I love this game’s story , I really do but the cutscenes really hurt it in my opinion.
When you actually play the game slowly and pay attention, you can overhear and notice so many cool little details that when combined, create a really interesting (and not so different from ours) world.
I also love to open the fandom wiki page and just read random articles to learn more about this world. This aspect of the game is genuinely fantastic IMO.
However then there are the cutscenes…..to me they feel insufficient and weak. You go from well developed world building to lame and rushed spy movie that acts as a weak glue trying to hold the good parts together.
And I know that this is due to budget but the cheap and ugly look of H3 cutscenes makes this even worse. H1 cutscenes were at least cinematic but everything after that straight up just fails in my view.
Strongly disagree. Bear in mind, context matters here. A lot of the cutscenes are very reactionary to the missions they precede and follow (particularly in 2016), so if you’re expecting deep lore dumps, that isn’t the place to go. The point of the post-mission cutscenes is to build anticipation and further the narrative of the game, not to add new bits of lore.
The H2 cutscenes onward are generally more story-focused (See Homecoming, which is one large comic book reference).
And I know that this is due to budget but the cheap and ugly look of H3 cutscenes makes this even worse
That’s the first time the H3 cutscenes have been called that, that complaint is usually levelled at the H2 cutscenes (which due to budget and IOI basically under threat of going under, weren’t able to render out proper cutscenes, so they make comic-book-esque slides with minor animations instead)
H1 cutscenes were at least cinematic but everything after that straight up just fails in my view.
They look nicer with their fancier animation, but I’d hardly call them any less cinematic than any of the other cutscenes we’ve gotten. Hell, the H2 cutscenes, as much as they get made fun of, still has some really nice shots and tell a story in an interesting way. That’s pretty cinematic to me.