Whatever Happened to the Cutscene?

I have fond memories of playing games on my dad's computer as a young boy. Sure, compared to today's graphics they did not look that great and cutscenes were pretty much nonexistant but they were still a lot of fun. Fast forward to my sophomore year of college after my girlfriend(now wife)gets me the playstation one for my birthday. To my astonishment and delight many games now had these incredibly cool, high resolution intros and cutscenes.

The great thing was that you never knew when cutscenes were going to take place. Sometimes there was one when you successfully completed a big level or maybe you would be treated to one right before a big boss fight. All I knew is that they were fun to watch and really added to the gaming experience. Some of my favorite cutscenes I remember were from PSone games like ODDWORLD, HEART OF DARKNESS, and MEDIEVAL. When the PS2 came around most games featured, at the very least, a really nice, full-resolution intro cutscene and, if you were lucky, there were more placed throughout the game. GOD OF WAR 1 and 2 both boasted gorgeous cutscenes that could be played again and again after you played the game.

Now fastforward to present day. The full resolution, highly detailed cutscene still exists. However, we seem to find it less and less in today's typical video game. Because of increasing technology games tend to look better and better. This is not a bad thing. But, because of this, many game developers tend to now use in-game graphics for all of their cutscenes instead of the super detailed, high resolution cutscenes I have come to love so much. Even GOD OF WAR 3, which is still one of the most incredible-looking games I have ever played, traded high-resolution cutscenes for in-game graphics cutscenes.

This is not to say that games need higher-resolution cutscenes to be good games. DEADRISING is still my favorite game and all of the cutscenes were in-game graphics. I can understand that it is probably a lot cheaper for developers to use in-game graphics for their cutscenes rather than pay for the higher-resolution models to be created and animated. To me there is just a deeper richness to the game if the nicer-looking cutscenes are there. So thank you to those of you who still throw in the higher resolution intros and cutscenes. This gamer salutes you.