Resident Evil 6 Has 4 Hours of Cutscenes

Matthew Mann July 09, 2012 News

Resident Evil 6 might be one of the most divisive games in the history of the franchise. Many Resident Evil fans lament the move to the more action oriented gameplay that Capcom has shown off of the game so far. Not to mention many fans of the series were turned off by Resident Evil 5 gameplay, which moved the franchise away from their horror roots.

This is not to say the game is going to be some major disaster, just that certain fans of the franchise may not like the direction the Resident Evil series is going. And today we have found out that Resident Evil 6 will feature at least four hours of cutscenes according to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC).

For those who don’t know, the British Board of Film Classification is basically the British equivalent of the ESRB in the United States. In addition, they gave Resident Evil 6 a 18′ or the US equivalent of an M rating for violence and gore.

Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5 both had about one hour worth of cutscenes each, so this is a considerable jump to say the least. But the big difference between Resident Evil 4 and 5 and Resident Evil 6 is that Resident Evil 6 will feature 3 main campaigns and supposedly a unlockable fourth campaign.

In the past Capcom did state that the 3 main campaigns separate were shorter then Resident Evil 5, but together the 3 campaigns are considerably longer than Resident Evil 5.

Some people might complain that four hours of cutscenes might be a bit too long and take away some of the interactivity of the game. However, I will say that Metal Gear Solid 4 did alright with around six hours of cutscenes. It just depends on the quality of the game, and having 3 different campaigns might make it easier for Capcom to spread the cutscenes out.

I haven’t had a chance to play the demo for Resident Evil 6 so I would like to hear from people who have played the demo. What are your impressions of Resident Evil 6? Does it feel like a Resident Evil game or is it too action oriented for you to consider it a Resident Evil game?

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Tim

I really don’t think 4 and 5 had anything like as little as 1 hour of cutscenes. In fact both probably exceed that in their first levels alone.

And really, MGS4′s stonkingly verbose infodumps full of information that was either trying to tie MGS3 to the rest of the series belatedly, was totally redundant (the entire B&B Corps plotline does nothing and goes nowhere) or might as well have been gameplay were ok? The shockingly self-indulgent PowerPoint presentation ending was ok?
Matthew Mann

You might be right about the times for 4 and 5, it has been a while since I have played either game so my perspective might be a little out of whack.

As for MGS4, I feel that is one of those games that is very divisive, some people will defend it as the greatest game ever made while others are feel it is a movie inter-spliced with some gameplay.

Thanks for the comment.
- Tim
  
  I dunno, a decent editor could probably halve the running time of MGS4′s cutscenes. Kojima doesn’t trust his audience and explains everything in the most absurd detail, which wouldn’t be good form even if he was writing a novel; for example, exposition-dumping the B&B Corps backstories after they’re dead, despite those stories being alluded to in the battles themselves and describing them in detail accomplishing nothing whatsoever.
  
  Then again, since you could remove the entirity of Act 3 without changing anything either since the whole thing is literally pointless for everyone concerned, a decent editor would probably have resulted in a markedly different (and better) game.
  - Matthew Mann
    
    I agree with you that an editor probably would have cleaned up some of the exposition. I would say that maybe this is just me but much of the storytelling I have experienced from both games from Japan and Anime tend to have lots of exposition.Therefore, I don’t believe the issue is so much trust in their audience but it is more of a directorial or story telling method that is sometimes overused by a lot of Japanese developers or directors. I have played quite a few JRPG’s and watched enough anime to recognize that there tends to be an over abundance of exposition in Japanese story telling. Not all of it mind you but the genres I have watched and played it tends to come up a lot.
    - Tim
      
      I think the main reason for large amounts of exposition in anime is a lot simpler; in animation, “talk is cheap” is quite literally true and having characters stand around talking is an easy way to kill runtime without also killing the budget. You can see the same ideas in action in Western live-action series like Star Trek, where it’s not abnormal to have a half-hour episode bulked up with fifteen minutes of meetings and conversations just to make up the timeslot. Granted, there are guys like Shirow who just eject clouds of words at the audience every so often regardless of budget, but nobody’s ever accused Shirow of knowing how to write believable dialog.
      
