Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual 171

Trigger Happy

Well, Robotron and Valhalla are pretty old games. Things on first inspection look somewhat different with the modern multimedia extravaganzas. Gamers familiar with epics such as the Final Fantasy series will quickly voice this objection. For every so often in such games, an FMV (full-motion video) sequence—the computer- generated “movie” nugget—pops up and moves the plot along. The narratives of the FMV sequences and the actual gameplay are contemporaneous: that is, the FMV is a synchronic story line, and a very involved one it is too. The same thing occurs in Metal Gear Solid23—where the highly entertaining plot is as tightly scripted and twisty as most Hollywood action movies— in Zelda 64 and, to a lesser extent, in the Tomb Raider games. Here are games that do have synchronic stories. Do they constitute some form of interactive storytelling?

As we touched on in the last chapter, the thing about FMVs is that they are completely predetermined. The player must watch them, cannot take part in them interactively. These sequences are also known as “cutscenes”—appropriately, because they signal a

_________________

23 Although here they use the game engine’s normal graphics, rather than the superior rendering of FMV. FMVs are just the most popular type of cut- scenes.

171