You all played a game with QTE or Quick Time Events, but what is it really ?
QTEs are performing an action during a game, sometimes during cut-scenes, it seems to be a good idea but sometimes they are overused.
In this post I’ll be talking about two games that use QTEs, the first example will be what harms gameplay and the second example won’t add anything to the gameplay.
Far Cry 3
Talking about QTEs without talking about about Far Cry 3 is like talking about J.K. Rowling without talking about Harry Potter.
What’s so bad about Far Cry 3’s QTEs ? Well they just stop what you were doing and prompt you to press (possibly) the same key you were going to press.
There are other moments like “Hold E to interact”. Why should I hold a key to just press a switch ?
Or be prompted to hold a key I was already pressed.
With that said, I don’t hate Far Cry. This game had the best bad guy ever, and interesting gameplay that in fact was supposed to designed as bad gameplay.
Metal Gear
Metal Gear has QTEs too ! In fact in Metal Gear Solid 3 you can even press R1 to view some cut-scenes from another angle.
In Metal Gear Solid 4 you can also see moments from the previous games when a character appears on screen. Some other moments will be key mashing to get Snake somewhere.
In this case the player will experience the struggle Snake is going through.
Alan Wake
Alan Wake is a pretty good example for the good QTE. While reloading you can speed up the process by pressing the reload key multiple times or start a generator a bit more realisticly.
Conclusion
I personally think that QTEs must NOT be overused. I understand the use of it if you must perform certain actions to stay alive during a cut-scene or to get an alternate ending.
If they don’t harm the game it’s good to have them, but otherwise I’d really like having a choice in the options to disable QTEs.