pokemon - resetting the game essentially undoes all that. It isn't something they'd want to encourage. Mechanically, Pokemon games are very replayable, but its not in the "heart" of the franchise.
@@GoldenOwl_UA-cam Gamedesign: Make a game worse to discourage people from playing in ways you don't want.
@GoldenOwlYT I personally always am amazed when someone restarts Pokemon games; with so much to do after a main story with stuff like completing a Pokedex (even the Gen 1 NatDex takes quite a while, although it could be options to grow your Pokemon is notoriously slow) and extra features especially from Gen 2-5 it feels a waste to go from the start and experience like 20% of the whole experience with just the story IMO.
P.S. We really need multiple save files so you could have one be replayable and one be your permanent because one-save file is the only reason I tolerate multiple versions.
22:35 This isn't entirely true, though. Forcing players to sit through a boring narrative buildup can also cause players to quit, or at least space out when the story is playing, before they reach the payoff. The lack of a skip button doesn't allow you to make the setup more boring. If the setup is boring, the better solution isn't forcing players to sit through it. The setup doesn't exist solely to make the climax more impactful; it also has to make the reader actually want to continue reading. You either rewrite the setup to be less boring, or you could also put more interesting sections before or in between the setup. For instance, you could split up the story into multiple parts that aren't able to be done all in one go, or, you could put this particular story after what you think is the best story you've told throughout the game (as players are more willing to sit through something boring if they can trust that the payoff is good)
We have our first this isnt a writing video its a game desgin decisions video comment.
@@GhostEmblem The two are inseparable and it _is_ a game design choice insofar as the cutscene is a break in play. Different people will have different tolerances for that, as well as context providing variable levels of player buy-in to willing suspension of -disbelief- impatience. While some people are going to bounce off regardless, if a _lot_ of the players find it a point of irritation or quit moment, that is a design choice and arguably a design failure.
@@nevisysbryd7450 They are seperated in terms of who works on what. A game designer cant do anything about the story which is why there was a long rant at the begining of the video about not using story as a critiscm and why I pointed out that this guy didn't listen to the stated purpose of the video and the reasons why.
He already covered this only reeason it deserves to be pointed out. He specifically said not to bring it up and also covered your exact counter argument too.
I'm just saying the two of you didn't pay attention.
@@GhostEmblem they are separable, until you include the fact that we are talking about UNSKIPPABLE cutscenes , wich means it is a GAME DESIGN choice, not only a story one, to force the player to sit through the cutscene instead of proceeding with the gameplay.
Moreover, if you don't allow the scene to be skipped, you assume this is an essential scene that should not be missed by the player. However i can assure you that a lot of unskippable stuff in genshin could be skipped and nothing of value would be lost at ALL.
@@zeneck7387 I dont know why I expected people who skip cutscenes to watch the video or read the other responses.
They are seperated in terms of who works on what. A game designer cant do anything about the story which is why there was a long rant at the begining of the video about not using story as a critiscm and why I pointed out that this guy didn't listen to the stated purpose of the video and the reasons why.
He already covered this only reeason it deserves to be pointed out. He specifically said not to bring it up and also covered your exact counter argument too.
I think older people want to skip cutscenes more often... cause you know, it's really enough to have your kids/colleagues chew your ear off, you just want to do things, not watch and listen😅
Add that onto the ever-growing pile of reasons why getting older isn't fun.
This is at least one nice perk of still being single - peace and quiet with no kids. Gotta enjoy it while I can
I think it's also that less games back then were so cutscene heavy so older people might just have lower tolerance for it in general.
I can sorta agree to that, but then I'd have to ask why did someone who clearly doesn't like reading pick up a game with a fair bit of reading to it. I'm not trying to call people out for this, but they should already expect how the gameplay loop plays out there. Especially with a genre like RPGs which usually has their story as their main appeal.
@@JAMllostthegame I totally agree (except for the fact that RPGs main appeal is story). I think more people should research about cutscene skipping if they are so against it, specifically if it bothered them before.
@@thomasffrench3639ironic how people who are in the older percentage and youngest minority are the most impatient in this world... strange huh?
TBH, the slow, boring parts of Genshin Impact's story, largely via seemingly endless text that i often skip through without reading anyways, is part of why i cant bring myself to get through it. ive still got alot of the story to go, but dozens of lines of unvoiced samey dialogue between almost every single event in a story makes me feel like im reading a book instead of playing a game. im playing a game instead of reading a book for a reason. its not like i chose to play a visual novel and complain that it plays like a visual novel.
i think theres a perfectly acceptable degree of unvoiced dialogue in games, but Genshin goes well beyond that. but TBF, even Skyrim does this to me, so i think im just not into exposition in videosgames much at all to te point where some otherwise great games will go largely unplayed by me because of it. and i cant be the only one who struggles with this..
sure when i was a kid id absolutely Kirby-style inhale every moment and aspect of the games i played over and over, but im a jaded adult now and the patterns in games and dialogue that ive seen repeated thousands of times just dont do it for me as much anymore. maybe its just a mental problem, but i feel like games should try to cater to people who have issues like mine by atleast giving us the opt-in choice to skip stuff we dont want to endure. maybe give those Sonic Adventure 1 style recap videos. i really liked that.
no one should be forced to play a game like i want to, and i shouldnt have to play like they do. options,choices and customization of ones personal experiences should be as crucial to a game as the gameplay itself. art should not be dictated from on high, it should be personally interpreted. you cant do that for someone else, you can only let them do it for themselves. and honestly, isnt this the point of art?
Cutscenes are literally the only thing that are keeping me from coming back to Genshin...
I agree, the main reason I play is for the story and cinematics
Im a multi-tasker so I made brownies while doing autoplay and picking options yesterday, it was kinda fun
I am the opposite, cutscenes are literally the only thing that are keeping me away from the game.
