Cut Scenes

Cut scenes are mainly used for three purposes; to create atmosphere, story and motivation for the player character's actions, and, sometimes, convey important gameplay information like mission objectives and clues.

Firstly, the cut scene is not gameplay. That means that if the player wants to play the game, rather than spending his or her valuable gaming time on the cut scene, he or she should have that option. And that in turns means that all cut scenes must be skippable, even the first time, and any information in them that are critical for successfully finishing a level must be accessible in some other fashion (HUD messages or indicators, a journal, etc.). This latter requirement is also important for any player that watched the cut scene, then saved the game and did not pick it up until later, when the cut scene had been forgotten. Also, most cut scenes are only interesting the very first time you see them, and if a failure to complete an objective forces the player to replay part of the game, he or she most likely will not want to watch that cut scene over and over again.

Secondly, a lot of people do enjoy cut scenes, and like to watch them both to marvel at the many times impressive art in them, and to get that extra flavor they bring to the game with deeper characters and richer stories. To allow people to do this, make sure it isn't too easy to skip a cut scene. I've played games where I've inadvertently skipped cut scenes I wanted to see when the cut scene was triggered as I was pressing a button. A 'do you want to skip the cut scene'-dialog is adequate for this. If the cut scene is more than 15-30 second, I'd like to be able to pause it. Many things can happen outside the game that can interrupt it, and I don't see why I would have to miss a cut scene just because the phone rings. And why are there so few games that let you see the cut scenes again? I have many times found that I missed something in the cut scene, because I wasn't paying attention to that detail, and that I would like to review it, but there is no way I can do that with anything less than loading my last save game and play to the cut scene again. And on that note, a forward and a backward button would be nice together with that pause button.