Cutscenes

A cutscene screenshot from Grand Theft Auto V

A cutscene is a break-away camera shot, often with ensuing dialogue, that depicts events in a Grand Theft Auto game storyline over which the player has no control. Cutscenes generally appear at the beginning of the game, at the beginning of missions, and at important milestones in the game. Cutscenes can also be shown at several points throughout a mission, usually in a long mission with many sections. The purpose of the cutscene is to inform the player as to developments in the plot that are important to gameplay, and to provide a cinematic representation of occurrences throughout the story. Cutscenes can generally be skipped if the player wishes to do so, and only rarely is this option unavailable.

Description

Cutscenes were first used in Grand Theft Auto in a very limited manner. When the player completes any of two primary objectives in each city to acquire a certain amount of money, the player is directed to head to a specific location, thereby triggering a cutscene that employs game art with very limited animation, and depicts a specific crime boss speaking to the player on their achievements or their next course of action. This feature is absent in Grand Theft Auto 2.

Full-motion cutscenes were introduced in Grand Theft Auto III, having been integrated into various storyline-based missions and taking advantage of the game's new 3D game engine. Often, cutscenes are played the moment the player triggers a mission, introducing the player and player character to the mission in hand. When involving main characters, cutscenes in the game often take place in specialized interiors and exteriors, and also usually utilize character models with more facial detail and improved facial expressions than in actual gameplay. Other cutscenes used to illustrate gameplay-specific elements often make use of in-game environments, pedestrians and objects. Since GTA III, cutscenes have fundamentally remained unchanged aside the choices of locations selected when depicting characters, which have more recently extended to include common, street-level exteriors more frequently. Cutscenes since GTA III were never pre-rendered, meaning that the cutscenes took place in real time in the game using in game environments with everything still functioning in outdoor environments such as pedestrians acting as normal and vehicles still in the background without interrupting the main scene featured in the cutscene. Time and weather condition prior to entering mission points may be retrospectively applied in the cutscene.

Cutscenes for Grand Theft Auto Advance and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars were simplified due to the limited capabilities of the portable systems. They are unique for having comic book-styled cutscenes, containing only sprites and text but no models or spoken dialogues. In addition, players have a choice to skip sentences rather than the entire cutscene.

In Grand Theft Auto V, cutscenes are more fluent. This means that the characters in the cutscenes usually get straight on with it. The camera also looks more realistic as it is like a camera man is following the characters with his camera. Mission cutscenes are also not as much activated by walking into a red circle, the characters are normally at the location waiting for the player. There are also short cutscenes that are being played when switching characters, usually depicting what that protagonist is doing before the player can take control, such as Trevor lying on alleyways or even railways (at this point, Trevor was able to successfully dodge a Train before it could hit him) drunk or on his stomach wearing only his underwear on the side barrier of a bridge, annoying a tourist in Vinewood by blocking her camera view, yelling a man playing a guitar by grabbing that man's guitar and telling that man to play a saxophone, fighting with some muscle men in Vespucci Beach, leaving a casino arguing with some guards, or having tied an NPC wearing a business suit onto a post underneath the Del Perro Pier; Michael in his house having arguments with some members of his family, sitting near his pool while smoking and drinking wine, sitting on a bench near a canal while smoking or chatting with some people at a cafe; Franklin doing some pull-ups in Vespucci Beach or leaving a bar or a store.

