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You may have double posted by clicking one too many times. V-rpg.com is funky like that. My excuse is that I've worn out my mouse and that it sometimes registers a single click as a double: highly annoying in RTS multiplayer, I can tell you.

I shall keep this post brief, boiled down to the following bulletpoints:

1. Ideas and beliefs are intrinsically linked. You can't discuss one without inadvertently discussing the other as well.

2. While arguing is amusing, what I actually said was that the whole point of discussion is that someone comes to a definitive conclusion: I should be either right or wrong, not in some ethereal limbo. I'm quite happy to be wrong, what I'm not happy with is someone saying I'm neither right nor<i/> wrong.

3. We're not that off-topic. In asking "how do I do cutscenes in V3" you simultaneously opened discussion on how to do it (mechanically speaking) and whether it's really necessary in the first place.

4. Quitter!

Also, to address a point Omni made: a game made as a form of catharsis (ie. it's only meant for you) can't also be art, can it? I mean, by definition art is about communicating ideas and emotions. That sort of requires other people; I mean, you can't "communicate" with yourself.

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I'm confused... all 5 of those games have cutscenes, and a vast amount of them at that. Tales of Symphonia in particular is very guilty of having the 'sit and wait as text scrolls by while twiddling your thumbs' syndrome. The other 4 are actually good examples of games that used cutscenes with very good results.

Unless your game is taking the radical route and having all dialogue voice acted and conversations are in real-time, or you are using a branching dialogue system, your game probably has large amounts of text that scroll by. I guess I just don't see much difference between that, and a cutscene, except cutscenes are usually (not always!) more interesting and engaging.

Adding branching plots to give the player a sense of control is a good idea, bt in practice it drastically increases the amount of work you have to do (not to mention opening the door for all sorts of crazy plot bugs). You have to be pragmatic about this -- maybe there's a really interesting direction the plot could take if the player loses to the first boss in the game, but there's no point in actually including it because a) that boss will e really easy and b) it'll drastically change the entire game. Now, if you do that, people will lose to the first boss to play that plot tree, but when players are deliberately acting a certain way, FAQ in hand, in order to see certain scenes, you've lost the element of interactivity.

I remember really liking the early Wind Commander games (I didn't play the late ones). I loved how the plot branched at nearly each mission depending on whether you succeeded or failed. However, those games were really short. While I would love to see more short branching games (maybe with a CT-style replay incentive), I often want to play long games as well, and making a long game with a hugely variable plot is a daunting endeavour. The modern game-design industry is a colossal machine capable of producing this sort of game, but even it can't make lots of them, and this sort of project is totally out of the reach of all but the most obsessive indie game designers.

It's not a coincidence that most games promising plot freedom have failed to deliver -- ultimately, this is a distant, untouchable ideal. You have two options -- you can either have freedom but no real story, or you can have a plot tree. The plot tree situation is the situation I think about the most because I like stories. The time and money constraints I mentioned are the big drag here, so there will always be a huge amount of pressure to have as few breakpoints in the plot as possible, and to disassociate the break points so that they don't interact in unqiue ways. This is a devil's bargain, because it only creates the illusion of control. Now, I'm all for a story with a couple of break points, but it doesn't have that much over a story with none.

Ultimately what I'm getting at is there are tradeoffs. Rigid plots with cutscenes are very good for some things, and while they integrate story with game far less effectively than games with interactive plots, they can still succeed both as stories and as games. Here I've argued that case by saying that the alternative is too hard to do with the same level of detail, but I could go into a separate discussion about why I think that rigid plots would still be useful even if the ideal of control were possible. It's like how when 3D became feasible, everyone said it would destroy 2D because it gave you so much more freedom of movement and was so immersive. 2D is still perfectly fine as a stylistic choice, it's just that it's no longer the default.

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Yes. I noticed that. It needs fixing.

That made a beautiful amount of sense (typos aside). I enjoy player interactivity, which is why I strive toward it. Like you say, though, it's not an easy option and it's a struggle to keep the plot on track if you give the player too much choice.

Even so, some interactivity is still better than none at all. At the moment, I'm working on a few theories to try and turn the whole thing upside down: ie. ways to give the player choices without making things hard for myself. While it's nice to affect the plot through choice, that's not all choice has to offer.

For instance, I'm working on a "mood" system for my game. Basically, every character you meet - including your own party - has a state of mind: happy, sad, angry, in love etc. This is managed by a series of meters, similar to The Sims in a few respects. Depending on how you speak to someone will affect their state of mind. With better social skills, you'll be able to alter someone's mood to what you want. Goad someone into fighting you. Talk someone out of attacking you. Convince a store to offer you goods at lower prices.

This even has a direct result on partymembers in battle: make them angry and they'll do increased damage but lose some accuracy. Calm them down to zen-like levels and they'll lose any damage bonuses but gain some accuracy. Make a party member fall in love with you and they'll throw their life on the line to keep you safe. Give your party a pep talk prior to a big boss battle and they'll temporarily gain stat bonuses if you say the right thing.

And that's just me getting started..