Kingdom Come: Deliverance II cinematic director explains how to make cutscenes unskippable

Attention spans are short, nowadays, but games that force players to sit through every second of their cutscenes without the option to skip them often force frustration. There's a balance to be had with creating meaningful story beats that keep investment without forcing players to watch. Instead, as Petr Pakar - cinematic director at Warhorse Studios - tells us, there are a few key ways to keep cutscenes engaging for players and make them unskippable even if you have a skip button.

"Well, the joke or the point is to make them as entertaining as possible. So the player actually doesn't want to skip the cutscene. It's a treat for them," Pakar explained. "So our philosophy is to make them as nice, as funny, as entertaining, as tense as possible."

While you might think that cutscenes should be as brief as possible to keep player interest, Pakar doesn't believe that to be the case. "A few of our cutscenes are quite long, but we worked very hard not to be boring. I mean, if the dialogue is really refined and there's always something happening, it can be long and entertaining at the same time," Pakar said. "We actually like long shots and atmospheric shots and long cinematics and meaningful talks. So not necessarily short, but it still has to be effective."

If you want to get a bit more into the technical side of things, and find out more about Kingdom Come: Deliverance II's cutscenes in particular, check out the full interview below: