These QTEs from the past are strange, ridiculous, and sometimes downright bad.
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0:00 Intro
0:33 Number 20
2:09 Number 19
3:12 Number 18
4:59 Number 17
7:15 Number 16
8:33 Number 15
9:53 Number 14
11:31 Number 13
12:48 Number 12
13:59 Number 11
15:24 Number 10
17:58 Number 9
19:37 Number 8
21:01 Number 7
22:11 Number 6
23:14 Number 5
24:51 Number 4
26:11 Number 3
27:04 Number 2
28:26 Number 1
Subscribe for more: https://www.youtube.com/gameranxTV?sub_confirmation=1
0:00 Intro
0:33 Number 20
2:09 Number 19
3:12 Number 18
4:59 Number 17
7:15 Number 16
8:33 Number 15
9:53 Number 14
11:31 Number 13
12:48 Number 12
13:59 Number 11
15:24 Number 10
17:58 Number 9
19:37 Number 8
21:01 Number 7
22:11 Number 6
23:14 Number 5
24:51 Number 4
26:11 Number 3
27:04 Number 2
28:26 Number 1
Category
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NewsTranscript
00:00Quick time events were all the rage in the 7th generation of consoles.
00:09Every game had buttons appear on the screen that you'd have to press or you'd die.
00:14Games are generally a lot better with QTEs nowadays, and that's a good thing, because
00:19these QTEs of the past are strange, ridiculous, and sometimes downright bad.
00:24Hi folks, it's Falcon, and today on Gameranx, 20 of the worst yet bizarre quick time events
00:31in video games of all time.
00:33At number 20, it's punching a boulder from Resident Evil 5.
00:36Hey, you ever get mad at a rock so mad you punch it?
00:40Yeah, one of the silliest sequences ever comes at the very end of Resident Evil 5, and everyone
00:46already knows it.
00:47You know it, we know it.
00:48It's the boulder punching scene.
00:50In a moment of rage, muscle freak protagonist Chris Redfield pursues a superpowered villain
00:55in a volcano, you know, all in a day's work, and there's a giant boulder blocking the path.
01:00Instead of simply pushing it, the only way to get the boulder out of the way is by punching
01:04it multiple times.
01:06Normally, one might explain why that's silly on a list like this, but I don't think I need
01:11to.
01:12It is, however, ridiculous in all the best ways that Resident Evil can be ridiculous.
01:26It's a moment of red-blooded, hot-headed, old-fashioned shonen drama.
01:31I am here for it.
01:32Look at him punch that boulder.
01:33I deserved it.
01:35Luckily, it's not like a hard QTE.
01:38A lot of other Resident Evil QTEs on this list actually are.
01:41But what's funnier is that in this cooperative game, you can also play as a second character
01:45that doesn't have to punch the boulders, and her sequence is actually way harder.
01:50You gotta press buttons desperately for way, way too long to stay alive as Sheeva.
01:54You're better off biting the bullet and just punching the boulder if you're playing single-player,
01:57because Sheeva's QTEs are way worse.
02:09Number 19, fighting a rat in Battlefield 3, hey.
02:13Finding a big ol' rock?
02:14Funny.
02:15Fighting a rat?
02:16Weird.
02:17Early in the game, you gotta sneak through a tunnel while avoiding alerting enemy guards,
02:21and so a nemesis of the highest caliber appears, a common rat.
02:26Well, maybe not so common.
02:28Most rats would turn tail.
02:30Not this one.
02:31It starts biting your fingers.
02:32Why?
02:33I don't know.
02:34But if you don't press the QTE input at the right time, the rat alerts his buddies, and
02:38a soldier appears and shoots you dead.
02:50Statistically, the rat didn't do it per se.
02:53Certainly doesn't get the credit for it, but you're dead.
02:55I mean, it's one of the weirdest things to ever happen.
02:59When you die, your guy flips the bird at the rat.
03:03So like, I guess we can confirm the rat was in cahoots with the soldiers?
03:07It's at the very least the rat's fault that you died before the campaign could even begin,
03:11though.
03:12At number 18, dodging furniture in the Indigo Prophecy.
03:16When it comes to QTEs, David Cage is a name you're gonna hear.
03:20Like, he's the director behind games like Heavy Rain and Detroit Become Human, but his
03:25weird narrative tics first got started in Indigo Prophecy.
