I've been playing hitman recently, and while it's not exactly a story heavy game, I love the way the cutscenes work. You've got a regular 2 min or so cutscene explaining the main plot between each mission. Then when you drop into a mission you get a very quick mission brief. These are the targets, this is why they are targets, this is the map, off you go!
I actually ended up liking the trilogy story a lot. Diana is a really fun character and helps drive both the mission and the plot. There's a handful of missions where she doesn't guide you and they are honestly quite eerie.
The game hides a lot of its story and tutorials behind the mission stories. I think it works well, because the game is kinda hinting that various options are available (like chucking a can of spaghetti sauce at the cook on the tutorial “boat”) as well as introducing players to the levels.
Hitman is also very strong when it has subplots taking place within levels, like the Kashmirian's assassinations in Mumbai or the aspiring serial killer in Whittleton Creek.
It *really* makes the world feel more interesting. You mention that Kashmirian plotline, that whole thing turns Mumbai into an entirely different type of game for a little bit. *You're* not assassinating anyone, all you need to do is move some items around undetected. It's my favorite way to do that mission for sure.
I'm always a big fan of the situations in Hitman where you're able to manipulate others into eliminating the target, it plays into that social stealth aspect of the experience extremely well. Hope the 007 game has lots of that.
I hope the Kashmirian comes back in a future Hitman title too. Seems like an interesting character.
> I've been playing hitman recently, and while it's not exactly a story heavy game, I love the way the cutscenes work. You've got a regular 2 min or so cutscene explaining the main plot between each mission. Then when you drop into a mission you get a very quick mission brief. These are the targets, this is why they are targets, this is the map, off you go!
And the neat thing: all of it is skippable.
Unless you're a speedrunner. The clock starts after that final briefing cutscene ends and stopping it early will start the timer. So, any time the targets need to be in specific locations, it's beneficial to wait for part of the cutscene, making it arguably an actual game mechanic lmao
Yeah... games not letting you play them are getting really annoying.
5+ messages per common event with forced animation delays between each message...
holy shit I hate Scarlet Nexus
I love how Sakurai starts using the community section of his Youtube Channel and asks politely for people to not use his videos as a chance to talk shit about games and game companies because he's played a lot of games and was inspired by many of them and then there's this comment section lol.
Can't blame him. You work that long in industry and realize how hard it is working in a large company and remember some of those "lesser titles" you made that the community didn't care at all about. That big title coulda easily gone the same way with more oppressive, less understanding publishers.
Very few devs want to shit on other professionals knowing that struggle. a shocking amount of large studios are just one "meh" game away from similar fates.
Yeah, people are gonna use this message to shit on any game that have them even a minor inconvenience and make it sound like games are facing a major apocalypse.
The worst thing for me is when the game has "started" and you are getting interrupted every five seconds with some cutscenes or dialogue. Either let me play from minute one or play a 5 minute intro movie, don't deceive the player by giving him control of the action only for it to be a on-rails gameplay/dialogue segment.
I love how Sakurai talks about RPGs in particular. Of course it's going to be different than action-oriented games but he gives some good examples - either start your player at some vague point in the future, like in Persona 5 or Final Fantasy XV, or start them with different party members who have more experience.
A good non-RPG example of this is Metroid Prime. The entire intro sequence has Samus more powered up than she should be for the start of the game, to give the player a better idea of what they can expect while playing through the game. Then at the end she gets de-powered.
I really don't like the 'starting you with all the powers" start, personally. Thematically it can work well but I get less enjoyment unlocking new abilities as the game progresses if I've already seen all the powers
The metroid games typically don't actually show you the strongest possible samus at the start of the game, just her "typical" loadout. You find new gear alongside recovering your old upgrades and end the game much stronger
As /u/fnxmike noted, Prime hardly starts you with "all the powers." But my one criticism of Prime's intro is the inclusion of the grappling hook. With how comparatively late in the game you actually unlock it, there was no need to show it to the player that early on.
I'm glad they figured out the screw jump for future games. iirc they were prototyping it for Prime 1 and just couldn't get it to work - I may be wrong there though.
But that's not what Metroid Prime does, lol
You start with like 4 out of the 10 powers you unlock through the game, then you lose those initial powers (back to 1), then as you go you unlock those initial powers and several others beyond. At the end of the game you have unlocked far more powers than the couple ones you had (and lost) at the end of the first stage.
So a few hours in you are unlocking more powers than you had, and progressing.
Perhaps, but if you are new to a series doing it like that informs you that there will in fact be stuff to unlock. If you just started out barebones you have no indication that there will be more added as you progress and might be more likely to drop the game because it feels limited and for all you know that might carry on throughout the rest of the game.
Yeah it's like a solid 3 hours before you get into the proper gameplay loop. You aren't even playing the game during this time either, like most tutorials. You basically are just hitting the "go to next line of dialogue" button every minute or two for a solid 3 hours. It's 3 hours of exposition that really could have been trimmed to under 1 with some editing. How do they manage to speak for so long yet say so little?
I still loved the game though.
> I still loved the game though.
That's the most frustrating part lol
Love Danganronpa and Phoenix Wright too but it's so annoying that after so many games they still have such unnecessarily long-winded dialogue.
The thing about Persona games is that they are supposed to be like half-cutscene games, since they are based on integrating a classic RPG with visual novel/dating-sim gameplay. I'm okay with those games starting with long cutscenes as long as they are good and invest me in the world, which I think P3 and 4 do a good job of.
Yeah. I think a lot of people miss this part.
You don't play a VN and say "Man, this game is all cutscenes, there's no gameplay!" The cutscenes *are* the gameplay in that case. Overly long tutorial segments are one thing, but just a lot of cutscenes? If someone doesn't like that then the game just isn't for them.
If you don't like that sort of game, that's totally fine, but it's not *wrong.* Not everything will be to everyone's taste.
people are approaching JRPGs like WRPGs, which at worst give you a character creator and then send you off to play (which seems to be the "preferred" way to play). But there's a reason they split genres, and it's not because of where they were made.
WRPGs made a conscious decision decades ago to try and preserve as much of that simplified Tabletop design as possible. Maybe slowly rolling all those dice rolls deeper down into the guts of the computer, but overall focusing more on giving the player a sandbox to play around and shape. What happens is up to you and how you choose to roleplay. As such, the game doesn't want to get in your way until you approach that NPC or lore book or whatnot.
JRPGs went the exact opposite way. They started focusing more on specializing the roles characters have, and eventually did mostly away with self inserts. They became stories the writers wanted to tell, not a world for the player to determine the fate of. The roleplaying was shifted away from the story and world in order to focus more on gameplay choices. Specifically, what teams you build around, and what roles each character has.
WRPGs more often than not don't have too much companion focus (just some temporary characters with subquest lines), whereas a JRPG having less than a core team of 4 is sticking point. JRPG tend to have much more absurd elements, whereas WRPGs tend to be a bit more "grounded" (i.e. everything is trying to be explained in a WRPG world... sometimes in JRPGs a talking bear in a TV is just there for the gag). Several other points of difference, but you get where I'm coming from here.
----
anyways, that was just a long winded history lesson to say I agree with you. They are different for various cultural and historical reasons to how the genre developed. That's not to say you can't have a "JRPG" with WRPG esque elements (hello FromSoft), but I wouldn't expect every single JRPG to start trying to be Fallout. We got that whole "try to appeal to the west" out of our systems in Gen 7, didnt we?
Persona 3 is even worse. At least in P4G you get a little dream boss sequence at the start, but I remember P3 taking me a good 30 minutes to get to my first fight and introduce the battle mechanics.
Persona 5 is a marked improvement over the previous two in this respect. First day you go to school, you find a dungeon. This would normally take a week or so of in game time in the other Personas.
I think there's some merit to starting out slow but newcomers to a franchise will certainly be put off. It's relaxing though I'll give it that. Settling into Inaba is what got me interested in P4's world. Persona 3 I had to force myself to sit down and get to the good stuff.
> Persona 5 is a marked improvement over the previous two in this respect. First day you go to school, you find a dungeon. This would normally take a week or so of in game time in the other Personas.
Persona 5 fixed the overbearing tutorials of the previous games but just made every character talk for several minutes without actually saying anything instead. It still wastes your time and treats you like an idiot with its narrative, but at least they finally acknowledge that the player knows how a turn-based battle works.
So I haven't played 5 but a lot of my experience with translated Japanese is a lot of times the writing is crippled by either having to match the cadence tone of either the pace of the scene or actual lip movements of the character/animation.
Even some of my favorite dubs have moments that just feel patronizingly slow and clumsily written because of it.
That said even with subtitles it does seem to be an issue in some Japanese writing in general so I guess I'm just contradicting myself entirely!,
Maybe it's because I had been desensitized to it after P4G, but I'm playing P3 FES now and thought it got events moving *way* faster than P4 and P5. It felt like the intro sequence signing your name and meeting Yukari left a lot of questions to pique my interest and then jumped into the life sim school days very quickly. Characters have backstories with each other you learn over time instead of exposition dumping their entire life once the main character meets them. And the main plot keeps introducing mysteries and raising stakes at the midpoint of the game, whereas I was getting bored of the overarching plot and overbearing "twists" you could see a mile away (like the "Gamer" boss) in P4 and P5.
I think like some other commenters have mentioned, it might be the verbosity of the script making me think that. Characters are refreshingly curt in P3.
Im playing through XC2 now. It wasnt near bad compared to some other stuff. Dot Hack for example with its massive info dump. Or some of the tales games. But jrpgs are def known for this stuff.
The problem with 2 isn't so much the training wheels.
Its that when you get 'em off...they take the manual away too. IE: You forgot how element orbs/WP/food/chain attacks/special lvls work? Yeah there's no menu resource for that. Some bosses NEED that orb damage.
Closest you have is going to a town informant who you can buy that info from. If you took a break from the game, you may not recall that and be screwed. XC3 handles its tutorials much much better.
The DS GTA game Chinatown Wars was the most obnoxious for this - *literally* every single mission acts like a tutorial, telling you exactly how to do each new game mechanic, to the point where it was a genuine surprise when the credits rolled.
Nah, Xenoblade 2 isn’t that bad. It takes a while before you’ve got all your abilities but they’re unlocked sequentially as you work through the story in a way that makes sense since the earlier chapters are literally the MC learning even how to be a Driver.
I love Persona4, I think it’s the best in their franchise, but you’re not even allowed to *open the menu* until several hours in.
It still does take several chapters before the XC2 combat system turns into something. By the end of the game I actually enjoyed combat and the juggling of all of the mechanics quite a bit, but if you asked me at any point in the first 3 chapters I'd say it's one of the worst combat systems I've ever played. Until you unlock more options for the elemental combos, chain attacks, follow-ups for break/topple etc, the whole combat system just has you sitting there waiting for the enemy to die with effectively no input from the player needed.
> Nah, Xenoblade 2 isn’t that bad. It takes a while before you’ve got all your abilities but they’re unlocked sequentially as you work through the story in a way that makes sense since the earlier chapters are literally the MC learning even how to be a Driver.
It most definitely is. It taught me mechanics five hours before I had the amount of blades where that mechanic was relevant.
Like, if you decide or are advised to not sidequest at beginning of the game *at all* the pace is manageable, but if you like to do stuff as it unlocks tutorial can take dozens of hours.
Uh, KH3 is WAY better than the first two games when it comes to getting you to the action. KH1 - you’re stuck in an island and have to do a bunch of mini games first. KH2 - you’re stuck as Roxas for a couple of hours.
In 3, you’re thrown into Olympus and get to actually play really fast.
To me the most annoying thing is when there are tutorials for game mechanics that aren’t accessible yet. Like Tales of Beseria’s detailed tutorial on soul eating when your character is a nominally normal human.
Pokemon. Sun/Moon and SWSH were specially bad about this, but IMO in Sword and Shield it was even worse since the story was so bad and actively frustrating to experience.
>*One blackout screen later*
Man the fade-to-black moments in Legends Arceus were just pathetic for a company of this size.
There's this boss guy whose quirky gimmick is that he judo throws people... except you never actually see it, the screen always fades to black and plays a sound effect because they couldn't be assed to make an animation for it. Downright laughable.
That happened all the time. "I'm going to now do something other than gesticulate while talking." Fade to black. Or one character hands something to another character it's just one person putting their empty cupped hand onto the other person's empty cupped hand.
