You can certinaly try in a 3D game. in 2D, I dont see how you would do that, without sacrificing complex scenes.
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| if player enters cutscene zone trigger music add letterbox / vignette / effects limit/prohibit player movement outside of the zone play story voiceover run NPC AI |
Well that part is obvious and I wrote it years ago... It doesn't replace real cut-scenes though.
Also they do not have the details you need. If a scene wants to point out that the character now does a very subtle movement: using video you can do it very cinematic; ingame, you could hardly even tell, since a finger is maybe one pixel... and even if you could, it wouldn't look cool.
If you want 3 Dimensional things to happen, rapid changes in scenery...
Especially a space battle is something you cannot do with youre engine, if your game is not a spaceship game, and creating such a 3D scene is not all that hard of course
Or I dont know... What if you want to focus on a Pool table as the players have a little match. But you're game is a sidescroller.
Making video doesnt mean 3D render scenes, but now you can show all scenes and all details you want.
And its very convenient.