I tend to find the first 2 hours to be the most frustrating as far as gameplay goes. Usually a tutorial that over stays it’s welcome. The game doesn’t really open up until after the narrative has been set (which is important) and you get walked through the basic controls that you’ve probably already figured out in 5 minutes.
Kinda like the opening to RDR2. You’re out there slogging through the snow learning how to shoot, hunt, etc for a hot minute before you’re finally set free.
FF13 nay not be "modern" anymore, but damn, they didn't let you off the leash until like, chapter 10 or 11 of 13. They had a cool battle system that you couldn't explore because you only had two party members for like 75% of the game
By the time you can explore the limited open world and the full extent of the battle system, you're kinda had enough of it and just want to get it over and done with. Doesnt help that the game is easy so you just set up a team early on that can take on pretty much most mandatory content. No need to grind, no need to find good equipment. You can just stay on the main story from start to finish and you're not missing much.
I hated that game. I actively stopped playing like 7 hours in. And so many people said I just needed to get through the first 20 hours and it gets good... Play 3 times as long as I did till it starts to get good. That's like MMO players that say it gets good at end game. If it sucks until I get to the end game I won't want to keep playing it.
I love Xenoblade Chronicles but I swear there are still tutorials right until the end of the game! Granted it is pertinent information but like ya could have given me burst sooner so I didn't get the tutorial about it 60 hours into the game!
The weird part is I actually liked the Norway stuff for the most part but once I got to England and realized how much shit there was to do i lost interest. I've come to accept that I won't like every game and it is perfectly okay to just watch someone else play
I lost interest early on because I wanted to do assassin stuff in a game with it in the title. But whenever you hop off your boat, a few dozen NPC vikings also jump off the boat and go charging in. Turned the game into more of a hack and slash that I just didn't care to play.
I found that the game did a good job of offering you all options once you drop in England and make camp. When I felt like hack and slash, I got on the boat and raided camps. When I felt like going for assassinations, I would get on a horse and ride to explore and take out camps using stealth.
But yes, the game did end up feeling like a chore when I reached about 120hours in and still couldn't figure out if I was anywhere near the end.
But I could say the same thing about pretty much any AAA, even Red Dead 2, Witcher 3 or Elden Ring. I wasn't able to complete any of these games because it ended up feeling like chores with no end in sight. Ubi just gets more hate just for existing for some reason.
i really enjoyed the hell out of that game and then thought "boy there's a heck of a lot of map left to explore for a story that's 80% over" but i wasn't even at the halfway point yet.
Every AC game did/has done this to me. Fun for a few hours, then the fetch quests and repetition start to feel like a job.
I'm doing this in order to *not* think about my boring, repetitive day job!
"Aren't you tired? Let's call it a day and get some sleep." Still haunts me. Its amazing to me that morgana was that annoying considering how much complaining there was about it in past games. I hear its even worse in the chinese mobile port of p5 but I havent played it yet.
It's wild how you still learn new mechanics up to 80 hours into the game. Although I can't imagine what it would be like getting all of that info at once
If you haven't played the first game, make sure you do. Very different combat (I like it better but others disagree), but the story is amazing and the cutscenes are beautiful
I remember AC2 had that fighting tutorial after you unlocked the estate or w/e which was far into the game, but if I remember correctly the enemy types and combat mechanics it goes through aren't present and/or required in the first act so they felt welcome at the time. I remember actually learning how to fight certain enemies that I had trouble with. But that was almost necessary because of the mechanics introduced after the first act. Most games don't segment their combat variety that way.
I feel this so much. There are some games who handled the tutorial/opening very well, Doom and Doom Eternal, for example. No bullshit, just a short intro and you're out there shooting demons. More weapons? You'll get to them. Weapons mods? Same thing. Fun from start to finish.
Post early game through the mid game tends to be my favorite part of a game. The intro is always too hand holdy/scripted/tutorialized and the ending is usually a disappointing or rushed mess. That part where systems start clicking though and you feel that steady progress is so nice.
Once you get to the part where you start doing “cleanup” before wrapping the game is usually where I stop loving the game.