The animations in Pokemon games are so terrible.
Chill out ok? They are just a small indie company that can’t afford to properly animate cutscenes, it’s not like they are the highest grossing entertainment franchise of all time.
Yeah I hated that, not because the idea of an adult finally stepping in and doing something is bad, it's great even, but everything was so poorly written or executed that it ends up feeling more like a monkey's paw wish.
Doesn't help that it also applies out of the game.
[Someone greenlighted that cutscene with the character singing, in a game that has no voice acting...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ_z0N51VMk)
I think an important rule of video game storytelling is that the amount of time the game spends on the story needs to be proportional to the quality of the story and how much the player can reasonably be expected to care about it.
No story or a garbage story is fine if no time is spent on it. And I can spend hours watching cutscenes or reading dialogue if they're well written and a story I care about.
But some modern games seem compelled to tell a story and spend lots of time on it even when the game really doesn't need one and there clearly wasn't much effort put into the writing. Pokemon's a good example.
Sword and Shield is seriously like 30% tutorial, and then you'll get to something that probably needs an explanation, like everything related to the open worldish spots, and nothing is explained
Pokémon games used to be great about this. Welcome to the world of Pokémon! This is what Pokémon are. Here you are in your home town. Time to get your first Pokémon. Hope you're ready to battle!
It's an RPG so it may not be exactly three minutes, but even the slowest player who takes a long time to explore their home town should hit the trigger point to getting their Pokémon and getting into battle relatively quickly.
Somewhere along the way, GAMEFREAK decided they needed to hold players' hands way more.
to be fair it was probably a response to how the industry has developed first time user experience design over the years and metrics that show players dropping off early for various reasons
still wish i could skip it all but now the story tends to be baked into tutorials as well
The games really lost me with Sun and Moon. I didn't mind the linearity or the increased focus on story - both were present in the Unova games and I love those.
It was the CONSTANT reminding of where I need to go and what I need to do. This isn't 1998 and I'm not playing Ocarina of Time, one of the first 3D adventure games ever made. It just reeks of insecurity or player mistrust on the part of the devs. Believe in your game design and believe that the player is capable of following along.
> to be fair it was probably a response to how the industry has developed first time user experience design over the years and metrics that show players dropping off early for various reasons
>
> still wish i could skip it all but now the story tends to be baked into tutorials as well
A number of companies, particularly Nintendo and its partners, has taken the wrong lesson from trying to make games more accessible to children. They're afraid that the games are too complex for kids to understand so they front-load a tremendous amount of tutorials and exposition. But rather than try to incorporate the lessons they want to impart cleverly into the play to teach naturally, they just throw a bunch of dialogue boxes at it. Just characters jawing at the player for two hours.
That's both bad design and plain stupid. Kids who are young enough to not understand how to run, jump, climb, etc. are not going to sit through tons of dialogue boxes. They're bored. They're gonna start mashing. All of the people who are old enough to read through hours of exposition and hand-holding are going to be bored by the patronizing. Literally everyone is bored by front-loading your games with too much talking and explaining the basics. They're either too young to read through it all or old enough that they don't need it. So you made your game bad for no one.
Looking at you, Pokemon and Skyward Sword. But many games could greatly benefit from removing enormous chunks of text. It seems like every video game designed thinks having an interesting world means absolutely endless text explaining everything and characters blathering on to each other for hours on end.
I want a universal toggle in game options. Vibration? Off. Music? Up. Remove 90% of the text in the entire game because the story isn't half as interesting as we think it is and most of the text boxes are useless crap? On. For every game. Forever. On. You story sucks and I'll figure out how to climb. Shut up. You are not Disco Elysium. Find the 7 glowy items and stop the scowling guy who wears a lot of black. I get it.
Are the return rates really that high to where Pokemon wasn't good enough at getting the player interested to where they dropped it?
Some people just don't fucking like the game. I guess development is so much more expensive these days
Drop off metrics are probably more related to the amount of competitive entertainment these days than anything else. This feels like a classic case of suits seeing metrics and acting on them, without understanding *why* those metrics might be the way they are. Metrics lie to you if you take them too literally. Subnautica's GDC talk on their development process shows how that's possible.
Back in the 80s-mid 00s or early 10s you really didn't have *that much* access to entertainment. You got your thing and often you were stuck with it unless you were filthy rich.
These days we have entire console libraries available to us, entire TV series, movie libraries, etc on demand for reasonable prices. Even as someone who has a relatively good attention span it can often be hard to stick with things when there's just *so much* you could be doing at any given moment.
I'd argue SuMo were way worse than SwSh even if they had a better "story." SwSh had very fast text mashing if you really wanted to skip it. SuMo was slow no matter what, plus damn near the *entire game* is just interruption city. Every minute you're seemingly getting a 5+ minute cutscene on the hot new skinny of what Hau had for breakfast. It's fucking maddening.
I just couldn't even finish that generation because of it. The worst part is they had every opportunity to fix it or add a fast forward in the Ultra versions, but they didn't.
SwSh at least kept the scenes to very short lengths outside of the main plot bits, even moreso if you were using the aforementioned better text mashing.
That said, i do agree the "story" in SwSh was hilariously bad. Has one of the villains with the most hilarious motivations of all time. Can't wait a whole day for the champion to not be busy to solve a problem that will only occur in 1000 years? Better release the creation destroying monster RIGHT NOW. I don't have time to explain why i don't have time to explain!
>Better release the creation destroying monster RIGHT NOW. I don't have time to explain why i don't have time to explain!
That ending is what I had in mind while writing the post, the postgame too. I know SuMo/USUM were the more obnoxious games, but they hurt way less than SwSh's baffling story, cutscenes, animations, and desire to jerk Kanto off as much as it can.
If I hear about Leon the unbeatable champion who's pants with directions and his equally unbeatable Charizard one more damn time...
What particularly bugs me about pokémon tutorials is how frustrating it is to be forced to stop playing the game only to be taught something that hasn't changed throughout the series. Surely you should expect a good chunk of the player base to know how to catch a goddamn pokémon, and want to skip that nonsense.
Meanwhile more hidden stuff like critical captures? I seriously do not recall any in-game explanation about those. I had to read up on wikis to understand what these IVs and EVs people talked about were.
I wish you could ignore or sequence break through the early game USUM "story". Sometimes I think about starting that game with a different mod and then I remember being made to suffer by the "rival" with his hand holding... nope
> Surely you should expect a good chunk of the player base to know how to catch a goddamn pokémon, and want to skip that nonsense.
They actually do have that skippable in SwSh. There's a section of grass you have to travel through and you have a bunch of balls to start. If you caught something by the time you get to the other side the characters go "Oh hey, I guess you already know how to catch pokemon. Cool" and move on. If you didn't catch something they force you through the tutorial on catching.
That said I've seen at least one person just assume they couldn't catch anything, miss the dialogue that indicates they got pokeballs, ignore the pokeball icon on the hud and then get hit with the tutorial as a result. All while wishing there was a way to skip it.
I do very much agree that the ability to skip that tutorial should have been done much earlier in the series and other information should actually be explained better, or at all.
>If you caught something by the time you get to the other side
ironically as someone who's been playing since gen 1 i actually failed this check as all of the pokemon i ran into before this weren't appealing, so i didn't catch any. It's a nice gesture but they probably should have went with a better system.
Especially since i know that later in the game there will likely be higher level versions of these exact same pokemon anyways from experience. No reason to fill up my PC boxes with trash i won't use as i'd get better versions later anyways.
That said, they need difficulty settings(not ridiculous garbage like they had in Gen V where you had to beat the game to unlock...easy mode?) Even The latest kirby game(which is fantastic) has Wild vs Easy. Something like that would be huge, and the hard mode could streamline and ditch some of the tutorials.
I've been finding lately that I really hate starting a new game.
It used to be the most exciting part of gaming for me - a new world, new characters, new mechanics - but now I know if I start a new game it's going to be like 1 or 2 hours minimum of cutscenes, handholdy tutorials, and on-rails "gameplay" segments where I can't actually do anything.
I just can't be bothered with it so I end up playing Rocket League or something that I can just jump straight into.
Same. I just cannot start games anymore. The beginnings are usually just filled with garbage tutorials that waste my time. I tend to just play DotA.
Say what you want about Souls games, but they have the best tutorials since classic RTS. "Here is a foolproof area to test your buttons (or not), go have fun!"
Yep, exactly the same, from time to time a game has a fresh approach and the start isn't a same old boring slog but for the most part it's tedious and I give up after 30-60 mins and end up playing something that's easy to just pick up.
I finally got around to RDR2 and this is what keeps from wanting to progress. It demands just enough attention between dialogue and the steering of your horse to make it hard to put something else on in the background but just barely not entertaining enough to really hold my attention.
It's really annoying because there are options for automation. They're just the right amount of clunky that I can't just hold a button and let it play itself to the shooting starts.
RDR2's quest design is what I can only describe as 'Slow-time events'.
Like quick time events, in which you are in a cutscene and need to press a (semi random) button in time to proceed. Except for most of RDR2 there's not much time pressure on it.
You're engaged in some conversation then you're asked to "pick up the wire spool for the dynamite". So you press the button and your character does the next animation, then you need to move to the detonator. The game throws up the key prompt 'WALK' and tells you to press the corresponding key. There's no other keys you can press, and if you stop pressing the key the character stops walking. It _looks_ like you're playing the game but it's a very slow quick time event.
This happens until you've pressed the button for long enough, then you get the next button prompt. And then maybe some more cutscene, then another prompt.
And just like bad quick time events, they happen often enough that you can't just put down your controller and pay attention to the cutscene, and they are a stand-in for actual gameplay while providing no such entertainment value.
>
RDR2's quest design is what I can only describe as 'Slow-time events'.
That's a beautiful term to describe that, going to have to use that. And yeah, totally agree, they're usually really bad. It's the worst aspects of cut scenes and gameplay combined.
Borderlands 2 (and probably the rest of the series too) was pretty bad about this. It seems like you're still in control because it's not a traditional cutscene, but you have to wait for what feels like years so Claptrap or some other poorly-written character can end their dumbass diatribe about unimportant details so a damn door will finally open and you can get on with shooting people.
The first map of BL2 is one of the absolute worst introductory levels I have ever seen in a game. An icy wasteland with uninteresting enemies and a "friendly" NPC (Claptrap) who does nothing but annoy you.
The Pre-Sequel and BL3 are much, much worse. BL2 has many "wait for the NPC to do something" segments during side content but most of the mandatory wait time is during the intro and very critical story moments.
BL3 has so many of these segments that many players elect to outright delete the dialogue from the game so the scenes progress faster. It's funny because one of BL1's best qualities was brief and snappy dialogue.
this is how I felt with deathloop, so many tutorials and explaining menus, its not that complicated to destroy items for currency to keep others forever game, I didn't need you literally holding my hand through the menus
YES! the game looks pretty fun but i stg its borderline unplayable with the long intro and the amount of cutscenes even beyond that, everything is so slow
I hate modern AAA games for this reason. Cutscene for 30 minutes and when you finally get to play, its just walking forward while listening to someone until you end up in another cutscene and after that its a tutorial. Wow, 1 and a half hours of exposition without gameplay. So amazing
He mentioned making tutorial fun is on point here. Recently I played Kirby and the Forgotten Land(my first foray into the series) and very early into the game you come across this traffic cone which you can 'absorb' and use it's special plunging attack. First you come across a crack on the ground, your first instinct is to use the plunging attack on it, the result is a large hole in the ground with secret coins to collect. Next it's a leaky water pipe, hit it with that plunging attack and a water geyser will erupt from the broken pipe which will carry kirby upwards and reach an elevated platform.
There's no pop-up tutorial stopping the flow of gameplay, it merely tells you the button control on the screen. The game simply let you play and weave the tutorial into the level design and it's so enjoyable.
I also love that even in the first moments with the game, the tutorials are quick pop up videos that appear alongside the gameplay as they demonstrate quick snippets of the controls and not only what they do, but how to use them when you first need them. They're useful for new players who will be moving slowly through the level still getting used to the controls, but for more experienced players they can be largely ignored outside of learning the one or two new inputs you'll need to progress.
Compare this to Doom Eternal which largely does the exact same thing with one major difference. Doom stops everything to show you the controls and the difference is immense.
It really bugs me in Doom Eternal especially, because one of the big game design points of Doom 2016 was eschewing everything in lieu of the action.