      It’s quite possible Japanese game writers get their ideas of what an acceptable story looks like from anime done in this way (much as a lot of anime fan-artists copy money-saving visual shortcuts like the infamous snoutface / fishface because they don’t realise why they’re done like that) which is why a lot of games are skewed towards telling when they should show, though there’s still plenty of guys like Miyamoto and Ueda who know how to give the player information without reading their game design notes out loud. There’s plenty of Western devs who don’t trust the player either (see Dead Space’s ridiculous “use run to move quickly” or Crysis 2 thinking it has to explain the *concept* of armour) so it’s hardly limited to Japanese devs.
Matthew Mann

Hi Tim, I do agree with you that one of the reasons behind the use of so much exposition in Anime could be costs. However, I do believe in Shonen series the exposition is used in more of a hand holding for the viewers. In many of the Shonen fight shows I use to like more when I was younger they would explain the powers then use them, and then after they used the powers they would explain what happened.

However, I do think the over use of exposition is prevalent in any sci-fi or supernatural stories, which is most of what I watch Anime or other. Like Star Trek the Next Generation for me is still one of my favorite shows, but half the show is just explaining what is going on.

So yea I definitely agree with you that western designers and directors over use exposition as well. But to me I think it may just be the fact that like I said before certain genres like sci fi and supernatural shows and games use it more than they should.
- Tim
  
  Well, in series made for TV one major concern is that every episode is potentially someone’s first, which is why they’ll usually begin with a short “sketch” of each character doing their thing and having their name used, and often include dialog that’s redundant for people who’ve been watching to help a newcomer catch up.
  
  You also have to remember with translated anime that sometimes it’s the translator who thinks you’re a moron; the dub of Castle in the Sky (Laputa) is a great example of that, where after a bright flash Muska is feeling around with one hand while clutching his eyes with the other and the dub helpfully adds “MY EYES! I CAN’T SEE!” where there isn’t a line at all in the original script. Glad they cleared that one up.
  
  I’d say Kojima’s problems are mostly related to his writing and cinematography skills; he has a tendency to try to include too many themes to really elaborate on (for example, witness MGS4′s pointless and out-of-place digression on how first-person shooters are evil soldier training), doesn’t have a good grasp of tone (Meryl just almost died, a lot of people did die, and it’s TIME FOR A ZANY MONKEY) and doesn’t really do anything interesting with his camera during dialog scenes, often just settling for flat shot / reverse shot.
  
  He’s a good action director and his most powerful scenes are often those which barely have dialog (Solidus’ death in MGS2 in particular), and when he’s having fun rather than trying to be Deep and Meaningful he’s at his best. MGS3 remains thoroughly enjoyable precisely because it’s spy hokum rather than wanky socio-political commentary. He’d be at his best with something light and fluff-brained like Die Hard rather than trying to be a Japanese Tom Clancy.
  
  In 4 he also spent too long trying to tie up all the loose ends no matter what, and forgot to write a story that involves the player’s actions. 4 commits the cardinal sin of having a plot that happens regardless of what the player does rather than because of it.
  
  By that I don’t mean it needed yes / no choices, what I mean is by and large the player is navigating the space between cutscenes in which things happen, as opposed to doing anything to set those things in motion. It doesn’t ever really succeed in making the player *do* things, and often ignores the player’s resources for story sake (for example, Snake uses a pistol at the end of Act 1 despite that he can’t *not* have a rifle, and in Act 3 never things to hand out the ten or so guns he picked up during the storyline when everyone’s ID guns pack up on the boat) and thus basically denies their presence as anything other than a nuisance. Much as people deride old classics like Castlevania, at least there things happened because you did them rather than because the designers decided to grab the controls and show you how it’s done.
  - Tim
    
    *deride them for having no story, that is.
  - Matthew Mann
    
    You are right, too many games take the control out of year hands and it becomes frustrating. I feel like there are quite a few games that feel the need to tell the story over gameplay. The best example I can think of is Heavy Rain (both good and bad).
    
    I mean some people actually don’t think Heavy Rain is a game because of the lack of actual gameplay. But to me it created the greatest video game invention in 20 years, not having a gameover screen (somewhat). If you failed at something the story went in a different direction uninterrupted, it was seamless. The story was full of plot holes and I am not a big fan of QTEs but seamlessly combining story and gameplay like that has not really been done before and no one seems capable of repeating the success.
    
    Then again that is just me, I know some people who don’t like that game because of the lack of action. It is one of the more divisive games on the market.