The accessibility feature just makes the qte auto success happen faster. Even with qte auto complete off there are no fail states for missing them. They just eventually succeed. That succeeding can't be turned off.
yeah, I cant help but feeling like the game is just being dumbed down a lot because they expect casuals, never touched a controller before, to play this game. sure its great for accessibility, but at this point i'll rather cut QTEs out and make it a cutscene.
To me this looks more like a case of saving money by not doing failstate animations rather than anything related to game design.
If the game was deliberately designed to be beatable by the biggest idiot, chances are the devs weren't having customers in mind but some suit above them who is tough dealing with and loves scrapping the entire studio if the game embarasses him.
From what I’ve read, the game went through some casual development hell with director and vision changing constantly. What came out is probably just whatever they could piece together from five years of “actually, let’s do this instead”.
Sony has literally bragged about making their games so easy that even the stupidest gamer in existence (DSP) can complete them.
They've stopped making games for the average skill-level gamer, and now tries to make them were skill isn't a requirement at all.
thats kinda disheartening as someone who likes a bit of challenge but not too much (completed Hollow Knight and didnt finish Silksong Act 1 for example)
I turn auto complete QTEs on in the accessibility settings for any game that has it.
QTE are not fun.
Now if this isn't an option in this game and it just gives you a QTE that you can't fail by default then it's just stupid and might as well be a cutscene.
That's exactly what the devs think of gamers. Either people with brainrot or that we just have 2 braincells - one for each button that needs to be pressed at any given time
This game has bad QTE implementation, but if the game let's me, I'll turn them off or have 'auto-complete' since I'm old, slow, and carpal-tunneling more these days.
Some people with disabilities struggle to quickly hit the correct buttons when on a timer so the accessibility option is great for them and in those cases.
In this case though? Who fucking knows? I struggle to even think of bad reasons why this game doesn't have fail states for it's QTEs let alone a good reason for it.
The originator re4 had some that people would call unfair but I love the concept of basically a rhythm game while watching a scene in game
Even something simple like timing breathes could help convey something and tell us about the character in interactive ways
Something like god of war having kratos take deep breathes to try to stay calm and the rhythm getting faster and the triggers resisting more to show his struggle keeping a cool head
The example from OP is the worst way to do it tho unless theres something like a loss of health or a harder encounter but I doubt it does have interaction at all since ive heard its a difficulty setting but dont know myself
I can forgive QTEs if and only if it's reasonable to predict what button will be used. Like if I see the character winding up a punch, and the melee button is square, I can presume that the button in the QTE will be square.
I remember there were games that would randomize the button required. Those got annoying. Though others would at least do the thing where the four buttons are mapped to the four corners of the screen / edge of the action, etc.
Exactly this. AC Origins had me stripped of my gear and buried up to my neck in the sand. I was there for like 5 minutes pressing every action and movement button but obviously nothing happened because I couldn't move. Then I pressed the 'call horse' button and the horse came pulled me out.
No button prompt after 2 milliseconds. No auto complete. Just the game gave you tools, let you internalise them across hours of gameplay, then gave you a little puzzle to solve with them.
Reminds me of that one QTE in MGS3: Snake Eater. The best one in gaming history for sure, but no one I'm willing to spoil. If you know, you know, and all that
I still hate that qte. The button changed each time and failure put you back at your save point so you had to run back to the boss fight, then go thru the whole scene again.
Spider Man obviously has them and they do begin getting slightly heavy handed, but used well and with proper deliberate intention, can really play into the power fantasy of the respective character.
They can also be used well for loading, pacing etc. which is definitely why they are included. But the intention and care needs to be there.
And Shenmue did them really well. The buttons used corresponded to how you'd use them in normal gameplay and fight scenes, so they were fairly intuitive. You could usually just watch the action instead of ignoring what was going on to hyper-focus on a button prompt.
Oh shit, I’d completely forgotten about that game! Used to love playing it at a pizza place that had it when I was a kid. Can’t recall if it was Pizza Hut or a local place… but now I’m suddenly craving both that game, and pizza.
The summon battles in FF16 have to be one of the worse examples.
All kinds of cool shit going on but you can't look at it because you have to pay attention to which input prompt is going to appear.
Idk I can't focus on the cutscene while I watch for button prompts. It like my brain has "we're watching a movie" mode vs "we're actually doing things" mode. I've never liked QTEs.
And then there's games like Alone in the Dark that had a blinking mechanic where the screen would fog up if you didn't blink. I wore contacts at the time and they would dry out simultaneously as I blinked in the game.
