Cutscene Incompetence: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|"''The one [[Weaksauce Weakness|weakness]] of any [[Player Character|protagonist or hero-like character]] is a [[Cutscene]].''"

|'''KaiserNeko''', [[Team Four Star]]'s [[Let's Play]] of ''[[Halo: Reach]]''}}

Once the [[Cutscene]] starts or the player loses even the tiniest bit of control, things tend to go south quick. The hero is [[Idiot Ball|far more prone to do rather boneheaded things]], such as take on too many enemies at once (or just declare there are too many and [[Stupid Surrender|give up even if it's obvious the enemy would be quite defeatable in a normal battle]]), get ambushed and captured, let an ally get killed, or stand around [[Contemplate Our Navels|navel gazing]] while [[Villain Exit Stage Left|the bad guy escapes]]. Often, such things can only be resolved once the player takes command again. It's as if the main character would be [[Too Dumb to Live]] without the player's wise and guiding hand.

 

 

[[Tropes Are Tools|May potentially be a necessary evil]] - because if the gameplay represented a soldier who is shown being unable to draw a pistol when needed during a cutscene and he does this for almost ''every'' random [[Mook]], the game would be much harder.

** What makes it worse is that, in a later cutscene {{spoiler|this time, Alicia gets shot}}, the characters were quick to call for the medic.

* In ''[[Crysis (series)|Crysis]]'' your character gets knocked out in a cutscene in a similar way to the ''[[Tomb Raider]] 2'' cutscene above (albeit by being punched in the face rather than with a spanner). Both ''[[Crysis (series)|Crysis]]'' and ''[[Crysis (series)|Crysis]]: Warhead'' have certain cutscenes with situations that are treated as being very dangerous, despite the fact your character could resolve them in all of ten seconds with the abilities and weapons they have available in-game.

** Later on they only take a gun-using enemy character seriously when he specifically shows his gun is strong ''out''side of cutscenes too.

* Towards the middle of ''[[Fallout 3]]'''s main quest, you find your father being held hostage by [[The Dragon|Colonel Autumn]] and 2 Enclave troopers. By this point in the game, you're almost certainly a heavily armed and armored murder machine who are easily capable of slaughtering dozens of Enclave troopers. But, instead of simply letting you into the room so you can murderize Autumn and his two goons, your father {{spoiler|sacrifices himself by flooding the room with radiation, killing the Enclave troopers and knocking Autumn unconscious.}} To top it off, this indirectly results in {{spoiler|your death at the very end of the game, when you're forced to walk into the irradiated room to "face your destiny"}}. Gee, thanks Dad.

** to be fair you fight a similar brand of mook as the bodyguards Detta has with him as somewhat-competent (for mooks) opponents in the last dungeon of the game. At the point you face Detta you just beat the very first boss in the game, your very low level and only have one ally. Assuming that the bodygaurds are as strong as their mook counterparts run into later Sly and Grumpos were no where close to strong enough to beat them at this point. So in reality Sly probably made the right choice. A bigger question is why Detta claimed to need Sly and Grumpos to clear out all the monsters in the cave when his overpowered mook bodyguards could have done it easily.

* ''[[Dragon Quest III]]'' has a fairly [[Egregious]] example. The Hero comes across his long-lost father Ortega in the depths of [[Big Bad|Zoma]]'s Castle. Ortega is fighting a battle against a powerful monster, and seems to be holding his own, but finally runs out of MP for healing and dies. Neither the Hero nor his party considers joining the battle, providing the needed healing, or using one of their spells or items to bring Ortega back to life after he dies.

** In fact, the fire extinguisher doesn't do ''any'' damage, it just has the game check if the target has less than 1 HP. (This is why guards don't shoot some of your possessed characters even if you spray them, because they're not suffering a health loss.) The imps are literally [[One-Hit-Point Wonder|Zero Hit Point Wonders]].

* [http://www.dailymotion.com/Static_Fiend/video/5496130 This] video of a [[Let's Play]] for ''[[Quake 4|Quake IV]]'' points out that the big spider-tank takes out your fellow marines' tanks effortlessly - but you, of course, can take it out. ...Of course, the element of surprise probably had something to do with it.

* Rebecca Chambers in the original ''[[Resident Evil]]'' and ''Resident Evil Zero'', who seems to be capable of taking care of herself when the player controls her, but is reduced to a [[Damsel Scrappy]] who needs to be saved by Chris or Billy whenever the plot requires it. This is even more glaring in ''Zero'', which takes place a day before the first ''Resident Evil'', where she is more competent than she was in the original game.

** Rebecca's [[Badass Decay]] is sometimes fan-justified because, by the point Chris meets her in ''[[Resident Evil]]'', she has been awake for several days and her team is found dead over the course of the game. But the ''Resident Evil'' series is effectively this trope incarnate, as probably half the boss fights could be avoided if the idiot characters would just shoot the bad guys during their monologues '''before''' they inject themselves with whatever they're holding.

** ''[[Resident Evil]]'' is an absolute god-king of this trope. Main characters being knocked out in one hit? Check. Main characters outright refusing to kill the resident [[Big Bad]] in a single shot even when there is nothing logically stopping them from doing so? Check. Main characters (often police officer) not retaliating with deadly force to bit-characters who opened fire on them ''first'' (and then often asking if they're a zombie or reasoning that they're not)? Checkmate.

* The second ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]]'' set (Darkness/Time/Sky) has a couple of these scenes. The first occurs when the [[Goldfish Poop Gang]] Team Skull spends approximately 5 minutes describing their super-secret attack and calling it...While your team stands there and waits for the attack...Granted, the characters didn't know how strong the team's leader was, but his minions were the boss of the first dungeon, and could be killed within two or three turns! Then, it happens again after fighting Grovyle, where after finally beating him down, he turns around and knocks you out so that a supporting character can save the day. It should be noted in both cutscenes, and non-plot party members just stand there and watch, but that falls more into [[Lazy Backup]].

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Gameplay and Story Segregation]]

[[Category:Show, Don't Tell]]