I started playing since release and I stop playing the games almost 2 years ago after inazuma update.I know that if I download back the game and want to catch up to date of the current main quest it would takes me countless of hours of unskippable cutscene
to be honest, a lot of the main quest through out the gameplay aren't too important to the main story anyway. like in inazuma where you are walking at the night market with ayaka and watching her dance, is nice and all but that's kind of a bad buildup for the main story. it would be fine as an additional chracter story quest but why putting is it in the main story?
It would be more ideal to just follow up the story via youtube to enjoy the story more.
@@Nelsonnshdx What you are talking about is Ayaka’s Story quest
FF14 has one of the best stories ever told in a live service game format, in an engine that is decades old and has a lot of technical baggage from it's PS3 version, and STILL lets you to skip 99% of cutscenes in the game. It's baffling to me that Hoyoverse won't allow the player to skip cutscenes as it kills replayability and makes the player not wanna listen what is being said in them, it comes off as pedantic and makes you think hoyo has no confidence in their story as the player has to be forced to watch it.
They has no confidence in players. Because gamers are not avid readers - I have seen many people downplaying both Nier stories, which is horrifying. And in gacha it is a running meme, if there is a skip, players always skip.
In other comments here, people were talking about how unskippable cutscenes in this format of game discourages alternate accounts and it increases playtime, which looks good statistically. So those could def be factors. Doesn't mean they are good reasons but it would make sense
Also in Genshin Impact if you could skip cut scenes you could easily earn primogems (main currency of the Gacha part of the game) very fast which makes it easy for players to create another account just to get characters they don't have on their main account. Which will make players less likely to spend money to get the characters they want.
Regarding Aventurine, Furina was EXACTLY like that in Genshin. She cane off so bratty ubtil we find out her tragic back story. Imagije skipping that just because you want to get into a fight with hilichurls.
Even with that development a skip button is entirely necessary. Yes the result added to the lore but its not like learning that piece of information entirely changed the functionality of the character and or game.
That's a bit exaggerated, personally I don't want to skip cutscenes without reason, I'm usually either unwillingly put into one while in co-op, which halts the experience with my friends, or I just don't feel in the mood of absorbing 10 minutes of lore at that given moment
I don't think that case works that well because the devs uploaded the final cutscene to the UA-cam channel and it's a pretty big spoiler. Some people lose interest when they are spoiled or just are satisfied with that amount of info. So the option to skip is still justified IMO
In the case of genshin I really understand the frustration but in some days I feel really glad because you have people having recent arguments about topics that were already discussed in the past and they wouldn’t know it because they 1: forgot or most likely 2: they skipped it during some dialogue. The part I find annoying is that it’s mostly skippers who try to argue about the themes and talk vaguely about details with little understanding
Some people out there still don’t know how irminsul works, glossed over how the sibling said we have more than enough time, and that Teyvat might apparently be experiencing its 3rd loop called samsara something, freedom from the gods.
@@Popocat3ptl Thank you, oh my god thank you. I would try to understand the skipping arguments if I didnt experience this high amount of people in the community who have zero idea of what's happening in the story. It's a story driven game, any person still playing genshin should know that by now, so it's kinda baffling to still see people crying about story being unskippable. Go play a different game lil bro, you're only torturing yourself here if you want to completely ignore the storyline of this game
Player choice is the single most important thing and artificially imposed limitations are always harmful to enjoyment. The player does not, and will never, share the creator's vision. The author is dead as soon as I boot into the game, so if I'm only playing videogames to kill stuff then let me kill stuff.
Stuck up devs ranting about immeasurable things like narrative have, ironically, totally lost the plot. I am here to be entertained and if I am not I will skip the parts of the game which are not entertaining. I want the highs and lows, I want my MGS3 ladder scene, I want the story, so trust the player to be mature enough to only skip cutscenes in such a way as to maximise their own enjoyment.
The author isn't dead though. Their intentions are still made clear. If something isn't enjoyable, like a total slog, then it's best to play something else. Otherwise, it's best to trust the artist for their intents and try to see it through unless it's made absolutely clear that they don't know what they are doing (like with Redfall or other infamously bad games).
You can say that all you want, but the intentions of the developer are all over what is available in the game. It is the restrictions of the game which give you enjoyment in the first place. Games generally don't, for example, let you skip all gameplay and just get to the cutscenes. But what if that is what entertains you?
In order for you to be entertained, the developer has to make certain things possible and certain things not possible. Whether a limitation is "artificial" or not is a judgement call, one that designers need to make in the first place. Perhaps you should consider that you are simply not the target audience for the game you are playing.
@@LoliconSamalik Far from it the intentions are often unclear in games because how easy gameplay complexities can come about that were unforseen even by the best of developers.
Fable 3 is a famous example it doesn't seem very likely that developers expected players to find means of generating infinite money and circumventing every morale dillemma in the second half of the game. But at the same time the mechanics involved in that were meant to be used to some extent to make money.
So the developers intention for the story ends up getting lost, is the player meant to struggle between safety and morality dealing with the same issues their brother dealt with? Or are they meant to have means to raise their own extra efforts to generate cash for the kingdom showing that the issue wasn't so black and white by going above and beyond the role of ruler to reduce the moral sacrifices that needed to be made to keep the kingdom safe?
The developers intentions will always influence the end result but that doesn't mean that one can always figure out what the dev intentions were from the game itself.
Dude, just about all of your examples are games that I DEFINITELY WANTED TO SKIP CUTSCENES IN AS A KID.
I knew I'd see that Tekken 8 "I'll never skip cutscenes again" meme scene the moment I reached reason 5.
There's a game dev who streams regularly on UA-cam, and he has a short of something that was sent to him.
Someone who purchased his game either reviewed or sent him an email saying "your game has no story." When asked about the cutscenes, which had the story, the person replied "I skipped those. They were obnoxious and getting in the way of me playing the game."
So, the person skipped the story, to complain that the game had no story.
