Cutscene Drop

A type of Story Overwrite.

In a video game, upon triggering a Cutscene, your Player Character very often gets teleported to a different position in the same room where the cutscene takes place. This is especially evident for cutscenes after Boss Battle, which usually teleport the player and the boss to the center of the room for the cutscene regardless of where they were when the finishing blow was dealt.

If you're lucky (or unlucky, depending on the circumstances), you could be left standing in that spot when the cutscene ends. If the boss dropped an item, you might be dropped a few inches away from it and staring right at it.

This is sometimes strictly necessary because cutscenes can change the room, making aversions possibly disastrous if the spot you were standing in before turns out to be over a Bottomless Pit after the cutscene ends.

Very useful for speedruns if it is possible to trigger a certain cutscene from a distance, thus saving some walking time.

Examples of Cutscene Drop include:

• The Metroid Prime games, all three of them, are famous for doing this. An especially notable example is the cutscene in the first game which showed Samus watching Ridley fly overhead after obtaining the Boost Ball in Phendrana Drifts. It was possible to quickly boost off the ledge before the cutscene began, causing the cutscene to replace you on the ledge (and in unmorphed form, at that).
  • Another notable one is a glitch during the Chykka boss fight in Echoes. The fight takes place in an arena with poisoned water, and at several points in the fight a cutscene takes place where the boss Turns Red, and Samus is always teleported to the center of the battlefield. However, at the time Samus has an upgrade which lets her jump better in water, and if she's in the poison water when the cutscene starts she still has the physics of being in water despite being on land, meaning that proper timing makes a Good Bad Bug which gives Samus extended water jumps while being on land.
• This tends to happen after the final Boss Battle with Solidus Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The player fights him on the rooftop of a large building, and when the player defeats him, both characters are magically teleported to the center of the rooftop for the dramatic finishing blow (which replaces the actual in-game finishing blow).
  • Cleverly averted in the same game, though, after the battle with Olga. Olga has several specific points around the area where she likes to stand to shoot you (and where you can shoot her); and several different cutscenes were made, so that wherever you knock her out, Snake will find her slumped where she was. Some of the scenes actually play out differently, such as having her drop her gun or having Snake take it out of her holster depending on whether she was firing at the time or not. Again, in the same game, after the later battle with Fatman, a short scene was spliced into some versions of the game, implying Fatman staggering desperately over to the place where he eventually dies.
  • In 4, the final battle is divided by short cutscenes; both Snake and the boss teleport to the centre of the arena. The battle with Metal Gear RAY is another example, as both Snake and the boss are in roughly the same positions at the start of the post-battle cutscene as they were at the start of the battle.
• Happens with the final boss of Command & Conquer: Renegade. It doesn't matter if you walk into the room, attack Dr. Petrova from a distance or just fire a rocket into the room, you will be just at the entrance when the battle starts. Considering that the first thing to do against this boss is flee, this just adds to the Fake Difficulty of the game.
  • However, you can shoot other things than Dr. Petrova with a no-animated-projectile weapon, which allows you to use your chaingun on the caged visceroids. And hide in their holding cells, whose doors open when the battle starts.
• This appears at times in, of all things, the Professional Wrestling games for the PS2. A maneuver can leave a victim prone in the corner, or near the ropes, but some moves for best effect rely on the victim dead center in the ring. When triggered, the wrestlers just end up in the right positions.
• This also happens in a very obvious manner in one of the storyline matches in Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain. In the Royal Rumble, one wins by throwing other wrestlers over the top rope however they can. To win, of course, you use various moves to 'assist' the opponents out. However, NO MATTER WHAT you do to get that last guy out, the storyline dictates that you and your new rival eliminate each other over the top, with 'video' from the event showing so.
• Mario Kart: Double Dash!! has this in Luigi's Mansion where winning ANYWHERE teleports you to the foyer.
• Final Fantasy games were typically immune to this because of separate world and battle screens. Final Fantasy XII overhauled the battle system, and had the main characters teleport after every boss battle in order to give their Victory Poses in a neat formation in the center of the arena.
  • Although the victory pose is certainly superfluous, having all 3 characters together can be justified by the fact that a giant/tough enemy has just been killed, so logically, you'd want to make sure your allies aren't dead.
• Happens often throughout Guild Wars, though the later chapters learned the lessons of earlier mistakes. One particular cutscene (Shutting down the portals in Hell's Precipice, then running over to encounter Undead Prince Rurik) dumps you so far ahead that to jog back for any dropped loot and/or achieving 100% exploration (And exploration is really important) of zone takes a minimum of a five-minute round trip. And there's nothing worthwhile in the intervening space anyway.
• Less noticeable in the finale of Half Life 2, but it's there.
  • Actually this is averted in the finale. Despite everything appearing frozen in time, while the G-man talks the player still has limited control to move around the (very small) ledge up to the point where you are warped away into the void. At that point there really is no point of reference except the G-man in your face and it's justifiable that by that time Freeman has once again been locked into stasis.
  • It still happens at the start of the scene. You can jump off the ledge just before the portal explodes but once it does you're back up on the ledge with Alyx.
  • Justified during the conversation in Breen's office - Gordon's stuck in a prison pod and so Breen can put you wherever the hell he likes.
• In Dawn of War Dark Crusade, having finished a major battle at an enemy faction's headquarters, there'd be a cutscene showing you destroying their base - including units you may or may not have in your army.