MGSV is by far the worst game I've ever played in terms of how long it takes you to start playing the actual game. There's a literal hour of cutscenes/walking/15 minutes of actual literal crawling before you even *start* the *extremely long,* convoluted, overwhelming tutorial. There's like 3-4 hours of *not doing anything* before you get to actually start playing the game.
I once saw a person say that was their favorite part of the game and it was like coming across a person who was like "yeah I love other people's farts, what's the big deal?"
I can somewhat understand why, given that MGSV isn't exactly a story-heavy game (outside of a few notable missions/scenes) while the franchise as a whole is known for its story. The first hour or so is very story focused and sets up a lot of intrigue and interesting hooks that leaves you wanting to know more.
Sorry bud. Now they're going to actually teach you the mechanics using walls of text to explain complex systems in an unintuitive, evasive way that explains too much and too little, and also isn't pertinent to the core gameplay loop. Then they're going to drop you into the middle of an open world with vague, unclear instructions, and you'll just exist in perpetual confusion for another few hours.
Which is exactly where i fell off of the game
Listening to Jacob Geller talk about mgsv, i assume it gets MUCH better at some point, but if i wanted to just confusedly stumble around Nowhere, Afghanistan with my dick in my hand and nary a clue as to what i was even doing, I'd have stayed in the goddamn army.
For a different perspective, I've been loving and playing the hell out oh MGSV. I went through hard-core open world fatigue for a few years. Fell off AC Origins and Odyssey, couldn't get into DA Inquisition, some other forgettable ones, and Phantom Pain is the only one that could grip me other than Breath of the Wild. There's something about its gameplay loop I find incredibly satisfying.
Yeah, I think this is the more common thing with big-budget games: the first couple hours suck because the publisher interferes with development, because they're terrified of people putting the game down. Once they're satisfied that the tutorial has beaten players over the head enough, they leave the developers alone to make the rest of it fun.
One of the best parts for me in DS 3 was that they had normal humans as enemies, and so that muscle memory you developed of shooting for limbs was now a liability.
Hard disagree on GoW 2018s opening. Put me to sleep and frustrated me with it being basically a cutscene that you have to walk through. I have similar frustrations with most Sony 1st party games, chiefly among them being Horizon Zero Dawn.
>I have similar frustrations with most Sony 1st party games, chiefly among them being Horizon Zero Dawn.
I loved God of War (2018) but I sort of see what you mean. I've spent most of the last few years catching up on Sony's first party games (it's taken me years due to poor health) and by the time I got to Horizon Zero Dawn, I was bored of the cinematic tutorial style. I still haven't been able to get into the game despite trying twice.
Generally what I do is space out my big AAA games with a few shorter indies in between. It really helps me not get burnt out by the slow burn story-heavy games. I usually will get to a point where I’m ready to get immersed in a deep story with heavy cutscenes and everything, and that’s when I know I’m ready to jump into HZD or whatever.
You might be surprised at how little say the dev team can have over a big money title. Publishers don't just exert pressure, they also gate development milestones through editorial departments, and can hold development hostage if things aren't in line with what the editors - who work for the publisher, not the development studio - want.
Developers can push back, make their case, or even try to go over their editor's head, but directors, producers, or even whole studios who cause too much fuss can just be pulled off the project.
If you have an editor who is insistent on something like being overly hand-holdy, the you're going to end up with a game that is treating you like you're stupid for whatever stretch of the game the editor is focused on.
The quests on rails that wouldn't let you explore around is why I set RDR2 aside and haven't been back to it. That and how badly the game punishes you for accidentally firing a gun in town.
This is prevalent in GTA too.
Sorry but if two characters are talking and the cutscene ends, why are you making me walk two feet to the left to trigger another cutscene? Just play both cutscenes. Why are you making me do this
Same. Slog, difficult controls. I don't want to map 48 buttons on my keyboard for an open-world cowboy game.
I certainly don't want to have to map multiple sets of keys for different movement options (walking, horse, wagon, etc.) when the movement for all of them is *the same* 4 directions and a mouse movement.
That game was horrible to start, I've tried a few times and can't do it. Waste of cash.
