I just finished God of War 2 today and of course it ended with an epic quicktime event against the final boss. Just like every boss in that series, control is yanked from you right at the moment of victory and replaced with a series of timed button presses ending with a gruesome kill or more likely a frustrating few minutes where you regain your lost progress.
I’m not sure what to think about QTEs. When they first showed up in Shenmue in 2000 I thought they were a neat idea. You get to watch a cutscene and still be a little bit involved. A lot of the button presses were the same buttons required to do similar things outside of a cutscene as well so it felt more interactive. Also the end of disc three in Shenmue 2 had one of the coolest uses of the QTE in that series.
Several years later and now QTEs are everywhere. It feels like anytime a game wants to do something cool without “taking you out of the experience” it uses a QTE. We seem fairly anti QTE as a community, but we accepted them in fantastic games like Resident Evil 4 and God of War. Did they somehow do them differently than in games like Tomb Raider: Legend or Prince of Persia?
Several times in God of War 2 I was incredibly frustrated with them. Whenever the button prompts switched from presses to mashing circle it would relocate the icon on the bottom left. The delay of eyeing the change is almost always enough to require you to fail the event once before you know its coming. Also the joystick swirls seem less forgiving that it probably should be.
Despite being annoying, my most fond memories of GoW2 took place during the QTEs. Even though I couldn’t control Kratos in the usual way, the things I was vaguely responsible for him doing during the QTEs were incredibly badass. Jumping from a Pegasus onto a gryphon only to cut off its wings and throw it downward before hopping back, stealing a gatekeepers key then using the door it unlocked to smash his head in, and getting one Sister of Fate to stab another in the face only to be stabbed in the face herself by me a few seconds later are all things I’ll think of first when recalling this game. They are a trademark of the series that helps bring their signature brutality to life, but do we really want them?
I must admit that one of the God of War series biggest strengths, its clever boss fights, would be less effective to witness without the QTEs. Is that a fair trade for the amount of frustration some of these bosses acquire by using them? I don’t know, but I have a feeling QTE’s are on there way out.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
the qte is generally a crutch for bad design. the big thing that makes god of war so forgivable in this regard is that it uses the button events for actions that don't immediately fall within the scope of your regular controls and abilities, and more importantly dedicates some effort to making the ensuing action cool to watch.
ReplyDeletei'll still be happy when the fad is dead though, because for every game that does a decent job of it there are a dozen others where the quick time events are either used for trivial actions that could be easily handled in-game, implemented in a way that leaves completely out of place in the regular gameplay, or both.
I personally love QTEs. In games like The Bourne Conspiracy, they add a more cinematic feel to it. I actually think game developers should be adding MORE quick time events. I think the reason people hate them so much, is because they suck at them. Would it kill them not to get so lazy just because there's a cutscene going on? I mean come on! it's just pressing a button when it appears on screen!
ReplyDeleteMost of my OMGWTFBBQ moments in video games come from QTEs, and I feel like there are some real missed oppertunities in which a quick time event would have it the most dramatic, kick ass moment in a video game. *cough* callofduty4 *cough*.