Cut scenes establish story at the expense of interactivity. Is it worth it? Denis Dyack, creator of Too Human, says yes.

In a column for Edge Online, Dyack says that developers need to rethink the ways they use cut scenes. The article needs some editing, but there are several useful insights from an industry veteran who values good storytelling.

“Over the last five to ten years, so many games have been released where cut scenes are absolutely meaningless,” writes Dyack. “They don’t contribute to the content and don’t contribute to the characters. They’re almost like some kind of reward for completing the level, and that makes absolutely no sense.”

Dyack goes on to say that his recently released RPG epic Too Human blurs the line between cut scenes and gameplay by allowing the player to move through them a la the Half-Life games.

These are regular episodes of dialogue and action — sometimes overlapping gameplay like BioShock’s recorded tapes and sometimes allowing you to play through them like the fallout scene of Call of Duty 4. They are not fully interactive.

Fully interactive means something that does not simply add a free camera to a scripted event. To have interactive storytelling and not just an interactive lense, we need dynamic scenes that include player choice and input in more than just viewpoint.

Dyack concluded his column, “I’d still say that we’re taking baby steps in the area of bringing cinematics in games, but we’re moving in the right direction. The industry is pushing the medium, elevating it so people really get more unique experiences out of videogames than they would from any other entertainment medium.”

I hope he’s right, and I hope that more people are willing to experiment.