BioShock creator Ken Levine has detailed his distaste for cutscenes in story-driven games, saying he wants to interact with a game’s plot, not just watch it unfold.
Presumably, Ken Levine doesn’t like Metal Gear Solid. The Irrational Games creative director has expressed a distaste for most story-driven games – primarily because he feels that cutscenes ruin them.
“People know me as creating story-driven videogames so assume that I must love story videogames,” he said. “Generally I’m not a huge fan of story videogames as that’s the problem I have with them – I want to play. I don’t want to sit down and be told the story. I want to interact with the story.”
Citing recent XBLA title Bastion as a shining example of how to do story in a game well, he said: “One of the reasons I think it works so well is that the narrative is so non-intrusive, it never makes you stop.”
In BioShock Infinite (pictured), which releases next year, there are no cutscenes. Every scene plays out with you retaining your first-person perspective, much like in the first game. And it’s spectacular. I spent half an hour with the game recently, and came away wowed.
Levine’s comments come in a chat with Guillermo Del Toro, the film director who’s also working on a game for publisher THQ. Developed in conjunction with Volition, Insane is still a while away yet.
“I’m a gamer, my daughters are gamers, we spend countless hours in the game universe,” Del Toro said. ”You know what kind of gamer I am? When we come to a cinematic, I jump it. I go ‘I’m not watching a movie. Fuck you. I want a game’.”
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