I remember that short, this is the exact kind of situation where I couldn't care less about the skip button. It allows you to rush the game and in the end it diminishes the emotional parts of it.
The key points is, the unskippable cut scene Must have a narrative importanse. Unlike in Genshin, where it's mostly just an incoherent word slush. For one word relatable to a story or a character or the lore, you have to sit through minutes of garbage. And sometimes they even give you a choise you have to make to continue. But your choise never affects a story, even if it's not a genshin classic of choosing between "Oh" and "..."
The problem with genshin is that ALL cutscenes are unskippable, from thrilling scenes that have you absolutely glued to the screen to the most mind numbingly boring scenes with no voice acting or action or anything between characters so irrelevant that they don't even have unique models. Hoyo themselves couldn't care less about these characters yet they're convinced that you'd be so gripped to the edge of your seat watching them babble on and on about absolutely nothing that they not only don't let you skip it but lock important world features behind these quests.
Another reason that I think is why genshin has no story skipping is that they need to make it so that people that skip the story can review/ watch/ read it again after the story is done. This takes alot of effort and knowing genshin just add QoL on expedition after 3 years and still no way of watching past story events....
yeah :)
Um, you can read all lines from Archon Quests, interlude quests and Character Story quests in the game, even listen to them. And instead of cutscenes there are small paragraphs of context. Of course, the same can't be said for events and hangouts (you can replay hangouts though)
Man this video is pretty good. I agree that it is a quality of life feature, and I get annoyed when people say otherwise. I feel like a lot of people think that unlimited bagging space, or turning off random encounters etc. are the quality of life improvements, when I think those are more so difficulty options or just straight up different modes to play. Cutscene skipping is a feature that's similar to that, but is way more about convenience than any of those other options do.
The lack of a skip button is the main reason i refuse to start another account, even if I'd honestly love to.
that's the point, so that you get demotivated playing in another alt account
I don't mind lengthy dialogues & cutscenes for main quests and side quests
what I do mind is to repeat a lengthy dialogue of DAILY quest while the point is just to fetch the NPC a bucket of paint
yeah, a dialogue will take 15 minutes to finish. I know because I timed it while playing. lol
Tbh I think it's obvious why they don't let you skip cutscenes, but some people feel VERY strongly about it
Guess I'm glad I play Goddess of Victory: Nikke where you can skip cutscenes and return to watch them on your own time.
Gachas should respect your time - that should be the priority for the players and goes beyond what the game developer wants or needs.
I've run into Nikke players who did skip cutscenes and have no idea what's going on with them, but I also met players who skip cutscenes because they're short on time, then come back to replay them - Nikke has a replay function that lets you replay *every single story cutscene* once you've beaten it once. They also have an Archive function that lets you replay *entire* Events, minus the rewards.
In other words, I suspect other developers are learning from Genshin's mistakes.
I think of all your reasons, the only one I think that can be fully justified from a gacha standpoint is #3. Many gachas have unskippable intro sequences, and to me that makes sense to avoid players completely missing gameplay introductions (though if you've ever watched a streamer or VTuber, they STILL completely ignore the instructions or read through them). And I guess with Nikke they made the ability for the game's cutscenes to be "modular" so that they can be played on a whim a priority within the engine (e.g. what you said with #2). Considering most of the cutscenes are just VN style with moving mouths and some "static" Live2D models, I guess it also makes sense that it was much easier for them to slot it in wherever they want.
If the game knows you're playing it again later on though, skippable cutscenes should be mandatory since you've already experienced the game once the way the creator wants you to see it. Afterwards you should be given the luxury of that option because you've already seen what they want you to see.
To be fair not all gacha are built in the same engine and system. Nikke, Aether Gazer two of my main gacha has visual novel system to deliver story and technically it's so easy to put a skip button on it. Some other games which works on other type of engine that invovles open world is much more tricky I guess. There a lot of things common people did not know about the back end work of a game dev.
@@famimame witcher 3, open world, animation using motion capture. you could skip dialogue one by one
@@famimame I mean, Blue Archive's story is basically a visual novel with automated gameplay for context while the "real" gameplay is an entirely separate mode. So skipping the story is REALLY feels wrong there.
My favourite creator's pride moment is in Portal 2, when you're lazering down the neurotoxin chamber. There's a visible sign while you're opening the portals that says "IN CASE OF EXPLOSION, LOOK AT THE EXPLOSION".
Appearently Playtesters in Portal 2 wouldn't watch the explosion and the people behind that animation sequence wanted players to see how cool the explosion looks.
As a game designer and gamer both, that loves story games, I feel that having a skip button is near required, and HSR/Genshin not having one boggles me to this day.
I'm of the opinion that people who want to view the story will do so, and those that don't want to can skip. Not having a skip option just serves to frustrate players who either don't like reading so much text, or who are going through the text again (such as on a replay).
There's definitely something to be said about type of player vs the target audience. It reminds me of the "is turn-based combat outdated" argument. Some players want speed, yes, but others want a lesiurely pace. A lot of online arguments about videogames comes from one side trying to get the other side to cater to them in lieu of the target audience.
I'm someone who likes the stories in Pokemon, not for the writing quality necessarily, but because I play to enjoy an adventure with some characters and minimal grinding on the gameplay side. Others want to dedicate all their hours on the gameplay and don't think about the presented adventure.
Nintendo, however, probably thinks the target audience of kids are more likely to be the former rather than the latter so they'll keep catering to the former despite the complaints of the latter. Same reason they keep mandatory tutorials. Same reason gyms aren't strategically challenging.
With all forms of art, your individual reaction is valid, of course, but there's maturity in recognising when the creator's just doing something you're not into. It's not a flaw; it's a preference.
26:30 I guess people feel so strongly about skipping cutscenes that it's enough to justify a 27-minute-long video. And I admit you brought up some good points from a game designer's perspective that I hadn't thought of.
If your writing is bad you have to force people to read it, if your writing is good people will read it by themselves.
