These things are getting more and more rambly (it's a word, shut up) and I can't tell if that's a good thing. They are, however still serving their purpose as a warm up. And I'm pretty sure I didn't tell a dick joke today. Pretty sure... Progress?
All right, quick time events. You’ve served your purpose. Please exit the premises or I’ll have you tazered. Yes, that means now... Yes, tazers hurt. Bad. How do I know? Well I’ll tell you this, never take your pants off when you’re- wait a minute, quit stalling. And stop crying, you’re embarrassing yourself. Look, you’ve had a good run, but let’s face it: You were a stop-gap at best. No, there’s not a severance package. Stop giving me the finger. It’s juvenile.
Best I can tell, game designers have been using QTE’s in the same way that rednecks use duct tape. They asked themselves how they could best convey complex in-game cinematic moments in a way that still engages the player, and (after three beers and a hearty shrug) decided that a series of predetermined button presses at just the right moment could hold the whole thing together while they waited for a part to come in the mail. Unfortunately, it took over a decade to get the part and in the mean time they had company over and had to make the duct tape look attractive, so they decided to draw some designs on it. Then they forgot it was there for a while and by the time the part showed up they’d already started doing meth and completely forgot what the damn thing was for and-... Ok, this metaphor seems to be getting away from me, let’s take a step back.
I don’t know that QTE’s were ever intended to be a permanent solution, but they’ve certainly become pervasive. If you have a narrative heavy video game, then by god you’re going to have some quick time events. How else is the player supposed to feel like they’re part of a interactive storytelling experience? Actually control it? Madness. Not that game designers can really be blamed. They’ve been grappling with the magnificence of their own creation. Utilizing a relatively new artistic medium to tell stories in a way that they’ve never been told before isn’t exactly a precise science. As graphics and physics and story quality and acting and every other aspect of game creation has improved and evolved over the past decade, the delivery method has remained decidedly unchanged.
I’d nearly lost hope that a better solution would present itself until this year's E3. During the torrent of trailers and gameplay demos that normally come with E3, I always find myself turgid with excitement when I see a pre-rendered trailer, only to be let down when I finally get to see a gameplay demo. It’s the same story that’s been playing out for years: The hero does amazing things in the trailer, things that blow gaskets in my nerd boiler, and then I'm completely incapable of doing any of them once I'm actually holding a controller in my hand. This was not the case with Assassin’s Creed III. For the first time in my life, I was more excited by the gameplay demo than I was by the pre-rendered trailer. And that’s quite the feat considering the disconnect between the cinematic aspects of the AC1 trailer and the gameplay it afforded. That was only five years ago.
Then there is, of course, the crown jewel of this year's E3: Watch Dogs. Most seem to point to its being one of the truly "next-gen" titles on the show floor, and they'd be right. But it seems that inordinate focus was put on its technical achievements, missing its most important contribution. We all drooled over Watch Dogs as though we were staring at a Nobel Prize winner that models on the weekends. Yes, we could marvel at their contribution to society, but we're too busy having impure thoughts involving goat cheese and a bullwhip. At the time, I was no less guilty of this sin. It wasn't until the end of the demo, when the protagonist enters a car and drives away that I finally realized what I was seeing: A sandbox game. At any point, as a player, you could have veered off in a completely different direction, handled the presented situation in your own way. And the inherent cinematic elements of the game would turn those choices into something amazing.
Time is eventually going to make a fool of the quick time event. It served its purpose for a while, sure, but we seem to have broken through the barrier that was preventing us from experiencing in-game narrative in a truly unique way. We'll have it all: The cinematic aspects of a QTE-driven experience like Uncharted or Heavy Rain, with the gameplay mechanics of a sandbox title. No more strings to hold us up. The player is left in complete control of the cinematic aspects of the gameplay. The story will be written for us, but the quality of the action will be a direct product of our skill level.
And that would seem to be rub, wouldn’t it? That to truly break through the chains of Hollywood’s linear storytelling guidelines, it will be up to the player to really make it happen once the controller is in their hand. Not everyone can do that. Not yet, anyway. Lend me your ears, fellow fuddy-duddys: While we were drooling in the carpet over the magnificence of our shiny new PS2s, there were five years olds playing it. Not well, but they were playing it. Those five-year-olds are now in their late teens. They’ve been holding the same controller (or a close approximation) and playing games as complex as Grand Theft Auto 3 or Metal Gear Solid 2 since the age that thirty-year-olds started playing Super Mario Bros. or Double Dragon. Prefer PC? Unless you’re using a game pad that resembles the aforementioned, the control scheme has remained unmodified since Quake 1. WASD, mouse. The new generation of gamers is more than capable of being given the cinematic reigns. They won’t even give it a second thought. They’ll just be really good at video games, and the cinematic moments will fall into place.
Part of me can envision a world in which quick time events still have their place. A world in which the iPhone generation saddles its withered, girdled form up to a dusty old 3D TV in the game room next to the ping pong table and mindlessly presses square, triangle, circle or x while they wait for that hot nurse to bring them their meds. You hope that your grandkids are coming for a visit today, but a combination of dementia and- “Ooh, look at that Nathan Drake and his toned buttox! Hey Skyler! You remember the good old days when games were really games and not these brain-operated whatevs that the kids are using these days? Lawl!” Then your colostomy bag bursts. And while that might sound a little depressing, fret not. It’s pizza day in the commissary!
I just made myself sad. I’m going to go do something youthful and reckless while I play with my smart phone.
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