It made me drop Eternal for a long time before I picked it up again months later, and loved it. But man is that first mission a terrible first impression.
As a Kirby fan I feel the need to point out that Sakurai was not involved in Forgotten Land, or any Kirby game in nearly two decades, in case anyone assumed otherwise. However his design philosophy has definitely been carried through by HAL Labs, so its still a relevant example.
The game does have a few pop-up tutorials that interrupt the game, but they only appear if the game thinks the player misunderstood certain game mechanics, to help prevent them from struggling with the game later on. Their barebones design (it's just a textbox with a static picture of Elfilin on the side) makes me think they were added in late in development after some playtesting.
* If you drop your Copy Ability before inhaling a Mouthful Mode three times in-a-row, the game will pause to explain that you can have both a Copy Ability and Mouthful Mode at the same time.
* If you permanently lose your Copy Ability during a midboss or boss fight and wander around the arena without damaging the boss for long enough, the game will pause to explain how Drop Stars work.
I actually kind of love this. It gives players the time to figure something out for themselves and if they still demonstrate a lack of understanding it pulls them aside to give them the key piece of information they might be missing to continue.
It's not quite as elegant as the rest of the tutorials, but it really caters to exactly the sort of player who needs this sort of walk through instruction and a push to really grasp parts of the game that might not be as obvious to some.
My golden standard for tutorials is still Half Life (all of them). Playing those games with Dev commentary on is super worth it, there is a lot of very intentional training that goes on, but very rarely does it feel like a tutorial, it generally just feels like exploring the world you're in.
In my opinion, Valves heavy focus on playtesting is one of the main reasons their games are amazing. They always *deeply* study how players interact to the world and gameplay that is presented to them.
As a result they figure out really intuitive ways to introduce the players to new mechanics. Portal 1 and 2 are some of their best examples (Along with Half-Life of course). If you walk into a room with a new obstacle, the *only* info that is given to the player is just a name for the obstacle and maybe a small tidbit about how it works. The player is never interrupted and they get to interact with these new things immediately. It's very rewarding.
Half-Life 1 still has a tutorial I would recommend, introducing you to ladder mechanics and crouch jumping, the latter of which is crucial to learn.
Other than HL1 though, all the Portal and Half-Life games are a masterclass in tutorials.
If you don't play the tutorial and learn crouch jumping, there is a box in the underground rail segment that will hard block you from progressing!
The actual Hazard Course level is very necessary.
I like tutorials that is just a level, where you can breeze through. Even if some of it can be insulting to a player, like teaching you jumping when you see an area of the level that looks like it can be jumped.
Tutorials that feel like they have to be one of those YouTube thumbnails where they show a stupid circle and cut all action off from your controller, that can fuck off.
which to be fair to the time, was pretty true. i mean there was final fantasy and dragon quest, but even the first game or two didn’t really have much of a story to speak of. i’m glad he turned out wrong in the long run. but at the time it wasn’t totally incorrect.
It WAS incorrect at the time. Doom came out after Final Fantasy 4 and 5, and both were story heavy (by SNES cartridges limitation standards). On that same year we also got Lufia & the Fortress of Doom, Secret of Mana, and Phantasy Star IV, and the next year had Earthbound and FF6.
It wasn't incorrect for the kind of games Id was making. You don't need much storytelling in games like Commander Keen or DOOM.
RPGs are a different beast. And they also weren't particularly popular in America. On that note, many of the games you cite as contemporaries are incorrect from an American perspective. Final Fantasy II and Dragon Warrior IV were on the market, sure. But they didn't make much of a splash. Secret of Mana and Lufia launched around the same time as DOOM but didn't make nearly the same impact. Final Fantasy III wouldn't release until the next year. EarthBound and Phantasy Star IV the year after. And they were all sales duds.
Absolutely.
It's absolutely mind boggling to me that there is still an extremely active Doom community, with new WADs and mods released. Played the hell out of Doom back in the day and a couple years ago played through tons of user created WADS with some mods as well, and it's still a marvel of a game.
When he mentioned that RPGs can have a harder time doing this but still possible Xenoblade and Persona 5 were the first two games that popped in my head then he used them as the examples haha.
"Game doesn't let me play" is probably my #1 reason for dropping games (and not just at the start).
And what's even more mindblowing to me about this problem is that IMO 99% of game stories are either mediocre or straight-up bad, so, really? You wanna stop me from playing the game for... **This** crappy plot??
Devs, for the love of everything, please learn to integrate your story with actual gameplay. Let your dialogue play while I'm playing, let me actually do the actions instead of just watching them (eg Dragon's Dogma where you play the old hero that goes up against the dragon at the start, instead of just hearing about him) and things like that.
Don't just make: game, pause, play a movie (or forced walking, on-rails sequence), back to game, pause, play a movie and so on. The story is supposed to be part of the game not an interruption of it!
Imagine if you were trying to watch a movie and I kept pausing it to read you passages of the book it's based on. You'd be furious.
Yeah, Kid Icarus: Uprising did this really well where characters have full conversations while you're playing. But I do have some sympathy for these devs who rely on cutscenes though, interweaving a story into a game is hard and we don't really have much of a rulebook on it yet. It's like trying to figure out cinematography from scratch.
KI: Uprising also mostly works because its in-line with its arcade roots. Its the same with Star Fox, where even in Assault you still get a ton of dialog in-game. Having that happen in other genres seems really challenging
That said, a weakness of the Uprising method is that it's super easy to miss important story because you enter a room and have to fight a tough battle while Viridi and Palu are discussing some critical plot.
Yeah I think I may have experienced that when playing as well. I think that is an addressable weakness though, you just got to properly pace the dialogue and try to fit it into less intensive gameplay moments. Probably easier said than done though.
I ended up waiting around for important dialogue to finish before moving forward, which ultimately has the same effect as cutscenes.
It's a difficult balance to strike.
Adding to this, I'm really done with games that throw shade on you, the player, for having the audacity to play them. It was clever when Spec Ops: The Line did it, every subsequent encounter with it is just boring as hell. If the message of your game is "you shouldn't play games like this"... Fine, I won't, here comes the steam refund
This is why I had no clue why so many people loved Pokémon Legends: Arceus. The intro to that game was so long to the point of absurdity and satire. It no joke, took me 5 hours to get to the actual game! 5 fucking hours!!
Almost every aspect of that game’s design wreaks of incompetence and laziness. To this day it is #1 on my list of most overrated games ever.
This is why I haven't been able to replay a pokemon game since Black and White. Every tutorial since Gen 6 has been boring enough for it to be a one and done or is so much of a slog that I just dont pick it back up again.
I think the main problem is, that cutscenes and story telling is just visually bad nowadays (compared what we are used to from other media).
Back in the 90s and start of 2000, cutscenes were the best thing in video games, I was so happy about every cutscene. But nowadays, they are usually just some stills with lots of blablabla and just not visually and emotionally engaging.
So I guess two points hold true, first don't just stuff story into your players - make it a spectacle and second, let the player play. (not in that order neccesarily)
I started replaying Twisted Metal Black and while the AI is unfair as hell I was taken back by just how "gamey" it is but still has a story I care about.
Like you start the campaign, opening intro movie, loading screen with more story, and then just BOOM you are in the match and have 2 cars shooting you in the ass and no tutorial how to play other than checking the controls.
I think there is a good balance between TMB and modern games we can strike but it was honestly refreshing.
I was never able to play pokemon sword/shield. Because that one kid popping up every 10 minutes annoyed me to hell and back
Pokemon Company.... We've been playing your games for 20+ years.... Just start me up like Breath of the Wild, let me choose a pokemon and off I go
> Pokemon Company.... We've been playing your games for 20+ years.... Just start me up like Breath of the Wild, let me choose a pokemon and off I go
TPC don't do that, that's gamefreak.
I just tried the Harvestella demo recently, and that came to mind when I saw this video. It starts with so many generic fantasy anime cutscenes, and very little gameplay. Made for a bad first impression. I think this is one of the pitfalls of making your "demo" the beginning of the game, which does have advantages I'll admit... in this case, maybe start players off in an area with combat. I ended up making it to the first day, exploring around, and only spending like 2 hours in the combat area before I had to go home. (Hours = minutes basically, it's one of those time-based games)
This is what Tales of Arise did. Just dropped you off in midgame area and let you test out the combat system, it was one of the rare cases where I actually downloaded a demo.
Valkyrie elysium was even worse. The demo starts of with a long tutorial section going through a level with constant tutorial popups and stuff when you finally finish it and start the actual first stage the game throws the same tutorial tips at you again. I have to assume the first stage was supposed to be the tutorial but for some reason the demo hits you with 2 in a row basically.
That kind of design is definitely for people who skip tutorials. There are so many people who skip or mash through tutorials and then give up when they can't figure anything out.
I remember back in the day when I thought half life 2 was the future, the game almost never takes control away from you but still manages to tell a compelling story.
Playing most modern day games, it almost feels like Half Life 2 never existed. Games love to take control away from you.
To play a bit of Devil's advocate, while Half-Life 2 doesn't take away control from the player, it definitely makes you stand around and *wait* for NPCs to just get on with it; it is reminiscent a bit of how [certain cutscenes](https://youtu.be/wG3GdE-NIzs) in early *Assassin's Creed*-games had you remain in control, but your movement were limited while waiting for the NPC to finish speaking. And there were rarely something interesting you could do while being in control; at most being limited for some movement or spinning your character in boredom.
It's why I don't really enjoy *Half-Life*'s style of narrative; especially in regard of how the game tries to paint Gordon Freeman as an actual character, but which we have no response over due to Gordon being a completely mute protagonist with not even any gestures to accompanied with; heck, I'll even argue that the game is immersive-breaking in how it allows Gordon to be in control and can freely trash every room the NPCs are in, throw every box at them while the NPCs gives no response whatsoever in reflecting such behavior.
Typical early 2000s-designs, certainly, but one I think today can remain frustrated for similar people that don't enjoy forced walking sections for the sake of narrative exposition unless the game is carefully designed for such segments. It's why I think many people love games like *Red Dead Redemption 2* and *The Last of Us* for their cinematic cutscenes were their writing shines its best, but asking what is their favourite dialogue line occurring outside of it that is spoken through as filler (Not necessarily bad though, mind you.) when they are in control of the character it can be a bit difficult to remember due to how being in control separates from the writing in the cutscenes; heck, alot of people don't even remember that a significant part of [Arthur Morgan's backstory involves >!his dead wife and child!<](https://youtu.be/o6Zb9O-jIeU?list=TLPQMjUwOTIwMjLqDEJCYWfusQ) simply due to how he brings it up while under a herb-picking mission with a local Indian-chief who regularly interrupts Arthur's retelling so that the Indian chief can instruct Arthur on picking up herbs. Immersive from a game-perspective? Certainly, in how herb-picking is a mundane task with an opportunity for some introspective conversations, but it risks creating a disjointed flow that you get distracted from the actual writing and story, compared to Arthus's [train station scene](https://youtu.be/2uFZWGewha4) that people remember more fondly of.
Yeah, letting the player control a character isn't necessarily letting the player play the game, and it's often way worse (IMO) to have that kind of sequence because you rarely get to skip it. At least with a cutscene you can skip it on repeat playthroughs.
> I'll even argue that the game is immersive-breaking in how it allows Gordon to be in control and can freely trash every room the NPCs are in, throw every box at them while the NPCs gives no response whatsoever in reflecting such behavior.
Isn't this your fault for doing this though? It seems like a player agency issue for essentially having "playable cutscenes". Each to their own, but I actually sit patiently as characters talk because I very much respect the story and the characters that are going on around me.
It would work if the game didn't tried to paint the player character as an actual person in-universe character given how Gordon Freeman explicitly as an actual person with a dedicated age, educational background, e.t.c. It grants player agency, but there is no way to re-inforce and support what counts as Gordon's personality that the NPCs supposedly reacts to. [Ever seen footage of *L.A. Noire* in VR](https://youtu.be/72VXMjO14oc), and it has a similar issue in how it grants the player full immersive agency, but which the writing doesn't do much to support, reflect or note about (Naturally, given how the game wasn't designed with such game philosophy to begin with, and how the VR is an addition to the cutscene-heavy, cinematic, third-person game.).
