Awesome game cutscenes.

[Worgen]

Just what the title says, what are some awesome game cutscenes?

I have to start with World in Conflict since it really is a great cutscene and more people need to play this.

Next you just can't go wrong with Dawn of War, they had some awesome cutscenes, even if I do wonder where that damn Dreadnought went too.

The Garden battle in FF8. It's still a neat cut scene, even though there is a lot of kinda dead time in it without the ingame models in parts.

 

[Elfgore]

God I love that cutscene from World in Conflict. One of the best use of licensed music in video games and that amazing reveal that it's U.S. troops being attacked on U.S. soil. Love it. Had a better story than most RTS games bother to have.

For mine, Battle of Ostagar in Dragon Age: Origins. WARNING: Spoilers for dragon age in video. It's such a twist and the music and mood only makes it better. God do I miss old Bioware.




Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne ending cutscene, the reveal cutscene of Wrath of the Lich King, and his eventual death. The music, the lines that stick in your head. "No king rules forever, my son." Most of all, it's the arc of Arthas, it's why the first cutscene always hits me. He had everything. A loving father, more friends than one can keep track of, a kingdom that loved him, someone he loved dearly and they loved him back. The final scene we see of him in Warcraft III is sitting alone on a throne, king of a frozen wasteland of the undead. With most of his friends and family dead at his own hands.

 

[Worgen]

God I love that cutscene from World in Conflict. One of the best use of licensed music in video games and that amazing reveal that it's U.S. troops being attacked on U.S. soil. Love it. Had a better story than most RTS games bother to have.

Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne ending cutscene, the reveal cutscene of Wrath of the Lich King, and his eventual death. The music, the lines that stick in your head. "No king rules forever, my son." Most of all, it's the arc of Arthas, it's why the first cutscene always hits me. He had everything. A loving father, more friends than one can keep track of, a kingdom that loved him, someone he loved dearly and they loved him back. The final scene we see of him in Warcraft III is sitting alone on a throne, king of a frozen wasteland of the undead. With most of his friends and family dead at his own hands.

Yeah, that World in Conflict cutscene is seriously one of the best around.

As much as I dislike blizzard, they do some really pretty cutscenes. So I have to counter them with some Guild Wars 2 and Warhammer online.

Ugh, now I want to play guild wars 2 again, but I really don't want to have to deal with my full inventory.

Its really too bad EA fucked up the launch of this game by releasing it in a buggy state before a wow expansion. It was a really good mmo.

 

[Gordon_4]

Pretty much every World of Warcraft cinematic is incredible - Blizzard’s art and music direction has remained strong - but there are two in-engine cinematics that grip me:

The first is the Wrathgate, probably because it was the first in-engine cutscene the game did and it was a both a big surprise and a big plot twist in Wrath’s over arching plot.


The second one is the concluding story cutscene from the first Alliance levelling zone in Warlords of Draenor. A dialogue free scene that does a damn fine job of show don’t tell with Velen and Yrel conversing by facial expression alone and a really, really kick ass bit of music that sadly is not on WoD’s soundtrack

 

[laggyteabag]

Pretty much every World of Warcraft cinematic is incredible - Blizzard’s art and music direction has remained strong - but there are two in-engine cinematics that grip me:

The first is the Wrathgate, probably because it was the first in-engine cutscene the game did and it was a both a big surprise and a big plot twist in Wrath’s over arching plot.

Have you seen IKedit's channel? Over the last year or so, they have been releasing almost shot-for-shot remakes of the older WoW cinematics, but using updated models and effects.

This is the one that they did for the wrathgate

 

[Elfgore]

snip

I raise you the two coolest cutscenes for Warhammer Fantasy. Watch 'em and weep, sucka!

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Hideo Kojima sure does like long cutscenes but he's also quite good at them. Especially Death Stranding's ending, which I've seen described as a "30 minutes Death Stranding prequel movie starring Mads Mikkelsen and Tommy Earl Jenkins" is quite fantastic.


The Final Fantasy 7 Remake had some of the most baroque action sequences I've ever seen put to any visual medium. This one in particular is very fresh in my memory but really, it's full if them:

 

[laggyteabag]

I think the Halo series has always had some great stuff.

From in-engine cutscenese, to CGI cutscenes and trailers, to full-on live action shorts and even a couple full-length films.

If I had to choose a couple, i'd say these


And the entire Halo 3 "Believe" ad campaign, which is presented as a sort of documentary.


But, if we are looking at cutscenes that actually appeared in-game, probably this one


This character making the ultimate sacrifice, thinking they had just saved their homeworld - only for the rest of the Covenant fleet to arrive just moments afterwards. Personally, I just think the first-person, and found-footage type camera shots, combined with the music, really make this.

