David Jaffe "F*** your cinematic games, son!"

CLU_2 · February 14, 2012, 11:37pm

I think the root of the gameplay/graphics problem doesn’t depend on developers most of the time. Its the higher-ups fault. First of all they get most of the cash without even working on the game.
Second of all they put pressure and time constraints on the team not to mention that because of the new technology your game needs to look good first and play good second which is bullcrap.
And lastly these higher-ups are only aiming to make money as fast as they can and they can do it by pulling casual gamers in with nice graphics and sub-par gameplay.

Making a good game nowdays is hard as shit, you have a limited budget and you have to spend most of the time making it look good. And I think it will get worse in 1-2 years we are gona get the new xbox and ps and they haven’t even tapped the power of today’s consoles let alone make a game without any bugs that needs 10 patches. Not all is lost though companies like Platinum games and Konami are on the right track.

If things don’t get better, this is the last gen of consoles I shall purchase.

I’ll play all of the classic goodness instead.

Much like I have been doing for most of THIS gen.

Blue ball comes slow. Sent from my fists, using 'AdoukenTalk.

SixMachine · February 14, 2012, 11:38pm

Heavy Rain is just something I personally didn’t like. It’s an example of the “cinematic” style I was talking about that stretched for way too long. I never felt like I was doing anything badass. I just felt like I was just doing button prompts to see a sequence. I only like it when a qte was short and simple like Krauser’s knife fight, which felt like a bonus at the end of a chapter. I like what Pertho is saying, even though I know you cannot carry out every action because games are still limited.

In RE4, GodHand, etc. a lot of the qtes come up during normal gameplay, so it is rather integrated and doesn’t feel like a disjointed thing, unlike say when Kratos does some rather long and elaborate kill. Leon can just be walking around and you can see cues that a qte can happen, such as a grate dropping before U3 tries to choke you, a bad guy in GodHand with arms raised, or Azel pointing at you, so you can prepare to do something next before you take big damage. This also gives some freedom to do actions the player is not normally given, such as melee attacks or special moves.

PozerWolf · February 14, 2012, 11:45pm

I don’t know why, but this thread reminds me of this video:

[media=youtube]8FpigqfcvlM[/media]

Spooty_Whiteboy · February 14, 2012, 11:45pm

Heavy Rain was barely a game at all. It was a “Choose Your Adventure” book.

orochizoolander · February 15, 2012, 12:35am

Actually when I think about it HR is by far the most blatant example of what Jaffe was talking about and what the seemed to be referring to the whole damn time but without actually saying it I guess he signed some shit that doesn’t let him bad mouth Sony? He actually praised them for evolving the “art form” of games.

Davidstar · February 16, 2012, 4:32am

uhhhiiiidooon’t know about that his style reminds me more of david lynch with games like killer 7, flower sun rain and the silver case.
even with games like no more heroes and lollipop chainsaw i still don’t think they compare to tarantinos movies.
anyways what i’m trying to say is suda>tarantino

Windlord0 · February 18, 2012, 8:07pm

DM1 > *

Jaffe admits that his thinking about what is important in games has evolved a lot since he made GOW. Just because he worked on something doesn’t mean he still agrees with it or would want to do it again. He even said that if he wanted to make a new GOW game he would just “write a book.”

NickRocks · February 18, 2012, 8:15pm

remember when the gaming experience was in the gameplay not the cutscenes?

Id elaborate on this more but im about to head out to pick up asuras wrath later niggaaaaaasssssss

TheDarkPhoenix · February 18, 2012, 8:23pm

Jaffe is speaking the truth

I was just speaking to a friend about how after the ps1 era we got stuck…

Every company wanted to make a gta 3,mgs2, GOW, or DMC, FFVII…

Games now are sand box movies…

Im not saying do away with that, but its out of hand now…

Kayame · February 18, 2012, 9:43pm

I kinda agree with what he said but I don’t like the Sfiv way either, too simple and since the characters are not new I get the feeling they didn’t care enough to hire a single writer to write something more complex
My fav game is FFT in which every damn battle and plot was filled with good story telling followed by the best gameplay possible

Psychoblue · February 18, 2012, 9:49pm

This is a conversation I had with someone else regarding this topic.