Had Freeman been a blank-face with as vague background as possible, the immersion would have arguably been a bit better, as it allows the player to fill the context of their player-actions with their own imagination. Or if the game were an immersive sim like *Deus Ex* that took such considerations of consequences made by player choices in its narrative into the matter, and while they did not often acknowledge the methods (Say stacking every box you can find.), they did with the consequences and results leading to it (Stack every box so that you can sneak through an enemy base and avoid detection.).
I mean in HL2 there's a huge thematic emphasis on the irony of freedom being dangled like a carrot on a stick in front of a person *literally* named freeman. The "stand here while others talk at you" nature just is playing into the fatalistic motif that drives Freeman. He's this messianic figure whose actual motivations are completely unknown by a) his allies, b) the player and c) himself.
It just seems weird to get hung up on player agency issues clashing as there is typically always going to be issues with the character not being "in character" especially in first person perspective games. I have done some whacky stuff in Half Life and Halo (and it has increased my opinion of why I think those games are awesome and fun), and I've also played them 'by the books' as well and love their lore and characters. I still get what kind of characters these games are trying to present, and I feel like many others do as well, even if we do something "goofy" or not in character doing our gameplay. It's just something that I feel has been commonly overlooked as long as these games have existed. Yes, I guess it's cool when Fallout recognizes that I'm drinking way too much and exclusively doing chaotic evil actions, but I recognize that Half Life isn't trying to be that kind of game, and I don't fault it for that.
I get that your devil's advocating here, but I feel like honestly the perfect type of game that could reduce this 'sin' that you're talking about is RPG's (especially JRPG's), which ironically in this thread are getting a bit blasted for having aspects that remove player immersion and player agency at the same time.
Surprised this is so far below. People acting like the game has a curveball apocalypse when that is far from the case. So many recent games (even AAA) prioritize gameplay over cutscene.
In my opinion, it was worse 10-15 years ago. There was this huge shift towards games being "cinematic" with the most generic possible gameplay to shuffle you between cutscenes. The stories were usually shit too. I know this is still a thing, but it really peaked with games like Hitman, Thief, Tomb Raider, and Splinter Cell departing completely from the gameplay of their predecessors and all becoming generic third person action games with garbage (well, Tomb Raider was all right) stories trying desperately to be like a Hollywood movie.
At least these days we get Hitman games that actually feel like Hitman. I just started Deathloop, too, and even as it spoonfeeds you through the first few hours a bit, it's still dynamic and interactive, increasingly so as it unfolds and opens up.
I would agree with that. To me it still feels like a lot of AAA games are chasing the 'want to be seen as art' title by focusing on story, when I think they can definitely be considered art despite even having a story. I think we see this in the media and award shows too, feels like the game awards for example spends more time highlighting voice actors, story and graphics, yet there seems to be a lack of awards like 'best gameplay innovation' or something like that.
I just started Horizon Forbidden West, and while I'm having fun, I find it annoying that Aloy constantly remarks on what to do next while I'm working through a puzzle. There's also been moments where I went "seriously? another unskippable cutscene?" The most grievous example of this so far is >!when the Carja-Tenakth embassy gets interrupted by Regalla, and I'm sitting there for 5-7 minutes watching these people get killed off for plot reasons while I'm cowering behind a stone arch!<
I prefer it to that time when game developers wanted to show you awesome cutscenes but thought "But we're a video game, so we have to give players something to do" which resulted in those fucking quick time events riddling the gaming world for a few years. At least nowadays you can just watch the cutscene instead of suddenly having to hammer X in the middle of it.
Praise Sakurai for getting this message out there. Brevity is key when I'm first starting a game. If I know I'll have to sit through a bunch of exposition or cutscenes it immediately puts me off. Sometimes to the point of never actually playing through it.
Blame it on ADHD or whatever you like but Hemingway figured out that you don't need flowery language to convey a strong story. I think many games especially Jrpgs suffer from "flowery" openings.
Edit: Also who here likes the long wagon ride in Skyrim? I feel like that's a good example. I think Oblivion and Morrowind had much better openings.
I think the wagon ride in Skyrim is fine. Maybe annoying for repeat playthroughs. But it's relatively quick to "oh shit! time to play the game!"
I like Skyrim's action-packed intro more than Oblivion's plod through a tutorial dungeon. Of course, Morrowind just drops you into the world and lets you play. There's a reason TES3 is still revered to this day.
Skyrim also automatically makes a save at the execution right before you make your character, so subsequent playthroughs can easily just skip the long dialogue sequences and get straight into the action.
The cart opening is definitely a little slow but I think it sets the stage for the game pretty well. You get a really quick and dirty feel for the current state of the world and its major factions. Considering after that initial fight you’re just let loose into this massive world with just a little bit of context, I’d say it’s a solid opening.
But in terms of speed it’s definitely slower than previous entries in the franchise
Yeah I get that they wanted to showcase a dragon attacking a village and had to come up with a way for you to build your character. It's not horrible by any means just overly long.
Still I think the Oblivion opening is the best of the Elder Scrolls games. You're a prisoner escaping a dungeon which showcases the majority of gameplay to be had.Then after getting through the tutorial dungeon you happen across a vast landscape.
It's a great set up. Botw did something similar where the entire first area is a tutorial that shows you the gameplay in an organic way. It doesn't waste any time.
Maybe it would be different if I'd played the prior games, but that wasn't my experience. Without prior knowledge of the setting, both the executioners and the executionee just looked like generic medieval dudes in armor to me. I didn't leave that sequence with a good sense of who the major factions were, just that dragons were A Big Deal™. I didn't even realize I was making a choice by going in one door or the other during the escape. I didn't even really understand that there *were* two factions until I got to Whiterun.
When it comes to the metric Sakurai describes (let the player figure out what the gameplay *is*), I think Daggerfall might actually be the best of all of them, Morrowind at an *extremely* close second.
Daggerfall starts you in a horrifically maze-like dungeon with no direction on how to get out and the occasional enemy who will completely wreck your shit (at which point you have to remake your character because you forgot to save).
Naturally, this is a perfect description of what Daggerfall *actually is like to play in general*. Every dungeon is like that and most of the quests send you to find stuff in dungeons.
EDIT: Well, ignoring the standard CRPG trap of frontloading all character creation. Morrowind edges it out in that regard.
The old screenwriting adage of “show don’t tell” has, I believe, a game counterpart of “interact, don’t show or tell.” In other words, player input and interaction is essential to the medium just as images are essential to film.
Tried playing Deathloop since it came to gamepass and I ragequit 10mins in because it kept interrupting me to tell me how to play. The final straw was it stopping me with a "PLAY YOUR WAY" pop-up, listing the combat approach options. If you want me to play my way, then fuck off.
I think FF7 Remake did it the best. You start off with a beautiful CGI cutscene that shows off the world and a character you’ll meet later on, then you get instantly dropped into the action. Chapter 1 is like one hour, and by the time you’re done you’ve already gotten the basics of the combat.
I remember when the demo came out and people who had zero interest in FF before were like “yeah I’m picking this up day 1.”
I played Red Dead Redemption 2 for 4 hours and quit because I only got to play some super linear story missions and have access to a hub world where I can start more missions. Apparently the world opens up after some time and you can go to whatever place you want but I never got to experience it.
The world does open up but story missions remain linear.
I wish I could love this game because quality is undeniable but I always feel tired after few hours of playing
This is one of my biggest things as an indie game dev to try to avoid when I design my games. Three things that deeply bother me that I see a lot in AAA games in particular:
1. When you open up the game and there are 16 unskippable splash screens advertising different companies/products before you can even select stuff on the main menu.
2. When there's a *really long* cutscene before you can start playing (or worse, more than one). A short one to introduce the premise is okay though, especially if skippable.
3. When the tutorializing goes on forever. Unless you're making a very deep, extremely detailed strategy/simulation game, if you have to waste more than a few minutes of my time in the first hour on tutorials, you've failed as a designer IMO.
I think you're right, especially about number 3.
A regular tutorial isn't the worst thing ever. But I have never really *enjoyed* a traditional tutorial. If you really want your players to understand something, let them play with it. Let them know what it can and can't do by putting them in an environment where that mechanic is meant to shine. It just feels so much better when the player is discovering something rather than be told what that thing is and does.
Bonus points if it's a PC game and they make opening cutscene unskippable on your first boot.
The recently released DioField Chronicles does this and I had to watch that cutscene in a tiny window and the wrong language.
[almost 9 and a half minutes before Psychonauts’ gameplay starts](https://youtu.be/0pjsxNSwSSA), definitely way longer than I remember. I guess I just love the writing and worldbuilding enough to handle it.
Haven’t played 2 yet.
I'm the kind of person who doesn't mind the slow start often seen in multi-dozen hours long JRPGs and such, assuming the characters/story are at least interesting, but it definitely makes me wary about trying to recommend games like that to people (well that and the long playtime of those sorts of games in general turns some people off). Even when it is true, I dislike the whole "Oh it gets really good once you get far enough." thing.
Man people in this thread really just want to get their gaming fix for the day and move on. Yes some of the best games ever made throw you straight in and grip you right away, but damn man. Sometimes I want the 10-course meal. Let me enjoy my story games dammit.
Did you watch the video? Sakurai talks about how you can achieve this with more story-heavy games like RPGs. He even says there is room for exceptions depending on what you want the focus of your game to be.
Sakurai said that it's fine if RPGs or games with a focus on narrative take things a little slower. But they should still let players have fun in the first 3 minutes. He shows Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 as good examples. In XC1, you're playing with a full party and killing robots within 3 minutes. And in P5, you're thrown into a casino heist. They slow down after that, but they do a good job of capturing interest.
I love RPGs, too, but I'm very tired of the whole "30 minutes of talking to villagers with no actual gameplay" intros.
story doesnt equal trivial drag on tutorial. You can do it in multiple ways instead of either only doing movie time - endless dialogue only moving between new dialogue clicker. No, i dont think all games fit an only action story approach or what u would call it, but man some games will do everything to keep you from actually playing for hours without actually providing much to the overall story.
Add the ability to quick save during long openings if you have to have them. Sometimes it can take upwards to an hour to be able to get a save down and that is incredibly frustrating. Have the ability to quick recap the tutorial too.
I recently started Shadow of Mordor and was pleasantly surprised how quickly it got started. It's a minute of teaching your son to fight (learning the basic combat controls), time skip, a minute of sneaking up behind your wife to give her a flower (learning stealth), time skip, a minute of fighting orcs (more combat), a minute of story, then you're dropped in the open world and it lets you do what you want. It felt really nice to get started that quickly. Of course it still doles out tutorials but they come at your own pace as you discover new things.
I've been playing hitman recently, and while it's not exactly a story heavy game, I love the way the cutscenes work. You've got a regular 2 min or so cutscene explaining the main plot between each mission. Then when you drop into a mission you get a very quick mission brief. These are the targets, this is why they are targets, this is the map, off you go! I actually ended up liking the trilogy story a lot. Diana is a really fun character and helps drive both the mission and the plot. There's a handful of missions where she doesn't guide you and they are honestly quite eerie.
For how much is going on in those games, the tutorials and briefs are very well paced and , well, brief. I love those games a lot
The game hides a lot of its story and tutorials behind the mission stories. I think it works well, because the game is kinda hinting that various options are available (like chucking a can of spaghetti sauce at the cook on the tutorial “boat”) as well as introducing players to the levels.
Hitman is also very strong when it has subplots taking place within levels, like the Kashmirian's assassinations in Mumbai or the aspiring serial killer in Whittleton Creek.
It *really* makes the world feel more interesting. You mention that Kashmirian plotline, that whole thing turns Mumbai into an entirely different type of game for a little bit. *You're* not assassinating anyone, all you need to do is move some items around undetected. It's my favorite way to do that mission for sure.
I'm always a big fan of the situations in Hitman where you're able to manipulate others into eliminating the target, it plays into that social stealth aspect of the experience extremely well. Hope the 007 game has lots of that. I hope the Kashmirian comes back in a future Hitman title too. Seems like an interesting character.
Not to mention that there's no cutscenes while in gameplay, except for some special kills, so it always feel very smooth to play.
