Ever since 3D graphics became realistic enough to render any level of human emotions, many writing and development teams have aspired to make ‘cinematic’ gaming experiences. In all honesty, some brave pioneers tried to make cinematic experiences before that point and are the reason why a large chunk of the PS1’s library hasn’t aged very well.
In recent years, the cinematic game has been exemplified by titles like God of War: Ragnarok, The Last of Us and, before that, Uncharted. Beyond Playstation exclusives, we also have titles like the A Plague Tale series and shades of the cinematic experience can be seen in many shooters like Call of Duty and Gears of War’s linear action set pieces.
(Image property of Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment)
It is a difficult type of game to pin down and define but, much like a human turd, you just know one when you see it. They can usually be identified by their heavy story focus with long cutscenes of serious, emotional character interactions broken up by combat or puzzle arenas to keep the player engaged. They also like to pile on the dialogue as your characters walk between gameplay arenas for the same reason. Plus, if the list of games I above is anything to go by, they usually cast Troy Baker too.
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| (Image property of Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment) |
However, there is debate to be had over whether these types of games are holding the industry back in the long-run. After all, should video games not create their own form of art rather than attempting to ape the linear narratives that define cinema? I intend to examine this idea today and whether, even if cinematic games don’t make up the peak of the games industry, they might be a useful evil.
The Price of a Good Story
The first, immediately pressing, issue with cinematic games is the sheer cost that they present to developers and publishers. Most games nowadays cost an average of two Scrooge McDuck vaults to fund but, for me, cinematic games are some of the pioneers in this downward spiral.
The vast majority of cinematic games carry with them the high demand of realistic graphics that are capable of conveying the human emotions the stories are centred around. A noble pursuit in theory. However, the obvious downside of this is that these kinds of graphics can be extortionately expensive to work with.
(Image property of Santa Monica Studio and Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Now, you might be thinking, “That’s fine, if publishers like Sony want to spend that much on a AAA game then that’s their cross to bear,” and usually, I’d agree. However, the problem this creates is that, when other developers see the massive critical and commercial success of a game like The Last of Us or God of War and they wish to mimic that success, they feel an obligation to meet those same graphical standards and expectations.
This cycle of increased spending and development times has raised some serious issues for the industry. There was a time where a game taking five or six years to come out would be considered outlandish mismanagement. Nowadays, it’s par for the course.
Again though, as a smart reader, you’re probably thinking, “The Last of Us and God of War were good though, so wouldn’t more games being like that be a good thing?” Well, unfortunately no. You see, for every Mozart, you need a Limp Bizkit. Every The Dark Knight needs a Batman and Robin and alongside the original Star Wars trilogy you have whichever Star Wars films the internet hates this week. Not everyone can live up to their forebears.
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| (Image property of Arkane Studios and Bethesda Softworks) |
As a result, we’ve ended up with games like Redfall and Jedi: Survivor as recent examples of games that have simply cracked under the pressure of these high graphical standards.
Furthermore, as many other commentators have observed, the number of these launch disasters has been on the uptick in recent years. This coincides with the rising popularity of the cinematic experience genre as we have reached closer and closer to rocket science levels of tech needed to make these games work.
Thus, on the surface, cinematic games set dangerous expectations that are arguably more of a burden than a blessing for developers, not just in the same genre but across the industry. However, I would argue that my chief complaints about cinematic games reach far below that surface level.
“This would make a great Netflix show”
As far back as the 80s and 90s, people tried and failed to make film and television adaptations of video games and you can see why. When asked to make sense of Mortal Kombat and its cast of multicoloured ninjas for a mainstream audiences, I wonder whether the creative team of the 1990s films began to question their life choices.
(Image property of Sony Pictures Television and HBO)
However, with the spawning of The Last of Us on HBO, people have fallen to their knees in thanks that the failed video game adaptation may be a thing of the past. Indeed, while shows like Arcane and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners were also lauded as adaptations, they were not direct translations of the games in the way that The Last of Us was.
Despite what came before it though, I wasn’t impressed by The Last of Us’s positive reception. My only thought was that yes, it obviously worked because it basically already was an eight hour series. If the adaptation failed then it would be down to a Tommy Wiseau level of incompetence rather than the material being too difficult to work with.
