My irrational hatred of unskippable cutscenes (developers, why?)

[Deleted member 45617]

You know every single player is going to be jamming the A button, pressing start, completely uninterested in what ham-fisted bit of emotion you're trying to shove in.

Now to preface, I'm not usually an impatient person, I really really like story-based games but there's some games where a cutscene matters and some where a cutscene just doesn't, and what I've realised is, its always the useless cutscenes that can't be skipped.

It's like they caught so many people skipping during play testing that they rushed in to stop people doing it, holding you down going NO, NO PLEASE LOOK WHAT I DID, ITS GOOD PLEASE



Why did I have to watch this? Turn 10 are passionate about cars? Are these characters important? Is there on-foot levels now?



Why did I have to watch this? Do I get to play as a little scouse girl against PSG? That would be absolutely amazing, oh wait I don't? Then let me play the friggin' game

What about when there is a story but its so laughably bad, surely they wouldn-

Oh

Why do it? You know attitudes will always vary from complete apathy to searing disinterest due to 2 minutes of wasted of time (like me),

At most the only justified reason seems to be masking loading times, but as far as I'm aware they don't apply at all to the games above, it took me more time to post this than the cutscenes above and for me it's time well spent venting

 

[Heliex]

Demons is really good about it, except for that damn Old Monk cutscene. I literally almost put down the game.

 

[Menx64]

I agree, for the most part I don't care about cutscenes, but I don't skip them the first play through.

 

[Doctor_Thomas]

Sony's lack of start button for 2 gens has made cutscene skipping impossible. Disgraceful.

Honestly, I watch them once, even opening cinematics, just because I know work went into them, but every cutscene that isn't masking loading should be skippable.

 

[treasureyez]

Wow, that Forza opening is so bad.

I rarely skip cutscenes in games but that one is a good example of something I'd want to skip.

 

[G_Shumi]

I kind of wish there was a console-wide setting for skipping a cutscene, especially now that this generation has very small load times.

 

[Killzig]

It's funny you bring up Destiny. I just had a crash error on PC when I smashed the skip button through the dumb little cut scene they play when you first zone into the raid. Generally I can't stand cut scenes, but my real bugbear is the more recent trend of slowing your walk speed and forcing you to listen to an npc deliver via at an absolute snail's pace. AC Valhalla is rife with this junk (and cut scenes too).

 

[Joker22Hero]

I would actually never skip a cutscene I didn't see before. But if I had to, it would probably be cross/a and then Options/+

 

[dedge]

Demons is really good about it, except for that damn Old Monk cutscene. I literally almost put down the game.

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I ended up going offline for this fight and was pleased to see doing so let me skip the cutscene lol

 

[Rotobit]

A lot of modern games do the cutscenes right (press "start", then press X to skip) like Yakuza, Kingdom Hearts, Metal Gear etc.. I despised it back in the day when you could accidentally skip by briefly nudging the wrong button.

I very rarely feel the need to skip cutscenes these days, only when I'm replaying content I've already seen. Tho that Forza one would be a contender.

 

[evrythngwastakn]

With how many games I give less than zero fucks about their stories these days (any "shlooter", battle royale game etc) just let me skip them all. DQ11S is going super fast as I can skip everything I've seen before and just get on with things. Games need to respect your time, especially given how many games there are to play.

 

[Arex]

Usually they're to mask loading, but this gen that shouldn't be a problem so we should be able to skip all cutscenes hopefully lol

Although I never skip cutscenes on first playthrough at least.

 

[onpoint]

I don't mind if a cutscene is unskippable the FIRST time I watch it. But if you have a cutscene before a part that I might have to retry a few times? And it's unskippable every time I retry? You can fuck right off with that shit.

 

[Efejota]

I only hate them when you need to watch them again after a game over. It's the same with badly placed checkpoints, basically. I agree that they don't make that much sense on arcadeyy/multiplayer games. Maybe they could have an option to "allow cutscene skips".

In my case I actually dislike when cutscene skips works "too well", as in, pressing a button skips it directly. It makes me have to go to youtube and look for it, risking possible spoilers.