Think of the amazing leaps games have made since the Playstation era (1994) with how the advances in graphics, sound, storage space and other factors have made games better. Games are getting closer and closer to the dream of playing 3-D games that render like CGI movies on the fly. Hell, the current console game graphics look better than most of the best pre-rendered cut-scenes in PS1 and Saturn games. Now that you’ve done that, think of the game mechanic advances since then. Have they really leveled-up as much as the graphics and the ability to mimic a movie in the game itself? I’m not talking about games having more enemies because consoles can handle more on-screen objects or the increase in media storage spaces that allows for games to have more content to be in the game. I’m asking if the nuts and bolts of game mechanics have improved as much as the ability to have better-looking games.

I think it’s something that’s been nagging people for years and we either couldn’t explain or were too scared to explain. I think it had to come to a head for us to start really talking about it. Kiwi had a great article and you hit a lot of solid points as well, Psychoblue. There was a time when the way the character acted in the game gave hints at their personality or the hero was a blank slate and let you act out your own personality.

It’s basically become the equivalent of graphic whorism for smart people and smart guy wanna-bes. Both cases have people focusing on what appeals to them the most and it isn’t the core game mechanics. Better graphics and richer storylines can make a game more enjoyable, but it doesn’t look like the true nuts and bolts of playing the games has improved as much as the ability to be movielike. Even with a game like FF7, I see more people talk about Aeris’ death than any game play elements. I think it’s a telling thing that the most memorable moments in some new games are the cutscenes and not what you actually did in the game.

Once they attracted an audience that wants games to be more like movies, they were pretty much trapped. Most of the fans they gained during the post 16-bit era now expect every game to be an epic multimedia experience (and I’m sure having a console maker promise that a certain console could render Toy Story 2 in real time didn’t help one bit).

The biggest moments in games were usually things that the players did during the game. Sometimes it was just the fact that you cleared something and others are those scenes like the snowy hill run in Strider, unexpected boss transformations, Mecha Dragon coming in out of nowhere and things like that. Now I hear people talking about the cutscenes and how those non-playable or QTE scenes made them feel. If the connections to the game are no longer due to the games themselves, when do some of those less die-hard gamers figure out that they can get that same exact feeling by reading a book, watching a movie or dozens of other mediums that don’t cost $60?

And here’s my own say on the matter…

Over the past several months, there has been a lot of to-do about story modes in fighting games. After the latest Mortal Kombat raised the bar about how in-depth a story mode should be in a game where the premise is two men (or women) enter, one man is left standing, the general consensus is that everyone should follow that premise. I myself have been a part of this train of thought for a while, after being a little underwhelmed by Street Fighter IV’s story mode and Tekken 6’s story mode, as well. I mean, Lars and Alisa are great and all, but what about all of the other characters that we’ve been following for the past few years? And no, I don’t count the meaningless banter between two characters in Scenario Campaign as cutscenes.

Now that Jun is back in Tekken Tag 2 (and possibly Street Fighter x Tekken), there has been a big to-do about how she came back and how she became Unknown. Being that Tekken Tag 1 didn’t have any story, there has been a demand that a story mode be placed in Tekken Tag 2 amongst the fandom. Obviously, we all have our own theories as to how Jun became Unknown, and many of us demand concrete answers. But as I thought more about this, I started asking myself a different question.

Do we really WANT concrete answers?