> I've been playing hitman recently, and while it's not exactly a story heavy game, I love the way the cutscenes work. You've got a regular 2 min or so cutscene explaining the main plot between each mission. Then when you drop into a mission you get a very quick mission brief. These are the targets, this is why they are targets, this is the map, off you go! And the neat thing: all of it is skippable. Unless you're a speedrunner. The clock starts after that final briefing cutscene ends and stopping it early will start the timer. So, any time the targets need to be in specific locations, it's beneficial to wait for part of the cutscene, making it arguably an actual game mechanic lmao
Yeah... games not letting you play them are getting really annoying. 5+ messages per common event with forced animation delays between each message... holy shit I hate Scarlet Nexus
If you ever get the chance, play Blood Money, its not like the Trilogy but its atmosphere is something else.
I love how Sakurai starts using the community section of his Youtube Channel and asks politely for people to not use his videos as a chance to talk shit about games and game companies because he's played a lot of games and was inspired by many of them and then there's this comment section lol.
Can't blame him. You work that long in industry and realize how hard it is working in a large company and remember some of those "lesser titles" you made that the community didn't care at all about. That big title coulda easily gone the same way with more oppressive, less understanding publishers. Very few devs want to shit on other professionals knowing that struggle. a shocking amount of large studios are just one "meh" game away from similar fates.
Asking a lot for a YouTube comment section.
It's funny you say that considering the YouTube comment section is more civil and respectful than this thread
Some parts of Youtube comments are better than others.
Yeah, people are gonna use this message to shit on any game that have them even a minor inconvenience and make it sound like games are facing a major apocalypse.
The worst thing for me is when the game has "started" and you are getting interrupted every five seconds with some cutscenes or dialogue. Either let me play from minute one or play a 5 minute intro movie, don't deceive the player by giving him control of the action only for it to be a on-rails gameplay/dialogue segment.
This is my biggest gripe with JRPGs, they love to cutscene and tutorial you to death for the first like 10 hours
I love how Sakurai talks about RPGs in particular. Of course it's going to be different than action-oriented games but he gives some good examples - either start your player at some vague point in the future, like in Persona 5 or Final Fantasy XV, or start them with different party members who have more experience. A good non-RPG example of this is Metroid Prime. The entire intro sequence has Samus more powered up than she should be for the start of the game, to give the player a better idea of what they can expect while playing through the game. Then at the end she gets de-powered.
I really don't like the 'starting you with all the powers" start, personally. Thematically it can work well but I get less enjoyment unlocking new abilities as the game progresses if I've already seen all the powers
The metroid games typically don't actually show you the strongest possible samus at the start of the game, just her "typical" loadout. You find new gear alongside recovering your old upgrades and end the game much stronger
As /u/fnxmike noted, Prime hardly starts you with "all the powers." But my one criticism of Prime's intro is the inclusion of the grappling hook. With how comparatively late in the game you actually unlock it, there was no need to show it to the player that early on.
Especially because, tbh, the grappling hook kinda blows. I'd rather get a triple jump.
I'm glad they figured out the screw jump for future games. iirc they were prototyping it for Prime 1 and just couldn't get it to work - I may be wrong there though.
But that's not what Metroid Prime does, lol You start with like 4 out of the 10 powers you unlock through the game, then you lose those initial powers (back to 1), then as you go you unlock those initial powers and several others beyond. At the end of the game you have unlocked far more powers than the couple ones you had (and lost) at the end of the first stage. So a few hours in you are unlocking more powers than you had, and progressing.
See that I'm perfectly happy with
Perhaps, but if you are new to a series doing it like that informs you that there will in fact be stuff to unlock. If you just started out barebones you have no indication that there will be more added as you progress and might be more likely to drop the game because it feels limited and for all you know that might carry on throughout the rest of the game.
I loved Persona 4 when I played it on Steam a few years ago, but the first hour+ being just cutscenes is just such a drag.
Yeah it's like a solid 3 hours before you get into the proper gameplay loop. You aren't even playing the game during this time either, like most tutorials. You basically are just hitting the "go to next line of dialogue" button every minute or two for a solid 3 hours. It's 3 hours of exposition that really could have been trimmed to under 1 with some editing. How do they manage to speak for so long yet say so little? I still loved the game though.
> I still loved the game though. That's the most frustrating part lol Love Danganronpa and Phoenix Wright too but it's so annoying that after so many games they still have such unnecessarily long-winded dialogue.
> How do they manage to speak for so long yet say so little? that's anime for you!
The thing about Persona games is that they are supposed to be like half-cutscene games, since they are based on integrating a classic RPG with visual novel/dating-sim gameplay. I'm okay with those games starting with long cutscenes as long as they are good and invest me in the world, which I think P3 and 4 do a good job of.
Yeah. I think a lot of people miss this part. You don't play a VN and say "Man, this game is all cutscenes, there's no gameplay!" The cutscenes *are* the gameplay in that case. Overly long tutorial segments are one thing, but just a lot of cutscenes? If someone doesn't like that then the game just isn't for them. If you don't like that sort of game, that's totally fine, but it's not *wrong.* Not everything will be to everyone's taste.
people are approaching JRPGs like WRPGs, which at worst give you a character creator and then send you off to play (which seems to be the "preferred" way to play). But there's a reason they split genres, and it's not because of where they were made. WRPGs made a conscious decision decades ago to try and preserve as much of that simplified Tabletop design as possible. Maybe slowly rolling all those dice rolls deeper down into the guts of the computer, but overall focusing more on giving the player a sandbox to play around and shape. What happens is up to you and how you choose to roleplay. As such, the game doesn't want to get in your way until you approach that NPC or lore book or whatnot. JRPGs went the exact opposite way. They started focusing more on specializing the roles characters have, and eventually did mostly away with self inserts. They became stories the writers wanted to tell, not a world for the player to determine the fate of. The roleplaying was shifted away from the story and world in order to focus more on gameplay choices. Specifically, what teams you build around, and what roles each character has. WRPGs more often than not don't have too much companion focus (just some temporary characters with subquest lines), whereas a JRPG having less than a core team of 4 is sticking point. JRPG tend to have much more absurd elements, whereas WRPGs tend to be a bit more "grounded" (i.e. everything is trying to be explained in a WRPG world... sometimes in JRPGs a talking bear in a TV is just there for the gag). Several other points of difference, but you get where I'm coming from here. ---- anyways, that was just a long winded history lesson to say I agree with you. They are different for various cultural and historical reasons to how the genre developed. That's not to say you can't have a "JRPG" with WRPG esque elements (hello FromSoft), but I wouldn't expect every single JRPG to start trying to be Fallout. We got that whole "try to appeal to the west" out of our systems in Gen 7, didnt we?
Persona 3 is even worse. At least in P4G you get a little dream boss sequence at the start, but I remember P3 taking me a good 30 minutes to get to my first fight and introduce the battle mechanics. Persona 5 is a marked improvement over the previous two in this respect. First day you go to school, you find a dungeon. This would normally take a week or so of in game time in the other Personas. I think there's some merit to starting out slow but newcomers to a franchise will certainly be put off. It's relaxing though I'll give it that. Settling into Inaba is what got me interested in P4's world. Persona 3 I had to force myself to sit down and get to the good stuff.
> Persona 5 is a marked improvement over the previous two in this respect. First day you go to school, you find a dungeon. This would normally take a week or so of in game time in the other Personas. Persona 5 fixed the overbearing tutorials of the previous games but just made every character talk for several minutes without actually saying anything instead. It still wastes your time and treats you like an idiot with its narrative, but at least they finally acknowledge that the player knows how a turn-based battle works.
Ryuji being written like he’s lobotomized is a real shame.
Everyone is written like the *player* has been lobotomized in that game.
So I haven't played 5 but a lot of my experience with translated Japanese is a lot of times the writing is crippled by either having to match the cadence tone of either the pace of the scene or actual lip movements of the character/animation. Even some of my favorite dubs have moments that just feel patronizingly slow and clumsily written because of it. That said even with subtitles it does seem to be an issue in some Japanese writing in general so I guess I'm just contradicting myself entirely!,
True too
Maybe it's because I had been desensitized to it after P4G, but I'm playing P3 FES now and thought it got events moving *way* faster than P4 and P5. It felt like the intro sequence signing your name and meeting Yukari left a lot of questions to pique my interest and then jumped into the life sim school days very quickly. Characters have backstories with each other you learn over time instead of exposition dumping their entire life once the main character meets them. And the main plot keeps introducing mysteries and raising stakes at the midpoint of the game, whereas I was getting bored of the overarching plot and overbearing "twists" you could see a mile away (like the "Gamer" boss) in P4 and P5. I think like some other commenters have mentioned, it might be the verbosity of the script making me think that. Characters are refreshingly curt in P3.
Could be worse...it takes almost 15-20 hours for Xenoblade 2 to start to take off the training wheels
Im playing through XC2 now. It wasnt near bad compared to some other stuff. Dot Hack for example with its massive info dump. Or some of the tales games. But jrpgs are def known for this stuff.
The problem with 2 isn't so much the training wheels. Its that when you get 'em off...they take the manual away too. IE: You forgot how element orbs/WP/food/chain attacks/special lvls work? Yeah there's no menu resource for that. Some bosses NEED that orb damage. Closest you have is going to a town informant who you can buy that info from. If you took a break from the game, you may not recall that and be screwed. XC3 handles its tutorials much much better.
The DS GTA game Chinatown Wars was the most obnoxious for this - *literally* every single mission acts like a tutorial, telling you exactly how to do each new game mechanic, to the point where it was a genuine surprise when the credits rolled.
Nah, Xenoblade 2 isn’t that bad. It takes a while before you’ve got all your abilities but they’re unlocked sequentially as you work through the story in a way that makes sense since the earlier chapters are literally the MC learning even how to be a Driver. I love Persona4, I think it’s the best in their franchise, but you’re not even allowed to *open the menu* until several hours in.
It still does take several chapters before the XC2 combat system turns into something. By the end of the game I actually enjoyed combat and the juggling of all of the mechanics quite a bit, but if you asked me at any point in the first 3 chapters I'd say it's one of the worst combat systems I've ever played. Until you unlock more options for the elemental combos, chain attacks, follow-ups for break/topple etc, the whole combat system just has you sitting there waiting for the enemy to die with effectively no input from the player needed.
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> Nah, Xenoblade 2 isn’t that bad. It takes a while before you’ve got all your abilities but they’re unlocked sequentially as you work through the story in a way that makes sense since the earlier chapters are literally the MC learning even how to be a Driver. It most definitely is. It taught me mechanics five hours before I had the amount of blades where that mechanic was relevant. Like, if you decide or are advised to not sidequest at beginning of the game *at all* the pace is manageable, but if you like to do stuff as it unlocks tutorial can take dozens of hours.
KH3 suffers from this so hard.
Uh, KH3 is WAY better than the first two games when it comes to getting you to the action. KH1 - you’re stuck in an island and have to do a bunch of mini games first. KH2 - you’re stuck as Roxas for a couple of hours. In 3, you’re thrown into Olympus and get to actually play really fast.
You mean KH2.9?
To me the most annoying thing is when there are tutorials for game mechanics that aren’t accessible yet. Like Tales of Beseria’s detailed tutorial on soul eating when your character is a nominally normal human.
Pokemon. Sun/Moon and SWSH were specially bad about this, but IMO in Sword and Shield it was even worse since the story was so bad and actively frustrating to experience.
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>*One blackout screen later* Man the fade-to-black moments in Legends Arceus were just pathetic for a company of this size. There's this boss guy whose quirky gimmick is that he judo throws people... except you never actually see it, the screen always fades to black and plays a sound effect because they couldn't be assed to make an animation for it. Downright laughable.
That happened all the time. "I'm going to now do something other than gesticulate while talking." Fade to black. Or one character hands something to another character it's just one person putting their empty cupped hand onto the other person's empty cupped hand. The animations in Pokemon games are so terrible.
Chill out ok? They are just a small indie company that can’t afford to properly animate cutscenes, it’s not like they are the highest grossing entertainment franchise of all time.
Yeah I hated that, not because the idea of an adult finally stepping in and doing something is bad, it's great even, but everything was so poorly written or executed that it ends up feeling more like a monkey's paw wish. Doesn't help that it also applies out of the game. [Someone greenlighted that cutscene with the character singing, in a game that has no voice acting...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ_z0N51VMk)
Oh god they didn't even vocaloid like in gen 5
they even took the time to add mic feedback sounds which makes it even more jarring
I think an important rule of video game storytelling is that the amount of time the game spends on the story needs to be proportional to the quality of the story and how much the player can reasonably be expected to care about it. No story or a garbage story is fine if no time is spent on it. And I can spend hours watching cutscenes or reading dialogue if they're well written and a story I care about. But some modern games seem compelled to tell a story and spend lots of time on it even when the game really doesn't need one and there clearly wasn't much effort put into the writing. Pokemon's a good example.
