Julie,
In regards to camera movement with the character, I guess the answer to your question is Yes: If the character is facing North in Screen 1 with the camera behind them, and the character turns around to walk South to Screen 2, we’d see the character turn around and walk towards us, and then the camera would do a 180, so both the camera AND the character would be facing South in Screen 2. During the 180 pan, we would ‘see’ screen 3 or screen 4 as we turn around depending on which direction the camera rotated.
Now, this doesn’t mean the camera would ‘follow’ the character all the time… in other words, we wouldn’t ‘zoom’ in to the background as the character walks forward. The screen would remain largely static unless there was an area of detail to explore like a keyhole or an object on the ground.
As for the cut-scenes, I meant just the opposite of what you said. They should be left for the unimportant stuff that doesn’t necessarily progress the story. In other words, the movie shouldn’t ‘do’ anything for you. I watched my friend play some console game, I think it may have been one of the Final Fantasy games, where it seemed all you did was walk around and ‘click’ to watch a bunch of mini-movies. This was the #1 complaint among players of Phantasmagoria when it first came out… the single cursor and over-use of movies took away from the gameplay, although Phantasmagoria still had WAY more interaction than the game I saw my friend play.
I personally LOVE games that you can beat with only exploring 50% of the possibilites. Re-playability is a very important factor for me when I invest $40+ on entertainment. Also, it gets those people who brag about beating a game in four hours to shut up. 🙂 ‘I beat the game!’ — ‘Yeah, but did you even GO into the catacombs?’ — ‘What???’ hehehe.
I’m sorry I haven’t really played KQ7 all that much, so I can’t quite picture what you’re talking about. Maybe I’ll install it today. It will give me something to do besides watch hurricane coverage. (I’m in FL) 😉
-Tom.