This is an universal truth.
The problem with Genshin's cutscenes are how bloated they are. Character A say's something, Paimon repeats it 50 times verbatim, and the Traveler is given a text box that has two identical choices
Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword actually have fairly extensive skip functions. Twilight Princess allows the skipping of almost every cutscene, barring a few exceptions, even on a first plsythough. The original skyward sword has the limitation you talked about, where you can only skip cutscenes you've seen before, but the HD remake let's you skip any of them from the start. BOTW and TOTK likewise allow the skipping of almost every cutscene, even on a first playthrough. Don't know why you thought the PG skyward sword implementation applied to every other game in the franchise, but it doesn't.
I don't mind not being able to skip the first time, but if you happen to have to redo a boss or stealth sequence or anything else multiple times, then it can be super annoying.
That said, I can see how back in the day it'd be almost rude skipping a cutscene when they were lovingly crafted by devs.
Meanwhile in Genshin my MC sometimes gets killed in the middle of a cutscene (though that can happen in Breath of the Wild too. Looking at you, Vah Rudania).
This man's entire first point about genshin died the instant Wuwa released
No matter what, if it’s possible to add a skip option it should be added. If there’s an issue because the skip option was there, then it’s a problem with the player, not because the option to skip was there.
Both, me and my sister play Genshin in different accounts, most of times we watch the cutscenes together and even compare the differences with different Travelers, but sometimes there's the situation of an event that is about to end, we already watched all cutscenes and dialogues on one of the accounts, but did not in the other, in these situations i'd like to be able to skip dialogues
Till cause it's a shame to don't have the option to rewatch cutscenes.
And there's the annoying situation of "to continue this quest you need to unlock the place/npc of another quest by completing it"
When i was about to fight Shouki no Kami, then, i was forced to watch Tighnari story quest before...
I do like Tighnari, but, on that moment, wanting to fight Scaramouche weekly boss fight, i was in complete hate against him!
I'd like to be able to skip and watch that cutscene on another moment.
My mom is one of those people who does not care about the story and always skips it when she can. I'm the opposite- I play games like Dragon Age on the "story easy" mode because I don't like bashing my face into a wall and I love stories. Even on repeat plays of most games, I'm revisiting a story I enjoy and I want to experience it again. Yes, I know Kingdom Hearts 3 has cutscenes that are twenty minutes long, yes I will watch all of them, I like the game's story.
The only exception to this is one of the games you featured, Pokemon Sun/Moon and Ultra Sun/Moon. While it was a little cumbersome on the first playthrough, the sheer amount and length of the cutscenes in that game tank it's replayability, because I am really not replaying a pokemon game for the story. I'm replaying it to see how using a different team changes the experience of the game. The unskippable intro to the Festival Plaza is especially grating in this regard- I realize why it's unskippable, it's because Nintendo is begging on their hands and knees for pokemon players to adopt their minigame side features. Doesn't make having to rewatch and replay that sequence not frustrating. It's a pity because I really like the challenge of the totem system, it was a fun departure from the gym leader formula the series has used for so long.
imo granblue's way of putting the skip button is good. it lets you skip the story but not before giving a summary about it
Definitely
I understand the no story skip in Genshin when it comes to the main plot but when you have some rando npc quest that is there just for more primos you should 100% be able to skip that, hangout quest divergent patyhs prove that they have skips for tons of dialogue
to be honnest, I don't hate the story but for god sake why are they making the dialogue like a visual novel.
Don't get me wrong I love reading visual novel but Genshin's talky talk is SOOOOO LOOOONG, It's like I'm not playing an adventure game but reading a book. Each cutscene is like 20 mins and watching them talk like a robot doesn't even help at all.
Reasons 1-3 are absolutely not factors for Genshin. Reasons 4 and 5 are the real reasons, and they're very weak excuses for excluding a skip button.
They should add a subtle skip button and/or allow mashing B to blaze through dialogue, similar to what BotW and TotK have.
I've played and enjoyed every archon and main story quest up through 4.1, and loved them. I never once thought to skip, and have even rewatched certain scenes on UA-cam multiple times. The game's story had me invested. What I detest though, is the absolute bloat some side content offers (6-minute dialogue sandwiches for event quests, Gazing 3000 Miles Away and Leviathan Bones, the bureaucracy struggles quest in Fontaine, etc.)
Also, keep in mind that it is 100% within hoyo's power to either
1. Implement mashing B (or F, left click, space bar, whatever) to blaze through dialogue. This amounts to a skip button but isn't a skip button. It would be a godsend for those of us who do want to engage with the story, but read fast.
2. Add a Selective skip button/selectively allow mashing B to blaze through dialogue. So for archon quests and main story quests, this feature is disabled, but for event quests and world quests, it's enabled. No more 13 hour aranara quest, or literally 20 minutes of unvoiced, unskippable, bland, and poorly written dialogue from that little shithead on yashiori island.
Hoyo is capable of doing either of these things, and they choose not to. It's due to their hubris.
Also, in your conclusion, I do take issue with your statement that excluding this QoL feature won't lead someone to quit. Not by itself, and not right away, but over time it wears down on you. It directly lead me (as well as 4 of my friends) to quit in mid 2023. I'm a busy person, I don't have much time to game, and I also like to enjoy several different types of games. So when I'm sitting here trying to do dailies, and burn resin at 11:30 pm on a weekday because I want to get to bed, but get roped automatically into a cutscene for a new event, and have to sit through minimum 5+ minutes of dialogue (even with mashing F key to make things 10% faster), I get tired. I want to play a game, not a visual novel. Nothing wrong with the latter, just not my cup of tea.
Hell, even Star Rail has indirect skipping. The bottom dialogue options usually lead to the encounter ending faster. There really isn't a good excuse for Genshin doing what it's doing anymore. It's just developer hubris, and you know what? Fine, lots of players still love the game. It grew into something more than an exploration and combat-focused action-adventure rpg.
