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Opinion – Not Being Able To Pause Cutscenes Is Infuriating
I had to restart Far Cry 4 six times recently because I couldn’t pause the opening cutscene. As the soldiers appeared with their mirrors to look under the bus in the game’s opening cutscene, my daughter, who has an antagonistic relationship with bedtime, continually demanded my presence.
The start button was no help and neither were any of the face buttons. The giant rectangular button in the middle of the PlayStation 4 controller (which I’ve heard rumor is also a touchpad) did little to pause the action. I tried pressing the PlayStation button to pull me back to the home menu, but that didn’t work – the cutscene soldiered on. I tried pressing the share button assuming it would pause the game while I crafted an annoyed tweet about not being able to pause cutscenes, but that didn’t work either. The only solution I could ultimately find was to close the Far Cry 4 application and start over from scratch.
Six times I handed over that passport, and six times I watched that curious monkey get smacked in the back of the head. I made it all the way to enjoying a meal with Pagan Min fewer times, but even that grew tiresome as I watched my limited gameplay time tick away in favor of watching something I had already seen all because I couldn’t simply pause and I didn’t want to miss any important character or story development.
It’s confusing that a cutscene would ever be incapable of being paused, or worse, is skipped with a press of a button, accidental or otherwise. Many games, thankfully, no longer function this way and do allow pausing, but it infuriates me that there would ever be a situation where I can’t.
Controllers have had a dedicated button for pausing the action for decades. The NES controller only afforded itself four buttons (eight if you include the d-pad), and even that, in 1983, had a button dedicated to making things stop when you needed to use the bathroom, eat, or check the 1983 version of twitter. It may be called something different these days, or be a picture of two overlapping squares on the Xbox One controller for some reason, but that button still exists and should be used.
In an era where all media is at our full control, it’s odd I would ever be in a situation where I would be at the mercy of the entertainment on screen. I don’t have to wait to watch television shows at specific times with on-demand options, and the same goes for radio thanks to podcasts and services like Spotify. Why would I ever be forced to watch a cutscene at any pace other than my own? It’s a frustration I’ve battled with on multiple occasions and I am hopeful it’s something will soon be a remnant of video games past.
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