A question on cutscenes?

so my question on cutscenes is this!

how much cutscene is too much? do you drag it out or get to the point?

i want to start with a cutscene that shows a bit of history of the land, before everything, what event happened, then moving to current times and what recently happened right before you take controll of the hero in game.

is all that too much cutscene?

Ive given the gamer an option to skip all cutscenes if they wish, but they might not have any idea of whats going on.

would quick pictures of the scenes and a bit of writing info suffice?

whats everyones thoughts on it.

and if you did starting cutscenes, how much did you do, how long roughly do you recken it should last?

if you dont like cutscenes, what other way did you use to tell the gamer what has happened and is happening before you take controll in game?

many thanks everyone and i look forward to your replies :-D

rob

Personally, as a player, I prefer cutscenes kept to a minimum. As a developer, I know this is not always easy.

I say give the smallest amount of information necessary to get the game started. Then use NPCs and objects (statues, books, letters, etc.) to give the player more information.

To some extent it depends on your writing style, as well as the particular game.  I'm not a great lover of long cut scenes, so none of mine (except about one or at most two a game) last very long.  By that I mean nothing over 2 minutes, and usually shorter. As for the beginning, I prefer to let the player have control of the party as soon as possible.

First game: opening cut scene (which involved 3 maps, which all went quite quickly from one to the next) lasted about 2 minutes.  It established the physical locale, showed you the 3 main characters and their very general situation.

Second game (which I hope will be released soon): a slightly longer cut scene showing the event which precipitates the whole story.  Again moves from one map to another in the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 1 with movement from various sprites so that there is no sense that this is static.  I personally dislike intensely cut scenes which just show you one map and static characters for several minutes.  This cut scene takes just under 3 minutes.

Game I'm working on at the moment: opening cut scene of about 50 seconds.

All necessary additional information is given via dialogue/story plus items you can click on.  This helps greatly, imo, with giving a dynamic feel.  As the characters don't necessarily know what's going on, the player discovers information as they do.

Not everyone writes this way, so I am not suggesting that this is the only way.  However, from other threads and sites, I do know that most players get bored with long exposition at the beginning.  When it's just text (as distinct from dialogue) players tend to find that even more boring.

Long story short: keep it as brief as you can and give the necessary information as you go along.

I've got to many cutscenes and I don't really care. The story is my favorite aspect of any media capable of possessing one and pondering how different personalities clash with each other in random situations is awesome. I would recommend that you don't have long scenes at the beginning, let players taste your gameplay as soon as possible and let the story unfold as they play; maybe cut down some of the longer scenes into their core and use the rest as optional conversations for those that want them. I invented an entire gameplay element around conversing with the main characters in my game to support such a thing.

Cutscenes should only be as long as they need to be to convey what they're meant to get across to the player.  As a writer, I've struggled with dialogue my entire life.  I'd start with "Hello" and end up with six paragraphs that revolved around the simple greeting.

I've found that it's best to go through "drafts" with your cutscenes, the same way you would with papers for school or books you're writing for a publisher.  The first time you do the cutscene, just put everything into it that you think belongs in it.  Then, experience the cutscene yourself a few times and have a friend or two experience it.  When your friend is experiencing it, watch their face and body language instead of what they're doing.  If they seem a bit annoyed, it's probably too much.  After that, it's time to make a new draft and get rid of redundant information as well as information the player doesn't absolutely need at that moment.  Do some more playthroughs of it and have different friends look at it.  Your final draft should be to give the minimum amount of information possibly needed to get started as well as deliver it in some kind of compelling way that makes the player interested.

If you want a good example of how to get away with a long intro cutscene, look at Final Fantasy 6 or Final Fantasy 7.  The intro to FF6 is really lengthy with very little dialogue...  It could be done in about 20 seconds, but it drags on for about 2 minutes and then you've got another 3 minute (skippable!) credits roll that's also part of the intro.  The dialogue, however, fixes you into the story.  It gives you the bare minimum and makes you wonder just what kind of world you're playing around in.  The intro to FF7 shows off the massive city you're in, the technology, one of the characters you'll be meeting soon, and the fact that it's underground.  It zooms to the train and gives you your first character where you are given expository dialogue for about 20 seconds and then you're off to kill enemies.

Longer cutscenes have to be compelling.  Dialogue should be kept to the minimum needed to get your point across.  I'm constantly trimming or rewriting my own cutscenes just to make things easier on the player as well as to help retain some mystery about the world they're playing in.

