#qtes

The reason most games with QTEs are such bullshit with their QTEs is that they’re not part of the core gameplay loop. Instead they’re rammed in artfiicially, like either action game action game action game press x not to die or cutscene cutscene cutscene press x not to die just in case you nipped to the bathroom during the cutscene the designers didn’t want you to miss. In the same way that experimental early 3d games would insert a random bad road rage clone to represent a motorbike chase into an otherwise turn based (Well, ATB), menu driven, combat RPG with a linear story progression. (Ah, FFVII. Remember when Square Soft had short cutscenes in their RPGs? I only do because I recently replayed the first disc of FFIX - 30 second to a minute cutscenes punctuating gameplay to heighten emotional impact of moments rather than driving the plot themselves. To be fair, I haven’t played FFXV yet, they might be back on form after the protracted, long, hideous cutscenes that take you out of the gameplay of XII and XIII), and we wouldn’t say that driving is inherrently bad because there are a remarkably high volume of PSX and PS2 era games that inserted random, badly implemented, driving minigames where they didn’t belong.

How do I know they’re not inherrently bad? Games that have them as the core part of their gameplay loop, is consistently how the game handles every bit of action in them (or every bit of a certain type of action, at least), see them work nicely - The Walking Dead, Until Dawn (Neither of which I’m not without criticism of, but it isn’t the QTEs in them)... PaRappa the Rapper.

Wait? PaRappa the Rapper? But that’s a rhythm action game, the same genre as DDR, or Donkey Konga, or Vib Ribbon, or Guitar Hero. What does that have to do with QTEs? It’s the exact same mechanic - hit the right input on the right timing to improve your situation, fail to your situation’s detriment. Sure is interesting that most games that don’t have that mechanic as their core mechanism implement it as ‘miss even one and you have to replay the segment from the beginning again’ while these games, built around that mechanic, are far more generous, with a healthbar you build as you get the inputs right and gradually goes down as you get the inputs wrong, with different levels of getting the input right ranging from OK to Perfect, and typically two levels of wrong - Bad (you hit the right button at the wrong time) and Miss (Either being so wrong with the timing it isn’t sure what command you were trying to input for, or pressing the wrong button), while those that just slap it in a couple of cutscenes or interrupting the flow of the core gameplay loop instantly fail you for not getting a single input right (or which merge it with other mechanics are less intricate in their grading even if getting it wrong isn’t necessarily instafailure...), by the by...