CUTSCENES and INTERACTIVITY
In game storytelling

Final Fantasy vs. Doom 3

Cutscenes in Final Fantasy are really important, not only for the storytelling but for the overall "game" experience. The same happens in Max Payne, with no "comic" cutscenes, would the game have the same feeling?

However using, pre-fabricated elements from other arts and insert them in a game could seem, a lot like "cheating". In Film you must be able to tell things through a composite audiovisual. You can use everything from text, to photography, paintings, music, and comics. But any of these pre-fabricated elements must be mounted into a new film set were no one will be prevalent upon the others. For example music can?t carry all emotions and meaning of a sequence. Music must be mixed within a complete film sequence, must be only one part of an all. Music serves as an emotional guider in the sequence, not as a producer of emotions or even as an intensifier. In a way, music must be transparent as all the other components, and then let form an overall experience.

So if we translate, the use of music in film to the use of cutscenes in games, we should have something like: cutscenes must be used to guide the emotional storytelling experience, not to produce or intensify that experience.

Comparing Final Fantasy X, and Doom 3. We can see differences.

Final Fantasy uses cutscenes to tell the story, to produce emotions and in the end they come to be almost the centre of interest in playing the game.

In Doom 3, cutscenes are used to introduce us to the playing sequences, to prepare our emotional mood for what is to come interactively. The interaction is more interesting than the cutscenes.