Cutscenes—Definition: When you’re watching a game instead of playing it.

Or, there’s a time and a place for them, and there’s one point in BioShock which wasn’t the time or the place. 

All right, that’s it.  You cannot continue reading without having an amazing moment in BioShock ruined for you.  Only continue reading if you’ve finished BioShock.  Even if you don’t intend on playing it, you’re not allowed to keep reading—instead, go buy BioShock and play it.  It’s way better than this article, anyway.  For those of you continuing on, I hope you enjoy learning about empathetic flow! 

Virtually every modern game flips between two modes: gameplay, which is all of the running, jumping, and shooting that comprises so many games; and cutscenes, which are short scenes that advance the plot or character development, but take most (or all) control away from the player.  Essentially, these cutscenes are short films strewn throughout the game that explain why you’re running/jumping/shooting.  They give the game developers a great deal of cinematic control over the plot—the camera moves around the space as it would in film, and the player has no control over the outcome.  These have all of the benefits of film—devs can control exactly what the player sees, allowing for interesting camera shots; they ensure that no information is unintentionally missed; they control the pacing of the characters’ interactions so that there are no awkward delays during which the player’s character doesn’t do exactly what the devs want him to. 

However, games aren’t films—the key difference is that rascally interaction that makes games so good… and makes cutscenes so tempting when you’re telling a story.  How can you trust players to look where they need to look and have the experience you’ve imagined for them? 

You can’t. 

Fuck!  Shit!  Whateverwillwedo?! 

Just… let the player play the game. 

Irrational did a terrific job of this with most of BioShock—for example, they provided audio logs that fill in much of the backstory of Rapture, the city under the sea in which the game takes place.  While still running and gunning, players learn about the grand intentions of this city: they hear the characters who made Rapture great talk about how amazing it is, and they hear characters’ accounts of how things went so wrong.  Additionally, there are scripted moments in which the player can realize the solution to a puzzle or avoid a trap by paying attention at the right times.  Neither of these take control away from the player; instead, they reward the player for being observant.  More importantly, they make sense within the world of the game. 

The integrity of artistic works rests mostly upon two things: their ability to make an audience feel something, and the means by which they accomplish the first goal.  Generally, a clean and unified delivery does a better job of making an audience feel something.  Every word, moment, camera shot, or note means something vital, and nothing distracts the viewer from what they’re feeling.  This frame of mind is something I’ll call empathetic flow. 

Empathetic flow occurs when you engage completely with an artistic work.  While you are not the character in the book/movie/song/game you’re consuming, you’re completely caught up in the feelings of the character, you’re absorbed by the decisions the character must make, and you believe the consequences of this world: in short, you’re experiencing empathy with the character and you’re not aware of the mechanics of the artwork while feeling that empathy.  Obliviousness to the mechanics is why it’s called empathetic flow; you’re in the zone, and it’s the same zone that gamers experience when playing exceptionally well, or that anyone experiences while doing whatever they do well.  Their focus is complete, time passes by without their awareness… it’s just that the flow they’re experiencing is grounded in emotions. 

Now, what does all of this have to do with BioShock and cutscenes? 

Simple. 

Empathetic flow is why I wish I had gotten to beat Andrew Ryan to death. 

I told you there were spoilers! 

BioShock turns the trope of quest updates on its head by showing players that they’ve played directly into the hands of a brutal criminal by completing every quest they’ve been given (involving no small amount of murder).  Every in-game action the player has taken has been to gain power (fulfilling their power fantasies), but then they’re faced with the realization that they are going to beat someone who (probably) doesn’t deserve it to death.  Bloody pulp.  It’s visceral and disgusting.  It’s shameful and perfect… except for the fact that it’s a cutscene. 

Remember—the term is empathetic flow.  You cannot be aware of the mechanics of the artwork.  The best way to accomplish this is to unify the delivery by eliminating the clutter and awkward transitions that remind the audience they’re viewing something constructed.  Alternating between gameplay and cutscenes increases awareness of the mechanics in a way that’s more apparent in video games than it is in many other forms because of the interactivity of games.  You transition from doing all of the action in the game to watching all of the interaction.  If you don’t notice when that happens, then the game is truly awful—or the cutscene involves interactivity. 

Back to death by bludgeoning: it’s a great moment in the game.  The character questions his humanity and his every impulse as he realizes he was born as a weapon crafted to kill Andrew Ryan. 

But the player?  The player’s just watching that happen. 

