http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CutsceneIncompetence

By Veronica Vera of NotEnoughRings.com

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The Protagonist is amazing. They can defeat hordes of monsters, perform feats of superhuman strength, solve complex puzzles no one else can, answer the most baffling riddles, and is always Just in Time for the action... that is, as long as they are being controlled by the player.

Once a cutscene starts, or the player otherwise loses even the tiniest bit of control over their character, however, things tend to go south quick.

During a cutscene, the hero is far more prone to do some rather boneheaded things such as:

Often, such things can only be resolved once the player takes command again. It's as if the main character would be Too Dumb to Live without the player's wise and guiding hand. This can be particularly jarring when the character has been in the conflict for a while and is doing an awful job, but immediately improves once the opening scene is done and the interface pops up.

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The best way to gauge how bad the effect of this trope is in a given game is to ponder the question: What would have happened if the player had control throughout the entire game? Because of this, many a player has likely fantasized about how they'd have handily won that Final Boss Preview if they'd been in charge during the encounter.

The rough justification for this comes from a conflict in the nature of gameplay and storytelling. Games generally demand the player to overcome obstacles and enemies to triumph or they will lose. However, effective storytelling often calls for setbacks and precarious situations the savvy player would simply avoid or subvert. Cutscenes are therefore employed so the player's character can suffer plot-enriching setbacks without requiring player failure.

This is especially common in games based on an existing story: at some point, the original protagonist screwed up, and their game counterpart invariably has to do the same thing, and the player isn't likely to do that themselves (if only because they know about it). Alternatively, this can result when the protagonist's in-game counterpart was made significantly stronger so as to use more traditional game mechanics—for instance, turning an untrained Action Survivor into a gun-wielding platform-jumping One-Man Army—but then jarringly shifts back to their original level of competence in cutscenes.

Cutscene Power to the Max is the opposite of this. Subtrope of Gameplay and Story Segregation. See Stupidity Is the Only Option for the "interactive" version. The Battle Didn't Count deals with a similar dissonance, where the player does get a chance to fight the battle, but the cutscene has them lose anyway.

Examples:

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Action Adventure

Action Game

Adventure Game

Played straight with Life Is Strange; to keep things spoiler-free, let's just state that while Max's "power" will put physical strains on her and give her a limit on usage during cutscenes, she (without consequence) can use it as many times as she wants during a gameplay puzzle.

Beat Em Up

The Bouncer features a kidnapping in the opening cutscene that the three playable characters try to stop. All three of them get easily beaten by the kidnappers, who they later easily beat.

One of the oldest examples can be found in Final Fight. After smashing your way through the bar in stage 3, the player walks to the street only for a cutscene to kick in, when an Andore Jr. runs up to him, grabs him by the neck and carries him offscreen. The player even drops any weapon he was carrying. Right afterwards, the player is pitted in a center of a wrestling ring, cluelessly looking around, before two Andores drop from somewhere above. This is taken Up to Eleven with two players - the second player will simply follow the first player being carried out doing nothing to help him. Cue three Andores dropped into the ring afterwards.

The "level is over, time to drop all your weapons" thing was a regular feature of side-scrolling beat 'em ups from Double Dragon onward. "That's the end of the level? Oh. I guess I'm not going to need this any more..."

Fighting Game

Adventure Mode in Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Subspace Emmisary) has enemies that can't be destroyed in cutscenes even if they are relatively weak lesser minions in combat. Also as nod to their own games, without any effort, an enemy manages to capture BOTH Princess Peach and Princess Zelda like they have no fighting ability. Later on, without much fanfare, BOTH are kidnapped. There's one particularly pathetic example as both Mario (who is famous even in-universe for his jumping prowess) and Pit (an angel who has wings) fail to catch the Ancient Minister as he flies away, even though their hands virtually brush his cloak as he flies. In Pit's defense, it is canon that he can't fly despite having wings - Palutena gives him the temporary ability to fly.

In many Dragon Ball games, the story mode will stubbornly refuse to deviate from the original story, leading to quite a few battles where you curbstomp the opponent only to have the following cutscene show you unconscious and at near-death because that's how it originally went. One of the games even went so far as to make you lose the mission if you defeat the opponent instead of the given "survive until time runs out" objective. Others avert this and reward you for going off-script with alternate scenarios or joke endings. One has Vegeta defeat Goku and go Super Saiyan over his anger that Nappa was killed, another has Cell accidentally absorb Krillin instead of 18 and turn into this pathetic thing , etc...



First Person Shooter

H-Game

Hack and Slash

In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, a level is made of Shelob's cave and the things that live in it. This is all well and good with smaller spiders, generic orcs, and the like. A typical hack and slash game. But after you beat Shelob (a gigantic spider)... The scene where Frodo is knocked out and believed dead makes perfect sense in the movie or book. But in the cutscene of this part, Sam hides from just two Orcs. After he just slaughtered at least 40 of them in the previous levels and a huge number of spiders in the cave by his wits and swordsmanship alone. And they're just regular orcs, too — no appearance from the awesome guy at the top of Cirith Ungol who can kangaroo kick people. He appears as a boss in the next level, where it's a requirement to kill at least 80 orcs by yourself, including miniboss varieties. You'd think that he'd defend Frodo's body a bit better.

BloodRayne has Rayne at one point picking up an artifact that forces its way inside of her body, causing such intense pain that she is unable to prevent the Big Bad from just ripping said artifact out from her. Fair enough that she didn't know that would happen, but then she goes on to do it a second time. It does give her the ability to snipe things from afar, but still, after the first time, you'd think she'd be a little wary.

In Samurai Warriors 1, during Yukimura Sanada's story mode, his lord Shingen Takeda will be assassinated in a cutscene by Hattori Hanzo no matter what until Shingen is unlocked; then it's possible to intercept Hanzo before the assassination takes place, unlocking Yukimura's Alternate Universe path.

Warriors Orochi played it even worse: there is a mission when you are saving Sun Jian from prison, wich ends with him standing behind to protect your escape from a pathetic number of mooks. Later, you can play this mission as Sun Jian himself. In the end-mission cutscene, there will be two Sun Jians: one will flee and one will stay. You guessed it: the one who stayed was the "real" one.

The same issue exists in the Dynasty Warriors series. You can fight through waves and waves of Faceless Goons and shrug off Annoying Arrows in game, but if you're doomed to die in a cutscene, then you will die. Interestingly subverted with 8 XL's Alternate History mechanic: if the player knows how a character will die, they can take options the game doesn't suggest to avoid their fate. Doing this with everyone in a given faction will unlock the faction's non-historical Victory ending.

Platform Game

Puzzle Game

Riven is a textbook example of this. The technology used to smoothly integrate video into the Beautiful Void landscape was unable to support traditional twitch-game combat mechanics. Therefore, you're able to wander freely around the awesome environment solving all sorts of difficult mechanical puzzles and riddles, but whenever you encounter a living person, he either instantly escapes or instantly captures/traps you in some way. Not so bad the first time, but as the game goes on, it gets increasingly annoying. If you're weaker than every other character, why is it that you must do all the work despite not knowing how anything operates?

Real Time Strategy

This happens constantly in Super Robot Wars. Look at the time when Ingram captures Kusuha. It's like he'd still capture her with just four Mooks surrounding her, probably because if the player is in control of Kusuha, she'd whip out the Guard/Iron Wall Spirit Command and lay the smack down on those mooks. It would get even worse if the player upgraded Kusuha's Grungust Mk.II to maximum beforehand. Kusuha and Ingram are both Psychodrivers, Mind Control makes piloting Mechas meaningless as you can't control even your own body. Same thing with the Einst.

