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[Fridgecrisis]

I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts about quick time events and their relatives. By now, I'm sure everyone's seen this screenshot from the latest CoD:



This strikes me as an odd use of the mechanic and a weird design choice for an action game where the cutscenes and story are anything but important.

Now, I don't know if this particular event is timed. What happens if you refuse to press F? Does the game just sit there and wait for you? I haven't played Bioshock: Infinite, but I hear there's a similar non-choice toward the end of that game, where the characters in danger will just awkwardly wait for you to act. So on the one hand, it seems like a time limit and/or multiple choices are the bare minimum to make this mechanic interesting, like they did it in The Walking Dead.

But on the other hand, the very act of deliberately pressing a button to participate in a scene strikes me as something that could have an impact, even if there isn't really a choice or time limit associated with it. Like, if your character is standing in front of some nether portal at the end of Game X that he's not likely to return from, and the game shows a button prompt and waits for you to press it, that seems kind of meaningful. You have to choose to jump in. The character won't do it by themselves.

Any thoughts or other notably good/bad uses of this mechanic? Why do you like or dislike it?

[Cobralad]

Half Life 2 killed shooters that rascal.

On unrelated note, I want that everyone watched that video. Just watch from 2:20:




I think it may be an actual intentional parody of Watch Dogs "wault the grave" meme, since there are actual human beings who know that cod is ridiculous but have limited creative input.

[Fridgecrisis]

Huh, I hadn't really considered that. Maybe they did mean it as something of a self-aware joke. It just seems like CoD is too big to have weird self-aware moments, but maybe not.

[Boreal]

I've seen another quasi-QTE in which you have to shoot an enemy in the vehicle next to you.  If you don't do it within a few seconds, the enemies just slump over by themselves for some odd reason instead of punishing the player.

It's getting ridiculous to the point where Poe's Law is kicking in; the line between satire and earnest is becoming blurred to the point where you can't tell the difference.

[Udderdude]

https://twitter.com/slowbeef/status/529315448144543744

[s0]

playing devils advocate here for a sec, how is this different from what jrpgs have been doing for decades? 90% of them are full of "press x to advance plot" events and a lot of them present you with fake "dialog choices" where your choice doesn't matter. or even worse, you get stuck in an infinite loop until you select the "correct" answer. golden sun is a big offender in regards to that.

(i don't have any beef with jrpgs and i don't play CoD, just putting this into perspective)

[Fridgecrisis]

playing devils advocate here for a sec, how is this different from what jrpgs have been doing for decades? 90% of them are full of "press x to advance plot" events and a lot of them present you with fake "dialog choices" where your choice doesn't matter. or even worse, you get stuck in an infinite loop until you select the "correct" answer. golden sun is a big offender in regards to that.

(i don't have any beef with jrpgs and i don't play CoD, just putting this into perspective)

That actually echoes a lot of my feelings on the subject. I was talking with someone earlier about the Persona series and I seem to remember multiple occasions where you're given a choice of something like "Yes," "I guess so," and "Totally!" Obviously your choice here isn't going to impact the story, but it DOES have the effect of letting the player express themselves a bit through the character.

If you think about it, if a dialogue box popped up and the only option was "Yes," it would be really strange. That's exactly what the "Press F to Pay Respects" is. At least if we have a few different ways to say yes or pay respects, it says something about the character and makes the player feel like they're contributing to the story.

[Udderdude]

Press F to Flip Everyone Off

...

You have been Dishonourably Discharged

Game Over

[SirNiko]

Wonderful 101 had a tongue-in-cheek QTE at the end where you're instructed to "Tap A to Protect Earth" to try to fire a laser and push away the bad guys laser. A few seconds into the event you cut to the heroes in their giant robot furiously tapping buttons just like the player is doing.





The various QTE through the game are easy to win, and failure is usually accompanied by a silly cutscene that's worth failing the QTE to see it (in one the commander chastises you for failing such an easy QTE, another has a heroine interrupted by a phone call, and if you fail it several times in a row you get a secret alternate scene that reveals the call is from a character in another game from that studio).