How about instead of making me watch, you let me run around the room, think about ways out, be completely unable to find anything else to do, and then eventually, after Andrew Ryan incessantly asks would I kindly kill him do I give in and blunt force trauma him to death. 

Might people decide not to kill Andrew Ryan, and get completely stuck and unable to move forward?  Yeah.  Then it’s okay to force a cutscene… maybe.   

Also, I realize there are time and monetary constraints on any project—as I don’t have intimate knowledge of BioShock’s development cycle or Irrational’s crunch time, it’s hard to say that they didn’t do their best with the resources available.  This is simply my suggestion for how to improve narrative and encourage empathetic flow by eliminating cutscenes and replacing them with interaction—especially for scenes as critical to the narrative of the game as this one was for BioShock. 

Here’s how I would have done it, including all of the solutions for any “but that won’t work!” responses I can anticipate:

Andrew Ryan starts talking to you once his defensive barrier goes down.  Don’t take camera control away from players at this point—let them look at whatever they’d like.  It’s going to be Ryan, since you’ve done a wonderful job of making him the focus of the entire game.  We want to look at him, because we can finally kill him.  We can beat the game (even though we know, thanks to the bathysphere navigation, that there are 3 more sections remaining).  And as the first non-threatening character we interact with face-to-face (aside from Little Sisters, if I’m not mistaken), we’re absolutely gripped by whatever Ryan has to say. 

Ryan talks, explaining what he does in the released version of the game: you’ve been controlled the entire time, you’re not a man, etc.  He clarifies the Would You Kindly idea, we realize that we’ve been controlled the entire time (via the great flashback Irrational provides), and then when Ryan asks would you kindly kill him, a quest update pings, telling you to “Kill Andrew Ryan”.  What made the Would You Kindly realization so amazing was that you’d been strung along the entire game.  You’d done exactly as Atlas had told you to do, and all because of a simple verbal command.  You were a pawn, even in this relatively open environment full of customizable spells and weapons. 

And what accompanied every one of those objectives?  A quest update.  If Irrational had included a quest update at this point in the game (and allowed players to keep control of their actions), it would have solidified the entire experience.  The quest updates aren’t in-game help, kindly guiding you to the next objective and keeping weak little players from getting lost—they’re your brainwashing telling you what to do.  The HUD is no longer an artifice, but a ticking in your brain, a program constantly reminding you of your goals.  You are a machine built to kill Andrew Ryan, and you’ve just been handed a golf club and your brain is commanding you to smash it into Ryan’s brain. 

But what if a player refuses?  What do we do then? 

With every one of Andrew Ryan’s Would You Kindlys, limit player efficacy—but don’t remove their control.  Decrease their movement acceleration, constrict how far away from Ryan they can look, sheathe any other weapons that they choose to draw, and eventually leave the player staring into Ryan’s eyes, unable to move or look away, with only one option left: swing the club. 

But it doesn’t kill him. 

So you have to swing again. 

And again. 

Just to clarify—I don’t want to bludgeon anyone to death with a golf club.  This isn’t a life goal of mine; however, as a thematic experience in the game world, that’s the entire point.  You’ve been bred to do this, and even your deep-seated desire to let this man live can’t keep you from bludgeoning him.  You empathize with the character; as an artist, this is your entire goal, and you didn’t have to take away player control to achieve it.  Well… didn’t entirely take away player control. 

Some constraints will be placed on the player, but they will appear gradually—which I think is the difference.  Interaction is what makes video games a unique art form, which means that we must tinker with how players experience interaction in order to fully realize the potential of games as an art form.  The current model is all or nothing—either players are running/jumping/shooting, or they’re watching.  I’m proposing that we blur those lines by restricting player interactivity when it furthers the themes or plot of the game.  By strategically limiting (or expanding) player options and interaction within a game, we can craft the experiences of players.  We already know that this works in survival-horror games: limit a players’ resources, and you create a terrifying experience.  Amnesia took this a step further by giving players no way to fight back—their only verbs are run and hide.  This created an entirely different experience for players, and I believe it could be done in others games and genres. 

But once again, getting back to bludgeoning a man to death—everything would be paced by the voice actor’s performance.  As Ryan becomes increasingly impatient with the player, the Would You Kindlys come more and more quickly.  A single vocal performance, with the limits on a player’s options increasing with every Would You Kindly.  Players would be able to turn and run from Ryan if they’d like… for about 4 seconds.  With the first Would You Kindly, the camera is pushed back toward Andrew Ryan’s face, and the player is pulled back to a position right in front of Ryan.  He can resist these movements at first—his camera movement and locomotion are stronger than the game’s new forces upon them, but with each Would You Kindly, he becomes less and less able to resist these forces until he’s left with nothing to do but kill Andrew Ryan. 

