Were FMV games any good?

[Igor-Rowan]

During the 90's, CD technology was introduced to the realm of gaming, but out of all of the milestones achieved, one of them remained in the 90's and it was the FMV "games", the quotation marks are for whether or not they are games or glorified DVDs with special menus. I brought them up because I've played Sara is Missing and Her Story (two great games BTW) that use live-action cutscenes to enhance the realism of the game, to surprisingly great effect.

FMV or Full Motion Videos were something introduced in the 80's arcades, remaining for some time were in the mainstream consoles with Sega being one of the companies pushing it forward and they stuck around during the PS1 era. But wouldn't you know it, nobody talks about them anymore.

I can see the logic behind them: in a race for better graphics, what's better than real-life graphics? While there were games that stood out such as Gabriel Knight 2 The Beast Within, The 7th Guest, Voyeur and of course, Night Trap [♫ We're gonna find you ♫]. I never heard anyone explicitely calling them good. Plus, looking back on them is almost as awkward as looking at those old family videos. Watchmojo got me covered on those (yes, I am quoting Watchmojo) B-movie and TV actors, low production values, amateurish productions, it's hard to think these were considered "the future" back at their time, even harder that games would improve with such things.

Were you part of that weird period of gaming? Share your opinions and history.

 

[Potjeslatinist]

I've got fond memories of Black Dahlia, the FMV-CYOA parts of Wing Commander IV, as well as Privateer II, but in those last two the space combat was the main draw. All in all though, their heyday didn't last long, relying too much on the speed of your cd-rom drive - I had a 4x and most of them required a 6x or even 8x, these were the only times this was actually an issue. Once graphics started to improve, the cost of these productions simply wasn't worth it anymore.

They weren't great games, often choosing style over substance.

I did play through the whole of Red Alert purely to see the next FMV sequence. They were so entertaining.

 

[TheFinish]

There were a few I really liked like Phantasmagoria, Spycraft and Gabirel Knight 2. But pure FMV games tended to be garbage, in general.

However, I loved Wing Commander 3 and 4, those FMV scenes were top notch. Of course gameplay had nothing to do with them, but still.

 

[Myria]

I have very fond memories of the FMV days. The 7th Guest, Phantasmagoria, Shivers I/II, The Black Dhalia, Gabriel Knight II, Myst, Riven, Toonstruck, The Tex Murphy series, and a host of others. Yeah, there was a lot of cheese, the green screening and acting could be laughably bad at times, but overall they were great fun.

Unfortunately for every good one there were a ton of bad shovelware titles and some notable misfires like The Eleventh Hour and Phantasmagoria II (though the later seems to be looked at a bit more kindly today than it was at the time). Add in high system requirements for the time, the added cost of paying actors, the general requirement for FMV games to be story driven (something video games in general have rarely excelled at) and the costs thereof (why pay for a writer when the boss' kid's fan fiction is good enough?),the higher "geek" appeal of working with the then rapidly improving ability to use fully animated 3D models, and the FMV era came and went faster than VESA VLB.

 

[Worgen]

Final Liberation had some good live action cut scenes.

 

[Recusant]

One thing to bear in mind: bad FMVs don't necessarily make a bad game. But yes, most of the games of the FMV era- at least, after it began properly, when that became the big selling point- weren't very good. It's hard to convey this now, considering that it wasn't that long ago, but the industry was a lot smaller back then, and being a "video game designer" wasn't seen as something to brag about- outside of the community, that is. So when a chance was given to make that more like being a moviemaker, people leapt on it- given the predictable results of titles that weren't very good as games OR movies. In addition to lower overall quality, cost was also a major factor- in 2016 dollars, the development and marketing of Wing Commander 3 was over eight million- and the fact that at the time, it was one of the most expensive games ever made should tell you a lot about what things were like then.

There were exceptions, though; mostly those that used FMV to complement a good game, rather than replace it; and those that made good movies. Wing Commanders 3 and 4, and to a lesser extent Prophecy, spring to mind.

 

[Tanis]

I really can't think of any GAMES that I enjoyed, though there were live-action cut scenes that I loved.
-Like Kane in C&C.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

My favourite FMV game was Ripper. The Command & Conquer series has awesome FMV sequences, that explain the narrative and tie all the missions together (not C&C Renegade, those were just rendered [poorly] in-engine). I wish more games had them, but it would probably be far too expensive.

 

[sXeth]

I mean, the gameplay formats still around and popular (Telltale Games, though they use animation), so it can't have been that awful.

FMV's themselves were just really tied a lot around the quality put into them. You had games that used stock footage and paid an actor for a 3 hour session of first takes. On the opposite end you had stuff like Wing Commander which was almost a movie in terms of effort put in (and has been recut into a movie, though missing the gameplay sections loses some of the idea, and the alternate path dialogue causes some loss of narrative depth.)

 

[Igor-Rowan]

Snip

I wasn't questioning their value BECAUSE they had FMV, I am questioning if during that experimental phase something of substance managed to come out, because I never hear about FMV hidden gems, which made me think of it. Even Her Story and Sara is Missing don't use the cutscenes as a selling point. Motion Controls and VR had their games and their moments despite their reputation isn't all sunshines with the community, even Night Trap, the face of FMV is only remembered because of the creation of the ESRB.

 

[sXeth]

Snip

I wasn't questioning their value BECAUSE they had FMV, I am questioning if during that experimental phase something of substance managed to come out, because I never hear about FMV hidden gems, which made me think of it. Even Her Story and Sara is Missing don't use the cutscenes as a selling point. Motion Controls and VR had their games and their moments despite their reputation isn't all sunshines with the community, even Night Trap, the face of FMV is only remembered because of the creation of the ESRB.

I don't know any hidden gems as it were. Night Trap being the face of FMV is only in the sense that ET is the face of the Atari 2600 (I may have gotten the number wrong). Sure, someone looking for the easy target for their ranty youtube video is gonna go there, but most people can bring up a laundry list of better (though not hidden) games. 7th Guest, Phantasmagoria, Myst, Riven, Wing Commander (hybrid, granted). Probably more that use the same formula now, if not strictly FMV on the technical level.