Resident Evil 4 had both very clever, and very stupid QTEs. You walk down a trail, and suddenly zombies throw a boulder you have to outrun with two QTEs. Very clever and fun.
There's a long cutscene with dialogue, and then suddenly there's a QTE. That's not clever and it's boring.
I agree with you. I think because QTEs were overused for a period the overall gaming community became hostile to them by default, but I definitely think there are cases where they are inoffensive and even some that a decent. It just depends on the application. The ones shown here for wolverine do indeed seem like the worst kind but I don't as a matter of course hate all QTEs.
I think some games do them okay. Yakuza they feel kind of right to me most of the time. But yeah in most games they’re not fun at all, or are just forced, or in this case entirely pointless.
Would be nice if they found a nice middle ground here. Like if you want the game to be both easy and engaging for players then don't make the game fail players who don't complete the QTEs but reward those who do.
Maybe if you don't complete the QTEs then the player succeeds but it's in a relatively mundane way. If they DO complete the QTEs then make them succeed with more flair. In this case Logan could shove his claws in more brutally and maybe the explosions are flashier or more stylized.
A change like that would keep the game accessible to those who don't/can't complete QTEs while incentivizing others to actively try. I feel like there are ways to make compromises here.
They definitely didn't worry about slowing down the pacing. There are some sloooooow sequences in the game akin to MJ sequences in Spider-Man, but worse.
Endless yellow paint, QTE that aren't real, a well written story, well crafted CGI, but the game feels as if it was crafted by a council of none? My guess is this thing had so many voices changing the direction that every time a decision got made, someone else came in and said "That shits stupid, do this" and the only thing that didn't actually get derailed was the story. Probably because Marvel was more controlling on that than the actual game part of it.
OR maybe it was the exact opposite and Marvel/Disney wanted a SUPER approachable game and didn't really care about the story. They kept meddling until it was game soup leaving Insomniac to craft a great story but not much else.
Adding interactivity just to tick a box is stupid. Even in games that primarily non-interactive, the parts that are should have it for a reason - e.g. Immortality for an extreme version.
QTEs are just stupid and immersion breaking 99% of the time. One of the many, many reasons I've almost totally stopped playing AAA games now.
I feel like it’s been that way for awhile, and not just with Sony. Games that tend to focus on story over game play have been some of the most acclaimed games of the last decade plus.
Whenever I hear people talk about all the critically acclaimed games lately it's almost ALWAYS about the story and characters, not a single blurb about the gameplay at all.
I've bought more than a few critically acclaimed games just to realize the gameplay is garbage or the game is too rigid for me to really enjoy. I was all for this game when I thought it would be Wolverine using his super senses to follow and liberate captive mutants while investigating the seedy side of Madripoor. When I learned that it's strictly an on rails adventure game where you're just trying to set up the next cut scene, I was so disappointed. I feel like games have come so far from Super Mario Brothers 1 we maybe don't need a glitzy version of "come here, smash this brick, jump onto this thing, now move forward, wait a 10 count, OK then run until you hit this ledge and now you wait..."
My least favorite game genre is "we didn't have the movie rights so we put in some occasional button mashing and now it's a game"
RD2 is known for how awkward and stilted the gameplay is, especially to start with. It's always on those lists of games that people started playing and bounced hard off from. I think I made it to the first shootout in some random house before I realized I liked my gameplay a little more fluid.
Rdr2's gameplay is fun but only because of the production and engine around it, not the actual mechanics the player executes. The physics of the enemies, the gun sounds, the character animations etc make the gameplay feels a lot more expressive than it actually is, which is a pretty barebones third person (semi) cover shooter. The Batman Arkham games are like this slightly too (not that the combat isn't good and has some depth, but it wouldn't have lasted for 4 games if Batman wasn't so damn cool looking).
Silksong, astro bot, hades, breath of the wild, hearthstone, super Mario (any), donkey Kong (was nominated for the most recent game of the year), Balatro... I could go on
Same, and if you dare say that you'd rather have good gameplay than a good story you'll get downvoted to hell. But yeah I'd rather not know what's going on in the game and have a shitty story if it means I'm going to have a great time.
Don't forget the people who accuse you of "asking for utopia" when you ask for devs who resist the urge to scale-creep and build a game with good gameplay and good story rather than trying chase absolute perfectionism on one aspect that handicaps the rest of the game.
