Antony Johnston is a man that wrote EA's promising Dead Space horror game. He also penned the comic. But as we all know, it can be all too easy to skip a game's cut scenes, especially when the action waiting for you at the end makes you want to get there faster.
But don't you dare go skipping any cut scenes in Dead Space.
"You'd be a fool to do that," Johnston told PSW magazine. "If you want to find out the mysteries of the game, you need to listen to the dialogue. But more than that, you actually need to listen to it so you can complete the game."
You need to listen to it so you can complete the game? All of it? Or just bits towards the end?
We hope to god that the finale doesn't involve some kind of monster, mind-bending mega quiz that wrapped things up in the original Banjo Kazooie. That bitch still haunts us to this day.
Are you a cut scene skipper or do you relish every last word? Sound off below.
I find this a tad insulting, I like games of this sort because of the (often cheesy) cutscenes and watch them anyway I don't need telling to watch them.
I might not watch them now because of this SO THERE (takes bat home, throws teddies out of cot etc etc).
I've never understood people who skip cutscenes and dialogue.
I play games for narrative as much as the action. If you're just in it for the shooty shooting then why bother buying new games? Why bother upgrading consoles? Just play DOOM forever.
Well as long as the writing is good, I've nothing against skipping cutscenes.
But they must be skippable. There's nothing worse than unskippable videos. Especially if one is playing through the game for the 2nd time. Or 3rd. Not the 4th. But 5th.
Sorry to break the chain here, but after about the third one, I skipped every cut scene in Halo 3 because I just didn't care about the story, and it was due to the reports of epic cutscenes that I didn't get MGS4.
I think it's partly a "time" issue (if I only have an hour free to play a game, I don't want to spend 25% of that watching cutscenes) and also because the stories are rarely as interesting to me as the gameplay.
That said, I liked Uncharted's cut scenes, so I guess it depends on the level of quality...
I have not got a problem with cutscenes, but i do get p**sed off with watching them over and over again.
I feel the best solution is to have the option of skipping the cutscene once it's been seen first time, i hate pressing a button and missing a scene accidentally.
I don't skip cutscenes, but you should be able to skip them. I hate it when you have to watch the same cutscene over and over because there's a bastard hard part of the game afterward and you can't either save or skip the scene when you die.
Dead Space writer: You'd be a fool to skip the dialogue You won't be able to complete the game otherwise...
I've heard about this - after the big end level boss fight, just before he dies he asks you SPOILERS "What was the 8th word uttered by the necromorph in the 5th room on the 2nd level?"
If you get it right, you complete the game - get it wrong and the boss gets all his energy back - repeat ad infinitum.
Well he's obviously going to say that! He doesn't want you missing his work, good or bad. It's like the publishers saying "you'd be a fool to skip buying this game" even if it was terrible.
I like having some cutscenes to embelish the story and give yourself a little time to breathe in-between chapters. Especially games of a survival horror nature. They can be rather exhausting when they are uber tense
I tend to watch most story cutscenes, just because I think it adds to the experience. But if it's just passing dialogue, like someone saying "thanks" or the result of a mission you've completed a hundred times before it's nice to have the option to skip.
But I like the idea that it might be important.
I don't think we'll get anything as specific as what The_Johnson suggested (dear god no, that's so much like the anti-piracy codes of the 80s it's not funny), but if someone asks you a question about something you've done in-game and you either can't answer or give the wrong answer, it makes sense that you should change the outcome.
The Max Payne games had a great way to handle this type of interlude; IIRC, you could skip/stop some of the inter-chapter cut-scenes or pause and flick through them at your own pace, although it's worth remembering that the inter-chapter ones were in comic-panel format, which made it easier.
If Dead Space allows you to pause/skip/replay a cut-scene, that would cover pretty much all bases...
btw, worth mentioning i'm in favour of watching cutscenes. the only times i skip them is in demos that i couldn't care much about anyway - it does annoy me when you can't skip them though!
Well he's obviously going to say that! He doesn't want you missing his work, good or bad. It's like the publishers saying "you'd be a fool to skip buying this game" even if it was terrible.
No its not, thats totally different, if you skip the cutscenes he'll still get paid and make money, if you don't buy the game they won't make money duh, common sense really.
Either way I always watch cutscenes the first times but hate having to watch them over and over, so the skip option should be there, but I do have friends who skip past them and actually find it amusing that I watch them.
full media player accessibility. that would be awesome. but i prefer in-game cutscenes, like in Half Life. although i would like something to do if things get a bit too wordy with very little movement. i'm tired of either standing there, or running around wildly trying to jump on people's heads as they tell you their life story.
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Thank god they didnt include this in MGS4 