 

[Worgen]

I raise you the two coolest cutscenes for Warhammer Fantasy. Watch 'em and weep, sucka!

I'll take those and raise you a heavy weapon squad being too dumb to realize they shouldn't charge into close combat.

Also, Parasite Eve 2 intro.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Hm, it's hard to get excited about cutscenes much these days when film does it all so much better, and trying to think back to any previously enjoyed moments tend to lead to badly aged memories. Kinda liked the assassination intro to The Witcher 2 though, even if the actual game was a chore.

 

[Worgen]

I think the Halo series has always had some great stuff.

From in-engine cutscenese, to CGI cutscenes and trailers, to full-on live action shorts and even a couple full-length films.

If I had to choose a couple, i'd say these



And the entire Halo 3 "Believe" ad campaign, which is presented as a sort of documentary.


But, if we are looking at cutscenes that actually appeared in-game, probably this one


This character making the ultimate sacrifice, thinking they had just saved their homeworld - only for the rest of the Covenant fleet to arrive just moments afterwards. Personally, I just think the first-person, and found-footage type camera shots, combined with the music, really make this.

That was a really cool cinematic and you're right, Halo did have some great ones like that. I just wish they would have continued the thing with the elites having joined forces with the humans. It seems like everyone forgot bout that after Halo 3, although I haven't played 4 or 5.

The thing that really bugged me about that sacrifice scene was that unless I was playing on Legendary I would always have some normal solders standing around. Only the Spartans had the reentry pods so they could have done that also. Even if they had them too, from a resource standpoint having a normal solder do it just makes more sense then wasting a super solder.

Red Alert 2 intro, just the cg part.

 

[Smithnikov]

One of the most satisfying, grim, and badass beatdowns ever.

 

[laggyteabag]

That was a really cool cinematic and you're right, Halo did have some great ones like that. I just wish they would have continued the thing with the elites having joined forces with the humans. It seems like everyone forgot bout that after Halo 3, although I haven't played 4 or 5

Well, I wouldn't necessarily say the Elites and Humans were ever really friends. Sure, they joined forces at the end of Halo 3 to fight the rest of the Covenant and the Flood, but I always figured that was more of a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" situation. The Elites were still responsible for killing trillions of humans, and the humans killed billions of elites. I'd call it an uneasy alliance at best.

As for the hostile Elites that appeared in Halo games set after 3, these are all from splinter factions, that were either still loyal to the Covenant (Halo 4/5) or were glorified space pirates (Halo Wars 2).

Friendly Elites do actually appear in Halo 5, under the leadership of the Arbiter.

But, just to stay on topic - here is another cutscene

 

[WindKnight]

Well, it hasn't actually been integrated into the game yet, but the 'new' Warframe into looks pretty spectacular


Unfortunately any others I'd like to link have some pretty big spoilers in them.

 

[Worgen]

Well, I wouldn't necessarily say the Elites and Humans were ever really friends. Sure, they joined forces at the end of Halo 3 to fight the rest of the Covenant and the Flood, but I always figured that was more of a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" situation. The Elites were still responsible for killing trillions of humans, and the humans killed billions of elites. I'd call it an uneasy alliance at best.

As for the hostile Elites that appeared in Halo games set after 3, these are all from splinter factions, that were either still loyal to the Covenant (Halo 4/5) or were glorified space pirates (Halo Wars 2).

Friendly Elites do actually appear in Halo 5, under the leadership of the Arbiter.

Hmm, I always though in Halo 2 it was more of that 'enemy of my enemy' thing. Since in Halo 3 they deliberately have the Sargent and one of the elite captain or whatever, both taking weapons from each ones respective armories and doing the whole nod of manly acknowledgement and teamwork.

Oh right, I suppose it was more contentious.

Anyway, Quake 2 intro, sure not much happens but the combination of the voice acting and music still gives me goosebumps.

 

[Asita]

Three words: "A Realm Reborn"

For anyone somehow unfamiliar with it, let me summarize: Final Fantasy XIV released in 2010, and was panned. Bad controls, bad UI, and bad gameplay with an insufferable grind. Devs would later confess that the initial production had put too much emphasis on graphical quality, had a poor understanding of MMO fundamentals, and simply assumed that problems could be patched out later. A little more than a year after launch, they issued an official apology for the game's poor quality, noting that it was bad enough to have damaged the Final Fantasy brand. Consequentially, they felt they couldn't simply move past it and had to rebuild it from the ground up so as to regain the fans' trust.

