"I think I figured out why the cutscenes in SM/USUM feel so cumbersome, and it's not just that there are a lot of them."

Pretty sure people have noticed this already but I'm putting down my thoughts for the record.As I played through Ultra Sun, I once again had to trudge through the numerous short cutscenes in the early to mid game. While I can tolerate them better than some critics, similarly I also feel that they tend to drag down the experience overall.And I started to wonder why that is, because on paper most of these interludes are acceptable both in content and purpose (either to set up the story, develop a character, or expand the setting). Admittedly there are quite a few that feel unnecessary or could have been relegated to background details rather than breaking up the pacing, but the number of scenes is only part of the issue. Story development in Pokemon games isn't bad; in fact, Gen 5 was widely praised for it. And Gen 5 had surprisingly many cutscenes to set up the story as well, but they were much less frustrating, and I doubt it's nostalgia because it's something I noted in a very recent playthrough. So what makes Sun and Moon feel like such a slog, even in necessary scenes? And I realized something.I think it's the camera.That's a little misleading though, because it's more accurate to say it's the general composition that's flawed. But I noticed pretty much every frustrating aspect of the SM cutscenes could be reduced if there weren't so many slooooow camera pans, zooms, pauses, and fades that extend the scene for no good reason. Even the scenes that are supposed to be fast end up slow because they almost always refuse to speed up the camera in any way. A lot of the pans are distracting or unnecessary, too, since they don't really serve to draw attention to anything in a timely manner and just seem to waste the player's time. It doesn't help that dialogue never seems to progress unless the game has fully completed its 3-second camera pan over to the character that's talking.Speaking of which, the characters. Every time they emote or move in any way, the dialogue is halted to let their animation complete, slowing everything down even more. Character rotates to face another? Gotta watch the whole thing. Pokemon exclaiming their cry? Gotta wait until it's done. Character changing facial expression? Can't happen mid conversation, you've gotta watch the unskippable animation and THEN finally see their dialogue. There's an uncountable number of times characters do that repetitive nodding/bobbing motion or head-shaking before their dialog pops up (once you see that every main character does this you can't unsee it), and there's no good reason why they couldn't have been talking at the same time in 90% of those instances to speed things up. I suppose it's meant to give more life to the characters rather than have the static sprites of pre-Gen 6, but you don't have to pause everything to make us watch them emote. Ideally it should be seamless. Sun and Moon does not feel seamless.This all creates a very disjointed feel, and I'm not sure if it's a side effect of the move to 3D and their attempt to make it more "cinematic" but it really just makes even basic interactions feel like a chore. I hope they resolve some of these issues in the Switch games somehow. Heck, fixing those camera issues would get rid of half the inconvenience right there, but that's just my preference.Sorry about this, since I know the cutscene complaining in SM is a tired topic at this point. But I'd like to hear others' thoughts on this reasoning, and whether this 'camera problem' is just from me being a chronic button masher/fast reader, or it's an actual issue. via /r/pokemon http://ift.tt/2lxNj0n