captures Kusuha. It's like he'd still capture her with just four Mooks surrounding her, probably because if the player is in control of Kusuha, she'd whip out the Guard/Iron Wall Spirit Command and lay the smack down on those mooks. It would get even worse if the player upgraded Kusuha's Grungust Mk.II to maximum beforehand. Age of Mythology. At the beginning of "Isis, Hear My Plea", two of the main heroes are taken prisoner by 6 axemen, which could have easily been taken down during gameplay. Also during the campaign, you have to stop the Big Bad from opening up a gate in the Norse lands that will set free an even bigger bad. After destroying the enemies defending the battering ram, a cutscene begins and about 10 fire giants appear, chase you away, and kill one of the heroes. In game, however, 3-4 heroes could easily take them down, and that isn't even counting all the soldiers you used to destroy the ram in the first place. Also in "Let's Go", Gargarensis (alone) taunts Arkantos (with a small army) from behind the iron bars of a big jail fence; once you gain control of your units, you can destroy the wall in less than 5-10 seconds.

In Impossible Creatures, enemies become completely immune to damage during cutscenes. Very frustrating in mission 8, when La Pette hovers near your anti-aircraft towers for about a minute and then you spend the rest of the mission trying to kill her.

Ground Control 2 manages this in its last cut-scene. The fail is great for three reasons: 1) He shouldn't have been there in the first place to get left behind, as he is not usually on the battlefield. 2) He could easily reach a dropship if he was there. 3) He is shown to be highly competent otherwise, destroying a battle walker equipped with only a grenade and his fists .

cut-scene. The fail is great for three reasons: . In Homeworld, the Bentusi are a Higher-Tech Species, whose tradeships are armed with powerful fast-tracking ion cannons that can obliterate your entire fleet in a matter of minutes. However, at one point, you have to rescue a badly-damaged Bentusi ship from a fairly small enemy flotilla that a Bentusi tradeship should've been able to wipe out in 10 seconds flat. Oh, and the Cataclysm add-on reveals they also have wings of extremely powerful fighter craft that are armed with twin ion cannons (i.e. destroyer-class weapons on a fighter).

Roguelike

The second Pokémon Mystery Dungeon set (Darkness/Time/Sky) has a couple of these scenes. The first occurs when the Goldfish Poop Gang Team Skull spends approximately 5 minutes describing their super-secret attack and calling it... While your team stands there and waits for the attack...

Role Playing Game

Simulation Game

Wing Commander II is rife with these, some highlights are: Early in the game your first wingman, 'Shadow', is shot down in a cutscene during a battle that you are present for while you just sit there and watch. After discovering Jazz is the traitor you go after him and shoot him down and he ejects. Then there's a cutscene of him in your sights while he pleads for you not to shoot him. You get no option to shoot him before another pilot swoops in and tractors him in to take him back to the carrier to stand trial. Unsurprisingly he later escapes and one of your fellow pilots chews you out for not shooting him when you had the chance... Also from cutscenes we learn the TCS Concordia has the worst security of any ship in the Terran navy, which is saying a lot considering how many times the Confederation is infiltrated throughout the series. Cutscenes show a saboteur on the Concordia literally gets away with murder for a long time until he's arrested in an unrelated incident. He also manages to disable flight operations on the ship not once, but twice, by planting bombs on the flight deck. As if that wasn't absurd enough, the cutscenes show the bombs planted in the exact same spot on the flight deck both times! That spot might as well have a sign stating "plant bombs here".



Sports Game

Can happen in any sports game that allows you to simulate parts of a game or season. You can be the God of Football, with a team made up of nigh-immortals, and lose to a series of scrubs because of the number generator. The opposite can happen as well, when your team of scrubs pulls off an impossible upset that you (the player) could not have done had you actually played.

Used with several variations in the Inazuma Eleven games, especially the second and third installment. In most plot-related matches, you can bet the opponents will steal the ball literally one second after the kick-off and score a goal soon afterwards. Even when they move in real time, it's Controllable Helplessness at best: the opponents will have an insane Form value so that it is virtually impossible to stop them or their shots.

