Warcraft III had some awesome cutscenes. The end of the Human Campaign is probably my favorite, with Arthas walking through the city while flower petals rain down.
Mechwarrior games typically had impressive cutscenes for their time. Particularly Mechwarrior Mercenaries. The ‘Game Over’ cutscenes are great-
Die during a mission: It shows a POV shot of you crawling about in wreckage. Suddenly a boot pins down your arm and you look up…into the barrel of a laser rifle :eek:
Run out of money: POV shot of you watching a Solaris 7 match with a can of Cy-beer and it is obvious that the mech you wagered on is losing because you furiously pound your can of beer against the counter and then throw it at the holo-vid in anger.
I get a small thrill out of the spacecraft launch at the end of Civ III. It’s got a stately, cinematic quality, and the link between the colony ship leaving Earth and the blown-about dandelion seeds is a nice little piece of visual poetry.
Warcraft III? I found those boring, no action, just a bunch of guys standing around waving their hands or whatever… yawn. Warcraft II on the other hand was awesome! Especially the one with the orcs swarming into the human throneroom, and the one with the orc sneaking up on a human catapult team and using it to shoot down one of their zeppelins. Or was it the other way around? I forget. Cursed new-fangled computers won’t let me play it anymore.
Recently the Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War intro positively ROCKED. Absolutely spectacular.
All time best I would give to the original Command & Conquer game. Seth getting shot through the temple close-up. Flame Tank blasting an entire street into kingdom come, only to turn towards the camera and let rip afterwards. The game has such good cutscenes the first thing I did upon entering every new mission was to blow up my own base, so I could see the “defeat” movies. Nod ending, showing your having successfully highjacked the orbital Ion Cannon, and Kane letting you select one of 4 famous buildings to wipe off the map. Total ownage.
Space Quest IV: When you wind up in “Space Quest: Latex Babes of Estros”, and they threaten to torture you with the Epi-Rip.
There was a secret in one of the early King’s Quest or Space Quest games. It’s been a damn long time since I’ve seen it, but I think it was either a preview of Space Quest in KQII, or a preview of Leisure Suit Larry in SQII. Either way, I think you triggered it by looking in a hole in a rock.
Sam & Max Hit The Road’s opening cut scene was genius.
The opening sequence of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 rules. The only bad part is that the guy playing the president is a douche. But there is a little nod to the Lewinsky thing. Plus, the General is awesome…and Tanya! Hot as F*uckin’ Hell Tanya! (Though I don’t think she’s actually in the opening scene.)
I just saw a cutscene from World of Warcraft last night that was :eek: probably the best graphics I’ve ever seen. Maybe even better than the final fantasy movie.
Knights of the Old Republic had some cool cutscenes as far as story goes. The “big reveal” was awesome.
Halo and Halo 2 tell a great story through cutscenes. After beating the game several times, the final “cliffhanger” cutscene from the second game has really grown on me and I love it.
EverQuest has a great and seldom noticed cutscene that only runs if you have the original CD in the drive when you load the game. Most people I know who play have never seen it but it’s great. The cutscene actually has a much better atmosphere than the game itself.
The first cut-scene I ever remember seeing in a game was one of the early ones in The Secret of Monkey Island. After solving one of the puzzle chains, it cuts to a scene of LeChuck and one of his pirates in their ship somewhere in the depths of Hell. It wasn’t all that spectacular or anything, but it was just such a cool concept and the first time I got the idea that videogames can actually tell genuine stories. I was convinced that I wanted to work in videogames after that (well, that and the earlier Monkey Island demo, which was done as a parody of the Citibank commercials running at the time).
The short cut-scenes in Sam and Max Hit the Road, first where Max takes the orders from the hypercephalic kitten and then where Sam rides the Cone of Tragedy, were just brilliant. Oh yeah – also the bit where Sam & Max learn about John Muir.
The whole sequence in Jet Grind Radio when Professor K is introducing all the rival gangs in the city, with the music blasting and the Noise Tanks all dancing together, had my jaw dropping with just how cool the game was.
The most beautiful cutscene I’ve ever seen was in Final Fantasy X, where Yuna does her dance on the beach to free all the souls of people killed in the battle against Sin. It was really the first time that a Final Fantasy game has ever conveyed to me the sense that there’s a real world going on behind the story.
And the cutscene at the end of Final Fantasy IX had me tearing up; I admit it.
I think I’m the only person in the world who loves Command and Conquer Renegade. And it had one of the best cutscenes ever… at the beginning of the second mission you see the tactical display on one of the ships… it’s a map in the original C&C style… the camera zooms in and the 2D display morphs into 3D. It looks awesome and it showed how C&C had come into the 21st century. Favorite cutscene ever.
IIRC, there were also some good ones in Lucasarts’ Dark Forces. And anyone who liked Dark Forces should check out the fan-made mods for the game like The Dark Tide II . It’s better than the original game!
Just about everything from Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers – they were mostly done as quasi-comic panels, revealed in succession, but those stick with me.
I’ll second (or third) Seth getting his brains blown out in the original Command & Conquer, if only because while I felt like he was jerking me around, I really didn’t see it coming right then and it shocked the hell out of me.
The title from Metal Gear Solid 2 – the game was a letdown, but I occasionally pop in the game just to watch the intro. It makes it seem like a kickass movie.
Yeah, Seth getting shot in C&C was a big twist in the plot. Kinda like when the General gets blown up by a Crazy Ivan in Red Alert 2- it just comes out of nowhere.
Seeing Kane in the Soviet ending to Red Alert was also pretty cool. After everyone else in the Soviet command kills themselves off, only Kane is left.
The Allied ending to both Red Alert 2 and Yuri’s revenge were both actually pretty funny. RA2’s Allied ending has allied soldiers dragging the soviet leader out kicking and screaming in his underpants (He had unsucessfully disguised one of his soldiers in his uniform). You then get to go on a ‘date’ with Tanya. In Yuri’s revenge, time gets screwed around with, so Eva beats Tanya to getting on a date with you (and she was HOT! :eek: )
and it is obvious that the mech you wagered on is losing because you furiously pound your can of beer against the counter and then throw it at the holo-vid in anger.