I have to admit something. I am a habitual cutscene skipper. If a video game has the option, my fingers have a competition to see which one can hit the skip button first. Naturally, this means I miss out on a lot of very important details. Too many times have I thought to myself, “Who is this? Why are they important? Wait, I’m fighting who now? I don’t even know where that is”
I think it really boils down to my impatience. I am trying to play a video game, not watch a movie. I realize that in my younger days of playing video games, I always gravitated towards games with instant satisfaction. Games like Call of Duty, Gears of War, God of War, Halo, or Resident Evil.
I’ve heard the argument, “But those games have great, immersive stories. How could you skip them?”, many times. My response was always a shrug and that I was there for the gameplay, not the story. Recently, I have had a shift in the way I approach video games.
Most video game fans know how deep and confusing the Resident Evil lore can go. During a recent run through of the games, I decided to not skip any cutscenes. Not out of interest of the stories, but to prove to a friend that I could beat a game without skipping any cutscenes. I beat the first one, to my surprise, without skipping any cutscenes. No thoughts. I quickly moved onto Resident Evil 2 Remake. I skipped the first cutscene. Even reviewing the opening cutscene for this, I skipped through it. I thought, oh well, the games are fun, Ill just continue playing and get an earful from a friend again.
Then, I got to Resident Evil 7. At this point, I’ve play RE7 too many times to count. The gameplay of that one always has me hooked. This time something was different. I started noticing things. Ethan was sitting at the table with the Baker’s. I really listened to what they all had to say. This playthrough, I was afraid of Jack Baker before the end of the scene.
It got me thinking. What else has he said that I should be afraid of? After progressing further, the clues, the dialogue, the way I interacted with the game all seemed to come together. They were all right there the whole time, and I finally realized what I had been missing out on. I finally understood why I was being stalked by a little girl and why I should care about her.
This revelation has me replaying many games again with a newfound perspective to what the writing and storytelling can bring to a video game, to make it more perfect than it always was for me. It has also opened up my eyes to techniques that I have started to employ in my own writing.
I have begun to approach my writing as if I were playing a video game on paper. New questions are finally populating my creative space. How can I emulate the video game characters and environments that I love to create my own stories? Why do I love them? What do they make me feel? How were the twists implemented through dialogue or the environment?
I have a lot of backtracking to do. I have even more learning to do when it comes to great storytelling. I truly think video games are my avenue to learn storytelling.