03:30It's a PS2 game.
03:31It's a pre-Heavy Rain adventure game, follows similar beats to all the other games in the
03:35genre.
03:36It has a weird Simon Says interface where you need to copy movements to big multicolored
03:41circles.
03:42It's like a rhythm game without the rhythm.
03:45There's no rhyme or reason for the buttons you need to press, unlike in future games
03:48that try to sort of map your actions to something that seemed at least logical.
03:52This was the Wild West of QTE, and everything is rough.
03:55The scenes themselves, the gameplay, but the longest, weirdest, and dumbest scene of Indigo
03:59Prophecy happens real early.
04:01Your main character just committed a murder, he's losing his mind, and he's trying to avoid
04:06getting caught by the cops, and that's when something unexpected happens.
04:10Well, his entire apartment tries to kill him.
04:13In a grueling 5 minute scene, you have to painstakingly dodge every single object in
04:18his apartment as it flies at him.
04:30Every 3D object gets a close up and a special sequence of QTE button presses to dodge, and
04:35it just keeps going.
04:36This is the moment where the interesting promise was squandered, and game would be total schlock.
04:44The Indigo Prophecy was fulfilled.
04:46That's both a bad thing and a good thing for us.
04:58At number 17 is Carrying Those Books in Shenmue 2.
05:02This is a series that is legendary for lavishing in the mundane details of Ryo's quest for
05:08violent revenge.
05:09You could call Shenmue a martial arts action game, but while it's probably what it's designed
05:15to be, I'm not sure that's an accurate thing.
05:19Kind of more of a life simulator with some fighting thrown in.
05:22You spend your days doing odd jobs and slowly investigating the murder of your father.
05:28It's basically the game that invented our modern understanding of QTEs.
05:33Cutscenes play, you press buttons to survive, and they went too far in the second Shenmue.
05:38The developers really ceased to be messing around here.
05:41They included one of the most evil QTEs in video game history.
05:44Later in the story, Ryo must prove himself to a martial arts school by moving books out
05:48of the library to dry outside.
05:50Instead of carrying the books safely one at a time, you have to move stacks of books as
05:55quickly as possible, and you need to get them all outside before the invisible timer
05:59runs out.
06:00Doesn't look that hard, but this is one of the most difficult QTEs in any video game.
06:04You can't cheat, you can't skip, you just have to get those books outside so they can
06:09frickin' dry.
06:10If you go too slow, they won't dry fast enough, I guess, and it's over.
06:14You can't drop the books for obvious reasons.
06:16Waterlogged books, uh, disintegrate into nothing upon any impact, I guess.
06:30There's dire consequences, or at least you would think there are based on the fact you
06:35have to do this QTE over and over again until you get it perfect.
06:38It's patently ridiculous.
06:39We've all carried a stack of books before, right?
06:42I'm a bird.
06:43If I've done it, you've done it, okay?
06:46We aren't martial arts masters like Ryu, but he's stumbling around like the floor is covered
06:51in vegetable oil, or actual frozen vegetables like the market in heavy rain.
06:57Ah, but he can barely walk a foot without tripping over his shoelaces.
07:01This QTE makes one of the simplest tasks in history one of the most impossible.
07:05And number 16, a close shave, also in Shenmue 2.
07:19If that first one wasn't enough, this one's one of the silliest QTEs.
07:23Um, I guess it's not really a QTE, but whatever.
07:26Uh, well, learning about the three blades, look, it's a Shenmue thing, not gonna bore
07:31you with the details of that.
07:32You have to pass a special test from the barber.
07:35He'll only give you important information if you pass the test.
07:38His test is that he gives Ryu a shave.
07:41A button prompt appears, but that's a trick.
07:45In a game where all you do is press buttons that appear on the screen, this is the moment
07:48you have to hold back.
08:03The fake QTE is actually a little clever, but we have to ask, does Ryu just assume everyone's
08:07trying to kill him?
08:08The barber even tells him not to move, no matter what.
08:11Um, maybe it's a combination of silly voice acting and stilted animation, but this scene,
08:16it got us bad.
08:17I just wish that if you pressed it and triggered the bad ending, quote unquote, the scene in
08:22Dumb and Dumber happened where Lloyd Christmas uses the ketchup packet to pretend that the
08:28barber killed him.
08:29You can't tell me that wouldn't have been the best thing ever.