As many of you know, I write fiction in my spare time when I’m not getting blown up in Mahvel, or Tekken, or Street Fighter or whatever else I’m playing at the moment. Just last month I wrote a 94,000 word novel in a mere 15 days. Tekken was one of my first forays into long-term fiction writing and that was because there was just enough story for me to get an idea of what everyone was about, but not enough story where everything was spelled out for me. This allowed for me to have plenty of creative liberties with characters and plotlines that the canon wouldn’t object to because it was never spelled out. From that spawned several novels and oneshots, and after a while I started going on to other fandoms and even delving into my own psyche for original ideas.

I was able to do all of this because I wasn’t having my hand held by the game’s creators. By that I mean that the story writers of Tekken left a lot of things to our imagination as to how our favorite characters got to where they were when their time in the Tekken canon began. Was Hwoarang a pot-smoking derelict before Baek took him in? Sure, why not. Was Bryan an honest cop before corruption led him to his death and eventual revival as a killer cyborg? You decide! What exactly did Paul do in the 19 years before Tekken 2 and 3? Who knows, but it was never spelled out specifically by Harada and his crew, so use your imagination!

Tekken 5/DR I think was the best breeding ground for our imaginations because it gave us a glimpse of the personalities of our characters via short but sweet cutscenes. It wasn’t enough to spell out their life story or anything like that, but it was enough for us to know how they talked and acted around other people. Tekken 6, on the other hand, had a little adventure called Scenario Campaign. Rather than give characters individualized cutscenes, the Tekken crew were given minor pieces of banter between them. On the plus side, they were available for every character matchup. On the minus side, they were pretty insignificant and for the most part weren’t that great.

My point is that I don’t like having everything spelled out for us in regards to game canon because it stifles creativity. When I was a little kid growing up, dinosaurs ruled the earth there were plenty of amazing games that had very, very little story. Let’s take Super Mario Bros, for instance. You turn on the NES, you press start, and you’re at Stage 1-1. Why are you there? Why are you fighting turtles? Why are there little people dressed as mushrooms? Who was that fire-breathing turtle-monster that you had to pass in order to pull the floor out from under him where he’d fall into red water?

Well, when I was a kid, no one really gave a ****, because there was no story to begin with. The only kind of in-game dialogue back then was “Our princess is in another castle.” What the hell does that mean? Who the hell is this princess? Why are we trying to save her? Maybe she’s hot and you’ll get some kind of lewd favor from her, or maybe there’s a bounty on her head and you need to collect it. No one knew why, and no one cared. Just jump on the bad guys, take your flame-throwing flower, and just make up your own story. If you’re fighting turtles and flytraps, chances are that any story the creators came up with wasn’t exactly Eisner Award material.

Let’s move on from Mario to another Nintendo creation, Samus Aran of the “Metroid” series. We all know her as the heroic bounty hunter from space that fights alien creatures who cares for a baby jellyfish creature called a “Metroid.” Most of her games had very little spoken dialogue, if any at all. And then along came her most recent outing, Metroid Other M. Suddenly she now had a posse of fellow bounty hunters that she interacted with on a regular basis, turning her into a much more talkative character than before. For the first time, Samus had a detailed backstory and a defined personality…and there was a LARGE number of fans who hated it.

There was a particular subject of controversy involving one of Samus’ chief nemeses, the giant space dragon Ridley. When Samus saw her long-time foe back from the dead for the umpteenth time, she promptly freaked out. The fans hated that, saying there’s no way she’d panic like that over someone she’d beaten so many times before. My response was, “How do you know that? There was never any dialogue during their previous battles. How do you know Samus wasn’t freaking out during the battle and it didn’t take all of her guts and bravery to keep from having a panic attack as this giant space dragon sought to rip her apart?”

Bringing the topic back to Tekken, Tekken Tag 2 featured the return of Jun Kazama looking a bit colder than before. In fact, once I saw a couple of her intro quips and win poses, I immediately thought of the “Hot Leona Babe” trope, which is my catch-call for the Leona Heiderns, Ayanami Reis, Juli & Junis, Shanoas, and Claires of the media world. And then it was revealed that she was Unknown this entire time. Now we have people saying that she’s a clone, or an evil sister? Really, people?

