In the early moments of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare‘s campaign mode, the player is given a choice — press or hold a button to pay their respects to a fallen comrade, or just sit there awkwardly watching the screen until they get bored and wander off. Not much of a choice, really.
Circulating on Twitter and Reddit yesterday, screens like the one above are being pointed at and ridiculed. It’s the new “Press ‘E’ to Hide In The Mass Grave.” I can see it. While nowhere near as distasteful as Homefront‘s example, a military funeral is a very odd place for a button prompt, especially in a game filled with gorgeous non-interactive cutscenes.
Having played through the full campaign however, I can understand why Sledgehammer Games chose to make this portion of the story player-controlled.
Mild spoilers follow.
In the scene in question, Jack Mitchell is bidding farewell to his best friend, who perished during a disastrous mission in South Korea. His friend also happens to be the son of Kevin Spacey’s Jonathan Irons, founder and CEO of powerful private military corporation Atlas.
The button press is a mechanic that signals the beginning of the interactive portion of the scene. Here’s the sequence in full.
Why go interactive at this point? Without spoiling anything, I’ll say that the sequence acts as a clever framing device for events which occur later in the game. It also, hopefully obviously, hints that there’s something not quite right with Spacey’s character. Your son’s funeral is not the proper place to field a new recruit.
That doesn’t mean the whole “Hold X” bit isn’t a silly device. The game needed the player to perform and action and follow the non-player characters down a path, and this is what they came up with.
Comments
16 responses to “Nothing Says Funeral Like A Quick Time Event”
“Press F If You Cry Everytim”
“Hold X to unlock casket”
You can’t really see it in the clip posted. But the guy that sits next to Kevin spacey looks a lot like Ryan gosling.
Oh sweet Christ give us a Drive game. Somehow, I don’t even care.
Do you care if it’s not called Drive? Because there’s always Hotline Miami.
Yes, but unfortunately I can only Platinum Hotline Miami once. That’s why I’m eagerly awaiting the second, and my 1/6 scale Jacket figure!
Press X to Wilson!
Presss X to Jaaaasssooon! Jason!
Just don’t press triangle
http://youtu.be/WY9NO4GQJRk
No care for COD whatsoever, but nobody seemed to care when you could do the exact same thing in Arkham City for Bruce’s parents.
This needed to be a kamiya-esque button smashing qte:
http://minus.com/lbu9KOKiVxizfi
Maximum respect!
Can you… not do it? Like, do you have to press it to continue?
If you miss the qte window, it launches zombie mode.
Press F to put your hand on some wood
I don’t get this shit. Just make it a cutscene. Having the player control the camera here is extremely weird and unnecessary.
Quick Time Events. Putting the “fun” in funeral…
I loled. I’d love to see some button mashing like DDR to tread the fine line between being respectful and if you button mash too quickly, “Keep it together man!”