Design: Quick time events:

Quick-time-events, or QTE, are a popular way of giving a character limited control during a cutscene or cinematic during the a videogames gameplay action.

A simple enough concept, QTE are button mashing sequences during a cutscene, that will advance a cutscene to the designed outcome for the player.

There a couple of positive and negatives to QTE's.  First, it gives the player the illusion of control during complicated action sequences.   These action sequences are also used to progress the players story in a logical sequence. 

The downside of quicktime events are 2-fold. One, they only give the user the illusion of control, they in-fact, have no real control, they either pass, and the game continues, or they fail, in which case they are forced to do it again until they pass.  Two, they are incredibly overused in gaming, and they really shouldn't be used at all.  Plenty of games I've played cannot go a level without entering multiple quick time events.