08:33And number 15 is the ringing doorbell from Sonic Unleashed.
08:36Sonic Unleashed turned Sonic into God of War, basically.
08:39Like the hedgehog becomes a werehog with stretchy arms that works suspiciously like Kratos'
08:44Blades of Chaos.
08:46Now while that sounds completely awesome, I wouldn't say it is.
08:50While it doesn't quite hit the lofty standards of God of War, it is swimming in QTEs in the
08:55same way that God of War was.
08:57Every enemy encounter, every platforming section, every random object, there's QTEs.
09:02And they're all bad, for the silliest reasons.
09:04That doorbell sound effect.
09:06Every time you get a QTE correct in Sonic Unleashed, you hear the basic ding that sounds
09:09like a doorbell.
09:20Hearing it once is fine, hearing it twice is fine, hearing it ten times honestly would
09:24have been fine.
09:25But you're going to hear it hundreds of times.
09:27That doorbell becomes very annoying.
09:29As a meme, very funny.
09:31Put that thing in like any other piece of media, instant laugh.
09:48If I'm playing Sonic that doorbell though, man I've heard it enough.
09:53In at number 14, mismatch in Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth, the Yakuza games don't take
09:58themselves too seriously, but sometimes we're still begging the developers at Sega to give
10:03us a little bit more dignity.
10:05For years they've been shoehorning these weird FMV cutscenes in their games with very real
10:10women.
10:11They're very awkward as your in-game dude attempts to interact with them.
10:14In a way that, I mean I assume that it's funny to people in Japan, but it's full-on cringe
10:19in not Japan, which is a lot of places if you didn't know.
10:23And the QTEs and cutscenes return in the, I mean it's an easy to miss minigame in Like
10:28A Dragon Infinite Wealth, but it's there.
10:31The bizarre goofy dating minigame where you have to select responses that the best match
10:35to your prospective date blah blah blah.
10:37It's very pointless.
10:38In this particular one you get to lie to people on the internet to make them like you, which
10:52is not something an actual bird like myself would ever do, I'm a bird of prey, a real
10:59one.
11:00Alright fine, that part of the dating game makes total sense, it's the rest of it we
11:03don't understand.
11:04Why is our boy Ichi trying to date women when he already has a crush that's central to the
11:08game's story?
11:09Why do these bizarre QTE minigames feel so random?
11:13And the reward feels more like punishment, FMV sequences are like omega level embarrassment
11:19generators.
11:20You'd have to do the eye thing from Clockwork Orange to get me to watch all of them, and
11:24that would by proxy mean you'd probably also have to watch all of them, which maybe makes
11:29it not worth it for you.
11:31Game number 13 is Failing the Bomb in Spider-Man 3.
11:34The game is based on the movie from a few console generations back, it belongs in the
11:40bad QTE hall of fame.
11:42Every QTE is funnier than the last, with the ridiculous flailing character models, the
11:47greatest of all time tear failures, best of the worst is of course the bomb scene.
11:52Early in the game Spider-Man has to save a woman tied to a bomb.
11:56Instead of navigating through the burning building doing all the things a spider can,
11:59you know, like the song says, we're forced to endure a dumb QTE sequence of jumping and
12:05webbing around PS3 era fires, you know, real scary ones.
12:10FIRE BAD, FIRE BAD.
12:13So the silliness starts when Spider-Man encounters the bomb we mentioned.
12:16When you miss the QTE, instead of gracefully swinging in to defuse, he literally belly
12:21flops onto hard cement, the woman exclaims that she's going to die, and then they all
12:27blow up.
12:29HELP, PLEASE, SOMEONE, I'M GOING TO DIE.
12:37Burnt to a crisp, oh my god.
12:39Everything about Spider-Man 3 is super weird.
12:41Look at that woman, look at her face.
12:43These character models are not normal.
12:46Something is very wrong here.
12:48At number 12 is press F to show respects from Call of Duty Advanced Warfare.
12:53After the opening mission your character is taken out of the war zone to a state funeral
12:57for a fallen comrade, the solemn proceedings become a total farce when you're prompted
13:02to press F to pay respects.
13:04You know, F for respects.
13:06It's so ubiquitous, F is a common meme.
13:10It's everywhere and it's not going anywhere.
13:13It's the perfect encapsulation of this very dumb bit of game design.
