You're talking about the intro. You never have control over those. Tbh i dont really see the difference between this and a normal cutscene. Its just a different way of doing it.
I'm not talking about the 1-2 mins long video. Intro as in introductory scenes. I'm talking about up until you have to take the elevator in the boss' office. I've already stated that cutscenes are horrible and kill immersion anyway, so I don't see your point. However this is much worse than a normal cutscene. First of all, you can skip a cutscene if it's as useless as those 20 mins, this travesti used in HR, you can't skip it.
And even if you want to watch it (since there's no other option to get to know the story) in a cutscene you can at least relax, get your hands off the kb and watch it, maybe even while drinking or eating something in the process. In the travesti method of HR, you are supposed to do something? No? Then why do they give me
some control at all? Will I have to hit a button from time to time like in other games? (horrible thing too)
Also why are things happening around the player, if the player is not suposed to look at them? So you try to look around, but you can't. What happened around was just a lame 2 sec incident to "fill up" the scene so it's not empty while the train brings you there and they are not even consequent to that small and silly storiette. In HL2 you get hundreds of those situations or in Black Mesa for example, but those silly situations have a beginning and an ending if you care to look at them, or you can just walk away. In HR they simply force you to abandon before even the most simple conclusion.
Nah, the intro scene is stupid, unnecesary and just plain wrong considering its lenght.
You never have control over those.
Of course you do. In every Valve game, you are always in full control. ES games full control. Crysis, Metro... Some also limit your movement at certain points, but at least it does not kill immersion or is for a shorter period. FarCry 2 comes to mind. I didn't like too much, but it makes sense, you're in a car, and you're crippled with malaria, so you can't move, fair enough, but you could at least look everywhere. COD MW or MW2 I don't remember, where they take player to where they execute him. It's tied up and held by 2 guys. Not being able to move and look around completely free is justified and in this case it actually improves the immersion*.
Sure there's many games with extensive use of cutscenes, long ones. I'm talking about videos this time. Always remember this is an opinion thread, those games are garbage. Final Fantasy? Garbage. Metal Gear? Trash. Said it in my first post. If I want a movie, I'll go get a real movie where I don't have to bother playing 5 mins so that the next scene begins.
* And I'm far from saying it was good or defending COD at all. I hated the Modern Warfare Call of Duties long before anyone else (since the very COD 4: MW), because I already saw the signs in COD4 of what it was about to come.
** BTW the FC2 and COD 4 examples I used to have as the worst way of introducing the player to the world (COD one was especially long, boring and meaningless), until Mass Effect and now HR.