Smash Bros’ Sakurai wants these key features in games

The creator of the Super Smash Bros. series is asking other video game developers to ensure that two specific Quality of Life features are included in their titles.

The Smash Bros. series only had one entry with lots of cutscenes, as Brawl had the Subspace Emissary mode, showing all the characters working together. Unfortunately, those cutscenes leaked online early, resulting in later entries having fewer cutscenes.

In the case of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the game has a few cutscenes tied to the World of Light mode, but these were mostly revealed in presentations before launch, so there weren’t many surprises waiting for players.

It turns out that Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai has many opinions about the handling of cutscenes in video games, which he recently shared with the world as part of his ongoing YouTube series.

Masahiro Sakurai wants developers always to include skip and pause features in cutscenes

In the latest episode of Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games, he shared his take on cutscenes, stating that developers should always give players the option to skip or pause them, due to a number of factors that influence their gaming experience.

“Company logos, opening movies, intermissions, cutscenes…” Sakurai said, “Please make sure players can skip these. Absolutely, whenever possible! All at once if you can.”

“In-engine sequences can commonly be skipped one line of dialogue at a time, and if that’s possible with cutscenes too, then all the better.”

Sakurai also mentioned pausing: “Speaking of cutscenes, please make sure the player can pause them. To this day, there are still some cutscenes that can be skipped, but not paused. But that’s not very “modern” design.”

He did mention one exception: “You may not have a choice with online games that keep advancing, but that’s another story.”

“When the player’s not in control, make sure they can skip what you’re showing them — I can’t emphasize that enough. I hope that by highlighting it here, we might just end up with fewer unskippable games moving forward.”

Anyone who endured the horrors of the cutscenes in the original Kingdom Hearts likely agrees with everything Sakurai said. Some developers will go all out with accessibility design in their games, but there’s no excuse not to include simple pause and skip QoL features for cutscenes.

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