Asura’s Wrath Interview Part 1: Arms Aren’t Everything

I freaking love QTEs and i agree they help with the immersion in action games like this (just not too many QTEs please), I love the feeling of mashing the button as fast as you can it gets my adrenaline pumping

I count myself among those who dislike QTE’s… most of the time, and only when they are used as a SUBSTITUTE for compelling, well-programmed gameplay.

Like say, Kingdom Hearts 2. That game QTE’s almost NEVER required a sense of timing, patience, reaction-speed or ANY kind of skill whatsoever. You just sat there and mashed the triangle button to deliver attacks that often were much more effective than regular attacks, resulting in a game that took no engagement whatsoever to play. And it wasn’t just combat, it used QTE for TONS of things. Jumping, breaking the enemys guard, defending against attacks, EVERYTHING became aaaall about the triangle button. Birth By Sleep put more control back into the players hands and I thank God for it. A game where so much of the action is just about pushing one button gets boring, as it feels like everything happens automatically, with no reason for the player to increase their skills.

Another game that did better but ALSO bad, was Bayonetta. Now wait just a second, I LOVED the gameplay of Bayonetta and find it infinitely more engaging than Kingdom Hearts 2, but hear me out. Bayonetta had, in my mind, bad QTE’s because they often showed up without any warning or preparation, were INCREDIBLY FINICKY (you always had to push two buttons, and if you pushed one JUST before the other then bam, you lost) and you could instantly die by losing them. But more often than not the QTE’s did NOT replace actual skill and gameplay. The boss-fights were all about learning the enemys pattern, nailing them with attacks when they revealed an opening and dodging their counter-attacks. It was about learning, experimenting, PLAYING. Then, when you proved your skills good enough to lower the boss health to a certain level they threw in a simpler QTE where Bayonetta did something really impressive, something that they couldn’t have done WITHOUT simplifying the controls, and having the camera be in charge of the player instead of vice-versa. It was still much more about the players own skill, rather than replacing multi-faceted input with button-mashing.

QTE’s are basically interactive cut-scenes. And hey, I like cut-scenes: they can provide the viewer with a lot of ‘oomph’ and visually impressive spectacles that get you really pumped. But if all I’m doing in a fight is pushing buttons when the game tells me to do so, then it’s ME getting played. Not me playing the game. So far most of the really big boss battles seem to be QTE-fests where the players own input is minimal and the game controls the events unfolding, because they needed to railroad the players into doing what THEY want to do, in order to present the most visually interesting scenario. But games aren’t just about LOOKING. Games are about touching, about moving, about PLAYING. Looking isn’t fun if we’re not allowed to do ONLY that.

Now, some people like QTE’s. I know people who played Kingdom Hearts 2 and liked it best because they DIDN’T have to do so much in order to pull of cool flips and stuff, and I don’t think these people are evil or stupid. They’re just not people who can keep up with everything a 3D-game asks them to keep up with. And while I feel for them… I want my games to challenge me. I want to be in control, even if that control gets my ass kicked. That is why I dislike most games QTE-events.