13:16There's a lot of QTEs we enjoy, but just like being forced to press a button to progress
13:21a cutscene that, I mean, there's no reason for it to be interactive at all.
13:25It's not our idea of fun.
13:27This one is so obviously absurd, it circles back from being annoying to funny.
13:31It's also the point where Call of Duty campaigns decided to start pulling back on QTEs to focus
13:36more on gameplay.
13:37Why do you think they did that?
13:44Everyone comment Fs to pay respects to pressing F to pay respects.
13:58At number 11 is pressing X to find Jason in Heavy Rain.
14:03Heavy Rain, like Indigo Prophecy, a narrative adventure game where you wander around, sometimes
14:08press buttons to do action scenes.
14:10The delivery system, however, way better than Indigo Prophecy in this game.
14:15That doesn't mean Heavy Rain does not have its own infamously goofy sequences.
14:19I've referenced them already.
14:21I mean, I can't think of QTEs without thinking of Heavy Rain.
14:26You play as the father of some boys caught in a familiar and scary situation.
14:30One of your kids is missing and you're given free reign to press X as many times as you
14:34want to shout that kid's name over and over again.
14:37Press that button too often and what started out as a harrowing scenario becomes comedy
14:41gold.
14:42The QTE isn't that bizarre if you press the Jason button once or twice.
14:57But rapid fire and oh, it's funny.
14:59I mean, it's so funny they did the gag a second time with Sean.
15:03Remember?
15:04They changed the Jason button to the Sean button and wow, it's a completely different
15:08thing, right?
15:09Um, yeah.
15:10Sean!
15:11Sean!
15:12Sean!
15:13SEAN!
15:14SEAN!
15:15SEAAAAAAAN!
15:16SEAAAAN!
15:17At number 10 is destroying the star destroyer in the Force Unleashed.
15:27You want a little Devil May Cry energy in Star Wars?
15:30Yeah, answer's yes.
15:31The force power in this game, they're unlike anything we've seen before.
15:34You're fallen Jedi can shoot lighting through dozens of dudes, blow through an entire squad,
15:39Stormtroopers, like with a force push,
15:41push them over a railing or something.
15:43I mean, there's fun to be had here.
15:58Gets ridiculous though,
15:59when you use the force to pull down
16:01an entire Star Destroyer.
16:03It should be one of the coolest scenes in the game,
16:04honestly, a marquee moment to show off the cinematic action
16:07on an unbelievable scale,
16:09but it's one of the worst QTEs of all time.
16:11Honestly, I still don't know exactly how this works.
16:14They do a pretty bad job of explaining.
16:16You don't get any feedback to correct yourself.
16:18Tells you what to do,
16:19but following the button prompts that appear,
16:22it's not enough.
16:23Makes what could be the best moment in the game
16:25into an exercise in pure frustration.
16:27The buttons just don't work.
16:28What you're supposed to do is twist the Star Destroyer
16:30so the nose is facing you and then push down.
16:33All while TIE fighters are bombarding
16:35with laser blasts and whatnot.
16:37If you try to move the Star Destroyer too much,
16:38you'll get blown away.
16:40If you release it to destroy the TIEs,
16:42the Star Destroyer moves.
16:43None of it works on PC for one,
16:45and it really barely works on console.
16:48A sequence like this really shouldn't be this difficult.
16:51And while a sequel is, I mean,
16:52it's not as good of a game as the first,
16:54but none of the QTEs are this bad at least.
16:57I also want to quickly resolve the idea
16:59that somehow it's canon breaking.
17:00It's not.
17:01Yoda basically tells Luke that it really doesn't matter
17:03what the hell you're lifting with the force.
17:05The size and weight and mass and all,
17:07that's all in your head.
17:08Unfortunately, the instructions
17:09for moving the Star Destroyer in this QTE,
17:11they aren't in your head or on the screen or anywhere.
17:14Ah!
17:15Ah!
17:16Ah!
17:17Ah!
17:18Ah!
17:19Ah!
17:19Ah!
17:20Ah!
17:21Ah!
17:22Ah!
17:23Ah!
17:24Ah!
17:24Ah!
17:25Ah!
17:26Ah!
17:27Ah!
17:28Ah!
17:29Ah!
17:29Ah!
17:30Ah!
17:31Ah!
17:32Ah!
17:33Ah!
17:34Ah!
17:35Ah!
17:35Ah!
17:36Ah!
17:37Ah!
17:38Ah!
17:39Ah!
17:40Ah!
17:40Ah!
17:41Ah!
17:42Ah!
17:43Ah!
17:44Ah!
17:45Ah!
17:45Ah!
17:46Ah!
17:47Ah!
17:48Ah!
17:49Ah!
17:50Ah!
17:50Ah!
17:51Ah!
17:52Ah!
17:53Ah!
17:54Ah!
17:55Ah!
17:55Ah!
17:56Ah!
17:57Ah!
17:58At number nine is fighting for a gun with no bullets
18:00in the Order of 1886.
18:02Sometimes QTEs are all smoke and mirrors.
18:04Seems they matter in the moment,
18:06but actually nothing changes whether you win or lose.
18:09That's what happens in this impressively silly QTE
18:11in the Order of 1886.
18:13After being captured by the Order,
18:15your hero escapes his dungeon cell,
18:17sneaks towards the exit.
18:18You know, that old chestnut.
18:20On the way, he finds a gun.
18:22Got no bullets in the chamber.
18:23Remember that.
18:24The player and the character both know
18:27the revolver has no bullets in it.
18:29Ah!
18:31Ah!
18:32Just my luck.
18:34Later, you need the weapon to stick up a guard.
18:36The guard doesn't know that the gun is empty though,
18:38but you'll obviously keep surrendering
18:40as long as you have a gun pointed at him.
18:42Later, after riding an elevator,
18:44the guard tries to get his hands on the gun.
18:46A QTE fist fight ensues,
18:48where you'll have to fight over the empty gun.
18:50And whether you succeed or not,
18:51the guard gets the gun and pulls the trigger,
18:53discovering that it's empty.
18:54So our question is,
18:56why do you need to fight over a gun that is empty?
18:58Why not just let him have it
19:00and punch him as hard as you can in the face,
19:03knowing that zero bullets
19:04are going to tear through your flesh at any time?
19:08There aren't bullets.
19:09Giving him the gun could even be a distraction
19:12while you rear back for the biggest haymaker
19:15you can conjure.
19:16But no, this doesn't make any sense.
19:19The developers just want a cool action scene, right?
19:21That's it.
19:23Ah!
19:29Ah!
19:30Ah!
19:30Ah!
19:31Ah!
19:32Ah!
19:33Ah!
19:34Ah!
19:35Ah!
19:35Ah!
19:36At number eight is Balan's bout in Balan Wonderland,
19:40one of the biggest flops in video game history.
19:42I don't know what Yuji Naka did
19:44to get Square Enix to front the cash for this one.
19:47It's aggressively bad.
19:48I mean, a train wreck on every front.
19:50And the QTEs are among the worst
19:52you've ever seen in a video game.
19:53To earn some of the important collectibles,
19:55you'll enter a weird minigame
19:57called Balan's bout from time to time.
19:59Instead of taking direct control or fighting a boss,
20:02you basically watch a cut scene
20:03and try to press buttons as shadows fly into Balan.
20:06Shadows in scare quotes there.
20:09Totally imprecise, impossible to figure out,
20:11not clear when the shadows are optimally intersecting
20:15with Balan to press the button.
20:16They move fast enough,
20:17you kind of have to jam buttons
20:19and pray that you're doing it right.
20:20There's no feedback, no clear visual cues,
20:22no real enjoyment to be had either.
20:24The QTEs are just straight up bizarre.
20:26They look dumb, they make no sense,
20:28and we kind of hate everything about them.
20:29They're also basically identical.
20:31So enjoy seeing this cut scene 48 times
20:34if you're insane enough to chase through 100% completion.
20:36And number seven, everything is bad in Afro Samurai 2.
21:04Balan Wonderland is bad,
21:06but it's also still available to buy on digital storefronts.
21:09Afro Samurai 2, it was so bad,
21:11it got pulled completely from everywhere.
21:13And trying to find a copy now is actually kind of tricky.
21:16We grabbed this game as soon as we learned
21:18how legendary the badness really was.
21:20The first Afro Samurai game wasn't a masterpiece,
21:22but it wasn't whatever the sequel is,
21:25top to bottom piece of garbage.
21:26It's shocking this game was ever released, actually.
21:28Look at this QTE, like, look at it.
21:30Ugh!
21:32Agh!
21:34Agh!
