Guild Wars 2

Just curious, but I never understood why people vehemently disliked the old 2D-esque cutscenes vs the current ones which seem nice but requires a bit of player input to make them right.

That is, in a conversation between 2 or 3 characters, the old cutscenes seemed perfect, cutting between the characters that the dialog is directed at. You get to see a close up of the character with appropriate hand gestures and close-ups on face to see changes in their eyes. Also, I enjoy seeing people’s costumes up close if its a dungon…or just skip it if they have lolshinywings set-up and didn’t feel bothered to see.

I do like some of the living story dialog where I have to position the character myself and I have control of the zoom but I still enjoy the old cutscenes too. Am I alone in thinking that? The best of both worlds would be defaulting to the old style and if you click skip, you go to the new style which could also be packaged with dungeons just in case you prefer to hear your character talk and not a stranger’s. Of course, there could be a settings option to auto default to the new style.

What do you think?

The adage of “Show, don’t tell” comes to mind.

Exposition is boring. Don’t waste time with it if you can just show what you mean, or include it with the action.

Many of what would be flat cutscenes (in the past) are now dialogue that plays while you run around. This is great for people who don’t care about the story (they don’t have to hit skip as fast as possible) and great for people who do care about the story (you can see how the action ties into the dialogue).

Vagrant.7206:

The adage of “Show, don’t tell” comes to mind.

Exposition is boring. Don’t waste time with it if you can just show what you mean, or include it with the action.

Many of what would be flat cutscenes (in the past) are now dialogue that plays while you run around. This is great for people who don’t care about the story (they don’t have to hit skip as fast as possible) and great for people who do care about the story (you can see how the action ties into the dialogue).

Perhaps you can quote an example? To me, you’re either actively engaging in the dialog (which can be done in the 2Dish cutscenes too) or you’re pressing the content and thus the dialog isn’t so much tying into the action as it is just background. I’d even go so far as to say most dialog doesn’t tie into any action at all unless you consider “run to the next green star” as action.

Vagrant.7206:

The adage of “Show, don’t tell” comes to mind.

Exposition is boring. Don’t waste time with it if you can just show what you mean, or include it with the action.

Many of what would be flat cutscenes (in the past) are now dialogue that plays while you run around. This is great for people who don’t care about the story (they don’t have to hit skip as fast as possible) and great for people who do care about the story (you can see how the action ties into the dialogue).

Except that never actually happens in the newer ones. It is all stand around talking then do stuff then stand around talking some more and repeat and now there is no way to skip listening to the NPCs blabber on for the Nth time.

One thing i really enjoyed which ive noticed lacked in the living story season2 (Ive just completed it, doing story chronologically) was my character speaking. I liked my human males voice and personality. I know there’s a few boxes i have to press to imitate the “speaking” but its just not the same.

In addition to other comments already posted there is also the issue of having dialog in two places. In the old system, you still had some dialog before and after the cut away close ups. This is problematic because they often don’t line up due to edits and changes in one that did not make it to the other. You see it all over the place where the cut away dialog implies your mission is X, but further in gameplay dialog tells you that you do Y.

I’d rather go back to the 2D conversations.
They can be skipped.

In-game banter is what leads to the Season 2 (and onward) achievement hunts to be so. incredibly. boring, especially when there are achievements like “don’t get hit by this highly prevalent and spammed attack, not even once”. Dodge, block, dodge again, >tapped<, gkittenit now I have to listen to Kasjory verbally intercourse while I walk. Again.

I get that it’s intended to be more immersive, but it’s garbage for replay value.

Is my memory betraying me? There were people that greatly disliked the 2D-esque cutscenes which is partly why the devs moved to change to the current model, right?

Are there players still out there that really dislike the old style? I’m still confused why.

I actually prefer the old style, I actually enjoy watching them.

But then I also watch the entire vista camera thingy, even if I’ve been to that vista hundreds of times already.

Leo G.4501:

Are there players still out there that really dislike the old style? I’m still confused why.

Are there players that really like cutscenes?

I don’t mean to make light of your opinion, only that the way you phrased it makes light of mine. As explained above by others, a cutscene interrupts the flow of the game and it looks awkward to me (a picture is worth 1000 words and 40 seconds of video is 1000 pictures at 25 FPS).

The only thing like about cutscenes better is that it’s more obvious how to skip them (press the ‘skip’ button), although there are plenty of other ways to do that with in-game dialogue.

To be fair, both styles are imperfect, especially as implemented in GW2. But it comes down to personal preference — and there’s nothing objective about that.

So in the end, I’m in favor of ANet doing which ever is easier to design, implement, and maintain. In case of a ‘tie’, I’m okay if they flip a coin.

Leo G.4501:

Is my memory betraying me? There were people that greatly disliked the 2D-esque cutscenes which is partly why the devs moved to change to the current model, right?

Are there players still out there that really dislike the old style? I’m still confused why.

Well they were apparently also more difficult to make due to the need to get things into the right position and state after the skip button. They also had a tendency to remove people’s hats and maybe their beards too.