Trivia

• In Grand Theft Auto V, for the first time cutscenes are happening in real-time without loading screens. The characters only play a certain animation, and player just has no control of the camera. Since a character goes straight to the cutscene and is still regarded by the game as a playable character, it might cause some funny bugs, such as cops chasing/shooting the character (wounds will be created but health will not decrease) and/or death in the middle of the cutscene. If the player character dies, he will ragdoll and fall through the other characters.
• In some Grand Theft Auto games, especially GTA Vice City, if the player knocks down an NPC with their vehicle while being close to a mission trigger point, when the mission cutscene is due to play, the lying pedestrian will die instantly with an occasional scream. The same applies with any other mission-related cutscenes.
• In general, there are two main types of cutscenes. Cinematic cutscenes normally occur at the beginning and end of missions, and feature detailed character animations and objects, extra sound effects and a high variety of camera angles. Scripted cutscenes on the other hand are controlled by the game script and generally occur during important milestones of a mission, are much less detailed, are animated using only in-game animations, and normally feature fixed camera angles without panning or fade-ins.
• In several games, some characters do not appear outside of cutscenes.
• Because from Grand Theft Auto III until Grand Theft Auto IV, cutscenes use different (and often more detailed) character models and textures, some of them may appear with different model and/or texture than in normal gameplay (i.e: Mr. Vercetti outfit. The shirt in the costume has different colour in cutscenes).
• In cutscenes the characters are much more detailed than in normal gameplay, having better resolution textures and more polygons for models. Also, they have more "bones" so they can suit the motion capture. Trying to enable a cutscene model will cause the game to crash. The upper half of the body will unnaturally turn 90 degrees left if managing to enable a cutscene model in GTA IV.
• In GTA V, due to the fact that cutscenes activate without loading, if the player takes a helicopter to a mission and flies low enough to trigger it, a glitch may occur wherein the cutscene will not activate, but the game behaves as if it has: certain characters may be suspended in animation, the player will have limited control of his/her character - such as being unable to run, jump, switch characters and use weapons – and the character's health will not deplete, since the game thinks a cutscene is running, and characters are not scripted to take damage during them. To end this glitch, reload the game.
  • This glitch may let protagonists enter certain safehouses normally inaccessible to them: for example, when playing as Trevor, take a helicopter to the "Fresh Meat" mission; since the cutscene starts after Franklin's aunt has run through the door of her house, it stays open during this glitch.
  • This glitch occurs because the game doesn't expect the player to enter missions in a helicopter. When player enter missions in a car it usually teleports the character over to where they need to be in the cutscene and parks the car at a nearby curb or driveway which tells the player they just get out of the car as simple as that. But that's not the case for the helicopter. Since they're usually parked at helipads and takes a bit of time to land. So the game gets confused and can't run the cutscene because it can't explain how the character got on the ground so quickly and can't figure out where to put the helicopter.
• In most game cutscenes, the Protagonist is wearing the same outfit or haircut (in Carl Johnson's case) that the player makes them wear prior to starting a mission.
• In GTA Vice City, if the play as (name of character) cheat is activated, Tommy Vercetti will assume the appearance/attire of that character in cutscenes, depending on which cheat is activated before starting a mission. For example, Tommy will "appear" as Ricardo Diaz, Sonny Forelli, Lance Vance, Jezz Torrent, Phil Cassidy, Candy Suxx, Hillary King, Mercedes Cortez or Ken Rosenberg in cutscenes.
• Some cutscenes will not be played under several conditions:
  • If Tommy kills Leo Teal beforehand in the GTA Vice City mission Back Alley Brawl, the cutscene where Tommy confronts Leo will not be played; instead only the cutscene where Tommy expresses exertion and is approached by Lance will be played.
  • If CJ pushes Eddie Pulaski's Buffalo off a cliff into water in the mission High Noon, the cutscene where Pulaski taunts and gets killed by CJ by a stomp to the head will not be played.
• Regardless of how the protagonist kills his target, that target will still appear with gunshot wounds in some applicable mission cutscenes saying their final lines even if the player used melee attacks or otherwise decapitated that target. Examples include Big Smoke, Eddie Pulaski and Ricardo Diaz.
• In GTA San Andreas, there are rare occasions where the San Fierro trams will come to a complete stop if they are accidentally caught in a cutscene. They will remain still even when normal gameplay resumes and can only move again when the player leaves the area.
• In GTA V, each protagonist has his own cutscene camera movement. Michael's camera motion is similar to the older GTAs, Franklin's camera movement mimics the motion of a cameraman and Trevor's camera movement is same as Franklin's, but with zoom effects.
• In GTA IV, NPC vehicles that enters a cutscene will stop and reverse into a parallel park, so as not to interfere with the cutscene.
• GTA San Andreas is the first GTA to use cameraman-style movement for the camera in cutscenes, namely in Management Issues, Nines and AK's, Los Sepulcros and some angles of the cinematic view. Staying idle for a while will cause the HUD to automatically turn off and the camera will shake and focus on random pedestrians.
  • However, it was implied that the latter was not featured in the beta version of the game.