21:35Trusted you to do this sacred duty to focus on-
21:39Agh!
21:40The animation, the stiff awkward button prompts to jank.
21:43We played plenty of games with disappointing final bosses,
21:46but this has to be the most disappointing final boss ever.
21:50After switching to Kuma, a reconstructed samurai character,
21:52you walk into a temple where this QTE battle begins.
21:55Instead of a boss fight, you jam buttons,
21:57throw this chump on the ground, poke his eyes out.
21:59The animation of the eyes squishing is, it's so bad.
22:02It's weird to even call it violence.
22:04It doesn't look like this model even had eyes to begin with.
22:06Honestly, after completing the QTE, the chapter's over.
22:09Took 10 seconds.
22:11At number six is a strip club distraction from Dead to Rights.
22:14This hits us with the terrible QTE
22:16right at the start of the game.
22:17By level two in this Max Payne-inspired shooter,
22:20our hero, Jack Slate, takes a break
22:22to let his girlfriend distract guards
22:23with one of the weirdest minigames in video game history.
22:27To help Jack sneak into the strip club,
22:29the stripper does a routine on a pole
22:31and we get to press all the buttons.
22:33Enjoy these sweet PS2 graphics.
22:35You could cut a board with those polygons.
22:37Buttons fly across the screen
22:39and the more you hit close to the center,
22:41the more heat you'll build up,
22:43presumably to distract guards with, I don't know,
22:45something they watch every night, I guess.
22:48I would think they wouldn't be that distracted.
22:49Maybe they'd be a little bored.
22:51And we'd be bored too if we weren't laughing
22:52at the absolute primitive character models.
22:54These things weren't made to stretch and squish this much.
22:57It's like watching a paper doll.
22:59Teenagers in 2002 really, really had to take
23:01what they could get, huh?
23:03And number five, wagging the stick in Resident Evil 6.
23:16Resident Evil 6 has a big QTE problem.
23:18On consoles, QTEs were far, far too difficult
23:22when the game first released.
23:23And then later, re-releases barely fixed the problem.
23:26There's nonstop QTEs, Resident Evil 6,
23:29and they're tough to pull off in some sections of the game.
23:31Some of them were even impossible.
23:39It's all because of a mechanic that just wasn't explained.
23:42In Resident Evil 6, you were forced to wag the D-pad
23:44to complete QTEs.
23:46In one level, Chris and his little soldier buddy
23:48fight a big old monster through the streets
23:50of ruined, war-torn cities.
23:52Your goal is to damage the creature,
23:54and then you jump on the back, waggle the big control rod.
23:58And unfortunately, the timer would move faster than the
24:00meter, failing you before you knew what you were doing.
24:02The HUD symbol doesn't make it clear that wagging
24:05is what you're supposed to do.
24:06You're meant to rock the D-pad left and right,
24:08which looks like you're supposed to make a circle motion.
24:10Both interpretations are wrong.
24:12Despite the game only showing one D-pad,
24:13you're actually meant to waggle two D-pads at the same time.
24:16Game registers both of them at the same time.
24:18Making QTEs actually impossible,
24:20but only if you knew to do something
24:22the game doesn't show at all.
24:23It's confusing and very aggravating,
24:25but you're stuck humping a giant metal rod for hours
24:28trying to get these stupid things to work.
24:50At number four is a big squat in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
24:54One of the most hated minigames in the remake,
24:57Returns in Rebirth,
24:58instead of going easy on your poor fingers,
25:00Rebirth decided the squatting minigame is going to be
25:03at a beachy region outside Costa del Sol,
25:05and they made it even harder with pull-ups.
25:07The squatting minigame is about pressing buttons
25:09to an invisible timer.
25:10The buttons disappear.
25:11You're forced to memorize the button order
25:13and then jam on certain buttons randomly
25:15when they appear in gold.
25:16The pull-ups challenge mixes things up
25:18by changing the order you press buttons.
25:20No longer a simple circular motion.
25:22Now you'll need to jump buttons in reverse order,
25:25memorizing a much more complex series
25:27of invisible button presses that feel totally random
25:29whether you win or not.
25:49Like a ton of minigames in Rebirth,
25:51we wouldn't mind if some were left on the cutting room floor.
25:53That's all I'm saying.
26:10At number three is dying instantly in Bayonetta.
