Something plenty gamers thought they'd very much left in the rear-view mirror were quick-time events (QTEs) following the leap to new hardware, but as Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and The Order: 1886 proved, they're still very much something the companies behind your biggest games want to continue pushing. Why? Because Jonny Can't-Handle-His-Difficulty likes to watch the pretty cutscenes and stab the button to win every few moments. Even though developers like Naughty Dog and Rockstar have shown you can craft a set-piece that continues to play out with the player enacting their own agency within (Uncharted 2's train sequence, for example), it's far easier to bolt the player into a particular on-rails sequence and shoot fireworks their way as an excuse for some high-octane thrills. However, like Michael Bay and the insultingly over-sexed Transformers flicks, after so many years of non-stop explosions where the only thing to do is succeed by hitting a prompt to start the next animation, it all gets too tiring. Or even worse, you fail one prompt and the game's most basic level of engagement is completely lost.