Thank god I’m not on crazy pills on this, if I’m looking to sit down with a movie then that’s exactly what I would do. I honestly don’t see much enjoyment in having to be on alert for quicktime events during a 20 minute long cutscene. If you’re looking for a good story there’s so much great stuff out there that isn’t the game medium
This is exactly how I feel and I truly feel like an old man yelling at clouds at this point. 😮💨 I don’t need or want cinematic cut scenes, I am PLAYING a game. I almost threw my controller at the TV trying to get into CyberPunk. Took 5 hours to get through the intro that was 50% cut scenes so out of spite I dropped the game.
More than double that and same. And I regularly read stuff on r/eldenringlore and other subs and I just nod thinking "oh interesting" as I absorb nothing
I still don't think that story over gameplay is necessarily a bad thing, it's just the recent oversaturation is really pushing it like Sony rinse and repeating and the last of us getting a 3rd remaster
telling gamers that they have all the power in the world to simply not buy games they don't like is cardinal sin. They want every game to appeal to their specific tastes and conform to their idea of what "good" games are. If a game is bad, you can't just not buy it, you have to rage against the game online for a couple of weeks too. We have to write treatises on why the newest CoD is still bad and that Madden is exploitative so people who already agree with us can read them and updoot. We can't just play games we find interesting and talk about those, we need endless negativity and whining so the anger and attention economy of reddit continues to grow.
Yeah it’s been going on for a while and is my least favorite trend in gaming right now. Hopefully Wolverine bombs so we can get back to games being games first.
I can't think of an actually acclaimed game where player agency didn't drive the story. BG3 comes to mind where even though 70% of the game is dialogue, you're never just watching people talk without any ability to change events.
I feel like the actually acclaimed games on the ones that did both well.
Yeah there are stretches of Last of Us where you're just walking, looting, and learning about the world, but there's also really good, challenging, and off-rails combat sequences that allow the player to choose their approach.
What stories in particular are you thinking of? If they focus on story so hard, surely you can name a few stories that really made you feel like the studio focused on them over everything else.
Cinematic videogames are weird... Imagine you are watching a Netflix movie but every 10 minutes the movie pauses and you need to either solve a puzzle, or beat a boss in order to unpause it.
We have to shame these bastards into making these qtes actually change something. How far back have these studios gone...even OG RE4 had qte failed states and then 20 years later Capcom innovated them into being real time action (Krauser knife fight) and these people can't even put fail states in their qtes let alone turn them into real time action. They have gone backwards.
Yah that's the crazy thing. QTEs having fail states isn't some revolution on a cheap gimmick from the past. QTEs had always been fail able or story impactful until recently when certain studios got so lazy they figured no one would notice/care and wanted their movie simulator to run smoothly
Fucking Mortal Kombat X had QTEs and if you fucked them up, atleast I got to watch the characters eat shit or do goofy shit or in one case just fuck up a fatality. And that game came out in 2016 lol
No, it is much easier to make a game full of cutscenes and quick-time-events compared to a game with actual substance. That's why a lot of movie tie-in games end up with garbage like this. Its cheap, quick, and forgettable. They make a buck, then everybody moves on.
That and these people always think they’re better writers than they actually are. Decades upon decades of source material to adapt and they give us this mopey fuck shit that they just had to share with the world. Majority of game writers are shitty failed writers
QTE's completely distract from the cinematics though. If games have hard QTE's, then you spend cutscenes waiting for QTE's to pop up, you aren't focusing on the story, the environment or the dialogue. They're just terrible and add nothing positive to the cutscene or the game.
In games where you die for failing a QTE I often just watch the cutscene on YouTube after passing the QTE.
Failing is frustrating and frustration leads to less customers.
The most well funded games are too expensive to take any risks, so they sand down the gameplay until there is nothing left of it.
Frankly, can't blame the studios when people still buy that shit like it's heroine.
The weirdest part is that these games more often than not don't even have much of an interesting story. It's literally all visual spectacle. And the masses LOVE IT.
Anything game that relies on Quick Time Events is slop in my book.
Again, then why have them? Just let the cutscene play. Even if you want a scripted outcome you could add some damage the character takes for fucking up or a bonus you get for doing all the inputs.
The scripting isn't the problem, the payoff is, no risk and no reward. Just keep it a cutscene then
And that's why AAA games are becoming more expensive. At some point it's doomed to fail. How much money you make isn't as important as how much money you've spent to make it.
This is the answer to almost every "why did they design the game this way?" question around Sony AAA games. Gameplay always matters less than the story and cinematics to the point where you can tell they just wanted to make a movie where you mash buttons sometimes.
2.5k
u/ThatFatGuyMJL Sep 11 '26
They wanted to make a movie