Action games often have built-in moments for players to take breaks, be it in safe rooms, during animated story sequences, conversations, or the part of a map that acts like connective tissue between one open area and another, where surely a fight awaits you.
Breaks, however, are different from pauses. A pause is simply a short moment of respite, a blink-and-you-miss it moment between one decision and the next. I love pauses.
I love it in bullet-time sequences when everything slows down to a crawl, when you see enemies and projectiles slowly advancing and you know, as soon as you press that one button, that everything around you will be faster, louder, more chaotic – but this moment is for you to get your bearings and to find a new strategy. I enjoyed it as much when it was a new thing all the way back in Max Payne as I do now in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake. That said, there are other, different kinds of pauses too.
One sequence that will always be emblematic of pauses to me is the leap of faith in Assassin’s Creed. You’ve just crawled all the way to the top of the highest building, to the peak of a mountain, to a cliff so high none before you will ever have scaled it, and you just need a moment. A moment to take it all in, to watch the world stretch out below, then you hold your breath and take that aptly named leap. It never gets old, a feeling of being in a life-or-death situation even though your character is entirely digital.