Strypey @strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz

Anyway that's enough examples to illustrate what I meant in the OP. Doing this blow-by-blow meant that it took me about 2 hours to get through the first 40 minutes of this 2 hour movie :P

Next is weird, somewhat experimental level where the three heroes climb out of the well, back-to-back. Whenever the players succeed in taking a step up the well wall, we cut to a clip from a press conference cut scene where the President delivers some exposition. The end-of-level cut scene shows us the surviving heroes swearing revenge of 'whoever-did-this'. The next cut scene features the imprisonment of Snake Eyes and some exposition about the high-tech prison and the target NPCs held there.

If we make the shot, we get another cut scene with the President and his son, foreshadowing that something odd is up with him and his bodyguard, then blatantly showing us that he's a fake and his thugs are holding the real President. This is followed by the defend-the-base mission. Then an end-of-mission scene where the surviving lead heroes hide in a well.

The end-of-level cut scene is set back at base, and foreshadows an upcoming defend-the-base cooperative shooter mission. Next up is another White House cut scene, further setting up for that. But first we have to do a training level in which we play as one of the lead heroes, and we have to aim at a small, distant target, while being taunted by other lead hero. If we don't take too long to make the shot, he blows away the target and we have to restart the level.

The end-of-combat scene tells us the narratives results of the Jinx/ Snake Eyes combat outcome. Up next is a scene in which the two lead heroes play video games and one gets ambushed by children; an opportunity for a two player cooperative shooter mini-game. A cut scene in the White House sets up the next level. Which is another cooperative shooter mission, this time with a retrieve-the-macguffin objective, preceded by some in-flight filler dialogue and an air drop into the mission arena.

The first scene is a seize-the-flag mission, whose only relevance to the plot is to establish that the heroes fight as a team, but one of them is a diva. This is followed by a back-at-HQ cut scene whose purpose - aside from establishing that some of the core heros are abusive, macho assholes - is to drive that point home. The next scene is a combat between Jinx and Snake Eyes. They're only sparring though, so the outcome matters little, and it could be played as a combat simulator.