The point I’m making here is that I think it’d be better if we stop asking for deeper story lines, because they stifle creativity. That’s why I hate Scenario Campaign so much even though I do enjoy Lars & Alisa’s relationship: everything was laid out for us and it left very little to our imagination. The entire point of fanpairings is using our imaginations to fill in the blanks and create a relationship from something that wasn’t there to begin with. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is going to be a non-canon game anyway, so I think it’d be better if the most we got were quickie endings like in TTT1 and the occasional custom win pose.

Unless of course, you want to see Jin freaking out that Ogre has returned.

Firebranded · February 18, 2012, 10:00pm

Hey guys, at least UMVC3 isn’t a cinematic game…In fact I was pissed by the lack of cinematics in it…

PublicEnemy · February 18, 2012, 11:50pm

He says this and yet he made God of War.

TheDarkPhoenix · February 18, 2012, 11:53pm

GOW 1-2 were more gameplay than movies…

GOW 3 was not his project. And it was a movie…

EvilSamurai · February 19, 2012, 12:51am

Doom 1, 2, and the Quake series have some of the best level design ever. Doom fucking invented level design. Good and varied level design is so much better than QTE that all basically involve mashing X so your dude will do a backflip while farting in enemies faces bullshit.

http://i.imgur.com/BITmX.jpg

odin · February 19, 2012, 1:01am

Because this era of gamers is “I DON’T WANT TO THINK”.

XtraKurrikula · February 19, 2012, 1:22am

David Jaffe is totally right we should all be playing Pong right now

[media=youtube]LPkUvfL8T1I[/media]

This is just fucking stupid

[media=youtube]Ukh7C9zkXGc[/media]

orochizoolander · February 19, 2012, 1:38am

Which is ironic because he is one of the biggest reasons why the market is flooded with those same cinematic games albeit probably unintentionally, even so the irony is DELICIOUS.

Nigga clutching at straws, you’re actually trying to defend Jaffe’s stance by splitting hairs?:lol:

Lots of very ill informed people in this thread (posting about something without understanding it first? no way that couldn’t happen on SRK). It’s like Havatchu and I said before Jaffe neverh ad a problem with games adopting film like qualities only when such change comes at the cost of core game play decisions.

My memory is a little fuzzy on quake 1 single player and I don’t know if that pic is actually accurate but Doom series was just straight up corridor city, no variation that’s what I was getting at.

It’s pretty hypocritical for a lot of people in this thread to bitch about cut scenes, QTE’s, and modern gaming in general right after coming out of a thread for any game of this generation praising it.

TL;DR

90% of this thread: bitches about this generation…goes to play SF4 and Red Dead Redemption:lol:

EvilSamurai · February 19, 2012, 4:11am

This is the dumbest fucking thing I have ever heard. Go and play a source port (Chocolate Doom is the most accurate) of Doom 1 and 2 right now. A lot of the later levels are basically first person Robotron and it’s fucking awesome.

Doom 3 was a shitty corridor shooter though but when people talk about Doom, they don’t mean Doom 3.

SlayerofBodom · February 19, 2012, 1:50pm

I agree with David Jaffe, and “being cinematic” is a trend I would like to see in less games. If I wanted that, I would watch a movie or watch a television series, not play a “game”. (Which, by definition, is something one actively participates, as opposed to something one passively enjoys, like cinematics) To be fair, there are a lot of great smaller/indie titles that focus on the mechanics and make for outstanding games. However, it’s a shame so many AAA titles are obsessed with graphics and trite cutscenes over quality design and balance.

I feel this is a very pervasive feeling among a lot of gamers. The comments in this topic reflect that…with the exception of orochizoolander trying to sound smart, but only succeeding in writing a bunch of moronic shit. (As usual)