And the brilliant thing about it is that they didn't just go "ok, here's what the game should have been at the start", they gave the game a full apocalyptic sendoff! One of the antagonistic forces tries a suicidal gambit that pulls a moon out of the planet's orbit, which obviously has cataclysmic implications. So the desperate response is to summon the world's Twelve guardian deities to return the moon to orbit, even as the aforementioned antagonist's armies are still pushing the offensive...The players can see the flaming sphere of the moon in the sky as the servers near their shutdown date...and then this happens. (Cutscene actually starts at 5:23)



What a way to go out! Character stand-ins and major NPCs fighting to the last, the revelation that the threat was so much worse than they anticipated because the moon was a prison for fricking Bahamut...an archmage doing what little he can to hold the dragon king off until the faithful around the world can summon the whole divine pantheon to reimprision him...and then they fail to do so. Bahamut overpowers the gods themselves, and as everyone stares in the face of their impending doom, the archmage tries one last gambit and sends the player stand-ins across timespace to safety, because they're the best hope moving forward.

I just love it. They canonized the destruction and reforging of the game in-universe as a near end-of the world event that the players just barely escaped from. That is literally the last thing that anyone online would see just as the servers were finally taken down, bridging the gap between the failed initial launch and the remake. And. It. Was. Beautiful!

 

[gorfias]

@10 minutes... this opening scene in Final Fantasy X informed me that gen 6 was going to be introducing me to some truly new stuff.

 

[Worgen]

Three words: "A Realm Reborn"

For anyone somehow unfamiliar with it, let me summarize: Final Fantasy XIV released in 2010, and was panned. Bad controls, bad UI, bad user interface, and bad gameplay with an insufferable grind. Devs would later confess that the initial production had put too much emphasis on graphical quality, had a poor understanding of MMO fundamentals, and simply assumed that problems could be patched out later. A little more than a year after launch, they issued an official apology for the game's poor quality, noting that it was bad enough to have damaged the Final Fantasy brand. Consequentially, they felt they couldn't simply move past it and had to rebuild it from the ground up so as to regain the fans' trust.

And the brilliant thing about it is that they didn't just go "ok, here's what the game should have been at the start", they gave the game a full apocalyptic sendoff! One of the antagonistic forces tries a suicidal gambit that pulls a moon out of the planet's orbit, which obviously has cataclysmic implications. So the desperate response is to summon the world's Twelve guardian deities to return the moon to orbit, even as the aforementioned antagonist's armies are still pushing the offensive...The players can see the flaming sphere of the moon in the sky as the servers near their shutdown date...and then this happens. (Cutscene actually starts at 5:23)


What a way to go out! Character stand-ins and major NPCs fighting to the last, the revelation that the threat was so much worse than they anticipated because the moon was a prison for fricking Bahamut...an archmage doing what little he can to hold the dragon king off until the faithful around the world can summon the whole divine pantheon to reimprision him...and then they fail to do so. Bahamut overpowers the gods themselves, and as everyone stares in the face of their impending doom, the archmage tries one last gambit and sends the player stand-ins across timespace to safety, because they're the best hope moving forward.

I just love it. They canonized the destruction and reforging of the game in-universe as a near end-of the world event that the players just barely escaped from. That is literally the last thing that anyone online would see just as the servers were finally taken down, bridging the gap between the failed initial launch and the remake. And. It. Was. Beautiful!

Dude, holy shit, that is really cool and ballsey. I've seen games do something kinda like that to remake a zone or something but narrative using it to reboot the game AND make the players lose... Kudos to them for pulling it off, and that was a great cinematic that I've never seen before. The main other 2 I'm familiar with are wow since they did the cataclysim thing, not sure how well they did it, stopped playing it before then. And, Guild Wars 2 and they used an attack on the main hub city to totally redesign that area.

Well, at the moment I'm coming up blank for something that can really compare so have a pretty good intro for a mediocre rts game from the 90s.

 

[BrawlMan]

This is how you start a video game! They rarely have intros like this anymore!



Other awesome scenes!

 

[Kyrian007]

Here's a good place to ask a question I've had for a long time now. Why does everyone hate this...

Metal Gear Solid is probably the game I've bought the most number of times across multiple platforms. And as someone who loves the game, I find that The Twin Snakes is the best version available. But you say that and all you get is, "the cutscenes are stupid... he jumps off a missile to destroy a helicopter, how ridiculous."

Hell yes he does, that is what makes it so freaking awesome!

As someone who has seen the rest of Kojima's work I have to say that Twin Snakes was his apology for how limited he was by the technology he had to make MGS. And my explanation for all the derision and snarky hatred for it... GameCube hate. It was an exclusive, PS 2 people were butthurt and invented a petty reason to turn their nose up at it and it caught on.