God of War's QTEs I generally liked because they came across as actual challenges during gameplay. Killing a minotaur and winning the button mashing game would let you kill it earlier and get a health refill. Responding to a centaur with the correct direction on the control stick turned a damaging attack into an opening to counter. You could win most battles without triggering QTEs, which I think helped make them seem less forced.

God of War III also had one really notable QTE where you press both sticks to gouge out Poseidon's eyes, which felt distressingly natural, whereas the rest of the game you feel divorced from the violence because mashing square to stab an enemy is less realistic.

I generally like the idea of adding some elements of interactivity to the game to improve what would otherwise be a cutscene, though I think you can do better than boiling it down to pressing a button to perform a complex action. I like things like the end of Metal Gear Solid 3 where you fired your gun in the final scene (using the same fire button you've used throughout the game) or when you fire the portal gun for the last time at the end of Portal 2. Better still if you just work all the story so that they fit within the mechanics of the game, like how Metal Gear Solid 2 has you listen in on a conversation with a remote microphone, or Bioshock Infinite makes you run through Elizabeth's tower while Songbird keeps popping in to tear it apart.

[Fridgecrisis]

Those definitely sound like they were all done really well. I had thought of the ending to Portal 2 earlier as a great example. It doesn't even show a button prompt, since you just need to do the same thing you've been doing the entire game.

I think AC2 had a couple QTE moments I liked. Since the buttons are generally mapped to the corresponding areas of Ezio's body, it felt kinda natural to use those buttons to do stuff during the cutscenes.

[Adam_]

Quick Time Events feel a lot like a cheap way to keep the player engaged with cutscenes, especially when considering the ones where failing or not performing an event doesn't have any consequences. Still, I kind of likes the ones from Fahrenheit, or Heavy Rain. They can have an immersive impact as long as executed on a reasonable scale, but it can also backfire heavily when not making a difference between failure and success. If the game doesn't care whether I press buttons, why should I?

Press F to Pay Respects

I'm pretty sure this is satire.

[SirNiko]

Oh yeah, I forgot about this one. When QTEs go bad. Heavy Rain Spoilers.

[Udderdude]

http://www.kongregate.com/games/kthorjensen/press-x-to-jason

Edit: I should've known p4rgaming would be all over this shit already

http://www.p4rgaming.com/what-metal-gear-solid-v-can-learn-from-call-of-duty-advanced-warfares-press-f-to-pay-respect-scene/

[jolene]

[Fridgecrisis]

On a related note, here's what happens if you fail to do every QTE in Ace Combat.





Only 4 QTE's actually affect the story beyond dialogue, as far as I can tell from the video.

[Udderdude]

I'm going to start calling them quittime events.  Because when you see that shit .. it's time to quit.

[Sik]

If you think about it, if a dialogue box popped up and the only option was "Yes," it would be really strange.

Hatoful Boyfriend, anyone? (warning, spoiler, albeit from the original version):
http://truemeaningoflife.com/images/hatoful658.jpg

And yes I searched into Angie's playthrough just to find that screenshot =P

[Derek]

playing devils advocate here for a sec, how is this different from what jrpgs have been doing for decades? 90% of them are full of "press x to advance plot" events and a lot of them present you with fake "dialog choices" where your choice doesn't matter. or even worse, you get stuck in an infinite loop until you select the "correct" answer. golden sun is a big offender in regards to that.

(i don't have any beef with jrpgs and i don't play CoD, just putting this into perspective)

The reason why this is different is because "Press F to Pay Respects" sounds fucking absurd. I don't think it would have gotten screencapped if it asked "Do you want to pay respects? YES/NO".

Also, this is still my favorite QTE sequence:

[PowRTocH]

This one is also older:

[PowRTocH]

Press nothing to let Jesus take the wheel.