7 Watch Out Mario! There’s a New Video Game Star in Town, and His Name is [YOUR
7 Watch Out Mario! There’s a New Video Game Star in Town, and His Name is [YOUR FAVORITE ACTOR] Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Emma Morgan-Mueller
Since the beginning of video games, people have often debated if they can be considered an art form.1 Whether or not every single game ever created counts as art is surely a difficult question to answer, however it’s undeniable that some games use cinematic techniques. From camerawork and motion capture to using Hollywood actors in games themselves, to treating games like interactive movies, games have increased in cinematic quality as technology has progressed.
Technological Aspects
Plenty of games include cutscenes in between gameplay segments. These scenes in themselves are usually movie-like. You can typically find these cutscenes unbroken in extremely long YouTube videos. The fact that there’s a demographic for these types of videos shows that people enjoy watching the movie adjacent parts of these games. At this point, it becomes a question of whether or not these separate cutscenes are a part of the game itself. Since the player has no input, it can be argued that these scenes aren’t a game. A few games over the years have tried to combat this conundrum. William Brooker’s article “Camera Eye, CG-Eye:Video Games and the Cinematic” describes this relationship between the player and the camera. He writes “Full-motion video cut-scenes break the player out of immersion in the diegesis, arguably like inter-tides in early films. Fixed camera angles restrict player movement and freedom, leading to an ‘on-rails’ experience like a theme-park ride, rather than a convincing simulation” (Brooker, 6). Some games such as Telltale’s The Walking Dead or any games created by David Cage (Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, Detroit Become Human) have made these scenes dependent on player interactivity. By adding in prompts for the player to choose, the “game” part is uninterrupted while still allowing the scene to play out.
God of War
A great example of a completely uninterrupted game comes from God of War (2018). While this game doesn’t utilize the interactivity of choosing what the main character says and does, the game appears to be one continuous shot including the gameplay sections. The director of the game, Cory Balrog, spoke about this technique and what he was hoping to achieve from using it in this capacity. He said “‘…You’re gonna get a sense of immediacy and connection to these characters, an unrelenting feel, to the adventure that you can’t get in any other way, and I can’t cite something else.’” (Kuchera) Included here is a short example of this transition from cutscene into gameplay. Content warning for blood and gore towards the end of the clip, but the first four minutes show the transitions. You can see how the camera shakes and follows the action and important objects in the scene just like how it would in a movie. The entire twenty hour long game is like this; transitioning back and forth b