Look, I’m of the opinion that most video game stories are utter trash. There, I said it.
That being said, I have never, ever skipped a cut-scene during my first playthrough of a video game and I never will. How about you?
If I’m going to be investing 10-60 hours of my life in this bloody video game, I feel like I owe it to myself to have some vague understanding of why I’m shooting/punching/stabbing these guys? Surely that’s vaguely important.
Yet I still here about people who bloody skip cut-scenes altogether. What is wrong with you people?
Comments
70 responses to “Tell Us Dammit: Do You Skip Cut-Scenes?”
omggggg, totally agreed. I even watched all of Res Evil 5’s cutscenes for crying out loud! Is why I can never play through a story campaign with friends usually, I end up stuck with that person who skips them.
Hell no!
Fin
Same, always watch them the first time.
But if they don’t give the option to skip it subsequent times then may a thousand curses rain upon them.
*cough cough* Destiny. I understand the initial ones are loading screens which’re ok to sit through, but the ones in the middle of or at the end of missions, let me skip dagnabbit
Some of the cutscenes at the end of the levels can be effectively skipped. You get credit for a lot of things before the cutscene, so you can go to orbit before the counter reaches zero without losing anything. I actually think you get your completion rewards from daily/weekly content before the summary page too but I’ve never been brave enough to test that theory.
Destiny really fucked that up with making such a grind and then you cant skip?! It killed it for me… Actually the grind for ascendant shards killed me then i saw another cutscene i couldnt skip and thats the last time
100% yes
From memory ever since SNES/N64 days Nintendo have been the main sticklers in my life who make them unskippable, not too bad though.
First time? Never. Under any circumstance.
Subsequent playthrough? Always unless it’s rad.
That should be the next ‘Tell Us, Dammit’. Or an addition, anyway.
“Which cut-scenes do you sit through more than once because they’re rad.”
I like rad things. Crowd-sourced gamer memory-jogging is awesome.
The cut-scene in Halo: Reach on the first mission with the injured citizen and the Elite pops out energy sword in hand is a good example of a rad cut-scene I never skipped, no matter how many times I played that mission to get the challenge XP 🙂
I skip them in most games. some have great stories or are just so funny i wanna sit back and enjoy them 🙂
I only skip when I’m replaying the game.
The way it should be.
Not in the first playthrough or if I haven’t played a game in a while. Occasionally during a game though I like to be reminded of the story.
I always watch them the first time then I’ll skip them if I’ve seen them before and it’s actually possible. (Why is the ability to skip a cut scene not a mandatory feature?) Sometimes I’ll watch them again if I haven’t played the game in a while or it was particularly interesting.
MGS2, 3 and 4 were all great movies!
Ok, I can let that comment about MGS 2 and 4 slide, but I won’t stand someone to insult MGS 3!
I wasn’t insulting! MGS 3 is my favourite game of all time! 😛
I could be wrong but MGS3 felt like it had more interesting, more ‘together’ cut scenes than 2 and 4 combined lol
I spent an exorbitant amount of time in MGS2’s Theater Mode, so they did something right!
The only game where I have skipped cutscenes on the first playthrough has been Final Fantasy 14, and only because of the other people who lose their shit waiting for the new people. I’ve had to sit through 30-40 minutes (An entire dungeon) of someone throwing a tantrum because of other people not skipping cutscenes and making everyone wait, it gets tiring so I just can’t be bothered with it anymore.
First time – always watch. Subsequent play-throughs – will skip if I don’t care, but will rewatch for favourites (ie, Mass Effect, Uncharted). I haaaaaaated the cutscenes in the first Kingdom Hearts – they were ‘interactive’ in that you had to hit X to proceed to the next block of text, which just meant you HAD to be there to rewatch that entire bloody thing all over again, ughhh.
Mass Effect had sooooo many skippable-but-if-you-do-what’s-wrong-with-you cut-scenes.
There’s one in Kingdom Hearts, right before you fight Riku/Ansem, that ends with “There’s no way you’re takingKairi’sheart!” I must have seen that cutscene a hundred times, as a kid – the fight takes a lot more dodging than I was used to. That line is permanently burned into my brains.
1.5HD Remix I took the bastard down first try. Never has anything felt as satisfying.
First playthrough its watch all of them. From then on skip, unless I really liked the scene
If the cut-scene involves Ben from Horizon 2, then YES!
Never skip them first time through, but have been guilty of zoning out and grabbing a sandwich during MGS chatter…
One of my most favourite features in… the last generation I think? At least that’s where I first remember seeing it. Where you push a button during a cutscene, and you get a little popup in the corner showing you what button you need to push to skip it.
I used to hate not knowing whether the cutscene would skip if I accidentally hit B, or A, or if it’d only react to Start, or what. Having that little safety buffer there is so much better, and makes it easier to relax 😛
(so obviously yeah, I never skip on the first playthrough either)
Yep I love this feature too – I used to be so worried that I’d skip a cut scene when all I wanted to do was pause it!
