Quicktime Events - Pros and Cons

Quicktime Events attempt a balancing act between creating good cinematics and giving the player control. Sometimes it results in a fun experience, but the approach is not without flaws.


God of War was hailed by many as something of a pioneer in Quicktime Events. The game actually utilized both QTE and traditional non-interactive cutscenes. The latter may or may not have been a good decision, as the dramatic difference in graphics quality between cutscenes and gameplay may have been great cinematically, but certainly broke immersion. 

The reason QTE worked in God of War is because it let the player act out brutal, visceral kill cinematics on in-game enemies while still feeling really involved in them. They not only watched it happen and heard the sound effects, they felt the vibration of the controller in their hands as they pressed the buttons that made it happen; direct feedback for their actions. This hit the player with the aesthetic impact of those over-the-top cinematics without breaking their sense of engagement in the action. It was a level of complex sensory experience most players had rarely seen before in games, and merely watching something can't compare to that.


Note my main point above was that QTE worked well in gameplay, not in a cutscene. As I mentioned in a previous post, players sometimes really want cutscenes to be a break in immersion, either because they need to stop and take a breather from the action, or else they are just used to not being quite as alert once the cutscene starts rolling. Enter Resident Evil 4:

This game presented cutscenes that looked exactly like traditional cutscenes, but would sometimes throw in a few Quicktime Events. The main problem with this is that the scenes caught most gamers off-guard, resulting in Leon dying and the player having to start the scene over. Having to start over again always breaks immersion, so if the makers of RE4 were hoping to keep the player fully engaged, they dropped the ball there.

Is there anything I can say that Yahtzee didn't already say better (and more quickly)?

Game developers generally want a game that has good cinematic quality while still keeping the player engaged, so in many cases a form of QTE may seem like a good idea. QTEs can be effective sometimes, but they don't carry the level of engagement of normal gameplay, and many players are just getting sick of seeing them, so developers would be well advised to start looking into alternatives.