Stealth Based Game

Survival Horror

Third Person Shooter

Red Faction: Armageddon: In-game, Darius Mason hurls entire buildings at monsters with his Magnet Gun, he has a wealth of 'nanoforge' powers including projected shields that protect while eating away at opponents, a massive shockwave that can send a two-ton behemoth sailing hundreds and hundreds of feet, and an area-effect telekinesis wave that leaves all nearby enemies hovering helplessly. Yet, in a late-game cutscene, he is attacked by the single weakest monster type in the game. It knocks him down and gets on top of him, rendering him apparently completely helpless and he forgets he has that building-hurling weapon and every single one of those aforementioned powers, any of which could have saved him. Additionally, towards the end of the game, there's a part that's set in a mecha . At one point the mecha is damaged after falling down an underground canyon, triggering a cutscene showing Darius and his girlfriend, Kara repairing it. Darius apparently forgets the he has the Nanoforge, an arm-mounted device that instantly repairs any damaged object that it's used on. While they're doing repairs on the mecha, one of The Queen's tentacles stabs Kara in the back, killing her and drags her away, never to be seen again

Happens a lot in Dead to Rights: Jack Slate, who can consistently gun down literal armies of well-armed and armored mooks during gameplay, will suddenly become helpless against a reluctant novice with a pistol.

Syphon Filter: In the first game, Girdeux has his mask off in the cutscene before you fight him. However, Gabe Logan doesn't shoot him. In the cutscene before the final battle in Syphon Filter 2, the otherwise fully-armored Jason Chance's head is exposed, and he isn't shown donning the helmet either. Gabe is too incompetent to headshot him. Happens again in the after-credits epilogue of Logan's Shadow, where Gabe stupidly gets shot by Trinidad . He had a clear window to shoot her first.

Max Payne spends a lot of the third game blundering into situations where he gets captured or otherwise accosted by bad guys when he would be perfectly able to blow them away easily had control remained in player hands. Of course, he spends the entire game either drunk or detoxing. He even lampshades how he's clumsy and screwing up.

When the player first takes control of Ellie in The Last of Us, they first have to clear out a level full of infected enemies. Then they have to go through a whole town full of armed humans. The player's reward for all this is being treated to a scene in which Ellie is choked out and captured by one man attacking her in a frontal assault. The game hits this trope a couple of times. One of the game mechanics is a skill called "Listening" which acts as a sort of sonar to show images of enemies behind walls and in other rooms. Perfect for avoiding or spotting upcoming ambushes, right? Except occasionally the game decides it's time for a scripted ambush for plot reasons and that's when listening suddenly doesn't reveal the enemies who ambush, even if the ambush looks very obvious from the level design. The above example is particularly bad because when its triggered, you've likely just finished clearing a room, see a blocked door, and making sure you can't be ambushed, attempt to open the door only for an enemy to just teleport in behind Ellie and grab her.

In one level of Star Fox: Assault, Fox is forced to fight on foot as he destroys devices jamming the friendly pilots' radar. After doing so, he is given an Arwing to join the sky battle - cue cutscene. The Arwing explodes as Fox approaches it, apparently sabotaged by the aparoids, which then jump up to surround Fox on the rooftop. These are the same enemies that you've spent the whole level (and most of the game) mowing down by the hundred, and you're almost certainly packing a machine gun and rocket launcher at this point. But Fox doesn't even draw his weapon - he just stands there awkwardly as the aparoids loom menacingly instead of attacking - cutscene incompetence on their part, come to think of it. Wolf rightfully calls him a "pitiful sight" as he flies to the rescue.

In Dead Space 2, Isaac Clarke fights through hordes of Necromorphs and his armor in game is able to survive most of their hits, and in sections of the game can tank assault weaponry. He also has the strength to fight off Necromorph attacks and smash them with his punches. However in Chapter 5, Clarke walks into a room while disengaging his helmet and is suddenly ambushed and grabbed by his shoulders by two armorless henchmen. He stands there apparently restrained, not bothering to put his helmet back up, apparently about to be escorted to his enslavement before being saved by a gunship trying to take him down. Later in the game Clarke also encounters a crazy man (Stross) attempting to take out Isaac's eyeball with a screwdriver. The moment the armorless Stross grabs Clarke, Clarke's nearly indestructible helmet disengages, and Clarke now has trouble fighting off Stross despite Clarke's superior strength.

