I never felt the story connected so far, so that may be why it's so hard to make very specific comments on the cinematics, most really just felt like a blur of random events.
JohnEpler wrote...
You raise an interesting point. As I see it, there are two types of cinematics - 'reward' cinematics, where the player is rewarded with a neat scene for accomplishing a task (killing blows would fall under this heading, I think) and 'story' cinematics, which are cinematics which occur as a way to propel the story forward. I think, perhaps, DA2 suffered from a dearth of the former and perhaps an overabundance of the latter in some areas.
Ideally, the latter should be minimized wherever it takes agency away from the player. Sometimes, of course, it can be necessary to take away at least some agency, at least temporarily, but if you do it too often you run the risk of ending up with what feels like an interactive movie. Those latter should also be relatively short - a minute, two minutes of stuff happening that the player can't control and it can feel a bit like you're being shoved down a specific path and told 'here's what we wanted you to do, now go do it'.
I think its an odd distinction to make on those type of cinematics. The most basic video game reward is that of 'seeing new stuff', in that way story cinematics works perfectly as reward cinematics.
Very few games makes killing blow cinematics work well. Taking control away, changing point of view and pace rapidly serves to detach the players more than involve them I think.
In DAO I think they were ok, maybe because they were mainly used in fights with only one opponent. A killing blow on one opponent means the fight is over and its natural to lean back, relax and breathe a sigh of relief and watch a short cinematic
Another issue with a killing blow cinematic is that we may feel it didn't happen that way. If I killed the dragon with an arrow shot through the eye and the cinematic shows a dagger through the chest, the cinematic will feel unconvincing.
A few posters brought up an interesting point. Are games visual media or are they cerebral media? Feeling the game as opposed to watching the game may be an important distinction. If our imagination or physical coordination brings us very close to the action or story, visuals may serve to actually add some distance instead of bringing us closer. I imagine this is very hard to track, because its such a personal experience whether we feel involved or not. But it might be something worthwhile to keep in mind.
Old games with their limited visual qualities had to evoke our interest in other ways, and focusing on making things up in our mind was the main tool.
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