Cut the Cutscenes. Slow Down on the QuickTime Events
Lengthy cutscenes are as part of RE’s legacy as corny dialogue, but even in a game where quick action is the main focus of gameplay, control was all too often taken out of the hands of the player. In RE6, trying to use a controller seemed to get in the way of all the cutscenes and button-mashy QTEs, which can be fixed fairly simply: Let players play the game.
To interact so infrequently with the controller strips the possibility of flow, wherein the gamer sort of loses contact with the real, physical world and becomes one with the on-screen experience. Part of the issue is that the makers of Resident Evil have always been very preciously attached to their own sense of storytelling, so they feel the need to set up scenes for the player, but it has gone too far. Make a product that is more interactive in all facets, or else find better ways of telling a story, and the result will be much improved.
To give an example, in one of RE6’s opening chapters, the player uses a series of QuickTime events to perform mundane tasks in between cutscenes, ostensibly to give the player a sense of ownership over what is happening. Ironically, it has the opposite effect, telling the player that her actions are only intermittently important, which also loosens the bond between player and game. The simple answer is to axe the QTEs but, barring that, make them infrequent enough that they feel integrated into the gameplay experience. This is an outmoded storytelling technique and needs to go now.
