- Primary Subject: Quick-Time Events in Games
- Key Update: Critique of the implementation and relevance of QTEs in modern gaming, using Wolverine as a prime example.
- Status: Draft
- Last Verified: 2026-09-17
- Quick Answer: We examine the effectiveness and necessity of quick-time events in contemporary video games, arguing that many are poorly implemented.
It beats me why game developers still think we need mediocre quick-time events. The controversy surrounding Insomniac’s Wolverine was a stark reminder that, if done right, QTEs are fun prompts that keep you engaged during cinematic moments. If done poorly, they are an insult to your intelligence as a player—acting more like annoying jingling keys because the developers don’t think they’re doing enough to hold your attention.
At their core, QTEs exist under the premise that video games are meant to be an interactive medium. As the medium progressed, more cinematic experiences emerged, handing developers the tough task of balancing a properly engaging narrative with compelling gameplay. It’s led to some bizarrely iconic moments in gaming history, like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s “Press F to Pay Respects,” which by definition is a QTE.
Just as iconic are those Spider-Man 3 meme-fail QTE animations, with players often purposefully missing them to see the hilarious results—like Peter Parker falling flat on his face while trying to save a doctor from a burning building.
The best QTEs put you in a perilous situation where you’re forced to be precise to avoid the consequences of failure. As mentioned, they can be very direct and lead to a simple game over screen. However, mechanics like Mass Effect’s Interrupts represent a proper evolution and application of QTEs in service of actual gameplay.
If you haven’t played BioWare’s space-epic RPG series—first of all, really? Second, Interrupts are QTE-like prompts that appear during specific dialogue scenes that let Commander Shepard take a context-sensitive action that can be either good (Paragon) or bad (Renegade). It’s not a basic, dull "miss it and it’s game over" prompt, but an evolution of what quick-time events are meant to be: opportunities for the player to take control with brief gameplay decisions amid narrative-heavy moments.
Going back to Wolverine, it features by far the most egregious implementation of QTEs I’ve seen in modern gaming. They are inconsequential and virtually impossible to fail, as half of them autocomplete even if you don’t press a button or happen to hit the incorrect one. A few lead to Logan taking minor damage, but the vast majority occur during cinematics and serve no real purpose. You could easily remove these prompts from the screen and nothing would change; their inclusion drags down actual cool uses of QTEs in other games because it perpetuates the idea that they’re just lazy cop-outs.
Like, at what point does it become warranted that a full-priced AAA product becomes such a half-assed product that it lets you interact with it in such lazy, uninspired way? Press this button, the prompt says. But it doesn't matter if you do, hell, it doesn't even matter if you press the wrong button, because they developers want you to keep enjoying the absolute mediocrity they are serving you in a silver platter.
I'd feel less insulted if a message from the developers themselves showed on screen telling me they didn't think I was good enough to press R2 when prompted on screen.
If Insomniac was worried about losing player attention, perhaps the studio should have focused more on crafting a visually and mechanically compelling adventure rather than relying on woeful quick-time events that can be completed by putting the controller down and letting the cinematic play out like a mediocre Disney+ MCU show.
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