Most infuriating "cutscene incompotence" moment?

[Twilight_guy]

Actually I usually chock most of that up to a the necessary divergence between gameplay and story. In gameplay, dieing for one bullet makes things bad, in a story not dieing from one bullet makes things bad. Your gameplay and your story sometimes need to have different laws in order to make things work. You may be an immortal ass-kicker who punts babies in the game, but in the cutscenes the character is a kind and fragile regular old human. I think its better just to laugh at it and accept it then to get angry at something that kinds of has to exist. I guess you could try and write stories that revolve around the gameplay better too, but unless your a developer or know one, that isn't going to do much.

Also, "Cutscene death is forever!!"

 

[Souplex]

Any time someone perma-dies in a cutscene where respawns are explained in-game.
Notable examples are Borderlands 2, Most Final Fantasy games.

 

[Souplex]

To be fair, there's also a lot of semi-cutscene grief during the Kai Leng/Robot fights.
Why make the scene interactive, but give them unlimited health?
During the robot chase, I kept hitting her with everything, simply because I could, but it was annoying to see nothing happen.
During the first Leng fight, you could only get him down to half shields before he went into invincible mode.
During the second Leng fight, you could only deplete sections of his shield as the conversation went on, and he smashed pieces of the floor. All other damage was prevented.

The second Leng fight I can forgive. He brought a gun ship to a gun battle after all. Maybe a skilled infiltrator would have got the job done, but I didn't bring Garrus and focus fire was on Shep.

The car chase scene is unforgivable for a biotic. Pull, Throw, Warp, hell, charge got me through walls. Leng should have been falling to his death.

The scene with the robot bothered me because it looked like my Shepard was paralyzed as the robot was gaining on Kaidan/Ashley after the shuttle crash. Once again, biotics or tech could have helped earlier so the damage to the VS wouldn't have been so bad. If it worked on geth, it should at least have an effect on the robot.

It's like all Shepards revert to soldiers during cutscenes. I didn't play a soldier since ME1 for that exact reason. They're boring!

Looking back, that game was filled with cutscene grief....

When is say the Second Leng fight, I mean the second time you actually get to fight him, on the Cerberus base.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

Any bit in a CoD game where a main character dies...

"I saw you take eleventybillion missiles to the face, that's one shot from a revolver! You have a knife with a blade so potent you can kill someone by gently brushing past them, how does this kill you!?"

 

[Owen Robertson]

I scream out loud every time a villain starts monologuing.
JUST FUCKING KILL HIM!!!!! HE'S RIGHT FUCKING THERE! YOU ARE A FUCKING ASS AND I'M GLAD I'LL GET TO KILL YOU AT THE END! >:O

 

[SajuukKhar]

I would say the Dragonborn DLC has an example of this, but on the badguy's side.

At one point, Miirak has you, and he could kill your right then, but instead he just says crap and then sends you back to Nirn, thus enabling you to come back and beat him later.

Badguys have cutscene incompetence a lot in game, they always have the hero in a easily killable position, but let them go.

 

[bigfatcarp93]

Half Life.

When you're jumped by two Marines.

Two, bearing in mind you've torn through about a hundred by that point. Gah.

Simple. The dark room put Gordon in flashback mode to getting stuffed in lockers.

 

[m19]

What about the god mode boss that stops the fight whe you are down to 10% health? I think it works.
Jedi Outcast had one of those, even Kotor (kinda) had that with Calo Nord.

In fact i think i prefer those to the "if you loose it's game over, if you win... you still loose", if you are suppoused to get your ass kicked, let it get kicked for real.

Yeah but if it is a rpg the player may get the impression that a different outcome is possible and just keep reloading and trying again.

 

[CleverCover]

When is say the Second Leng fight, I mean the second time you actually get to fight him, on the Cerberus base.

Sorry, that makes sense since the first time you meet him is in a cutscene.

 

[putowtin]

Dragon Age: Origins.

Hey guys, see that incredibly ancient, powerful and possibly possessed witch you came here to kill? Yeah, don't start stabbing the crap out of her or anything while she has her back to you. No, just stand there in a rough diamond formation like a pack of gormless twits while she calmly walks over to that little hill and turns herself into a fucking dragon.

Yeaph, for that correct answer you get The Duke:

 

[Vegosiux]

Dues ex: HR, the scene with Zhao was just painfully bad. Not just because of gameplay and story segregation where the character appears stronger in the actual game than they are story wise, I?m use to that and can accept it so long as the character doesn't stand there looking like a deer caught in headlights while this going on but because Adam got hit with stupid bat aswell. ?oh I?m really just a helpless woman, continue standing there brooding while I walk around behind you.?

THIS. A thousand times this.
I was going to post this but I'm not surprised it's in the first 5.

The only even remote justification I can find for it is the sweet reversal of it later on (assuming you don't ragequit after the first meeting with Zhao).

Rumor has it she actually used the CASSIE on him. Which makes it less incompetent, but yes, still rather galling. And it set up a perfect comeback for when you took the hints from Pritchard and Sarif and went to not get the upgrade.

Another rather galling example would be you getting captured by the Hitler expy in Uldum only to set up a minute of glory for the Indy expy. Yes, I refuse to use their names. Seriously, Blizzard, what the fuck, I was tearing up the place and you make me all helpless in a cutscene so that you can go "Hey look, Indiana Jones, we're so awesome, huh!"

Screw that.

 

[pat34us]

You might already know what this is if you read a lot of TV Tropes, but what I'm refering to is when, during a cutscene, your character does something profoundly and uncharacteristicly stupid,

The ending for Final Fantasy 13-2

Major ending spoilers follow:


Basically the bad guy wins (which was cool) and chaos is unleashed consuming everything and everyone, so what does the warrior goddess do?? Freeze herself into a crystal so she doesn't die. How heroic.

 

[bossfight1]

There was that bit in Borderlands 2...

Spoiler

where after Angel dies, Jack appears, kills Roland, captures Lilith, and is actually made CLOSER to his goal of awakening the Warrior. And all this could have been avoided if the Vault Hunter SHOT HIM right after he killed Roland, or at the very least grabbed the Vault Key, which was RIGHT FUCKING THERE, RIGHT NEXT TO ANGEL.

 

[Lugbzurg]

I suppose if this counts, in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (and Majora's Mask for the first part of what I'm about to say), when a Gerudo spots you. Link automatically surrenders, even though he'd previously fought zombies, a dragon, tree-beasts, skeletons, and loads of other monsters before this point. Why would he just surrender? And why does being knocked down when fighting one of the sword-wielding ones cause him to give up? That's so cheap! It can happen in one hit, regardless of your health.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Axel's sacrifice in Kingdom Hearts II. Sora and the gang are "cornered" by abouth a dozen Shadows, the WEAKEST enemy type, not in the game but in the whole series, and rather than fight them off they let Axel kill himself for it. I get it, the writers wanted him to go in a blaze of glory. But this happens after Sora has killed half of Org. XIII more or less single-handed, mind you. Ridiculous.