 

[Mupod]

Genshin Impact has a lot of skippable cutscenes but the process for skipping with mouse+keyboard is press a button a few times -> 'skip' prompt appears in the corner -> you have to move the goddamn mouse cursor up there and click 'skip'. It takes so long that the short, repeating cutscenes I want to skip are usually over (domains and gacha rolls). Also the intro was unskippable, which is annoying when you're rerolling - thankfully you can just quit out and reload on PC rather quickly. And to be clear I love the game's story I just mean skipping shit you've seen 5000 times.

 

[nsilvias]

*dies*
unskippable cutscene restarts

 

[RPGam3r]

Where is the normal person option of just sitting there and watching the cutscene or looking at my phone?

 

[kamineko]

I like holding a button to skip. Sometimes I want to pause during a cutscene and I skip by mistake

But I hate unskippable scenes and its close relative the walking and talking scene. Main reason I won't play uncharted 4 again

 

[Tora]

Spiderman Miles Morales' new game plus run was frustrating at times because of this

 

[Deleted member 45617]

Wow, that Forza opening is so bad.

I rarely skip cutscenes in games but that one is a good example of something I'd want to skip.

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Yep and you know what, if they just let people skip their weird NASCAR commercial, people would've just got on with their day, but here it is maligned 5 years later

 

[Rosebud]

You know every single player is going to be jamming the A button, pressing start, completely uninterested in what ham-fisted bit of emotion you're trying to shove in.

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No way I'm skipping cutscenes

What I hate is when you can't pause them without skipping

 

[Heliex]

I ended up going offline for this fight and was pleased to see doing so let me skip the cutscene lol

Click to shrink...

yup, thats what I ended up doing as well. It wasnt an issue on my firt playthrough since I wasnt skipping cutscenes and I got him on my first try. On my second character I was dying alot and it became so annoying.

 

[ThatOneGuy831]

It's especially annoying on repeat playthroughs. As much as I like Max Payne 3, it's such a pain in the ass to play through the game again and having to watch the frequent unskippable cutscenes when you just wanna get to the shooting (the actual good part of the game)

 

[My Blue Heaven]

oh oh! destiny secretly has this amazing story but you need to watch this to understand

[link to british ASMR guy quietly reading the destiny wikia for 30 minutes]

 

[Elfgore]

I despised it back in the day when you could accidentally skip by briefly nudging the wrong button.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I think I almost dislike those more than unskippable cutscenes. Can't remember the game, but I know even just changing my volume from a button on my keyboard caused it to skip one.

 

[Manbig]

This is a Monster Hunter World thread if I ever saw one, and I'm shocked that they never patched in the ability to skip cut scenes or the incredibly dull and mindless walk and chat sequences. It's pretty much the only reason I've mostly avoided playing the PC version after doing everything on the PS4 version.

 

[Parcas]

The last jedi game has this problem. Let people decide if they care about your story please

 

[My Blue Heaven]

The last jedi game has this problem. Let people decide if they care about your story please

Click to shrink...

there's a last jedi game? oh god ERA is going to implode

 

[Ultima_5]

Miles morales in new game plus was frustrating because you could only skip random cutscenes

 

[bob100]

Aren't unskippable cutscenes there to hide the loading happening in the background?

If you were able to skip these you would just see a loading screen

 

[Nabs]

I hate cutscenes so much, especially before I get to any gameplay. Unskippable cutscenes are my enemy.

 

[Deleted member 28386]

This was the one thing that almost made me quit my Ghost of Tsushima playthrough. Especially the first couple of hours, where I felt like the game was trying so desperately hard for me to give a shit about the story and not actually experience the game when all I wanted to do was run around and explore and kill Mongols and bandits. The entire time I was just picturing the opening of BotW and Link running to the cliff edge of the Great Plateau.

That said, I ended up really enjoying GoT and would recommend it to any friend but man...so much talking that I just can't be made to care about at all. And mid-playthrough I switched to Valhalla and was so relieved to see I could skip pretty much whatever I wanted.