I feel like this topic would come to a conclusion if gamers, consumers in general, researched the game they’re considering buying beforehand. You won’t like the game regardless if you hate cutscenes. It’ll literally save you money.
Manage your own expectations and find stuff that suits you. Let’s meet creators in the middle.
People are WAY too harsh on creators. A creator doesn't have to compromise their vision just because some players lack media literacy or don't care about story. THEY bought the story heavy game, so they're getting what they bought.
And then mihomo games come into play. I generally read everything, i still read every line in main story, but when you play your 200th world quest or weekly event and notice what you're reading is a story they've explored 4 times before at best and just an absolutely pointless wordwall at worst, you really start to appreciate your time and despise the company for making you mash next dialogue button for two minutes straight.
@@Soundwave1900 EXACTLY
@@mertensiam3384Man, it's so fucking hard to implement that skip button isn't it
@@doommaker4000 watch the video
I love honkai star rail. I could hardly tell you the real story of penacony. Hoyo not letting me skip doesn't stop me from zoning out and clicking through it. I pulled on Adventurine cause he was hot. This is how I roll.
as someone who did read the story, I still couldn't tell you wtf is happening in penacony anyway. everything is so cryptic and allegorical for no fkn reason
@@Cajun_SeasoningBlack swan explains it in the end😭😭
@@muhammetemiraydin1459 I havent gotten to the end yet, I kinda stopped just as I got Harmony MC. Hopefully ur right and I'll be able to understand whats going on when I get to finishing the main story. I still don't think its the best method of storytelling though, to barely make sense unless you really read and understood all the lore and vague connections until the end. But I won't lie that I have been pretty interested so far albeit lost.
In reason #1's BOTW limitation example, I have a suspicion that the skip button despite being longer is added "game juice". Game juice is something that adds to the feel of the game but doesn't dramatically change (if not at all) the core elements of something (sometimes it can but its rare). There's a example I heard from another game developer who said something along the lines of that they were making a gun for a large company, and the producers said the gun felt weak and gave him a list of things to do. The developer later returned and said "I've done everything", but all he did was add more bass (I believe this is something to do with audio) to the gun and the developers were satisfied with it.
I have some slightly mixed feelings on this. On one hand, I think that people should be free to enjoy the things that they enjoy in whatever way they enjoy most. On the other hand, if someone start playing a story heavy game and they immediately start skipping cutscenes there is a part of me that definitely feels like they should find a game that they actually enjoy.
The story is just one aspect of a game. The player should be allowed to pick and choose what aspects they can enjoy without being forced. Story heavy or not.
My biggest gripe with Genshin are non-voiced quests that have characters talking full on paragraphs that take ages to fully load/let me get the full text. Since it's not voiced, i can't just let it play & my reading speed is so fast that I left frustrated cause I need to wait for like 60% of the text to load to tap to get the full text... I will, just pls lemme read at a faster speed T^T
reason #3 is the biggest one, imo. look at games with long tutorials or lots of things to learn to play them well, especially multiplayer games. a huge majority of players will skip these teaching moments because theyre boring and slow, but then theyll also take to reddit to complain about how hard the game is and how things arent explained to them.
they skipped the tutorials, and got punished for it, and dont see that its their fault. tutorials need to be made more fun, absolutely, but they also need to be unskippable. players will not like your game if you dont teach them how to enjoy it.
I think skipping cutscenes is mainly for games that expect people to replay them. Pokemon should have skippable cutscenes since the fandom is based on playing the same game multiple times with different teams and challenges. Meanwhile Genshin only expects people to have one account and doesn't feature replayable quests so I think Genshin doesn't need skipable cutscenes.
Same with Persona replays i skip or forward most dialogue and cutscenes
Every game needs skippable cutscenes in some form. I would like to progress at my own pace.
FGO and Dragon Ball Legends let's you skip alot of the story with only a few in fight dialogue being unskippable. However they have ways to read the skipped stuff anytime you want which is great.
For Genshin I mostly want to just skip commission dialouge because by the time those npc's are done yapping I could have already completed it
From a narrative perspective, maybe finding a way to write the story increase their frequency, but shorten their duration? Maintaining a natural flow, without taking too long each time
That is ultimately a challenge which lies with the writers to solve. Designers and programmers don't have much say in that. All we can do is plan and features which facilitate the storytelling.
I'd also imagine this isn't a universal solution - sometimes a story calls for a long scene and exposition, and there's no perfect solution to get around those natural limitations. And prioritizing a story's durations over it's... y'know... narrative needs, likely won't make for a good story.
I never skip cutscenes in Videogames and rarely have the desire to do so if it’s something I’ve not seen before.
But I do have to say when it comes to putting a long unskippable cutscene before an extremely difficult boss you’re setting up a very frustrating scenario that’s going to affect the player’s enjoyment of the game...
Looking at you Final Fantasy X. Seymour Flux and Braska’s final aeon… (I know FFX came out in 2001, but the fact they didn’t change this for the remasters still baffles me to this day)
Wolfstride makes light of #4. If you pause a story scene, the prompt says "Every time you skip a cutscene an artist dies", and the player can choose whether to "kill one more". Cheeky way to have some of the writers' creativity shine through even if you skip.
1 makes sense but it's your job to find a way around it.
The rest are just excuses or ignorance.
Lack of skip hurts the replayability of your game.
Replayability is one of the main things that make your game successful and worth remembering.
Literally no??? Not every game is designed to be compulsively replayed hundreds of times, nor should it be. Replayability is not and should never be the be all end all of games, that’s just stupid. Sometimes a game is designed to be played just once.
there are a few reasons why genshin players complain about cutscenes:
1) they have multiple accounts and don't want to watch the same cutscenes multiple times. genshin is a 1 account per player type of game, you're not supposed to play on multiple accounts, you're supposed to get attached to a single one.
