I guess that's my gripe. Crystal Dynamics, through the latter 66% or so of the game, has demonstrated that they actually do know how to make cinematic QTEs an immersive and logical gameplay feature - so why the hell didn't they manage that in the first 33%?
In the first 33% of the game Lara is far more likely to find herself in a situation where pressing X not to die becomes important. She's not as proactive about dealing with threats or as equipped to do so, mentally or physically. It takes a little while for her to learn that putting your head down and waiting for it to go away is not a valid response, so she keeps getting caught out.
In other words, what The E said. It's story-related.
That would make sense if they weren't so obnoxiously done, IMHO.
There are many, many lone survivor-type games where the tension is done as well or better than TR, yet they don't have an abundance of jarring QTEs cropping up.
Here's where the railroading comes in, though - the game designers know that the player is going to be spooked and be overly cautious with their biggest weapon out. However, that spoils the effect they're trying to achieve (I'm thinking here of the wolf). So they force the game to prevent you from holding a weapon at the ready. Then they take away player control by creating a cinematic effect - which is two strikes against player agency. Now, traditionally, this sort of cognitive dissonance - where the player wants to do one thing, but the character they control is being forced to do another - is handled by cutscenes. However, by introducing a QTE here, the designers have created a situation in which control and decision-making are removed from the player, the player is railroaded into watching the character endure a situation the player never would have gotten into, and THEN, instead of seeing the character emerge from the situation with a mindset closer to the player (thus increasing the immersion), the player is forced to engage in a button-mashing exercise where lack of precise key-mash timing results in a repeat of the sequence over and over until the player gets it right and the character emerges "victorious."
That's not immersion-building, that's immersion-breaking. That makes me contemptuous of the character and the flawed design. That makes me annoyed that the developers took away my control to force me through a sequence that I not only have to watch, knowing what will happen before it does, but which I then have to finish through a button-mashing exercise in frustration.
There is a reason that cutscenes traditionally are used to place characters in jeopardy and control is returned to the player to get a character out of it - it rewards the player for their actions, and helps to build immersion as the player takes a protective role over the character itself (well, Shepard, you got yourself into this and now I'll get you out). More impressively, some developers manage to do this subtly without ever taking player control away (well, Gordon, that was an unfortunate train crash... let's not get eaten by the big swimming monsters, alright?). This use of QTEs seems to be the worst possible answer for a non-problem to begin with - we're going to punish the player with a rapid-fire set of button mashing that will result in constant repetition if you don't get it exactly right - after forcing the player into a situation into which they never would have placed themselves.
That wolf scene is everything that is wrong with the use of QTEs in games as a replacement for traditional cutscenes. Not only is it basically "press X, then Y, then Z not to die... oh wait, now to it again because you didn't time it quite right," but it is directly at odds with player agency in developing that situation.
This is perhaps why I find the later TR QTEs much less irritating - you are pressing a key that makes sense in context in response to an event over which you both had no role in precipitating and which is the definition of "dynamic circumstances." That again triggers the reward pattern - oh ****, the floor just went out from under me and I managed to catch a zip line... oh wait, this one ends... hey look, I can hop on THAT one instead... oh ****, into the river... obstacles... hey, that's what a shotgun's for... - etc. That's very different from "Hey, I'm in a wolf den and the developer just stuck me in a cutscene where my character does NOT have her pistol out to shoot the wolf that I can hear growling and which there is a 99% probability is hovering in the single dark corner my torch is not illuminating... oh yeah, there we go... wait, I have to do WHAT now? Oh look, I died and get to do it again... what buttons am I hitting....?"
Budding game designers, pay attention.