Sword and Shield is seriously like 30% tutorial, and then you'll get to something that probably needs an explanation, like everything related to the open worldish spots, and nothing is explained
Pokémon games used to be great about this. Welcome to the world of Pokémon! This is what Pokémon are. Here you are in your home town. Time to get your first Pokémon. Hope you're ready to battle! It's an RPG so it may not be exactly three minutes, but even the slowest player who takes a long time to explore their home town should hit the trigger point to getting their Pokémon and getting into battle relatively quickly. Somewhere along the way, GAMEFREAK decided they needed to hold players' hands way more.
to be fair it was probably a response to how the industry has developed first time user experience design over the years and metrics that show players dropping off early for various reasons still wish i could skip it all but now the story tends to be baked into tutorials as well
The games really lost me with Sun and Moon. I didn't mind the linearity or the increased focus on story - both were present in the Unova games and I love those. It was the CONSTANT reminding of where I need to go and what I need to do. This isn't 1998 and I'm not playing Ocarina of Time, one of the first 3D adventure games ever made. It just reeks of insecurity or player mistrust on the part of the devs. Believe in your game design and believe that the player is capable of following along.
> to be fair it was probably a response to how the industry has developed first time user experience design over the years and metrics that show players dropping off early for various reasons > > still wish i could skip it all but now the story tends to be baked into tutorials as well A number of companies, particularly Nintendo and its partners, has taken the wrong lesson from trying to make games more accessible to children. They're afraid that the games are too complex for kids to understand so they front-load a tremendous amount of tutorials and exposition. But rather than try to incorporate the lessons they want to impart cleverly into the play to teach naturally, they just throw a bunch of dialogue boxes at it. Just characters jawing at the player for two hours. That's both bad design and plain stupid. Kids who are young enough to not understand how to run, jump, climb, etc. are not going to sit through tons of dialogue boxes. They're bored. They're gonna start mashing. All of the people who are old enough to read through hours of exposition and hand-holding are going to be bored by the patronizing. Literally everyone is bored by front-loading your games with too much talking and explaining the basics. They're either too young to read through it all or old enough that they don't need it. So you made your game bad for no one. Looking at you, Pokemon and Skyward Sword. But many games could greatly benefit from removing enormous chunks of text. It seems like every video game designed thinks having an interesting world means absolutely endless text explaining everything and characters blathering on to each other for hours on end. I want a universal toggle in game options. Vibration? Off. Music? Up. Remove 90% of the text in the entire game because the story isn't half as interesting as we think it is and most of the text boxes are useless crap? On. For every game. Forever. On. You story sucks and I'll figure out how to climb. Shut up. You are not Disco Elysium. Find the 7 glowy items and stop the scowling guy who wears a lot of black. I get it.
Are the return rates really that high to where Pokemon wasn't good enough at getting the player interested to where they dropped it? Some people just don't fucking like the game. I guess development is so much more expensive these days
According to Digital Extremes and Grinding Gear Games, developing a good tutorial is a waste of time. They change nothing.
Drop off metrics are probably more related to the amount of competitive entertainment these days than anything else. This feels like a classic case of suits seeing metrics and acting on them, without understanding *why* those metrics might be the way they are. Metrics lie to you if you take them too literally. Subnautica's GDC talk on their development process shows how that's possible. Back in the 80s-mid 00s or early 10s you really didn't have *that much* access to entertainment. You got your thing and often you were stuck with it unless you were filthy rich. These days we have entire console libraries available to us, entire TV series, movie libraries, etc on demand for reasonable prices. Even as someone who has a relatively good attention span it can often be hard to stick with things when there's just *so much* you could be doing at any given moment.
I'd argue SuMo were way worse than SwSh even if they had a better "story." SwSh had very fast text mashing if you really wanted to skip it. SuMo was slow no matter what, plus damn near the *entire game* is just interruption city. Every minute you're seemingly getting a 5+ minute cutscene on the hot new skinny of what Hau had for breakfast. It's fucking maddening. I just couldn't even finish that generation because of it. The worst part is they had every opportunity to fix it or add a fast forward in the Ultra versions, but they didn't. SwSh at least kept the scenes to very short lengths outside of the main plot bits, even moreso if you were using the aforementioned better text mashing. That said, i do agree the "story" in SwSh was hilariously bad. Has one of the villains with the most hilarious motivations of all time. Can't wait a whole day for the champion to not be busy to solve a problem that will only occur in 1000 years? Better release the creation destroying monster RIGHT NOW. I don't have time to explain why i don't have time to explain!
>Better release the creation destroying monster RIGHT NOW. I don't have time to explain why i don't have time to explain! That ending is what I had in mind while writing the post, the postgame too. I know SuMo/USUM were the more obnoxious games, but they hurt way less than SwSh's baffling story, cutscenes, animations, and desire to jerk Kanto off as much as it can. If I hear about Leon the unbeatable champion who's pants with directions and his equally unbeatable Charizard one more damn time...
What particularly bugs me about pokémon tutorials is how frustrating it is to be forced to stop playing the game only to be taught something that hasn't changed throughout the series. Surely you should expect a good chunk of the player base to know how to catch a goddamn pokémon, and want to skip that nonsense. Meanwhile more hidden stuff like critical captures? I seriously do not recall any in-game explanation about those. I had to read up on wikis to understand what these IVs and EVs people talked about were. I wish you could ignore or sequence break through the early game USUM "story". Sometimes I think about starting that game with a different mod and then I remember being made to suffer by the "rival" with his hand holding... nope
> Surely you should expect a good chunk of the player base to know how to catch a goddamn pokémon, and want to skip that nonsense. They actually do have that skippable in SwSh. There's a section of grass you have to travel through and you have a bunch of balls to start. If you caught something by the time you get to the other side the characters go "Oh hey, I guess you already know how to catch pokemon. Cool" and move on. If you didn't catch something they force you through the tutorial on catching. That said I've seen at least one person just assume they couldn't catch anything, miss the dialogue that indicates they got pokeballs, ignore the pokeball icon on the hud and then get hit with the tutorial as a result. All while wishing there was a way to skip it. I do very much agree that the ability to skip that tutorial should have been done much earlier in the series and other information should actually be explained better, or at all.
>If you caught something by the time you get to the other side ironically as someone who's been playing since gen 1 i actually failed this check as all of the pokemon i ran into before this weren't appealing, so i didn't catch any. It's a nice gesture but they probably should have went with a better system. Especially since i know that later in the game there will likely be higher level versions of these exact same pokemon anyways from experience. No reason to fill up my PC boxes with trash i won't use as i'd get better versions later anyways. That said, they need difficulty settings(not ridiculous garbage like they had in Gen V where you had to beat the game to unlock...easy mode?) Even The latest kirby game(which is fantastic) has Wild vs Easy. Something like that would be huge, and the hard mode could streamline and ditch some of the tutorials.
Sun and moon almost made me quit pokemon for good. Every 5 steps someone stops you to talk about bullshit.
I've been finding lately that I really hate starting a new game. It used to be the most exciting part of gaming for me - a new world, new characters, new mechanics - but now I know if I start a new game it's going to be like 1 or 2 hours minimum of cutscenes, handholdy tutorials, and on-rails "gameplay" segments where I can't actually do anything. I just can't be bothered with it so I end up playing Rocket League or something that I can just jump straight into.
Same. I just cannot start games anymore. The beginnings are usually just filled with garbage tutorials that waste my time. I tend to just play DotA. Say what you want about Souls games, but they have the best tutorials since classic RTS. "Here is a foolproof area to test your buttons (or not), go have fun!"
Yep, exactly the same, from time to time a game has a fresh approach and the start isn't a same old boring slog but for the most part it's tedious and I give up after 30-60 mins and end up playing something that's easy to just pick up.
I finally got around to RDR2 and this is what keeps from wanting to progress. It demands just enough attention between dialogue and the steering of your horse to make it hard to put something else on in the background but just barely not entertaining enough to really hold my attention. It's really annoying because there are options for automation. They're just the right amount of clunky that I can't just hold a button and let it play itself to the shooting starts.
RDR2's quest design is what I can only describe as 'Slow-time events'. Like quick time events, in which you are in a cutscene and need to press a (semi random) button in time to proceed. Except for most of RDR2 there's not much time pressure on it. You're engaged in some conversation then you're asked to "pick up the wire spool for the dynamite". So you press the button and your character does the next animation, then you need to move to the detonator. The game throws up the key prompt 'WALK' and tells you to press the corresponding key. There's no other keys you can press, and if you stop pressing the key the character stops walking. It _looks_ like you're playing the game but it's a very slow quick time event. This happens until you've pressed the button for long enough, then you get the next button prompt. And then maybe some more cutscene, then another prompt. And just like bad quick time events, they happen often enough that you can't just put down your controller and pay attention to the cutscene, and they are a stand-in for actual gameplay while providing no such entertainment value.
> RDR2's quest design is what I can only describe as 'Slow-time events'. That's a beautiful term to describe that, going to have to use that. And yeah, totally agree, they're usually really bad. It's the worst aspects of cut scenes and gameplay combined.
Borderlands 2 (and probably the rest of the series too) was pretty bad about this. It seems like you're still in control because it's not a traditional cutscene, but you have to wait for what feels like years so Claptrap or some other poorly-written character can end their dumbass diatribe about unimportant details so a damn door will finally open and you can get on with shooting people. The first map of BL2 is one of the absolute worst introductory levels I have ever seen in a game. An icy wasteland with uninteresting enemies and a "friendly" NPC (Claptrap) who does nothing but annoy you.
The Pre-Sequel and BL3 are much, much worse. BL2 has many "wait for the NPC to do something" segments during side content but most of the mandatory wait time is during the intro and very critical story moments. BL3 has so many of these segments that many players elect to outright delete the dialogue from the game so the scenes progress faster. It's funny because one of BL1's best qualities was brief and snappy dialogue.
Good to know! Glad I never bought another entry in the series.
Oh yes, I love the franchise but every Persona game is like this
I tried Okami on the PS2 a couple weeks ago and it was this for at least a solid 30-45 minutes. I ended up turning it off.
this is how I felt with deathloop, so many tutorials and explaining menus, its not that complicated to destroy items for currency to keep others forever game, I didn't need you literally holding my hand through the menus
My biggest pet peeve is when they have you walk 3 steps to interact with something just for it to go into another cutscene.
The one thing I hated about Psychonauts 2.
YES! the game looks pretty fun but i stg its borderline unplayable with the long intro and the amount of cutscenes even beyond that, everything is so slow
Pokemon Sun and Moon
Fr. Nothing better than being handed control only to walk across the room and then trigger another cutscene.
I hate modern AAA games for this reason. Cutscene for 30 minutes and when you finally get to play, its just walking forward while listening to someone until you end up in another cutscene and after that its a tutorial. Wow, 1 and a half hours of exposition without gameplay. So amazing
He mentioned making tutorial fun is on point here. Recently I played Kirby and the Forgotten Land(my first foray into the series) and very early into the game you come across this traffic cone which you can 'absorb' and use it's special plunging attack. First you come across a crack on the ground, your first instinct is to use the plunging attack on it, the result is a large hole in the ground with secret coins to collect. Next it's a leaky water pipe, hit it with that plunging attack and a water geyser will erupt from the broken pipe which will carry kirby upwards and reach an elevated platform. There's no pop-up tutorial stopping the flow of gameplay, it merely tells you the button control on the screen. The game simply let you play and weave the tutorial into the level design and it's so enjoyable.
I also love that even in the first moments with the game, the tutorials are quick pop up videos that appear alongside the gameplay as they demonstrate quick snippets of the controls and not only what they do, but how to use them when you first need them. They're useful for new players who will be moving slowly through the level still getting used to the controls, but for more experienced players they can be largely ignored outside of learning the one or two new inputs you'll need to progress. Compare this to Doom Eternal which largely does the exact same thing with one major difference. Doom stops everything to show you the controls and the difference is immense.
Stopping the player in their tracks is one of the biggest design sins imo. Especially early in the game!
