I just finished Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.
I’ve always been quite into the Uncharted-series, but never got around to playing LL. Now was the time.
And my god, how I hated much of it.
Now, I know the game is getting old. But shit, it got on my nerves. Janky movement, quite possibly the most stupid NPC AI (friends and foes alike) and! The god damned quick time events.
Why oh why in the name of everything holy am I “forced” to sit and repeatedly mass the square or triangle button to lift a door, move a leaver, push some freaking branches aside, kick some rubble, spank a pony. Well, maybe not that last one.
And sometimes 3 or 4 times in a row.
Why? Why, god damn it?
Who in their right mind finds it to be a wise gameplay choice to have me pushing the same button over and over again like a lunatic? It’s not even a combo like in the good old Tekken days. IT’S THE SAME FREAKING BUTTON OVER AND OVER!
Sorry. Just had to get it off my chest.
Done right, I think a QTE can immensely benefit a game. My two favorites, off the top of my head, are God of War 3 and Infamous 2
GOW3:
spoiler
Is a twofer. The first is pushing in both analog sticks to gouge out someone’s eyes. It is mostly just funny (in that sadistic 00s gaming kind of way…), but it sets the stage for what really matters. Been 13 or so years, but the final fight against Zeus (?) involves you mashing buttons to punch him. Which is pretty normal for the game. But you keep punching. And punching. Until nothing is left but a pile of paste as you keep punching the stone beneath what was left of his skull. And it only ends when you, the player, realize it is over. For all the flaws of the original God of War trilogy, that is one of maybe three or four moments that would be worthy of Teal’c’s Kratos.
And Infamous 2 (and spoilers for 1):
spoiler
I am kind of outspoken for how much I love Infamous 1 and 2. The fact that 1 is all about sacrificing EVERYTHING to be able to stop The Beast, right down to traveling back in time to murder the love of your life so that you won’t hesitate when the time comes. And then 2 opens up with you getting the shit kicked out of you and failing with it all being for naught. And the overall themes throughout the game of Cole knowingly destroying himself for a second chance (Half as long, twice as bright). And when the time comes… your heroic ally is terrified because of what she might lose and your villainous ally is right there with you with her understanding that nothing matters outside of stopping The Beast. And it just works so well that Cole drops The Beast like it ain’t no thang, just to prove he can, before getting ready to activate The Device that he knows will kill him and possibly all other powered individuals. And the QTE is just to have you slowly, one shoulder at a time, press down all four shoulders of your controller. And it ends with the simple message of “let go” and the knowledge that it is up to the player to put the game down and acknowledge it is over.
All the “mash these twelve buttons to dodge this boulder” and even a lot of the Yakuza/LAD ones don’t do a lot for me. They are more annoyances than not and I tend to streamline them in any game with accessibility options.
But done right? QTEs are some of the most powerful tools in a game developer’s arsenal for truly immersing the player and conveying the emotion of a scene.
Oh shit, I had forgotten all about the Infamous games. That was some strong implementation of QTE for sure.
But let’s be honest. Those are kind of the exception to the rule :-)
And they really shouldn’t be.
QTEs largely became a way to make sure nobody sneaks off for a piss break during an unskippable, unpausable, cutscene. Or as an annoying way to break up the flow of a fight. When they should be ways to enhance the immersion
We are starting to see some of that again with the use of adaptive triggers on the PS5 but those are already about as dead as Sixaxis.
There is an option where you can hold the button to finish the QT event, atleast makes it less cumbersome
QTEs were sometimes a way to mask loading screens in the old days.
Edit: Can we talk about that spanking ponies thing?
Let’s not. It was a hard part of my life.
Wait, I’m sorry. Were you hard when spanking the ponies, or…?
This is probably my one complaint about the new spider man, What you think is a cool cinematic all of a sudden a Button prompt jumps up and you gotta scramble to hit it, Always catches you off guard and never feels engaging. So many unnecessary resets just because i wasn’t aware that a qt event was coming.
Exactly!
What? Is it supposed to make me feel powerful that I can smash a button a gazillion times to hold back a train from falling off the rails? Just so it as a cinematic - I don’t need to be involved in every little thing!
There is an option to under accessibility I think where you can choose that the QT events succeed all the time and you don’t need to press anything.
But still they kind of ruin the pacing of the cinematic scene IMO.
I think the God of War series is to blame for it. They had so well crafted QTE. Fighting the hydra in the first God of War is still an incredible spectacle to behold. So after that other game devs tried to imitate its success, with mixed results. It’s just lazily adding button prompts over a cinematic right?
I’m like 90% sure this game has an accessibility option to disable quick time events. Uncharted 4 had it, I believe.
The Uncharted series isn’t really my jam, but I can still relate. Halo 4 has those completely unnecessary quick time events and it’s very jarring. I’m so glad we’ve moved away from this fad.
have you ever played the original resident evil 4 or jericho? Those were quick time events from hell, in comparison to that the ones from Uncharted are fun…
No I’ve never played those. And sounds like I should really stay clear of them ;-)
Resident Evil 4 put QTE in a boring exposition monologue with only barely 1 second to react. If you fail the button prompt you have to watch the boring exposition monologue all over again.
