10 Storytelling Clichés In Video Games That Need To Die
8. Hold X To… [Do Something]
Prime Offender: Every Call of Duty game
Interaction is one of the key things in video games. But maintaining that while also delivering a decent narrative is a tricky thing to balance.
So what we end up with is a really stilted moment where to advance the plot, show emotion or carry out a scripted event – just about anything, really – is conducted by making us hold a button down.
‘Bam!’ Video game developers say, probably high-fiving each other, ‘We’ve just made our story engaging and interactive.’
Trouble is, gamers tend to do this sort of stuff on auto-pilot. Screen tells us to press a button, so we press it. We’re not thinking about why we’re doing it, or what our character is feeling at that moment, we’re just doing it to get to the next part of the game.