You do know that cutscenes are actually harder than in-game dialog? Often times the cutscenes are rendered in much higher detail than the game and require far more intricate animation, as the cutscenes also tend to be more life-like, the characters move more fluidly, aliens' various strides must be continually touched up, and most annoyingly, cropping between various body parts must be avoided at all costs. Cutscenes are in no way a lazy alternative.
Actually they are a lazy alternative, from a design standpoint. When designers have no idea how to implement plot elements during gameplay efficiently or in an interesting manner, they just go on and think "hey, lets do a cutscene".
Good cutscenes are more complicated to produce and indeed they can be visually better, and there is a place for them in games (say, for some reason you want the player to witness something which happens on another location, or something).
However in Halo neither are the case. Most of the cutscenes involve the Master Chief, and they are rendered using the in-game engine, with the in-game models.
Well, three, if you count the one at the end of Assault on the Control Room and the one at the beginning of Two Betrayals, plus the final cutscene on the Maw, which you already mentioned. And it's probably safe to add in the cutscene on 343 Guilty Spark that introduces the Flood, and the cutscene in the middle of The Maw that sets up the engine room scenario, and -- for the sake of completion -- the cutscene in the middle of the level 'Keyes', just for its emotional impact.
Objections to any of those? (Er, I guess I'm being kinda nitpicky, so I'll add the caveat that I'm not much emotionally invested in how many cutscenes are actually relevant, and you can feel free to disagree; I am definitely interested in hearing objections, and not merely so I can take fanboyish potshots at them.)
Aside from those, a lot of the game's plot seems to be advanced during gameplay, mostly with Cortana's dialogues.
Nah, most of those are:
1. Assault on Control Room: Erm, why didn't we just keep Keyes next to the Master Chief? Erm, we'll explain it to you as you proceed down into the Forerunner containment building.
2. Two Betrayals: Good job on almost blowing up the Galaxy, let's go disable the generators even though I have the Index, kthxbai.
3. 343 Guilty Spark: Mmm, yeah, we have a parasite that almost destroyed the galaxy being kept cozy here in a lab (Does no one remember the Spanish Flu). Kill the parasite.
4. Keyes: Yeah, go figure. The Captain is on a flood-infested vessel, and ode to his lack of combat skills (T and R anyone?) probably got captured by Flood. Hey, whaddya know, he's Flood now, let's take his implants that are somehow necessary to active the PoA (
...) and go back.
And from these summaries, it further proves my point. Why do we have to have cutscenes 1, 2, 3, 4, when it could be much more interesting being part of those cutscenes personally?
Oh and right, many plot elements are revelealed in-game via cortanas dialogue... its almost the same thing: I'm blasting Covenant when all of the sudden an invisible chick speaks to me, again and again.
I've been thinking about this specific point and I think it's not so much cutscenes per-say but the fact they have become an easy "filler" and their lazy use that grates. So many games include them but to no real benefit when they could add so much.
Freespace's movies were awesome IMHO. The Bosch monologues were exceptional, giving both an insight into Bosch's psychie and showing him to be a normal, flawd human in extraordinary circumstances. Or the intro giving a teaser glimpse to the Colossus (firing point clangers aside).
Or Thief2, with it's signiture warm look, Garret's musings and the Mechanist scripture. The fact T3 reduced them to loading screen fodder did it no favours.
Even Farcry brought a new twist by retaining the first-person perspective and Carver's dry humour.
TBH I usually skip cutscenes. Especially GTA, even when Itry to follow the story I always end-up skipping past.
Dunno about the other games, but in Freespace's case thats one of those games where cutscenes are well used. Also notice this clever thing: During the supernova, you witness it in real time, interactively until you either die or depart, and only then do you have a pre-rendered cutscene to have a "gods view" on the event. The nova cutscene could've been easily left out, and was only there as a bonus. That was clever design.
On a similar note, in Freelancer you have a mix: those really needed cutscenes to advance the story (its a space sim, so you need cutscenes to know what happens inside the space stations, etc), and then you have those in-game cutscenes which could easily been left out.
Also, in Half-Life 2 and its consecutive Episodes I was often frustrated that I could not proceed when characters were interacting. The exception is when you're in Eli's Lab at Black Mesa East where he has a few gadgets for you to play with here and there. Otherwise, I was often shoved aside by moving characters, couldn't get a good look at whatever screen the main characters were looking at, and couldn't interact with the environment to the degree they could. I prefer a good spiel with even better graphics, a gripping story, and watching characters develop their personalities.
Well of course you couldnt proceed. Were you supposed to just leave Kleiners lad without the suit, for example? (in a free roam game you should be able to, but Half-Life is a linear story game). However the point remains that those ways of giving story are interactive. You can still move around and see the room you're in while things happen (unless you are strapped or whatever the story needs you to be). Also you witness everything in first person, interactively in Half-Life, and thats the main point.
A similar good plot exposition happens in Quake 4 when you're being "Stroggified". Sure you're slaved to what's going to happen. But you are there moving your eyes around, having your legs cut off, being pierced in the chest, etc. If a similar situation happened in Halo, you can be sure you were gonna watch another inpersonated cutscene. Guess which of them has more impact.