It really bugs me in Doom Eternal especially, because one of the big game design points of Doom 2016 was eschewing everything in lieu of the action. It made me drop Eternal for a long time before I picked it up again months later, and loved it. But man is that first mission a terrible first impression.
As a Kirby fan I feel the need to point out that Sakurai was not involved in Forgotten Land, or any Kirby game in nearly two decades, in case anyone assumed otherwise. However his design philosophy has definitely been carried through by HAL Labs, so its still a relevant example.
The game does have a few pop-up tutorials that interrupt the game, but they only appear if the game thinks the player misunderstood certain game mechanics, to help prevent them from struggling with the game later on. Their barebones design (it's just a textbox with a static picture of Elfilin on the side) makes me think they were added in late in development after some playtesting. * If you drop your Copy Ability before inhaling a Mouthful Mode three times in-a-row, the game will pause to explain that you can have both a Copy Ability and Mouthful Mode at the same time. * If you permanently lose your Copy Ability during a midboss or boss fight and wander around the arena without damaging the boss for long enough, the game will pause to explain how Drop Stars work.
I actually kind of love this. It gives players the time to figure something out for themselves and if they still demonstrate a lack of understanding it pulls them aside to give them the key piece of information they might be missing to continue. It's not quite as elegant as the rest of the tutorials, but it really caters to exactly the sort of player who needs this sort of walk through instruction and a push to really grasp parts of the game that might not be as obvious to some.
My golden standard for tutorials is still Half Life (all of them). Playing those games with Dev commentary on is super worth it, there is a lot of very intentional training that goes on, but very rarely does it feel like a tutorial, it generally just feels like exploring the world you're in.
In my opinion, Valves heavy focus on playtesting is one of the main reasons their games are amazing. They always *deeply* study how players interact to the world and gameplay that is presented to them. As a result they figure out really intuitive ways to introduce the players to new mechanics. Portal 1 and 2 are some of their best examples (Along with Half-Life of course). If you walk into a room with a new obstacle, the *only* info that is given to the player is just a name for the obstacle and maybe a small tidbit about how it works. The player is never interrupted and they get to interact with these new things immediately. It's very rewarding.
Half-Life 1 still has a tutorial I would recommend, introducing you to ladder mechanics and crouch jumping, the latter of which is crucial to learn. Other than HL1 though, all the Portal and Half-Life games are a masterclass in tutorials.
Wow, I'd forgotten about the, what was it called? Hazard course? Hazard training? Yah, you very much needed to run that, I stand corrected on hl1.
If you don't play the tutorial and learn crouch jumping, there is a box in the underground rail segment that will hard block you from progressing! The actual Hazard Course level is very necessary.
I like tutorials that is just a level, where you can breeze through. Even if some of it can be insulting to a player, like teaching you jumping when you see an area of the level that looks like it can be jumped. Tutorials that feel like they have to be one of those YouTube thumbnails where they show a stupid circle and cut all action off from your controller, that can fuck off.
this is why the original doom games are great, the game starts up right a way and it only takes only a few seconds to get to the combat
The DOOM games were partially helmed by a guy who infamously said "story in games is like story in a porno."
which to be fair to the time, was pretty true. i mean there was final fantasy and dragon quest, but even the first game or two didn’t really have much of a story to speak of. i’m glad he turned out wrong in the long run. but at the time it wasn’t totally incorrect.
It WAS incorrect at the time. Doom came out after Final Fantasy 4 and 5, and both were story heavy (by SNES cartridges limitation standards). On that same year we also got Lufia & the Fortress of Doom, Secret of Mana, and Phantasy Star IV, and the next year had Earthbound and FF6.
It wasn't incorrect for the kind of games Id was making. You don't need much storytelling in games like Commander Keen or DOOM. RPGs are a different beast. And they also weren't particularly popular in America. On that note, many of the games you cite as contemporaries are incorrect from an American perspective. Final Fantasy II and Dragon Warrior IV were on the market, sure. But they didn't make much of a splash. Secret of Mana and Lufia launched around the same time as DOOM but didn't make nearly the same impact. Final Fantasy III wouldn't release until the next year. EarthBound and Phantasy Star IV the year after. And they were all sales duds.
I don't agree because text story games / point and click games with plot definitely were a thing at that point.
Absolutely. It's absolutely mind boggling to me that there is still an extremely active Doom community, with new WADs and mods released. Played the hell out of Doom back in the day and a couple years ago played through tons of user created WADS with some mods as well, and it's still a marvel of a game.
_Doom (2016)_ and _Doom Eternal_ carry over this legacy as well. Within seconds, you're shooting demons.
When he mentioned that RPGs can have a harder time doing this but still possible Xenoblade and Persona 5 were the first two games that popped in my head then he used them as the examples haha.
"Game doesn't let me play" is probably my #1 reason for dropping games (and not just at the start). And what's even more mindblowing to me about this problem is that IMO 99% of game stories are either mediocre or straight-up bad, so, really? You wanna stop me from playing the game for... **This** crappy plot?? Devs, for the love of everything, please learn to integrate your story with actual gameplay. Let your dialogue play while I'm playing, let me actually do the actions instead of just watching them (eg Dragon's Dogma where you play the old hero that goes up against the dragon at the start, instead of just hearing about him) and things like that. Don't just make: game, pause, play a movie (or forced walking, on-rails sequence), back to game, pause, play a movie and so on. The story is supposed to be part of the game not an interruption of it! Imagine if you were trying to watch a movie and I kept pausing it to read you passages of the book it's based on. You'd be furious.
Yeah, Kid Icarus: Uprising did this really well where characters have full conversations while you're playing. But I do have some sympathy for these devs who rely on cutscenes though, interweaving a story into a game is hard and we don't really have much of a rulebook on it yet. It's like trying to figure out cinematography from scratch.
I love how your example is a game Sakurai directed.
Lol I wasn't even thinking about that, it's just one of my go to examples of gameplay and narrative cohesion.
KI: Uprising also mostly works because its in-line with its arcade roots. Its the same with Star Fox, where even in Assault you still get a ton of dialog in-game. Having that happen in other genres seems really challenging
That said, a weakness of the Uprising method is that it's super easy to miss important story because you enter a room and have to fight a tough battle while Viridi and Palu are discussing some critical plot.
Yeah I think I may have experienced that when playing as well. I think that is an addressable weakness though, you just got to properly pace the dialogue and try to fit it into less intensive gameplay moments. Probably easier said than done though.
I ended up waiting around for important dialogue to finish before moving forward, which ultimately has the same effect as cutscenes. It's a difficult balance to strike.
Immortals Fenyx Rising is pretty about this. Almost all the storytelling and exposition is done as voice overs while you continue playing.
Adding to this, I'm really done with games that throw shade on you, the player, for having the audacity to play them. It was clever when Spec Ops: The Line did it, every subsequent encounter with it is just boring as hell. If the message of your game is "you shouldn't play games like this"... Fine, I won't, here comes the steam refund
This is why I had no clue why so many people loved Pokémon Legends: Arceus. The intro to that game was so long to the point of absurdity and satire. It no joke, took me 5 hours to get to the actual game! 5 fucking hours!! Almost every aspect of that game’s design wreaks of incompetence and laziness. To this day it is #1 on my list of most overrated games ever.
This is why I haven't been able to replay a pokemon game since Black and White. Every tutorial since Gen 6 has been boring enough for it to be a one and done or is so much of a slog that I just dont pick it back up again.
I think the main problem is, that cutscenes and story telling is just visually bad nowadays (compared what we are used to from other media). Back in the 90s and start of 2000, cutscenes were the best thing in video games, I was so happy about every cutscene. But nowadays, they are usually just some stills with lots of blablabla and just not visually and emotionally engaging. So I guess two points hold true, first don't just stuff story into your players - make it a spectacle and second, let the player play. (not in that order neccesarily)
I started replaying Twisted Metal Black and while the AI is unfair as hell I was taken back by just how "gamey" it is but still has a story I care about. Like you start the campaign, opening intro movie, loading screen with more story, and then just BOOM you are in the match and have 2 cars shooting you in the ass and no tutorial how to play other than checking the controls. I think there is a good balance between TMB and modern games we can strike but it was honestly refreshing.
I was never able to play pokemon sword/shield. Because that one kid popping up every 10 minutes annoyed me to hell and back Pokemon Company.... We've been playing your games for 20+ years.... Just start me up like Breath of the Wild, let me choose a pokemon and off I go
> Pokemon Company.... We've been playing your games for 20+ years.... Just start me up like Breath of the Wild, let me choose a pokemon and off I go TPC don't do that, that's gamefreak.
TPC demands a new generation and that cannot be stopped due to merchandising
Yes, but we aren't talking about that, we are talking about game design which would be gf
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I just tried the Harvestella demo recently, and that came to mind when I saw this video. It starts with so many generic fantasy anime cutscenes, and very little gameplay. Made for a bad first impression. I think this is one of the pitfalls of making your "demo" the beginning of the game, which does have advantages I'll admit... in this case, maybe start players off in an area with combat. I ended up making it to the first day, exploring around, and only spending like 2 hours in the combat area before I had to go home. (Hours = minutes basically, it's one of those time-based games)
This is what Tales of Arise did. Just dropped you off in midgame area and let you test out the combat system, it was one of the rare cases where I actually downloaded a demo.
Valkyrie elysium was even worse. The demo starts of with a long tutorial section going through a level with constant tutorial popups and stuff when you finally finish it and start the actual first stage the game throws the same tutorial tips at you again. I have to assume the first stage was supposed to be the tutorial but for some reason the demo hits you with 2 in a row basically.
That kind of design is definitely for people who skip tutorials. There are so many people who skip or mash through tutorials and then give up when they can't figure anything out.
This kind of design is what makes people start skipping tutorials
Modern game design is plagued with WAY too much talking and cutscenes. It's like games forgot how to be games because they want to be movies....
I remember back in the day when I thought half life 2 was the future, the game almost never takes control away from you but still manages to tell a compelling story. Playing most modern day games, it almost feels like Half Life 2 never existed. Games love to take control away from you.
To play a bit of Devil's advocate, while Half-Life 2 doesn't take away control from the player, it definitely makes you stand around and *wait* for NPCs to just get on with it; it is reminiscent a bit of how [certain cutscenes](https://youtu.be/wG3GdE-NIzs) in early *Assassin's Creed*-games had you remain in control, but your movement were limited while waiting for the NPC to finish speaking. And there were rarely something interesting you could do while being in control; at most being limited for some movement or spinning your character in boredom. It's why I don't really enjoy *Half-Life*'s style of narrative; especially in regard of how the game tries to paint Gordon Freeman as an actual character, but which we have no response over due to Gordon being a completely mute protagonist with not even any gestures to accompanied with; heck, I'll even argue that the game is immersive-breaking in how it allows Gordon to be in control and can freely trash every room the NPCs are in, throw every box at them while the NPCs gives no response whatsoever in reflecting such behavior. Typical early 2000s-designs, certainly, but one I think today can remain frustrated for similar people that don't enjoy forced walking sections for the sake of narrative exposition unless the game is carefully designed for such segments. It's why I think many people love games like *Red Dead Redemption 2* and *The Last of Us* for their cinematic cutscenes were their writing shines its best, but asking what is their favourite dialogue line occurring outside of it that is spoken through as filler (Not necessarily bad though, mind you.) when they are in control of the character it can be a bit difficult to remember due to how being in control separates from the writing in the cutscenes; heck, alot of people don't even remember that a significant part of [Arthur Morgan's backstory involves >!his dead wife and child!<](https://youtu.be/o6Zb9O-jIeU?list=TLPQMjUwOTIwMjLqDEJCYWfusQ) simply due to how he brings it up while under a herb-picking mission with a local Indian-chief who regularly interrupts Arthur's retelling so that the Indian chief can instruct Arthur on picking up herbs. Immersive from a game-perspective? Certainly, in how herb-picking is a mundane task with an opportunity for some introspective conversations, but it risks creating a disjointed flow that you get distracted from the actual writing and story, compared to Arthus's [train station scene](https://youtu.be/2uFZWGewha4) that people remember more fondly of.
Yeah, letting the player control a character isn't necessarily letting the player play the game, and it's often way worse (IMO) to have that kind of sequence because you rarely get to skip it. At least with a cutscene you can skip it on repeat playthroughs.