In alot of jap games if its like visual novel style cutscenes, if i can sense that the characters are gonna go on a neverending inane-“Oh Yoko! You’re so crazy about beef ramen!” “Hey, no fair! I just haven’t had breakfast!” “Yeah right! Youre gonna empty out all the restaurants in —–” GROOOAAAAN, then i’ll gladly just mash my way through it…
And obviously if its all in japanese, i’ll skip it all.
Actual like animated cutscenes i wont, regardless of how inane it is or whether i understand the language.
Second playthrough all bets are off
I like the visual novel’s approach where there’s a skip-all-except-new option, so you can skip things you’ve seen before and it’ll resume when you reach a new branching point.
:O I have never skipped a Tales skit!
I watch all the cut scenes during the first play through, someone made them so the lest I can do is watch them. I fell asleep during a metal gear solid 4 cut scene……….but that is a special case, they should have a warning before those hour long cut scenes to tell you that if its 11 o’clock you should probably save and watch it in the morning.
You wake up to your alarm clock next morning and the cutscene is still going. The plot twists have gone full circle and they’re now reacting surprised over plot points you didn’t realise were ever in question.
Only when they’re boring and its a cutscene I’ve seen from hundreds of other games. Like an opening for a fantasy game.
Metal Gear series…
Flash Screen
*skip*
Credits.
A few years back I was saying to someone how much I liked Assassin’s Creed 2 and they were saying they didn’t really like it. I made mention that I liked being in that world, with the characters and the story. I got the response, ‘oh I skipped all the cutscenes.’
My reaction is just… ‘how could you do that.’
Here is the question though, who reads all that extra stuff in games? Whether it’s newspaper articles, journals, e-mails, historical facts. Now that stuff is often too much to be bothered.
On cutscenes, a really big pet peeve of mine is you finish a mission/ level of a game and you want to stop playing. However it goes right into a cut scene. Where sometimes if you skip it to then exit the game, the autosave starts after it. Such bad design.
Wow losing all the story to AC2 – yeah that would make for a boring experience!!!!! Loved number 2!!!
For the most part, depends on the game though. Couldn’t not read every single log scan in Metroid Prime, for example 😛 Assassin’s Creed 2, I tried to read most of the extra stuff… but sometimes I just skimmed it instead, since it didn’t seem overly interesting.
It’s not that crazy though. I don’t remember anything noteworthy about the first Assassin’s Creed plot. The game play was fun though so it was entertaining. I could understand someone going into the second one with the attitude that story was irrelevant.
Sometimes you’ve got to step back from being a gamer and remember a lot of people eat this stuff like McDonalds. Whether the game was designed with it in mind or not they sit down and engage with it on a purely mechanical level. Driving cars, shooting bad guys, skating, playing football. I find it hard to imagine, but I’m sure more than one person out there has played Arkham Asylum without paying attention to the story at all. Treating it like a pure, mindless brawler with some stealth bits and loving it.
I get the feeling that these are the people who are the reason that MOBAs and TF2 and CoD etc are so popular. They probably vastly outnumber gamers like me, at a guess.
I groan at a game that doesn’t give me enough smoke-and-mirrors attempts at motivation to shoot all the things, then when I complain about it not being done very well (eg: Destiny), there’s always an enormous crowd saying, “Who cares? Just shoot all of the things, that’s the fun part!”
For me, I need that illusion for motivation. Otherwise I might as well just be running the introductory special-forces paper-target training range.
I think what makes us different is we play games that we’re told will shatter our minds and make us rethink everything we know about gaming… once or twice a month. Whether those games succeed or fail it makes us really good at processing gameplay. That makes something like the plot/characters in The Last of Us important to us because we need something beyond gameplay to invest in.
Someone who plays a few games a year can invest in beating GTA and that’s rewarding, but I’ve played so many games that most of the time I walk through the door good enough to annihilate it. Not because I’m some fantastically skilled player, but because I’ve played games like GTA so many times that if there’s a part of the skill set I’m not great at I’ve been forced to confront it so many times that I know how to work around my lack of skill.
I was playing Legend of Korra last night and it really is just a fun brawler. It’s not outstanding. It’s not inspired. It’s not long. It’s sort of low budget. It’s not made for gamers. I find a game like that every now and then gives me a little perspective on how I’m processing the other games I play. It makes me realise when I’m not playing a MMORPG because I’m enjoying it I’m playing it because I’m good enough that I don’t have to tap out. It stops me from thinking a game needs to be fixed just because I can see how the design could be improved. It also reminds me that even though I feel like every game I play needs to be revolutionary I enjoy just smashing stuff sometimes.
Only after the first playthrough.