2) the quest locks an important gameplay element (new map, a boss, a domain, and until recently a weekly boss, and the infamous aranara incident) that they're too impatient to get to. it seems like genshin doesn't really understand that's a criticism of the game, because while they did implement the weekly boss feature, they claimed in a developer notes that they're pushing overworld exploration to be more quest driven, which is the exact opposite of what most players want.
3) they don't find the quests interesting enough to read through, not necessarily the main and character quests, but the smaller world quests and even daily commissions that don't affect any playable characters. that's where skip buttons could really come in handy because missing out on that lore isn't gonna affect the main experience of the game.
just my rant
I think not being able to skip cutscenes is fine, the FIRST time. Once I have completed data, it makes subsequent playthroughs less appealing if I know I have to sit through 5 hours of cutscenes I can't skip that I've already seen before. I like cutscenes as expositional vehicles, much more immersive and interesting than just reading dialogue lines, but once I know the story, they're no longer necessary. I don't mind loading screens being a few seconds longer, and speedrunners crying about or trying to abuse load times should have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on how developers decide how to apply their methods lol.
I disagree. The player may have lost a complete save file, played on different platform or may have already watched the cutscenes on UA-cam or Twitch, or had a family member who finished the game in their presence. Just because the player doesn't have finished save file doesn't mean they haven't experienced the story.
@@Gnidel weird to disagree with the entire premise over the specifics, but I digress. Then just pose the question to the player upon starting a new game, "Have you played this game before?" if yes, cutscenes and tutorials are skippable. Better?
@@frankcaggiano8282 I bet even IF some games had that, people would complain because they mashed A and said no
I'm the person who prefers to watch cutscenes on subsequent playthroughs.
Now you see skippable cutscenes are fine....if you can replay it later through methods like...in game gallery, or you have to repeat them if you restart missions etc.
But games like genshin...it's a one and done.
Like.literally do it once and that's it. You ain't doing it again.
For Gocha games, there is a 5th reason: the cutscenes and dialogues are made to (obviously besides story-telling) make players emotionally attached to paid characters, thus increasing their revenue.
The evolution of your channel is incredible ❤ we started from onyx to learning about game desing decisions
As someone who aims to work on the writing-side of the industry, my back hurts every time I see a cut-scene being skipped xD
Very insightful takes on storytelling in video games. I'm reminded of games that tells story and lore through exploring the game space, be it books scattered in Skyrim, or environmental storytelling in Dark Souls, it seems like a perfect way to balance gameplay and story.
Kudos to creators that use the format to their advantage~
Then write for non gacha games, there your talents will be fully utilized and please dont write like Genshin does where theres a Paimon like character that will re-iterate what the other NPC's have already told you in ad infinitum.
Other than that, I hope that you have a very nice experience in the industry, may you flourish and succeed my dood.
i used to care about genshin's story, but as it goes on it desperately needs a skip button. it being a toxic gacha game, they tied so much behind completing quests and side quests; its so annoying to go through the drudge. long term its actually degraded my experience and retention. i like stories, lore, and world building in games, but i dont really care about the stories in game (try to interoperate that confusing statement), and having rather inept ppl who skip yet complain about not understanding the story makes it feel worse not having a skip button cuz its in compliance with idiocracy.
something many ppl forget, devs included, that games encompass multiple forms of art: story, visual, sound, and the main draw that stands them out from the others is their level of interactivity. video games were never not art; you dont need some snob to "declare" and "recognize" them to be such, thats just stupid. you get players engaged in the art through the interactivity in ways that the "artist" doesn't expect. the interaction and player input enhances the art and experience of the game cuz it makes it personal to each player. player choices matter, so as a player let me interact with that skip button.
While it's true that games are indeed are, won't gutting put parts of the artistic experience make it less worthy of being called art?
@@LoliconSamalik you're implying adding a skip button is gutting the experience? no, the story doesn't change, and its quite normal for games in general to have replayable story. one of the many problems with genshin. regardless, gutting certain aspects isn't a matter of is or isn't it art, rather is it good or bad. i would say anything that's forced on a game by (the corporation) makes games less of an art, cuz its stuff that gets in the way of the creations and degrades it.
When games do this to force my engagement, it usually has the opposite effect on me and makes me care less, and that can get to the point where I stop caring about Characters/Plotlines that I previously liked. Thats the leading reason I quit Genshin
I voice every line in quests, because why the hell not.
Makes the story more immersive for me.
I want a skip button for NPC non-voiced dialogue, specifically in limited time events. These NPC's placed at the entrance of the battle event have story continuation from the previous version of that battle event. They would have counted as an easter egg, if only these NPC's or the issue they were actually discussing showed up in the actual permanently available world quest. Forcing me to sit through a non-essential dialogue, essentially blocking me from the enjoyment of battle is actually evil. Whoever the Genshin writer is, who is inserting pointless story dialogue into these battle events, deserves their own hell for not having a skip button there.
Like man, they aren't even mentioning instructions about the battle event. It's just literally bloat.
in Genshin the aranara quest was hell there were hundreds of little creatures that speak gibberish like naranara ara nara.. and we had to read that shit for days.. such a waste of my life
I love the recent Tales of cutscenes because they're fully acted out, but you can still press the advance button and it will jump to the next line AND jump into the next action that the character would be doing at the start of the line. Basically, if you're fast enough to read the subtitles, you can make the dialogue go by quickly while watching for any important action that's happening and pick when you want to advance without as much risk of losing story or action-related context.
Genshin No Skipped Button
Wuthering Waves have Skip button
But for me, Genshin still my favorite since having no skip button which means you have time to Immersive yourself to the game and get the important information (Like hidden lore).
