RANT: QTE's suck or are rather very annoying

So this is my first rant on my new blog space. I hope to post many more since that is why blogs exist...right?

So, what are QTE's? If you have been a video gamer in the last generation or the current one, these gems have been around for awhile. Known as Quick Time Events, a person playing a game will be prompted with a series of button presses during a static cut scene in the video game. This allows a player some semblance of control over an otherwise static cut scene in the game.

I call it teh suck.

The earliest game I can recall utilizing this was 1983's Dragon Lair. The whole game was controlled by QTE's set in an animated world. At the time it was the most amazing thing to watch, visuals on par with Disney movies. Playing it, on the other hand, was an exercise in patience, memorization, and frustration. There was no skill except to have quick reflexes and hope you pushed the joystick in the right direction- fast. If you missed it, you died and had to replay the entire sequence over. Fun, huh?

Don't get me wrong many games, good or bad, have utilized this game design choice. The alternative was to have the player sit and twiddle their thumbs while watching these little movies with nothing to do. When gamers complained about the length of cut scenes and the lack of interactivity they lost when these cut scenes showed up, game designers leaned on QTE's to fill the need. Hoping to make the cut scenes more interactive, the player can be engaged while the game moves through its narrative and tells it story. 

Now, I don't want to get into the argument over story telling in video games. I think we still have huge steps to take in that direction, but the current slew of games do a pretty decent job of telling a story be it through cut scenes or purely through game play.

Examples of games with cut scenes and QTE's:

   

        RE5            Tomb Raider       God of War

Those without:

   

     Bioshock          Half Life 2           Fallout 3

My main beef with QTE's is in its implementation. I had an argument with Beerjedi, a buddy of mine, who loved Resident Evil 5, sinking almost 40 hours playing the game over and over. I enjoyed the game as well, except for the very end of the game where a series of QTE's frustrated the hell out of me, marring the otherwise enjoyable experience I had. I think QTE's are used, more so than not, to cover up sloppy development and/or story. It is a way to get away with lazy story telling or adding artificial padding in a game. Used sparingly, it is but an annoyance. Extensively using it does not allow the player to play and when you penalize a player for not hitting the right button quick enough and starting you over after an extended period of button slapping (I am talking to you Prince of Persia), to start the whole process again can make gamers like me  crazy enough to jump out a window.

When a game spends a ton of time teaching you the mechanics of the game and empowering you through their control scheme and suddenly throws out all of the things you learned so you can now hunt and peck face buttons arbitrarily, can ruin the flow of the game. I don't know what the answer is, maybe keep QTE's down to a minimum or don't use them at all. They really don't add anything since we know we are not in full control of the character during these times. The worst sin is to harshly penalize the player not for misusing the learned mechanics of the game, but because they didn't press B,A,B,Y,LT,RT,X,X correctly and quickly. I think it's bullshit and I for one hate them.

Comments

[Don Snabulus]

I would respond, but I am afraid you wrote that post with an incorrect sequence of directional keys.