  • Including units you probably don't have, in fact; every race has one or two basic infantry units that will become hopelessly obsolete by the end of the long slog through an enemy HQ mission. Nonetheless, there's always plenty of same in the end cutscenes.
• Happens in the Cell phase of Spore. The first cutscene pans the camera far away from your cell to show an item appearing, and suddenly your cell is right next to the item.
• Since City of Heroes and City of Villains uses its own in-game model machinima for scripted cutscenes with pre-placed NPCs, there are times when you'll be able to 'insert' yourself into the cutscene by standing somewhere in the camera shot when the script triggers. For added hilarity, you can bind text and even emotes to keystrokes that will fire off during the scene where normal text input has been suspended.
• Occurs with one of the possible endings of Deus Ex. If you hit the button, then fire up your super-legs and run like crazy, you can almost make it out of the reactor room before the final cutscene starts. However, no matter how far you make it by that point, the game will always put you at the bottom of the ladder just outside the control room.
  • Take downs in Deus Ex Human Revolution may move you and the person you're attack around and change orientation from when you initiate them to the actual scene. This is particularly obvious when you use a takedown on Namir when he's climbing over a wall—the only way a takedown will work then—who's suddenly standing on the ground, which is why some people figure it to be a bug instead of a deliberate case of Revive Kills Zombie.
• Averted in Battle Moon Wars: characters tend to stay exactly where they were at the end of battle for cutscenes, even if that means the attacks in the cutscenes can't actually hit their target, or someone ends up standing in the middle of a sword.
  • That's because the same thing happened in the series it's inpired on, Super Robot Wars. Though sometimes it DOESN'T, which can be pretty annoying (Character that already moved, surrounded by Elite Mooks? Ouch.)
• Though lots of times this trope can be avoided, there is a good reason for it. How is someone supposed to know standing there would make the camera zoom in on Link's crotch?
• An interesting variation occurs in Mega Man X. If you trigger the cutscene where Zero sacrifices himself while standing right in front of Zero, then Vile will very politely pick X up, take him to the opposite end of the room, and then walk back over to Zero's cell so that everyone's in position for the cutscene.
• Psychonauts has one when you open the isolation chamber - you are dropped to the bottom of the area. It also has another one if you give Edgar Teglee cards one at a time instead of all at once; this time, you are dropped to the bottom.
  • More noticeably, if you cure any of the residents of the asylum you'll be back on the island for a cutscene, even if you accessed their minds from the Brain Tumbler.
• The first Spider-Man game based on the movies subverts this. The second battle with Green Goblin takes place in two different buildings. After Goblin takes enough damage in the first building, he retreats to the second, where the post-battle cutscene takes place. However, it is barely possible to do enough damage in one blow to exhaust Goblin's life bar while he's still in Building 1. Should this happen, the cutscene still occurs in its normal location, but Spider-Man and Green Goblin aren't there!
• In Fallout 3 after obtaining a MacGuffin the enemy wants you are ambushed and knocked out with a stun grenade. Even if you run past the ambush into the next room the cutscene starts with you in the room where the grenade detonated.
• Averted in Uncharted 2: Gameplay frequently begins immediately where Drake is standing, meaning that sometimes you begin a stage right in the middle of a heavy gunfight. The game even begins In Medias Res, requiring you to climb your way out of a train.
  • However, a variation exists with the checkpoints: Where you load from if you die is not even necessarily a point you've gotten to yet. Annoying if you die from a good cover position and respawn in the middle of the guys who killed you.
• Played annoyingly straight in Dragon Age. While this isn't too bad on the 'easy' difficulty, on anything else it can make otherwise simple battles incredibly painful. The game puts great empthasis on positioning and combat tactics, which - obviously - goes straight out of the window when your carefully planned ambush is dumped into a small cluster in front of an angry mage because you had a conversation before the fight.
• RuneScape plays that straight quite a few times. In one occasion, a bug existed where other players could see player teleporting a few tiles away as these players entered the cutscene.
• One of Mercenary Tao's special attacks in Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi involves pummelling the enemy into the air, and then slamming them back down into the ground. In BT 2, no matter where you were when the attack began, you'd always end up at the same place in the arena when it ended.
  • This happens with every Cutscene Super Move, not just Taopaipai's. To be fair, two stages are set on small surfaces surrounded by nothingness (Freeza's ship and God' Lookout) and another is the TB tournament arena; those could make said moves look awkward.
• Warcraft 3 sometimes does this. It's not that obvious in the official cutscenes, but in less well-made fan ones...
• StarCraft 2 does this with end of level cutscenes, although they tend to fit what actually happened pretty well.
  • No matter how much of the zerg you clear out in the third mission, they will overrun you base in the cutscene. Instantaneously.
  • Also noticeable is how in many levels the game doesn't care what your army was like - complete the mission Supernova with a tank division, for instance, and it will still show Marines and Banshees engaging the protoss for the end cutscene.
• In Cave Story, this happens after a battle with Curly and the fourth encounter with Balrog.
• No More Heroes inverts this whenever a boss Turns Red: they move to a safe place, while you stay where you are. Unfortunately, this also brings any super-combo you might have going to a grinding halt.
  • Somehow played straight in the sequel, where no matter where you are on the arena when you beat Alice, in the next cutscene, she'll be on her spider limbs machine on a higher area of the roof.
• In Mass Effect, on Therum, no matter which angle you approach the last surface building from (to hide behind obstacles), the cutscene will show your party casually walking in the open in the middle of the base, just before the geth appear right in front of them—forcing you to run for cover, fast, immediately after the cutscene ends.
• Doom 3 pulls this off with a cutscene before a boss, leaving you in the absolute worst position to start the fight. The cutscene consists of the hero walking towards that spot and standing still while the boss approaches him.