Honestly a little surprised that the 'Main Scenario trio' in FFXIV wasn't mentioned, as they're the only dungeons in that game with unskippable cutscenes. For context, these happen at the climax of the game's first 'arc', A Realm Reborn (or 2.0, for those following update numbers), and serve to finish the base game's story. The issue is, however, that these dungeons are unusual in that they have major plot cutscenes sprinkled throughout which don't have the usual newbie protections in place. Usually cutscenes only appear at the start, end, and before the final boss of a dungeon, where players are unable to move until the first cutscene finishes for everyone, the boss intro cutscenes are usually short, and the final cutscene doesn't inconvenience the other players because they an just leave the completed dungeon.
Now, the main scenario cutscenes used to be skippable, but the short of it is that we as the player base had our skip privileges revoked because people couldn't behave. Outside of the first cutscene where everyone is forced to wait, veteran players could skip the long story cutscenes inbetween and would complete much of the dungeon before the newbies even got a chance to unless they also skipped the plot that they haven't seen yet. I believe even in cases where most of the party agreed to wait, there were a couple of bad eggs who would harass the newbies to skip the cutscenes so the rest of the party would continue, and just was an all around shit time for people. So, this was stopped by making these specific dungeons unskippable so that everyone was in the same boat when it came to wait times and nobody was "slowing the group down" or "ruining the first-timer experience".
SKIP and REPLAY features should be standard in EVERY. SINGLE. GAME. Especially games with long life-span and long cutscenes/dialogue.
Not everyone always have time to watch long cutscenes. Sometimes we just want to play with the limited amount of time we have left. People who work for 8 hours or more per day only have 2-3 hours of free time and sometimes a few cutscene/dialogue is enough to eat up all those free time. If the player could SKIP all the dialogues, then they could effectively use that amount of time to ACTUALLY play the game instead.
If developers really want people to enjoy their story, then REPLAY is a must. The ability to replay cutscenes you've already seen, or replay story quests you've already completed without restarting the ENTIRE game from the very beginning or making a new account is a good way to do this. It allows players who SKIP to actually watch what they skipped when they have more free time, or binge watch them during the weekends when they don't have work. This also allows long-time players to revisit their favorite parts in the story from 3-4 years ago when Genshin's story was still good.
Honkai Impact 3rd have both SKIP and REPLAY features. Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail doesn't even have one. This still baffles me to this day, how a newer game actually have LESS features. Genshin's archive doesn't count since it only allows you to reread the text without the actual scene, even though Hangout Events prove that the game is capable of replaying cutscenes anytime and anywhere.
This is what I've been thinking as well. I like how HI3 respects the player's time by allowing a lot of the time consuming stuff (cutscenes/dailies) to be skipped
Remember the time when Diluc and Jean were talking about having Turtles? Peak.
To be fair to HSR, they allow players to skip if they are re-experiencing a scene like if they are retreating from a boss fight or if the game crashes suddenly. However, imo they should have an archive for the pre-rendered cutscenes and the special CG image stills in the data bank. I also want the Fate’s Atlas features to be more helpful by letting us replay the story version of the bosses like in HI3 ngl.
For HI3, recently they shifted over to a more semi-open world style for the main story in Part 2 so we don’t know if they will have the story be available in stage form again after the arc concludes like how they did with some of the Part 1 arcs (Kolosten, Elysium Everlasting). However, we do still have the skip button.
A replay feature would require too much storage for people.
Although you can fix it just by having an option to turn it off.
You can skip cutscenes in every game - some just give you the courtesy of not having to skip the rest of the game with them.
That is, I agree with you. If the plot is crucial to a game I will watch it anyway, but some games have been so immersion breaking and laborious to suffer through the stops that I have dropped them entirely and moved on to others.
Thank you for the insight!
The reason Genshin doesn't implement cutscene skipping is because they wanna waste as much as your time in their game as possible. Just like so many other little things. Finite sprint, slow as shit climbing speed, enemies that constantly fall off ledges to get you to go down kill them just so you can go back to the enemies at the top by spending more time climbing, cryo enemies (fuck dragonspire in particular for this), the lack of a better treasure compass to pinpoint every treasure in the map like other open world games, new players having to wait more than 4 weeks to be able to unlock the treasure compass in mondstadt, the fucking resin system etc... Everything is tailored in such a way that will make you keep coming and waste your time if you decide to play the game. The longer you stay in the game, the higher the odds you open the wish UI and maybe spend some cash in the game, maybe buy the welkin, battle pass and more. A ton of factors in there and they will never never fix these issues because they don't give a shit about the players and they are at the top of their market, they have no reason to give us what we want and people will keep spending money regardless. I'm hoping wuthering waves puts some fear in them that makes players loose more interest in genshin so they actually start making the game better.
I guess that's why Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon divide the playerbase so much.
People who love stories love these games.
People who hate stories and just want to kill monsters will hate them.
What a nice straw man. I liked the story my first time through, and I usually care about stories. But I like replaying games, and Sun and Moon is completely un-replayable because of all the long custscebes
@@highlightermarca-texto3281 I like to replay games too, and I enjoy Sun&Moon's story every time I replay it.
@@highlightermarca-texto3281unless ur replaying for story
@@madnessarcade7447 that’s literally what I said
Best way to not need atory skip is to have it be in the world map as you play the cast talk. In smaller bursts so you van get some playtime in or just better story.
Instead of one hour long cutscene(especially ones you need to tap the button yo continue) have short 2-5 minute long ones that break up the gameplay but also not just brick wall you. Even skipping at top speed genshin impact scenes take forever and repeat nonsense
Its especially bad when the game forces you to remember for one time onky quiz answers
This option can also go very wrong, nothing freaks me out more than when the game decides that it's a good idea to include story-relevant dialogue in the middle of a gameplay sequence, sometimes the dialogue is cut off because you interact with something on the map and the text/story gets lost into limbo, other times you are in a moment of tension and cannot dedicate 100% focus to what is being said, ( imagine reading with 10 enemies on your tail), don't even get me started on when the dialogue is placed in the middle of a boss battle lol. The reason not to do this is the same as why people used to dislike quick time events in the middle of cutscenes, it breaks your game rhythm.
