The graphical power of the new generation of consoles has, quirkily, entailed a reduction of quality in one aspect of videogames: the cut scene. It used to be that cut scenes in FMV were lovingly rendered on hardware much more powerful than the host console, and then streamed off disc. But these days many developers seem happy to render cut scenes with the game’s own graphics engine. So we’re watching cut scenes of lower visual quality than in the past; and yet we seem to be watching ever more of them.

This is a bad omen. Even in Metal Gear Solid 2, the sheer amount of cut scenes surprises. Though they are of consistently higher quality than the lamentable videogame average, their preponderance makes you wonder whether Hideo Kojima might not really prefer to make films. Given a matrix of GSCubes, the opening scenes, from the bridge to Snake’s tanker infiltration, could stand comparison with any number of studio actioners. All power to Kojima-san if he wants to overturn the nauseating example of Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy movie (a really long, boring and incoherent cut scene) and make a CGI feature that’s actually a good film. But do we really want him to practise doing that on our time?

Everyone knows that the problem with cut scenes is that you can’t play them. But they become even more alienating when they seem to be used as a dumping ground for actions and scenes that cannot be managed in real-time gameplay. Now it could be argued that in MGS2, Kojima uses the tradition of the cut scene to toy creatively with the player’s expectations. By introducing an enemy in a cut-scene and readying you for battle, only to reveal that you won’t be fighting right now, the game effectively raises its level of unpredictability and thus excitement. Yet a player might justifiably feel cheated by being locked out of any participation in the dramatic, lengthy scene that closes the game’s first chapter.

We might give MGS2 the benefit of the doubt, given that it still boasts a great number of gameplay set-pieces that are engineered with extraordinary inventiveness and attention to detail. But the cut scene as dumping ground for what the interactive engine can’t manage is all too apparent in other games. To name just one recent example, for instance, Silent Hill 2 has such shockingly unsophisticated animation and control for the player’s character that it needs a cut scene just to show you climbing through a couple of pieces of wood nailed across a passageway. (The repetitive footstep animation that pops up every time you enter a new room, moreover, is not only annoying but bizarrely illogical. If I’m walking along a leaf-strewn path, why are my footprints white on black? At least the Resident Evil games have the grace to change the features of the creaky opening door - great, this time it’s panelled oak; now I’m really frightened - depending on your location.)

The prime example of what gets dumped in a cut-scene, though, is interaction with non-player characters. Aside from the sporadic and unsatisfactory attempts at interactive dialogue, for instance in Outcast or Deus Ex, conversations are mostly relegated to little snatches of digital drama, framed in a boring two-shot and acted with all the thespian vim of Will Self on downers.

This is when videogames step most clumsily on the toes of cinema, that old-school multimedia competitor which they view with an unfortunate mixture of superiority and craven envy. And it is when the aesthetic gulf between cinema and videogames becomes most painfully apparent. Wearily, we sit through risible writing, or awful voice-acting, or woodenly programmed gestures that make the characters look like people who failed the audition for Thunderbirds. And being forced to watch your character saying really sappy or just plain dumb things can do immense damage to your psychological identification with him or her.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of such scenes, though, is the fact that they have subtitles. Sure, usually you can turn them off, but the default is to have English subtitles along with the English voice-acting. This is an extremely odd experience, but it’s often necessary - as when MGS2’s subtitles provide parenthetical explanations of all the amusingly silly military acronyms that the characters blithely refer to in their speech. The problem is that it distracts attention from and therefore devalues the voice. Why bother getting better actors, people who can actually deliver the script so that it makes some sense, when the player can read the text simultaneously? And if we’re going to have subtitles, I for one would far rather listen to the original language. I don’t watch the dubbed version of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on DVD; if we want to take videogames seriously as aesthetic artefacts - as seriously as we do films - then why should I be forced to buy a dubbed game?

Despite their widespread abuse, it is clear that cut scenes can serve a positive purpose. When expense and attention is lavished on them at the expense of pushing forward developments in interactivity and player freedom, something is clearly wrong. On the other hand, good cut scenes can effectively enlarge the fictional scope of the game universe. A fine example is to be found, perhaps surprisingly, in Ace Combat 4. In between the whizzy naturalistic 3D of the flying missions, the game tells a downbeat story of war using a totally different aesthetic style: its beautifully stylised cartoon frames set up an interesting counterpoint to the straightforward arcade nature of the gameplay. But perhaps it is Grand Theft Auto 3 that best understands how to keep it short and sweet: describe the mission, and send you quickly back out into the streets. The role of a cut scene should be to establish atmosphere or relay essential information, and then to get the hell out of the way so we can start playing.

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