Dead Space 3 has a piece of cutscene incompetence so big that, if you take the Awakened DLC into account, may have destroyed the human race, when Carver allows the bad guy to wake up a moon sized necromorph .

Turn Based Strategy

The undead display this in the opening cutscene of Might and Magic: Heroes VI. In-game, skeletons are ranged units with javelins, and fate-spinners are shapeshifters who have one form for ranged attacks and another that specialises in melee. In the cutscene, the fate-spinner takes on her ranged form and they all charge into melee against Anton's forces, getting mowed down by Anton and his men.

of Might and Magic: Heroes VI. In-game, skeletons are ranged units with javelins, and fate-spinners are shapeshifters who have one form for ranged attacks and another that specialises in melee. In the cutscene, the fate-spinner takes on her ranged form and they all charge into melee against Anton's forces, getting mowed down by Anton and his men. All the various justifications of why the enemy CO in Advance Wars can't be captured at the end of a battle all add up to a generous all-you-can-eat buffet of this trope. Only once is it actually justified, where they capture the Mad Scientist Lash and discover it's a dummy she made to cover her retreat, and all the various other times if it's even mentioned at all a character will remark how "they were too fast", "are too far away to chase", or will just shrug off capturing them like it's not worthwhile, ignoring the fact that capturing even one enemy CO and preventing their future usage by the enemy would be a crippling blow. Only once do you actually capture the enemy CO, and it's the end of Dual Strike where you do in fact capture Von Bolt in the final mission .

. This can occur in some cutscene battles in the Fire Emblem series. While this can happen to nearly any plot-important character depending on how the RNG rolled for them, Fire Emblem Fates in particular is a prime abuser of the trope. For instance... As the main character and player-insert, Corrin will most likely be one of the army's most powerful units. However, in a few chapters (such as Conquest 7 & 21), they nearly get their rear handed to them by some random Faceless. Birthright Chapter 26 also has Xander almost curbstomping them despite the fact that both of them have gone through the Rainbow Sage's trial, meaning that while Xander got the Sage's blessing, Corrin should still be roughly equal to him, since they did too. In Conquest 21 or Birthright 24, Lilith will get killed by either a random Faceless or Hans. The problem with this is that Lilith has probably been stuffed with so much food by the player at this point that she will probably be at least on par with the respective enemies at that point, if not better, and yet she still dies in a single hit. The Conquest example is particularly egregious, since she actually gets an attacking weapon in that route and could even damage the Faceless in return! And yet, she doesn't. Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War has a variant of this in that many times a barrier of sorts prevents you from riding to the green team's aid, and they are slaughtered no matter how good they are... and should the game decide to avert it with Cutscene Power to the Max, it can make the whole game Unwinnable by Insanity. It's "insanity" because the odds are insanely against it happening... of course, the end of Chapter 5 plays this painfully straight, as your army is burned to death no matter how high their stats .



Wide Open Sandbox

Various

Any Star Wars game that follows the movies, allowing the player to plow through enemies but still get captured and/or defeated as required, for example having the player face Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back and defeat him in gameplay, only to have him cut off Luke's hand in a cutscene. Shadows of the Empire gets a notable example in its recreation of the Battle of Hoth, wherein you effortlessly destroy all of the AT-STs and AT-ATs attacking the base before they can close in, only for the shield generator to blow up anyway once you've passed the required number of waves. Some later games which straight-up recreate the Battle of Hoth, such as Star Wars: Battlefront II, notably avoid the issue of the Rebels somehow losing despite all in-game logic and reason saying otherwise by having you play as the Empire instead.

Non Video Game Examples