But what if the player never swings the club? 

Well, a cutscene is the obvious way to force their hand.  However, couldn’t you code it up so that any key input (mouse movement excluded) triggers a weapon swing? Even the Esc key, your only option for saving and quitting, in this moment kills a man. 

Or maybe that’d look like an accident.  Instead, unbind all other keys, leaving the player with only one option.  This gives the sense that the player character truly has been programmed for this moment, and his brainwashing is so powerful that he cannot do anything except kill Ryan. 

It’d be intense.  Or maybe I’m just trying to give a generation of gamers PTSD… not really sure just yet.  But I’d love to try it sometime!

A few more “but I found a loophole” bits come later, but I’d like to first address why this solution feels like the stronger option to me than BioShock’s implemented solution. 

First, the brainwashing.  The idea is that Would You Kindly is such a powerful switch within you that you have no choice but to follow any command that begins with it.  It’s so powerful that you’ve gone through some 15 hours of gameplay without even noticing the phrase, let alone deciding not to accomplish any objectives attached to it.  By taking away all control from players during this moment, you diminish the power of the brainwashing as a narrative device.  It’s strong enough to make you play all of the game preceding it, but it’s not strong enough to make you do something once the player understands what’s been going on?  It’s much more fulfilling to have players actually kill Ryan—even if it involves a couple of hoops—than to relegate it to a cutscene. 

Plus, there’s the issue of revenge.  Obviously, Fontaine’s a terrible man and he should not be in control of the city.  However, once Tenenbaum undoes much of your brainwashing, there’s nothing actually driving you to kill Fontaine.  However, if players were forced to kill Ryan themselves, even when they understood it was an unjust thing to do—now they have motive to finish the game.  Now the continued quest updates are the vengeful ticking in your brain reminding you to seek justice for what Fontaine made you do.  There’s ownership of the act, which is a powerful device for interactive media.  If we can’t make players feel responsible for their actions, what good is this medium for triggering emotional responses from players?  We empathize with characters in other media when they are forced to do something we recognize to be a poor choice, or at least not the best one.  Why do we miss opportunities to do the same when the player is acting as the protagonist? 

This solution also creates a bit more narrative punch to the rest of the game—after experiencing this restriction of options within the game, players are going to be concerned that this can happen to them at any time.  That makes Tenenbaum’s work on you more of a relief, and makes you appreciate her and the Little Sisters even more.  It makes Fontaine’s first attempt to control you after Ryan’s death (his suggestion to go get stepped on by a Big Daddy) and your ability to ignore it even more satisfying—although you were a pawn before, now you’re your own man.  You’ll do as you like. 

Which makes Fontaine’s control over your heart (the reason you lose health during the next section of the game) even more of a bastard move.  You think you’re in control for the first time, but he’s still holding some of the strings—which only amplifies your motivation to seek revenge.  (And actually, I wish they’d done a bit more with this idea—let Fontaine do a few more dastardly things to the player.  Yes, the lack of control over your Plasmids was frustrating and sort of related to the brainwashing thing, but it could have been more so.  Perhaps whenever your Plasmid was changed, you automatically fired one off—meaning you’d sometimes draw the attention of some bloodthirsty splicers and could blame your troubles on Fontaine rather than just using very few Plasmids during that section of the game.  Then, after you find one of the doses of the solution that brings your Plasmids under control, remove the auto-fire component of it to show that you’re gaining back some control—a combination of gameplay reward and fuck you to Fontaine.) 

But this solution only works for a game in which the player character has been brainwashed!  Well… not necessarily.  Constricting options and limiting acceleration and camera movement doesn’t make sense in the real world, unless you explain it was characters being controlled by their emotions (think Brad Pitt during the climax of Se7en)—perhaps this is a new tool for narration within games.  Tint the color palette and limit player options based on the emotional state of the character. 

Maybe.  It seems like something that will take a lot of polishing to work out—players will hate feeling incapable if you weaken them too much due to emotional distress, and they’ll despise it if they don’t empathize with the characters—but improving an art form’s never easy.  

If these proposed changes are an improvement, of course. 

Tell me why they’re not below!