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Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Story Without Cutscenes

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I don't want to talk about this anymore.

You people don't get it, do you? I just published an article dismissing that alleged Masahiro Sakurai column where he supposedly said that Super Smash Bros. 4 won't have a story mode. Now that information has spread across Miiverse and people seem to understand that Sakurai never said there wouldn't be any story mode at all. Good! The bad? The fact that there won't be cutscenes is leading some to believe that there can't be a story mode by default!

This idea is LUDICROUS. It's absolutely possible to tell a story without cutscenes. We already know that Sakurai recognizes every Nintendo fan's dream for a massive crossover story, and that Super Smash Bros. 4 provides that unique, exclusive opportunity.
"One thing we can do with the Smash Bros. series that’s unique to us – because we have all these different disparate characters brought together – is we can create that sort of fan-movie experience as a special gift."
Knowing that, Sakurai must realize what millions want him to do. So what can happen? He can do the exact same thing he did in critically-acclaimed Kid Icarus: Uprising. Uprising had almost no cutscenes, because Sakurai wanted to change how stories are told in games because he didn't like the old way. What's the old way? Interrupting gameplay tempo with cutscenes.

Anyone who says that Uprising didn't tell a story despite having minimal transitional cutscenes is horrifically wrong. (Go play Uprising if you haven't — it's the best game on the 3DS.) Sakurai already has experience in this. All it requires is voice-acting, and there are enough Nintendo characters that are already established talkers in their respective series and not silent protagonists that this can happen. And we can certainly have more NPCs if required. Because, hey, RPGs can tell a story with silent protagonists just fine.

Based on everything we've learned up to this point, there is absolutely nothing stopping Smash 4 from having a story mode that's different from Brawl's that tells a story without having cutscenes. It's been done before.

And if all else fails, you can just have straight Super Smash Bros. Melee Adventure Mode-style gameplay going through various places (but not with the character of your complete free choice) and write up a narrative on the Smash 4 website. Almost like what Brawl did.

Oh, and speaking of Pit and Kid Icarus: Uprising, go vote for him in today's GameFAQs poll.

The results won't look like this when you vote.


Ludwig is spending plenty of time on Miiverse nowadays, especially with the Super Smash Bros. 4 community. Hopefully there won't be any more arguments on this subject after this article is published, but if there are more, Ludwig will write another article on it and educate Miiverse.

1 comment :

  1. And if you aren't going to play Kid Icarus: Uprising (shame on you) then you should know that gameplay and cutscenes happen simultaneously. As in, you can't separate the two from one another.

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