Integrated Cut Scenes

The next step in this snail-like evolution was the presentation of the cut scenes using the same graphics engine as was used for the game itself. Half-Life pioneered this technique. This greatly smoothed the transition for game to cut scene. The jarring effect of jumping from one graphics style to another graphics style was eliminated; the experienced smoothly flowed from game to story and back again. The story itself remained functionally isolated from the game; nothing that happened in the game affected the story itself. This required some story jury-rigging. The easiest arrangement was to simply kill off the story with the player; should the player die, then there was no opportunity to see the rest of the story, which makes sense because the player was the protagonist anyway. You can't tell a story with a dead hero. The designer had to hamstring the game so that it marched along a narrow path leading to either victory or death; these were the only two story developments permitted in the game itself. Later, a few designers embellished this concept by adding a handful of endings and a corresponding number of game developments that would send the player to one of the pre-defined conclusions.

Despite their clear superiority, integrated cut scenes don't solve the problem of interactive storytelling, because they do nothing to make the story interactive. The stories in such games are still fixed, with little or no opportunity to respond to the player. The story and the game remain isolated from each other; these designs are shotgun weddings.