I like how Xenoblade includes the skip option and then a cinema to watch every single cutscene the player has witnessed.
Not only that, but the game allows you to play the ones that are in real time back with different conditions, like the time of day, weather, etc. Making some scenes more dramatic by adding a thunderstorm in the back.
That king crimson joke at the beginning was golden (wind)
Genshin knowing its story is complete garbage and forcing you to watch every cutscene
nuh uh I deleted my account try reaching me now hoyo feds
I think if your story is good doesn't need an absence of a skip button, there should always be an option. Xenoblade chronicles 3 as an example lets you skip basically every prerendered and all NPC dialogue but its great so I personally want to keep following along.
I don't mind not being able to skip cutscenes, but PLEASE let people pause them! I can't leave the screen without missing something
What bothers me the most about certain kinds of cutscenes has been the fact that a cutscene will finish, give me a loading screen and then starts up yet another cutscene!
Creator's pride is the dumbest of them all. Like most VNs has this fiture, even though they are the books of videogames.
Hilariously, I'm watching this while having genshin play itself in the background in a window.
I was hoping for some explanation for Genshin, but... there doesn't seem to be one?
I'll give you one
It makes having alternative accounts far more tedious and hense makes it more likely players won't get a 2nd account
@@acezero5705 But why is that a benefit to Mihoyo to stop people from getting second accounts? Sure, some people are willing to sink twice the grinding time to get double the freemos on separate accounts, but some people will end up paying for Welkin and such on two accounts instead. I don't think you can conclusively say this is a worthwhile reason that clearly benefits them.
@@acezero5705The problem with that excuse though is you don’t really need to have a second account to make a second “account” because that option is already baked in to the game via allowing one account to play on multiple server regions. If anything, you could make an argument that allowing people to skip would give people incentive to spend more on the game so that they have the same or mostly similar things across multiple regions so that they could play with their friends that aren’t on, say NA for example, and of course, the added benefit of increasing replayability which in turn supports the whole “playing multiple to play with friends” sentiment. And if you argue that people will abuse it to reroll for better stuff, let me remind you that the Genshin team isn’t so generous with gems that you could get a significant enough stash to get a “stacked” account without the tremendous effort of complete exploration, side quests, events, and abyss, which is such a high barrier to entry comparatively to most other gachas that most people wouldn’t even bother.
The only thing it would actively incentivize that is considered “bad” per se in regards to multiple accounts is the bare-bones reseller market for accounts that have decent rolls on a specific server(s) and/or a good enough amount of grinded rolls for at least 1 or 2 guarantees because I assure you there is no such thing as a primogem account in that market on the same scale that other games like FGO have quartz accounts because of how few shit Genshin’s team gives out and how much effort grinding the free stuff that’s already available takes with no reliable forms of automation unlike with MMOs and clicker-based apps unless the person doing the selling is literally involved in some borderline illegal slave labor operation.
@@acezero5705 Yeah right that never stop anyone from playing multiple acc, just no bro.
@@famimame it doesnt stop us but it sure as hell is still god awful to reexperience when the whole point of the challenge account is the gameplay, not the story
The thing is, i don't mind not-skipping story in many story-driven games (Final Fantasy games for example, or Ys games) because i like the stories and if i replay those games i mostly replay them because of stories. Because overall i'll have same experience, play with the same characters and do mostly same strategies. If i don't like the story i won't replay such games.
But games like Genshin are different. It's a Gacha game, meaning depending on the units you have you'll experience different approach to the same bosses. Either you fight it with meta units, or trying out other less stronger teams. And because i wanted to feel that difference i created several accounts. I can feel where the game has limitations, and it helps me to overcome some challenges with creativity. So story in genshin never was top priority to me. It's exploration and battle system. And if the game didn't have that variety of units i'd never replay it in the first place. Because story sucks, no offense to those who like it.
And i believe most if players would play story for the first time. But for the second or third - doubtful.
I'm a creater too, i understand that feeling of wanting to show your imagination to everyone, but as a creator i also understand that we all have different tastes and preferences, so i don't feel offended when someone doesn't like what i do. Forcing someone to read your story - is the most awful thing as a creator you can do to a person, especially if that person is interested in other aspects (exploration, gameplay). So as a creator i will never understand other creators that expect appreciation from all people.
And ofc, having an option to skip is just an option. Genshin even saves all the dialogs in the datalogs, so nothing much will be lost.
As a person who has 3 accounts, i played story once, but i'd prefer to have an option to skip it second or third time. And if we look from another perspective, exploration or abyss in genshin are all optional - don't wanna do it? - don't. But story is mandatory? How so? If people who like the story have an option to skip exploration and abyss they don't like, then why people who don't like the story don't have the option to skip it so they could get to fun stuff faster?
I can understand technical limitations, but the rest is just... selfishness, a childish behavior, i can't even find correct words.
I don't remember if the guy mentioned it in the video but that's another purpose to not putting a skip button. It acts as a deterrent for people who want to play multiple accounts. This results in players spending money instead cause they don't want to spend time on another account or you play another account and spend more time on Genshn which keeps the game alive cause you're increasing their player count and whatever other stats they have by playing another account. Remember, nothing in life is free. If you're getting something for free, you are the product.
It's working as intended and you don't realize it. That is exactly why you are complaining right now. You are exactly the kind of player they are trying to discourage from playing multiple accounts by not implementing a skip button. I know cause I have multiple accounts too. Sometimes I wish I can spend money on one account and get every character I want but sadly, I'm not rich so I have to play multiple accounts and suffer through unskippable cutscenes.
Fun fact: The Sims 2 cinematics uses real time rendering. Which is the reason why Sims 2 cinematics are unskippable. Leading to heart attack to Sims 2 player especially when Sims woohoo on bed, and hot tubs while parents comes in.
Technically: Cinematics are cutscenes in Sims 2