I think it completely depends on the style of the game.  A murder mystery game would, understandably, have many more and longer cutscenes than an action-focused RPG.  If you want a highly interactive game, keep cutscenes brief and have the story told almost completely through the maps, objects and NPC dialog.  If you want a more of an interactive novel, long cutscenes are pretty much required, since the entire game is focused on telling a story more than player interactivity.

As a player, I do appreciate the need for backstory and plot setup, but I really dislike when games have long cutscenes for their intro.  FFIV takes an interesting approach to this, which works for me.  At the beginning, you get a brief cutscene where Cecil steals the Crystal from Mysidia, then you immediately get attacked by some monsters on the way back.  When you return, you have another cutscene where the King strips command of the Red Wings from Cecil and gives you and your friend Kain a package to deliver. 

Then you can explore the castle, talk to people, but the game doesn't go on until you go to Cecil's room and rest.  There is another brief cutscene where Rosa (Cecil's girlfriend) talks to Cecil about the Crystal.  Then, Cecil and Kain set out and there's a longer text roll that gives more context, then you start the game.

So, what it does is split out a lot of cutscene-worthy backstory into smaller bite-sized chunks, and intersperse player interactivity throughout. 

In my case, my first game has a blurb of scrolling text that gives just enough information to place the intro cutscene (which lasts maybe 1 minute) into context.  The cutscenes I do have tend to be very short, around a minute or so, and just give bits and pieces of plot.

As a developer, I personally use a cutscene when there's no other practical way to convey the information, or when the player MUST see the information or be forced to do something.  And when I do, I try to keep the cutscene brief.  If I want more (optional) information, I have the cutscene set a Switch, then have some NPCs in the room or elsewhere say something different, related to what happened in the cutscene.

Lastly, I try to keep all player-action-forced cutscenes to a minimum, because as a player I find it REALLY irritating when a game makes the player do something really stupid just to advance the plot. 

It depends on how good are you at writing your story and making the cutscenes that go with it. If it's a good cutscene, by all means, take all the time in the world just... don't do it when the game starts, there's no need. A good story is told over time, not in the first minutes, if you feed too much information to the player early on, it will stagger (and probably bore) him to quit playing.

Something you could do to tell a prologue / cutscene is do it while the player retains certain control, make him be able to "play" through the story, of course, make it so the player can't deviate from the story too much, but if you are telling of how some evil was defeated in the past, why don't you have the player fight the evil and defeat it in the first place? It would also be a good place to write a few hints on how to better play the game, make him used to the battle system and so on. 

Something else you could do is to make it clever... present it with great images, videos or something that makes it stand, the player wants to play and have fun, make sure you are at least giving him some of that. 

Whatever you do, however, do not use scroll text. Please! Enough of it already! 

Cheers.

Depends really on your game's style. But personally, as much as I love a good story, I hate long cutscenes. If you will have a really long one, at least make some parts of it interactive so that it doesn't bore out the player.

Thanks you everyone for your feedback. It's overwhelming the ideas you've given me and opened my eyes to different ways of showing the user things in game without using cutscenes.

(being still somewhat of a newbie) i think its 4 weeks almost lol

still so many things im learning and how to upgrade my game to be better.

i would never have thought of getting the gamer to take part in a scene that i was going to just "cutscene", now with your info, i can actually put him in it and take part in the history of the game.

So much appreciation right now and quick responces too :-D

This is a very helpful forum, monkeyman1188. 

Some other newbie advice:  Look at the sample maps (right-click on the maps), and the many tutorials on this site before you start making a game.  Then, I think it's best to start with a simple game, or perhaps a small piece of your larger one, to get the feel for how to use RPG Maker before you start doing more complex ones.   Within that simple game, make sure gameplay is balanced, polished and so forth, since those are keys that separate great games from crappy ones.

It's a huge sense of pride and accomplishment when you finish your first game, even if it's a tiny little "demo game"   And there is a LOT to learn.

I prefer long cut scenes as a game player as long as they are interesting! Like a game like dragon age, or ogre battle 64 i would look forward to the cut scenes and then when i had to play again id be like damnit i just wana watch the scenes!

I think it all depends on the developer's personal storytelling style.
If you're good at creating elaborate cutscenes, go for it if you

think that the game will benefit.

My rule of thumb is that the epic scenes should be elaborate. (The endings, etc)