It also had the credits displayed live, giving a nice cinematic effect that MGS4 lacked (the credits stopped during those gameplay cuts and continued during the cutscenes). MGS3 had the same problem Long intro, climb tree, long codec conversation, walk further, more codec.Ĭompare this to MGS1, where the first gameplay segment in the basement was a well designed stage that let us use most of the mechanics. After that, the player can run again for about a minute until the next cutscene which keeps going for well over ten minutes not including the briefing or codec conversation. After a few seconds of running, we get another minutes-long cutscene to introduce the Gecko.
Now the player can run around the building. We needed a cutscene to cross the street. In the cutscene we see the rebels fighting some more and then snake rolls across the street. When you go under the truck, another cutscene begins. You have to crawl under a truck to proceed. The immediate play area is about the size of a bedroom. In the opening of Metal Gear Solid 4, after the long "War has changed" speech, the player finally gets to play. These types of scenes, while amazing and refreshing, highlight the vast separation between the Game layer and Story layer, because the game actually has to put it's primary mechanics aside in order to facilitate compelling story-based play. Since the majority of the player's available actions (as governed by the control scheme) aren't usable in these scenes, the player is left with a small range of interactions, often limited to either passive observation or quick time events. When a meaningful and memorable story beat does get to be experienced through play, like The Last of Us' intro and giraffe scenes, it usually excludes the main mechanics.
Playstation Plus’ free April game was Uncharted. If you are a fan of thrillers/zombie movies, this is the game for you. Every year we see new kinds of story beats being applied to games that we hardly ever see in the medium, but they are still relegated to cutscenes most of the time. Character development is awesome and the plot is a straight-up 10/10. Writing and storytelling in these games is getting better, but gameplay is still stuck in a repetitive mechanical loop. Anything can happen in the story, but if it's not in the control scheme, the player is often left out.
A downside shared by these kinds of games is how little variety there ends up being in gameplay compared to the cutscenes.