Next to sandbox design and quasi-futuristic body armor, Cineractives are some of the hottest buttons in gaming. Resident Evil 4 supposedly introduced them, God of War supposedly refined them, and they are, supposedly, pushing games to new peaks on the evolutionary scale. If nothing else, cineractives certainly are a welcome relief from the high-school prose posing as proverbs of endless insight (Metal Gear maybe?). I hate to imagine what our beloved hobby would have become had cineractives not appeared in... 1983.
That's right Leon. You may have brought cineractives to the masses, but the honor of originality goes to, this guy-
Okay. Crediting Dragon's Lair with birthing the cineractive might be a bit of a stretch. Timed button presses were the only challenges, and it was closer to being a cartoon than an actual game. Still, it played a large role in paving the way into modern gaming. Without Dragon's Lair, would there have been a Space Ace, Hologram Time Traveler, or the subsequent FMV craze of the '90s?
FMV games are cringe-inducing by today's standards, but there was a time when the grainy images of Under a Killing Moon and The 7th Guest sought to push gaming into a realm that could only be matched by the visual and narrative power of the cinema. They succeeded to a degree, until the novelty of realism wore off and the desire for depth took hold. Designers hit the drawing boards, hired professional screenwriters, and interspersed traditional gameplay with cutscenes of cinematic potential. Eventually, the disjointed experience of playing and watching, as in Final Fantasy VII, lead to the cinematic interaction of modern times.
It seemed good at the time.
Who knows? If it hadn't been for Dragon's Lair, we might have never seen Kratos' beautiful mutilation of Greek mythology, let alone controlled it. That, or we could have skipped the FMV holocaust.
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Felix_Arabia - December 16, 2007 (02:25 PM) Cineractics brought forth by Resident Evil 4? I'm 100% positive I was playing QTE segments in Shenmue back in 2000. |
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pup - December 16, 2007 (02:39 PM) You're very correct, but sadly, Resident Evil 4 usually gets the credit (hence the "supposedly"). |
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sashanan - December 16, 2007 (02:43 PM) Good ol' Dirk never got any further than Dirk the Dying when I controlled him. And by controlled, I mean I pressed buttons and he did nothing. I think it took me about two dozen game overs just to stop the thing in the moat from grabbing me after the drawbridge collapsed under my feet - all the while leaving me to wonder if there was an input problem or something. |
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pup - December 16, 2007 (02:48 PM) I'm still partially convinced that Dragon's Lair has no ending, and that the sequences shown in the idle screen were fake. |
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EmP - December 16, 2007 (02:49 PM) Never mind: if you didn't grab the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox remakes last generation, perhaps you can grab the DS/PSP remakes that are being made as we speak! Dirk will not die! Publishers won't let him. |
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nash - December 16, 2007 (02:50 PM) Only Shenmue can get away with this. |
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Suskie - December 16, 2007 (03:48 PM) Whether deserving of credit or not, Resident Evil 4 still used the mechanic wonderfully, especially during boss battles. |
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Felix_Arabia - December 16, 2007 (04:09 PM) I don't understand why RE4 would get that credit, but I suppose stranger things have happened. I've never played a Dragon Lair game. They seem interesting. |
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pup - December 16, 2007 (04:36 PM) You could simulate the experience pretty well by taking an episode of a cartoon, playing 10 seconds, start over, play 20 seconds, start over, and repeat until the end. You have to buy the DVD with a roll of quarters though. That's the rule. |
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Felix_Arabia - December 16, 2007 (05:14 PM) Sounds like my roommate paying for a Dominoe's pizza. |
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jiggs - December 16, 2007 (06:18 PM) if dragon's lair was never made, i'm sure someone else would have come up with the idea. |
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wolfqueen001 - December 16, 2007 (08:21 PM) >.> What's wrong with FMV games? I loved LoD.... I think that was FMV, anyway, considering the numerous cutscenes and everything. >.> But that game had awesome gameplay anyway... */rambles* Edit: Stupid HTML code won't let me do the typical representation of the end-action.... |
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daff - December 16, 2007 (08:47 PM) I loved Under a Killing Moon. |
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Genj - December 16, 2007 (09:02 PM) I loved The Beast Within aka Gabriel Knight 2. |
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LegacyGaming - December 21, 2007 (07:20 AM) Heh, FMV holocaust..thats about right. Oh and fave systems include PS 1 and 2, and Saturn... |
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