If it's not me against the game then it's just me against the dialogue and that is way more likely to end in broken controllers. A game should be about making my own story and not about a mishmash of a story from a game designer in a cubicle somewhere. A game is about interactivity and that goes away when you're just watching a cgi cutscene.

Curious. I had a phase like that a couple of years ago. I've actually always loved cutscenes and stuff, as a kid I literally used to watch certain cutscenes in a loop (e.g. in StarCraft or Jedi Knight). Then, a couple of years ago, I hit a phase where I grew frustrated if a game had two minutes of a non-interactive intro or if an action game that I wanted to play for its wanton destruction had a lengthy peaceful walking simulator intro sequence. I literally ragequit a few decent games over it during that phase. Eventually I kinda "grew out of it" again, though, and now it's pretty balanced. I may sometimes be in the mood for jumping right into gameplay but I don't get mad over a cutscene anymore.

That said, I still do have a problem with a bunch of "cinematic" games that are so heavily directed that I don't feel any danger and such. The original Uncharted trilogy is a very bad offender in this regard. Not only the narrative is so riddled with deus ex machinas and whatnot that I have trouble feeling invested, it even applies to much of its action. Many of the most spectacular sequences of the series are painfully boring to me because I know that the danger isn't real or minimal at best. So now a boat is getting flooded, doesn't matter, I'm still just running wherever the camera is guiding me, all jumps are magically scaled so Drake makes them without breaking a sweat and if I don't do it quickly enough I have to repeat a few seconds - same thing as always. It just can't compete with e.g. a new enemy type who requires me to think and act differently (something this particular series barely does). But in the series' defence: I genuinely enjoyed the fourth game and feel that it addressed many of these issues.

There's a lot of stuff about the plots of the Uncharted games that annoys me, but I still love those games, and what you so dislike I was part of the fun for me. I actually like how linear and "heavily directed" it is. Maybe precisely because it was so unlike what I feel most games have become of late, and thus felt fresh. Among a throng of open world games full of repetitive checklist activities, crafting (and even compared to some good open world games like Morrowind or Witcher 3) or procedurally generated rouglikes here's that's tailor made to not waste a single second. No getting lost, no backtracking fetch quests no boring randomly put together levels, no need to gather shit to make other shit - everything has been planned and thoughtfull set up to create a sense of fast moving grand adventure in impressive, memorable locations.

Now, does it essentially have all the depth of a theme-park atraction? Sure. Would I want this to become a dominant model for all games to follow? No. But as a break from open-world games, labyrinths of old-school FPSes, RPGs filled with choices and alternate paths and tactical decisions, or even similarly linear but slow paced and thinking-heavy adventure games, Drake's adventures were a super fun ride, even if the tracks were clearly visable.

I wonder if part of the issue comes down to quality? As in, perhaps it's the quality of cut-scenes in recent games that has decreased, rather than you disliking cut-scenes in general? I mean, it seems like the standard of writing in games in general has decreased over the past 20 years (especially AAA), so I wouldn't be surprised if that trend is also being reflected in the cut-scenes.

I personally quite like cut-scenes in games when they are done well and aren't too long/frequent. I enjoyed the cinematic cut-scenes in Wing Commander 3 back in the day. I'm playing Witcher 2 at the moment and the cut-scenes seem to be quite well done, although the game probably leans a bit too much towards the cinematic side for my liking.

Then again, could just be that your tastes have changed.

A few other things changed in those years too. We're all older and likely consume different media for one. Two other things come to mind though.

1. Graphics. If I'm telling you a story on SNES you know it's not with hyper realistic graphics and sound. You read the text and hopefully it's well written. Today I feel like it might be possible to get away with some crappy writing because the rest of a cutscene is such a spectacle. 12 Angry Men takes place largely in one room with a bunch of guys talking so if something feels off I notice. Nobody thinks Michael Bay movies are the best written but with all the other stuff going on you kind of ignore some wonky lines. I think I may have just described De Stijl.

2. Who makes the games and scripts? I played computer games growing up but consoles were a bigger deal and consoles mostly came from Japan. Japanese games for consoles in the 80's and 90's just tended to be better(at least what made it overseas) so I played a lot more of those.. While Japan is still important there are a ton of big name American publishers. There are different approaches to storytelling because the West now plays a bigger part. It's not a bad thing always but we might dislike certain approaches. A haiku, a sonnet, and a limerick are all poems but their approach and the message/style they convey are wildly different.

How do you feel about being presented with multiple choice dialogue boxes where the character says/does something different than you pick?

(Like so often is the case in Todd Howard games?)

It was really Bioware that started that trend.

All those massive narrative games with faces that look like clay sorta blur together after a while.

I don't really care that much for an option A or option B in the dialogue. In Skyrim I made a character who was a scavenger or mercenary that was also antisocial. So I didn't do any heroic quests but only took on all the fetch quest stuff (Radiant AI) that a low level adventurer would do and I avoided the cities in Skyrim as much as possible and build my house near Riften instead of buying the one in Whiterun. I hunted for food, I would do low level smithing, I killed bandits but stayed away from Dragons and vampires.

This character was to me much more memorable than any story choice of A or B I've ever seen in an RPG. It's the same reason I don't really like CDPRs games because they control you too much and force you into watching janky character animations and cutscenes.

I can deal with games with option A or B but I like to know what my character will say or do but I much prefer to be creative and come up with my own gameplay in RPGs.

That's a good point. He's 32 but sort of a very naïve young 32. I think he's stormed out and "quit" our job (he's a coworker) about 8 times now only to return a few hours later and apologize. From our conversations it still resonates with him. That being said I think he played it as a teenager so I can imagine it was impactful for him.

To be clear I don't hate the game itself. I think so mechanics probably need tweaking to take it to the next level but I thought it was much more inventive gameplay and storywise compared to other ARPG titles. This thread is about story and this game just sort of sticks out to me because it was so drastically different then what had been built up for me. That in itself might be a point in this whole discussion. As budgets have soared have we expected games story content to scale up in quality? That means different things for different people too. Uncharted has been cited here a few times and while some people enjoy it for it's ability to mimic blockbuster films others loathe it for it's linearity. The series costs far more to produce then anything from the 1990 but the way it used those resources to tell a story differs greatly from two other acclaimed 2007 releases, Bioshock and Elder Scrolls:Oblivion.