 

[Hippopuncher12]

I get not having the ability to skip it the first time, but after that it should always be an option.

 

[Plumpman]

Spiderman Miles Morales' new game plus run was frustrating at times because of this

Click to shrink...

This was a bad offender, especially because you have to replay for platinum. What should've been a snappy, swift adventure turns into a cutscene slog.

 

[Pankratous]

Uhh, cutscenes shouldn't be skippable on the first playthrough and admitting to doing so should be a bannable offence.

 

[RecLib]

Even in games where I genuinely love the story I want to be able to skip the cutscenes. At the point I'm doing my 4th playthrough of a game on the hardest difficulty because I just loved the gameplay so much there is a very good chance I don't want to watch cutscenes no matter how much I loved the story.


Anyhow, the ideal "skip cutscenes button" is that you have to press start, which pauses the cutscene, and then press another button to confirm your desire to skip.

 

[DragonSpear2462]

The reason why there are some unskippable cutscenes is because some of them are used as hidden load times.

Developers didn't just omit the add the function to like half the custscenes in Miles Morales for example. (If you want to bring up that PS5's SSD should be fast enough to handle it, don't forget that Miles Morales is also on PS4, so they had to design with that as the lowest denominator)

 

[Jogi]

I don't skip cutscenes until a second play through, or I've seen it already somehow. But yeah, all should be skippable.

 

[FooF]

MIles Morales has only some skippable cutscenes while the other half are unskippable. Like why what's the point it doesn't even change when you're playing new game plus

 

[My Blue Heaven]

Uhh, cutscenes shouldn't be skippable on the first playthrough and admitting to doing so should be a bannable offence.

Click to shrink...

everyone should have to do the tutorial as well or they get banned, tough but fair

 

[Deleted member 10726]

Super Mario Sunshine is notorious for this since it's a popular game for speedrunning but a good chunk of the early speedrun is just watching unskippable cutscenes.

 

[JuniperAndSage]

Genshin Impact has a lot of skippable cutscenes but the process for skipping with mouse+keyboard is press a button a few times -> 'skip' prompt appears in the corner -> you have to move the goddamn mouse cursor up there and click 'skip'. It takes so long that the short, repeating cutscenes I want to skip are usually over (domains and gacha rolls).

Click to shrink...

This drives me crazy too. I'd rather they be literally unskippable than be so complex to skip that it's not even worth doing.

 

[flyinj]

I've worked on games where the animators and the creative director have fought against allowing people to skip cut scenes because they worked so hard on them.

This happens a lot.

 

[Deleted member 19070]

Demons is really good about it, except for that damn Old Monk cutscene. I literally almost put down the game.

Click to shrink...

i went into offline mode just for that part

 

[Red Liquorice]

You rationalised your hatred of them.

i went into offline mode just for that part

Click to shrink...

Ironic.

 

[ciddative]

Doesn't seem irrational. And it's not always the useless ones that can't be skipped, it's often the relevant ones too, but you're less annoyed by those.

Ubisoft are normally pretty bad with this. God of War only allowing it on a new game plus was obnoxious, but Sony 1st party normally are fine. Replaying RDR2 and Rockstar are good with skipping any cutscenes as they have been since the PS2 GTA games

 

[julia crawford]

The OP themselves say it's irrational.

I just watch the cutscene.

 

[Kent]

Being able to skip cutscenes is nice, but it's more important that, if they can be skipped, they can't be accidentally skipped.

It's also more important by far that they can be paused.

 

[Nabs]

Super Mario Sunshine is notorious for this since it's a popular game for speedrunning but a good chunk of the early speedrun is just watching unskippable cutscenes.

Click to shrink...

Your picture cut off, let me get the rest for you

 

[Manbig]

Uhh, cutscenes shouldn't be skippable on the first playthrough and admitting to doing so should be a bannable offence.

Click to shrink...

Nah, to be real fuck this noise right here.

I don't give a shit about stories in games like Monster Hunter. I just want to kill the thing and make gear out of it.