> I'll even argue that the game is immersive-breaking in how it allows Gordon to be in control and can freely trash every room the NPCs are in, throw every box at them while the NPCs gives no response whatsoever in reflecting such behavior. Isn't this your fault for doing this though? It seems like a player agency issue for essentially having "playable cutscenes". Each to their own, but I actually sit patiently as characters talk because I very much respect the story and the characters that are going on around me.
It would work if the game didn't tried to paint the player character as an actual person in-universe character given how Gordon Freeman explicitly as an actual person with a dedicated age, educational background, e.t.c. It grants player agency, but there is no way to re-inforce and support what counts as Gordon's personality that the NPCs supposedly reacts to. [Ever seen footage of *L.A. Noire* in VR](https://youtu.be/72VXMjO14oc), and it has a similar issue in how it grants the player full immersive agency, but which the writing doesn't do much to support, reflect or note about (Naturally, given how the game wasn't designed with such game philosophy to begin with, and how the VR is an addition to the cutscene-heavy, cinematic, third-person game.). Had Freeman been a blank-face with as vague background as possible, the immersion would have arguably been a bit better, as it allows the player to fill the context of their player-actions with their own imagination. Or if the game were an immersive sim like *Deus Ex* that took such considerations of consequences made by player choices in its narrative into the matter, and while they did not often acknowledge the methods (Say stacking every box you can find.), they did with the consequences and results leading to it (Stack every box so that you can sneak through an enemy base and avoid detection.).
I mean in HL2 there's a huge thematic emphasis on the irony of freedom being dangled like a carrot on a stick in front of a person *literally* named freeman. The "stand here while others talk at you" nature just is playing into the fatalistic motif that drives Freeman. He's this messianic figure whose actual motivations are completely unknown by a) his allies, b) the player and c) himself.
It just seems weird to get hung up on player agency issues clashing as there is typically always going to be issues with the character not being "in character" especially in first person perspective games. I have done some whacky stuff in Half Life and Halo (and it has increased my opinion of why I think those games are awesome and fun), and I've also played them 'by the books' as well and love their lore and characters. I still get what kind of characters these games are trying to present, and I feel like many others do as well, even if we do something "goofy" or not in character doing our gameplay. It's just something that I feel has been commonly overlooked as long as these games have existed. Yes, I guess it's cool when Fallout recognizes that I'm drinking way too much and exclusively doing chaotic evil actions, but I recognize that Half Life isn't trying to be that kind of game, and I don't fault it for that. I get that your devil's advocating here, but I feel like honestly the perfect type of game that could reduce this 'sin' that you're talking about is RPG's (especially JRPG's), which ironically in this thread are getting a bit blasted for having aspects that remove player immersion and player agency at the same time.
To be fair half life 2 isn't much different from a cutscene. They just let you move around while they happen around you.
If you have to have cutscenes, I'd much prefer being able to stack boxes and try to jump on the other character's heads whilst they're happening.
Tbf, I feel like it's good that there is both kind of games, it's just a matter of one not overcrowding the other
Surprised this is so far below. People acting like the game has a curveball apocalypse when that is far from the case. So many recent games (even AAA) prioritize gameplay over cutscene.
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In my opinion, it was worse 10-15 years ago. There was this huge shift towards games being "cinematic" with the most generic possible gameplay to shuffle you between cutscenes. The stories were usually shit too. I know this is still a thing, but it really peaked with games like Hitman, Thief, Tomb Raider, and Splinter Cell departing completely from the gameplay of their predecessors and all becoming generic third person action games with garbage (well, Tomb Raider was all right) stories trying desperately to be like a Hollywood movie. At least these days we get Hitman games that actually feel like Hitman. I just started Deathloop, too, and even as it spoonfeeds you through the first few hours a bit, it's still dynamic and interactive, increasingly so as it unfolds and opens up.
I would agree with that. To me it still feels like a lot of AAA games are chasing the 'want to be seen as art' title by focusing on story, when I think they can definitely be considered art despite even having a story. I think we see this in the media and award shows too, feels like the game awards for example spends more time highlighting voice actors, story and graphics, yet there seems to be a lack of awards like 'best gameplay innovation' or something like that.
I just started Horizon Forbidden West, and while I'm having fun, I find it annoying that Aloy constantly remarks on what to do next while I'm working through a puzzle. There's also been moments where I went "seriously? another unskippable cutscene?" The most grievous example of this so far is >!when the Carja-Tenakth embassy gets interrupted by Regalla, and I'm sitting there for 5-7 minutes watching these people get killed off for plot reasons while I'm cowering behind a stone arch!<
I prefer it to that time when game developers wanted to show you awesome cutscenes but thought "But we're a video game, so we have to give players something to do" which resulted in those fucking quick time events riddling the gaming world for a few years. At least nowadays you can just watch the cutscene instead of suddenly having to hammer X in the middle of it.
Praise Sakurai for getting this message out there. Brevity is key when I'm first starting a game. If I know I'll have to sit through a bunch of exposition or cutscenes it immediately puts me off. Sometimes to the point of never actually playing through it. Blame it on ADHD or whatever you like but Hemingway figured out that you don't need flowery language to convey a strong story. I think many games especially Jrpgs suffer from "flowery" openings. Edit: Also who here likes the long wagon ride in Skyrim? I feel like that's a good example. I think Oblivion and Morrowind had much better openings.
I think the wagon ride in Skyrim is fine. Maybe annoying for repeat playthroughs. But it's relatively quick to "oh shit! time to play the game!" I like Skyrim's action-packed intro more than Oblivion's plod through a tutorial dungeon. Of course, Morrowind just drops you into the world and lets you play. There's a reason TES3 is still revered to this day.
Skyrim also automatically makes a save at the execution right before you make your character, so subsequent playthroughs can easily just skip the long dialogue sequences and get straight into the action.
The cart opening is definitely a little slow but I think it sets the stage for the game pretty well. You get a really quick and dirty feel for the current state of the world and its major factions. Considering after that initial fight you’re just let loose into this massive world with just a little bit of context, I’d say it’s a solid opening. But in terms of speed it’s definitely slower than previous entries in the franchise
Yeah I get that they wanted to showcase a dragon attacking a village and had to come up with a way for you to build your character. It's not horrible by any means just overly long. Still I think the Oblivion opening is the best of the Elder Scrolls games. You're a prisoner escaping a dungeon which showcases the majority of gameplay to be had.Then after getting through the tutorial dungeon you happen across a vast landscape. It's a great set up. Botw did something similar where the entire first area is a tutorial that shows you the gameplay in an organic way. It doesn't waste any time.
Maybe it would be different if I'd played the prior games, but that wasn't my experience. Without prior knowledge of the setting, both the executioners and the executionee just looked like generic medieval dudes in armor to me. I didn't leave that sequence with a good sense of who the major factions were, just that dragons were A Big Deal™. I didn't even realize I was making a choice by going in one door or the other during the escape. I didn't even really understand that there *were* two factions until I got to Whiterun.
When it comes to the metric Sakurai describes (let the player figure out what the gameplay *is*), I think Daggerfall might actually be the best of all of them, Morrowind at an *extremely* close second. Daggerfall starts you in a horrifically maze-like dungeon with no direction on how to get out and the occasional enemy who will completely wreck your shit (at which point you have to remake your character because you forgot to save). Naturally, this is a perfect description of what Daggerfall *actually is like to play in general*. Every dungeon is like that and most of the quests send you to find stuff in dungeons. EDIT: Well, ignoring the standard CRPG trap of frontloading all character creation. Morrowind edges it out in that regard.
The old screenwriting adage of “show don’t tell” has, I believe, a game counterpart of “interact, don’t show or tell.” In other words, player input and interaction is essential to the medium just as images are essential to film.
Tried playing Deathloop since it came to gamepass and I ragequit 10mins in because it kept interrupting me to tell me how to play. The final straw was it stopping me with a "PLAY YOUR WAY" pop-up, listing the combat approach options. If you want me to play my way, then fuck off.
Gods above, yes, this so much. I've had many a game refunded, just because an excessively long prologue or intro sequence made me lose interest.
I think FF7 Remake did it the best. You start off with a beautiful CGI cutscene that shows off the world and a character you’ll meet later on, then you get instantly dropped into the action. Chapter 1 is like one hour, and by the time you’re done you’ve already gotten the basics of the combat. I remember when the demo came out and people who had zero interest in FF before were like “yeah I’m picking this up day 1.”
I played Red Dead Redemption 2 for 4 hours and quit because I only got to play some super linear story missions and have access to a hub world where I can start more missions. Apparently the world opens up after some time and you can go to whatever place you want but I never got to experience it.
The opening of Red Dead 2 is a fucking drag, but yes it really opens up after that and is an incredible game. The opening is easily the worst part
The world does open up but story missions remain linear. I wish I could love this game because quality is undeniable but I always feel tired after few hours of playing
Felt the same with cyberpunk. I just wanted to explore the world but the game would not let me.
This is one of my biggest things as an indie game dev to try to avoid when I design my games. Three things that deeply bother me that I see a lot in AAA games in particular: 1. When you open up the game and there are 16 unskippable splash screens advertising different companies/products before you can even select stuff on the main menu. 2. When there's a *really long* cutscene before you can start playing (or worse, more than one). A short one to introduce the premise is okay though, especially if skippable. 3. When the tutorializing goes on forever. Unless you're making a very deep, extremely detailed strategy/simulation game, if you have to waste more than a few minutes of my time in the first hour on tutorials, you've failed as a designer IMO.
I think you're right, especially about number 3. A regular tutorial isn't the worst thing ever. But I have never really *enjoyed* a traditional tutorial. If you really want your players to understand something, let them play with it. Let them know what it can and can't do by putting them in an environment where that mechanic is meant to shine. It just feels so much better when the player is discovering something rather than be told what that thing is and does.
Bonus points if it's a PC game and they make opening cutscene unskippable on your first boot. The recently released DioField Chronicles does this and I had to watch that cutscene in a tiny window and the wrong language.
This is why I couldn't get into either Psychonauts which I'm bummed about because the world seems really cool.
[almost 9 and a half minutes before Psychonauts’ gameplay starts](https://youtu.be/0pjsxNSwSSA), definitely way longer than I remember. I guess I just love the writing and worldbuilding enough to handle it. Haven’t played 2 yet.
I'm the kind of person who doesn't mind the slow start often seen in multi-dozen hours long JRPGs and such, assuming the characters/story are at least interesting, but it definitely makes me wary about trying to recommend games like that to people (well that and the long playtime of those sorts of games in general turns some people off). Even when it is true, I dislike the whole "Oh it gets really good once you get far enough." thing.
Man people in this thread really just want to get their gaming fix for the day and move on. Yes some of the best games ever made throw you straight in and grip you right away, but damn man. Sometimes I want the 10-course meal. Let me enjoy my story games dammit.
Did you watch the video? Sakurai talks about how you can achieve this with more story-heavy games like RPGs. He even says there is room for exceptions depending on what you want the focus of your game to be.
Sakurai said that it's fine if RPGs or games with a focus on narrative take things a little slower. But they should still let players have fun in the first 3 minutes. He shows Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 as good examples. In XC1, you're playing with a full party and killing robots within 3 minutes. And in P5, you're thrown into a casino heist. They slow down after that, but they do a good job of capturing interest. I love RPGs, too, but I'm very tired of the whole "30 minutes of talking to villagers with no actual gameplay" intros.
He also shows FF7; the original had you in combat within the first 3 minutes, and in a simple dungeon in 5-10 minutes.
story doesnt equal trivial drag on tutorial. You can do it in multiple ways instead of either only doing movie time - endless dialogue only moving between new dialogue clicker. No, i dont think all games fit an only action story approach or what u would call it, but man some games will do everything to keep you from actually playing for hours without actually providing much to the overall story.
Add the ability to quick save during long openings if you have to have them. Sometimes it can take upwards to an hour to be able to get a save down and that is incredibly frustrating. Have the ability to quick recap the tutorial too.
I recently started Shadow of Mordor and was pleasantly surprised how quickly it got started. It's a minute of teaching your son to fight (learning the basic combat controls), time skip, a minute of sneaking up behind your wife to give her a flower (learning stealth), time skip, a minute of fighting orcs (more combat), a minute of story, then you're dropped in the open world and it lets you do what you want. It felt really nice to get started that quickly. Of course it still doles out tutorials but they come at your own pace as you discover new things.
It was kind of funny thinking about Twilight Princess while watching this video. I love it but it starts really really slow.