Bad Video Game Writing

[codezer0]

It's pretty well known that back in the 8-bit days, most console QA done was pretty much just caring whether the game will boot up and play more than whether the writing was properly localized. This is why we got so much engrish back then.

As to why it still happens now? Well, I'd blame cultural xenophobia and a prideful sense of themselves, like they just don't *expletive* care what anyone outside of Nippon thinks.

Then we have companies like LJN back then who just didn't even care about quality or disregarded QA entirely, and were simply focused on pushing out as many titles per year as they could in the hopes that at least one of them could actually be successful; hindsight is 20/20, but considering it was an age before the internet, timely reviews from anyone who wasn't just renting a copy were hard to come by, so marketing tended to con a great many into thinking it was better than it really was. Annoyingly, that kind of crap still happens.

 

[CathyRina]

If they are too long then yes. Long cutscenes arent out of the question but you shouldnt go overboard. You say I don't know what I'm talking about but I'm only really saying that one thing. I don't see what there is to argue with unless you think MGS scenes technically don't break this rule since they are either not that long or so good that its worth it.

Let me put it this way. When I played my first metal Gear Solid game 3 years ago (MGS3 for 3DS btw.) I started playing in the evening and had to stop after my alarm clock started notifying me that I've played through the whole night. I've been so sucked in by this game that I didn't even notice how long I was playing. That was an unusual experience, I usually can't play the same game for longer than 2 hours straight. I have too much free time... Anyway I assume that the cutscenes need to be good because it wasn't the gameplay. Heck I sucked at this game back then I remember using a sniper rifle to eliminate guards because I couldn't find a way to sneak past them. God, I was so stupid back then for not figuring the gameplay out.

Also if I sit down every night to play for one hour it isn't a bad thing to get roughly thee same amount of cutscenes and gameplay in each session. Not that one night is impromptu 'watch cutscenes' night.

God, finally a legit argument. You're right! If you play only for one hour then these games are fuck*ng awful. But as far as I see it they are meant to be played for more than an hour straight... I mean after the final boss in MGS4 you have literally an hour long cutscene.
If you dislike all the metal gears for the length of the cutscenes Peace Walker, Rising Revengence, Ground Zeroes (don't buy it, rent it) and The Phantom Pain are probably the ones designed for you. I was playing through some missions of peace walker as we spoken and the average playtime was from 8 minutes to 30 Minutes with like 5 - 10 Minute cutscenes per story mission. Excluding the opening and ending cutscenes as they have a bigger job to do. There is like 120 side missions and all can be even done in coop. And between every Mission you build up your own base, develop new items to tackle missions differently, upgrade your items etc., recruit soldiers for your army. It feels more like a game than a movie since you as a player have a bigger impact on the progress. Same for Rising which is a platinum spin off, which means it's gotta be silly and fully aware of that. Don't buy Ground Zeroes. You probably should rent it and then decide whenever or not you want to buy The Phantom Pain. TPP is taking all features from Peace Walker and expanding them while adding open world on top of it (although coop wasn't announced yet but there will be online multiplayer) And like said earlier I spend 90% of the time playing a game rather than watching cutscenes in my 5 hours play though of Ground Zeroes so it can't be that bad, right?
I could go in detail about that but I think we came to a conclusion. I'd like to end this conversation for the sake of this thread.