Metal Gear Solid 4 damn near killed me…
But I never skip first play through – I’m also very thankful a lot of developers have a pause option for cutscenes these days as I live with a woman and our child and sometimes she just dont get it…
Having said that now when a game comes out that doesnt allow pause its also good you are required to hold O to skip instead of start/options button just skipping it… That coulda been awkward
MGS ones are usually compelling but the ending to 4 was way too drawn out. I really, really, really didn’t care about what happened to Johnny and Meryl.
Plus those loading times at the start of chapters… Damn…
Never. But I do agree MGS4’s ending was nearly the death of me. Seriously I think I finished it 4 times as I kept falling asleep in the, what feels like, 1 hour + long ending cutscene. Only game worse for long scenes is Yakuza, but I always found those rather compelling as they really framed it like a classic Yakuza movie.
The first time? Nope. But non skippable cut scenes are annoying as hell in your second attempt, or if they’re just really bad like worms battlegrounds.
Never on my first playthrough. Practically never in subsequent playthroughs, either, actually. If I’m playing a game through for a second time, it’s because I liked the story, which means I usually want to watch the cutscenes again.
Hit the nail on the head.
Never in the first play through. Every subsequent time I skip it unless it’s awesome like the Last of Us.
I walk into every game I have ever played saying ‘I will watch all the cutscenes no matter WHAT’. It has only actually happened once. Red Dead Redemption.
I always watch the first time. It would be nice if games would let you pause and skip cutscenes.
First time through: no way, I want to appreciate the story!
Second time through: depends on the quality.
Third time through: yep, yep, got it, no problem, onto the next thing (unless it’s like, really super good).
I love Destiny but the unskippable story cutscenes on second/third characters and even when just replaying story missions was really frustrating. I couldn’t tell you how many times the queen’s brother has opened his punchable face-hole to tell me “Good luuuuuuuuuck…. getting through the exclusion zone.”
Yeah, I just go make myself a cup of coffee or take care of other business.
The only cutscene that particularly annoys me is on the moon when the stranger contacts you on the Dinklephone. I get a clunky black screen and pause before the scene which is really similar to getting booted from the game by an instance of one of the 11,275,894 different server errors Bungie have had the time to name.
Canary. Canary damnit…or some other thing
Bungie may well be turning young men off beaver forever.
Upvote for dinklephone.
I skip them if I have watched them once.
So if I play though again, or I die and have to repeat, skipped
I have, and I no doubt will again. If the story is bad, but the game is fun I see no sense in ruining my enjoyment.
I paid my money and I will do what I want.
This is why me and my sons don’t play together. I watch ALL the cutscenes for story and for goals
Me
Put in new game
Watch all the scenes. Collect everything. Break everything that can be broken (looking at you Lego(insert name here)
Explore everywhere
Sons
Skip everything. EVERYTHING I TELLS YA!
I have zero interest in the story of games. I skip everything possible. Everything
I’ll watch the first 5 or so, and if I’m enjoying it so far I’ll watch all of them. If it hasn’t got me hooked by then, I’m skipping them all.
I tend to watch them the first time but only if I’m interested in the story.
Yeah I always watch the first time; and sometimes the next couple depending on how I like the game. Actually I get really annoyed if the cutscene is an immediate skip with a single button press like they used to be (now most games have a hold button down to skip) because if you accidentally hit the button and cant go back.
Not until my second play-through.
I always watch the cutscenes. I loooove pulp videogame stories
Metal Gear, Yakuza, GTA V, Vagrant Story, Uncharted, squaresoft games (not enix) are some of my favourites
I never skip cutscenes, no matter how many times I’ve played the game. It’s part of the experience. It would be the same as watching a movie that you’ve already seen, but just randomly fast forwarding or skipping entire scenes. Another thing that I find really weird (and my girlfriend is guilty of this) are people who will get so far in a book and then suddenly decide to read the ending, just to see it they really want to keep going or not. A lot of people seem to have forgotten what story telling is ultimately all about, and they’ve lost respect for passage that delivers us to the impact of an ending. Otherwise it’s just another random event recorded on a medium that holds no significance other than the fact that it exists.
Except in the case of MOH: Warfighter (which wasn’t actually possible to skip the cut scenes), I’ll only skip if it’s my second play through. And hell if I was going to watch the MGS4 cutscenes again!!
To skip the cutscenes on the first playthrough is to be missing half the game, so I never do it.
That said, I am thankful there’s an option to skip, on the off-chance that an otherwise good game is ruined by a terrible plot. That thankfully hasn’t happened yet in my experience.
First time; never, second time it; depends on the game. Third run through of any game or series is always my “experience-absolutely-everything-the-game-has-to-offer” play through in which I skip nothing and explore everything. Most games don’t warrant a second play through though, so the third is only for a select few games or series.