Adventure Gamers - Forums

Well one reason is probably because it’s usually used in action scenes, which are quite widely disliked themselves. If it’s not that, they are often excessive or unintuitive, and even downright distracting (can’t follow what’s happening on the screen because you must smash the buttons like crazy).

If they are used logically they’re not that bad. And usually I really enjoy the non action scenes in games that use QTE, doing everyday movements with a draw of the mouse or analog stick instead of just clicking everything.

I suspect The Walking Dead would have been successful without QTEs. It didn’t need QTEs even though they were implemented more seamlessly than usual. Press F to pay respects.

They can really take you out of a game though. There’s a trend to end boss fights with QTEs and it never feels as satisfying as taking control to finish off a boss how you see fit.

Funny irony though is that it’s watered down action games but pumped up the violence in adventures. Every episode of a Telltale game has a fight sequence now. I’d like to see how it’s handled in the Minecraft spinoff.

Dance Magic Dance - 06 April 2015 09:15 PM

Given the success of modern adventure games that have used it (ex. TWD) it seems to be the way of the future—why is it so hated?

Way of the future! pfft you better have a look at Dragon’s Lair, it’s so old school and way of past actually.

The problem I have with QTE is that when they appear I don`t pay attention to the game anymore. I was playing The Wolf Among Us and when the fighting scenes started, the characters and the actual fighting were just noise in the background because I was too busy concentrating on the next key to press.

For me, the main problem with QTE’s is that they take players out of the game.

For instance, in an adventure game, if an NPC pulls out a gun I might have a limited time to pull out my own gun and shoot him before he shoots me or someone else. I probably have to open the inventory, select the gun and click it on the NPC BUT I do all this while thinking that I’m pulling a gun out to shoot someone in the game. It fits well into the established control mechanism and thinking of the game.

If, however, a message pops up saying “Press ‘E’ on the keyboard” while a timer counts down, I am thinking about pressing a button on the keyboard and not about drawing and firing a gun. The immersion is gone. [/personal opinion]

Personally for me QTE’s are also very often a bit too gimmicky and they try to gamefy story elements that don’t need to be gamefied. There’s some occasions when a QTE event can work, but usually the way they are executed feels very counterproductive and at worst distracting.

I have to echo other people’s thought on here. I don’t think they’re terrible, but they can distract from the cut scenes and storytelling. I think Shenmue did them well as they mostly turned up in a not so important scene and the button prompts matched the layout of the games controls throughout the game. X was punch, b was kick and y was throw just like in the game itself.

Antrax - 07 April 2015 12:26 AM

It’s a way to make a non-interactive thing feel interactive. As such, it’s not so much a game mechanic as a trick to make people feel they’re playing something when in fact it’s just the something’s that’s playing.

QFT - It is a dirty trick to make us fell like we are playing a game, when in reality we are just watching a cutscene - QTE simply can’t die quickly enough!