I wish they would bring back the old cutscenes for certain instances. I like both the old ones and the new in game text over the had ones where you can move around but if everyone in the scene is stationary, why can’t we have the old ones too?

The major thing I dislike about the dialog “cutscenes” since the Living Story began is that you can’t skip them. And characters won’t always follow you if you run ahead. And I also don’t like having to position myself so that I can read all of the dialogue word bubbles if I am wanting to read ahead and not listen to them jabbering on. That is what slows the flow of the story down a lot. I love the vanilla Personal Story so much more in every aspect, to put it simply.

I think there are advantages and disadvantages to both.

The old style was great for showing the characters clearly and enabling me to focus on the conversation. I often need to play with the sound turned off so I can’t actually listen to the dialogue and I’m slightly dyslexic so I read slowly. All of which means stopping the action and presenting the dialogue clearly in the middle of the screen with minimal distractions was great for allowing me to follow the conversation.

But it was useless for showing what was going on. If anything happened during a conversation you wouldn’t see it. There’s numerous points where someone says something like “Oh no! What’s that? What’s happening?” and I’m there thinking “I don’t know, all I see is you calmly standing there.”

Also depending on where they put the change-overs you’d often get either someone just standing there doing nothing long after their part in the conversation is over or someone entering too early and “giving away” what’s going to happen. I can’t remember where it comes up but one of those times when an NPC reacts to something unexpected is ruined because several seconds earlier the person they were speaking to is replaced with a risen, which makes it obvious that risen have broken into your camp and are about to threaten you with death and corruption before attacking (because that’s all they ever do).

The new version is almost the polar opposite of that. All those problems are gone because the dialogue and the action are interwoven. It means you don’t have to stop what you’re doing because someone is speaking, there are far more opportunities for NPCs to react to things that happen or to space out conversations more realistically instead of having to cramp it together into a cut scene.

The problem is I’m often too busy fighting or trying to find where I’m going to pay attention to what’s being said so I have to wait until both the conversation and the fight is over and then scroll back through the chat box and re-read it, which pulls me out of the action far more than a cut-scene ever did.

The other problem is that if anyone is behind the camera or too far in front or off to one side I may not even know they were speaking until my character replies because the dialogue boxes don’t appear, either the sound is off or the directional sound has made the dialogue too quiet to hear and with 2 guilds chattering away I may not immediately notice grey text in the chat box.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t mean to make light of your opinion, only that the way you phrased it makes light of mine. As explained above by others, a cutscene interrupts the flow of the game and it looks awkward to me (a picture is worth 1000 words and 40 seconds of video is 1000 pictures at 25 FPS).

I’m not trying to make light of any opinions, I’m just curious. I can see the interruption as being annoying but doesn’t the skip button make that negative far more easier to tolerate?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The only thing like about cutscenes better is that it’s more obvious how to skip them (press the ‘skip’ button), although there are plenty of other ways to do that with in-game dialogue.

I personally feel the old style allows for more expression that can easily be missed with the new method. I dunno, maybe there’s a lot of emotes being done that I don’t see in the LS but going back and playing some old content after a long break, I was pleasantly surprised at how expressive some of the dialog is.

Khisanth.2948:

Well they were apparently also more difficult to make due to the need to get things into the right position and state after the skip button. They also had a tendency to remove people’s hats and maybe their beards too.

I suppose that could be why they stopped using that style. I figured, other games out that utilize similar style dialog don’t seem to be hindered by this although glitches will still happen.

Whatever lets me skip the dumb dialogue is fine. I couldn’t care less about the characters.

Moyayuki.3619:

The major thing I dislike about the dialog “cutscenes” since the Living Story began is that you can’t skip them. And characters won’t always follow you if you run ahead. And I also don’t like having to position myself so that I can read all of the dialogue word bubbles if I am wanting to read ahead and not listen to them jabbering on. That is what slows the flow of the story down a lot. I love the vanilla Personal Story so much more in every aspect, to put it simply.

I just resort to alt+tabbing out while they blabber on and check back once in a while.

Vagrant.7206:

Many of what would be flat cutscenes (in the past) are now dialogue that plays while you run around. This is great for people who don’t care about the story (they don’t have to hit skip as fast as possible) and great for people who do care about the story (you can see how the action ties into the dialogue).

And terrible if you don’t read your text at a snail’s pace. There is no way to speed up modern conversations, and interactions which took me 10-20 seconds in the old system now frequently take 90-120 seconds due to the extensive 3D cutscenes around them which also frankly add nothing to them.

All the characters do is stand around in the 3D engine while chatting, instead of in front of a 2D background. No real change with it. Since the old version was skippable, this doesn’t even help if you want to ignore the story, could already do that anyhow.

I really don’t like this new system. It’s my least favorite part of the current story, too. The endless blablablablabla. Not that I dislike the story itself (well I do now with episode 5, but that’s besides the point), but it takes sooooooo long. Why not let me read? At my own pace? Like it was already possible before?!