26:13Bayonetta started life as a remixed version
26:15of Devil May Cry with wackier sensibilities,
26:17but there's one aspect the first game had
26:20that we're glad didn't make it into the sequels,
26:21the random instant death QTEs.
26:23It's hard to even describe them, honestly.
26:24You could be running around a crumbling city
26:26and suddenly a button prompt appears.
26:28If you don't press the button,
26:29you're restarting from a checkpoint.
26:30It happens a lot, weirdly often,
26:32during boss fights sometimes,
26:34but it's these weird QTEs that appear without any prompting
26:37in the middle of these platforming sections
26:38that really, really get us.
26:39You climb the clock tower, camera pulls back,
26:42you can't see yourself anymore,
26:43so you don't know what's happening anymore.
26:45The button appears so fast, you can't easily miss it.
26:47It's the opposite of what we'd expect
26:49from a glamorous character like Bayonetta,
26:51you know, dying randomly in a bunch of rubble.
26:53And number two, pushing away a small child
27:06in God of War Chains of Olympus.
27:08While we're talking about uncharacteristic actions,
27:10let's talk about one oddball QTE
27:11from God of War most of us forgot.
27:13Chains of Olympus is the first
27:14of the two PSP adventures for Kratos,
27:18and one of the least memorable by a lot.
27:19He'll be fighting mythological monsters
27:21and traveling to Greek-themed locations
27:23on a mystical quest for something.
27:25I don't remember.
27:26Details don't matter either.
27:28What matters is that Kratos wrestles a small child.
27:31Late in the story, Kratos finds his lost family
27:33in the underworld.
27:34He's given the choice to renounce all his power
27:36and just stay with them,
27:37and he agrees until discovering
27:38the gods have a plot to destroy everything,
27:40so he has to leave his daughter, Old Yeller style.
27:43Instead of shooing her away,
27:44you have to jam buttons and forcefully remove
27:47your clingy, heartbroken child.
27:59It's meant to be sad, and I mean, it is,
28:02until you remember you're playing as the living embodiment
28:04of a high school network doodle,
28:06and this god of war is struggling
28:08to defeat an extremely precocious child.
28:10Image is burnt in my brain forever.
28:12Mother, please!
28:23Please!
28:25And finally, at number one, every QTE final boss.
28:28Like, our favorite games get us hyped up
28:30with the promise of an epic final confrontation,
28:33a chance to test the skills we've learned
28:35during the course of the game against a worthy opponent.
28:37Like, boss fights aren't always fun in video games,
28:39but a well-made boss can be one
28:41of the most exhilarating experiences you have in video games
28:43because, I mean, you've played the game,
28:45you've learned the skills, you know what you're capable of,
28:48and here's the test.
28:49Not every developer has the time or budget
28:51to deliver that, though.
28:52When it's crunch time and a game needs to get done,
28:54boss fights are the first thing to get cut.
28:56And that's why there's a plague of QTE final bosses
28:59in video games, particularly from the era that we mentioned.
29:11All the way through!
29:38There it is!
29:40Asura!
29:49Games like Warhammer 40K, Space Marine,
29:51they don't lean on their mechanics
29:53to give us a meaningful final challenge.
29:55Instead, you beat on a big cut scene bad guy
29:57by pressing buttons.
30:07Shockingly similar, final boss appears in Bionic Commando
30:10on Xbox 360 to beat on a thing while falling through the sky.
30:22Then there's the real disappointments,
30:24like the fight against Sauron in Shadow of Mordor.
30:26Turns out you never needed that army
30:28and all that power to face down the Lord of the Rings.
30:31No, you press a few buttons, easily defeat him.
30:33The QTE final boss is the ultimate letdown.
30:36The shrug it leaves you with is just a bad feeling.
30:38These fights might be easy,
30:40but they're really unsatisfying to play.
30:42And that's why they've been almost completely cut
30:44from video games.
30:44Space Marine 2 corrected the issue.
30:46Great final boss encounter.
30:48But that doesn't mean the QTE final boss is dead.
30:51Even relatively recent games like Metro Exodus
30:53have a few weird QTE bosses at the end.
30:55Games have to end somehow,
30:57so they might as well end with a weird, bad QTE, right?
31:00Those are our least favorite, but weirdly memorable QTEs.
31:03Sound off and let us know what we missed there
31:05in the comments.
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31:18I'm Falcon.
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