Herein lies the rub for me with cinematic narrative games. Many of them seem to find success in aping what films are already capable of achieving rather than doing something new or something that can only be achieved through video games.
There needn’t be an issue with this. Many narrative-heavy games have very strong characters and stories thanks to the time and effort poured into them. However, for many, this means that their gameplay feels like a chore to justify the story rather than a genuine vehicle to help tell it.
(Image property of Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment)
For an example, look to The Last of Us: Part 2. Without spoiling the game, its broad themes centre around the idea that all actions have consequences. For every ‘necessary’ killing that your character is responsible for, the consequences will come back to haunt them through moral decay or vengeance from others. It's a theme with interesting narrative possibilities for a zombie apocalypse.
However, this theme is fairly heavily undercut when the standard gameplay requires the player to massacre 20 people at a time in the cover-based shooting arenas. The consequence-free murder that takes place in the gameplay sphere runs counter to the narrative sphere’s finger-wagging about the consequences of killing people. In other words, it feels like a story that would really rather not have to do this whole gameplay thing because it keeps upsetting the message.
Furthermore, even when a cinematic game’s narrative isn’t undercut by its gameplay, I would also posit that there is nothing new or exciting about them. Take the Dark Souls series as a primed alternative to the linear, cinematic structure. In that series, you are expected to immerse yourself in the game’s world where the majority of the game’s story has already taken place and you simply piece together what happened afterwards.
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| (Image property of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment) |
This offers a lot more complexity not just in terms of the possibilities for the stories that can be told this way but also in how the player can experience that story. Because Dark Souls is so non-linear, players are unlikely to pick up the pieces of the story in an order that makes perfect sense. Rather, players' experiences will be unique to them and their ability to make connection between the pieces of information that they are given.
Dark Souls is a story that cannot be told in any medium other than video games because of how uniquely designed it is for the format it exists in. By contrast, games like The Last of Us can present perfectly fine stories without offering anything valuable that comes from them being video games.
As such, in the grand scheme of the industry, cinematic narrative-based games are acceptable but, ultimately, aren’t helping to push forward or evolve the medium in a way that would make them worth celebrating when compared to other titles.
Who’s the audience?
If you can get past the economic pressure they pose, I think cinematic games are good for the industry… I know. What the hell? You see, while it might sound nonsensical, both this statement and my previous reservations about cinematic games can be true. I don’t see much value in them as video games specifically, but I think that they are helping the industry overall. Let me explain.
Not long ago, I was catching up with old friends of mine who are not video-gamey people. They bought a PS5 to play Fifa and Call of Duty and that was about it. However, at one point we got to chatting about The Last of Us and how one of them was being drawn-in by its narrative elements.
At this point, I got over-excited, as I’m want-to-do when my favourite topic is brought up, and I asked him if he’d played any Naughty Dog games before. He looked very confused and seemed to think I was accusing him of an animal sex crime. After clearing things up, he told me that this was his first ‘proper’ game experience outside of the classic Fifa-CoD power couple.
(Image property of Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment)
This gave me pause for thought. After all, how could I really complain about The Last of Us and its kin when it was responsible for bringing my friend into the world of ‘core’ video game titles. From this experience, I realised that, even if you don’t care for cinematic games much in the field of video games as an art form, they are a valuable part of the ecosystem because of what they represent for new players.
I criticised these types of games for trying to emulate cinema like a teenager shallowly pretending to be an adult rather than pursuing their own identity. However, it is precisely because they are reflective of cinema that they are accessible for people that might otherwise be put off by video games.
There are plenty of people that find games confusing and intimidating. A film though, they can understand that because they’ve almost certainly seen one. Games like The Last of Us offer a valuable first step for people that might not otherwise get into games as a medium.
Since I started looking at them in this way, I’ve become far more accepting of cinematic games and the characteristics they hold because, while I do like being pretentious about games as art, I also like seeing the industry thrive. Like all successful markets and gene pools, attracting new people in is the key. So, maybe the next time you feel tired by a 30-hour long cinematic narrative game, you can feel happy knowing that its existence is helping to stave-off the incestuous alternative.
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