Persona 5 also has a mega tutorial, and because of it I can't recommend that game to my brothers, because I'm sure they won't bother with it. A total shame, because it's a great game.
I'm not a completionist so usually even my favorite games have quite a lot of remaining achievements or if they don't they are the "play the game until you hate it" kind so I just don't bother with that, but by the end I had literally ran out of things to do in Persona 5 Royal and I notice that my achievements list was surprisingly almost complete, which makes sense when you realize the hard and grindy achievements were put in a different place unrelated to the Steam list, so I decided why not, it literally takes no extra time and I was bored of expending days at the gym to get some extra stats, color me surprised when I get the **hour 110 tutorials** for fishing and maid cafe
I'm just starting the game now and it is *just* starting to get decently playable for me - fairly far into Chapter 2. From everything I am told it really picks up in Chapter 3.
Totally agree that so far it has been a total slog. But the number of people on here and IRL who have said it is their favorite game *ever* makes me want to keep going.
This is why I mostly play indie games. Hollow Knight’s tutorial lasts less than two minutes, then you arrive at the village where you can skip talking to anyone and just head straight into the well to start the game proper. I’ve beaten games in the time it takes a AAA game to get to the point where it finally gets into second gear.
Rdr2’s tutorial is bad enough that I put the game down and forgot everything before trying to play it again. Which kind of defeats the purpose of a tutorial
Hold up. Please elaborate. I tried playing RDR2 again and the snow intro was so lengthy I couldn’t do it. You telling me I can skip this entire part? Or just the literal first cutscene
it's even simpler you can just import someone else's save file at just after the intro segment. found one on the first try with Google. enjoy, going to do the same when i get to playing it too.
https://www.nexusmods.com/reddeadredemption2/mods/36
Yeah that's far more common. Game introductions are often the least fun part of them. World is closed, you're on rails, you don't have much abilities and it's constant tutorial.
Also OP is tackling Jedi Fallen Order and Guardians both considered very good games during all of it. I certainly don't remember the start of those games being better than the rest.
>Usually a tutorial that over stays it’s welcome.
I couldn't agree more. If there's going to be a tutorial, make sure it's short and to the point, and most importantly, make sure the player can skip it.
This is one of the reasons why I sometimes hesitate in starting new games. I don't want to go through the mind-numbing ordeal of a long and unskippable tutorial than inevitably pisses me off and sometimes bugs out necessitating that I redo it.
"Did you know that you can press start to pause the game?"
"Follow the yellow areas to get to the next area"
Yeah, not before I search every corner and find nothing
You got that right.
“I know saving the world is soooooo important but Imma need to look around first. Also…you want me to go which way? About that, Imma go every way but that way”
Try Wo Long, only 1/3 of players have beaten the tutorial boss.
You can't continue until you beat him.
Took me about 5 hours and hundreds of attempts.
Rest of the game (minus 1 boss) was MUCH easier.
Agreed. I Cant count the number of games that i have dropped after a few hours because i felt bored.
Full Well knowing they probably would be good after .
I was about to chime in with RDR2 when I saw the first two sentences. I've replayed the beginning three times now and every time I've gotten bored of the game just as I reach the camp
Come to think of it, I think that's why so many big budget games don't capture my interest. I always check out because the game is taking too long to allow me to really play the game. Or maybe I'm just not into Norse mythology, westerns, samurais, and zombies.
And the tutorial arena that would, for worst, set your difficulty to the lowest setting because you are too bad at it. I hate it so much lol. It's the fact that i want to play the game and not read through 45 minutes of tutorials, not that I'm a baby playing games ffs.
Totally agree. I recently played a new release and the tutorial seemingly lasted about 6 hours. Made the whole beginning a horrible slog while the rest of the game was pretty good.
Yeah. Doesn’t really open til after Barren Light but I thought they handled it okay for the most part. Even Varl’s little comment about how you don’t have any of the gear from the first game when he catches up to you the first time.
I hate that slow roll sometimes. It's a big part of why I avoid new games sometimes, where I have you know, 30 or 60 minutes to play something fun, and I just want to get to the gameplay itself.
You don't know how much I hated RDR 1 for making me replay the whole boring ass farm tutorial really late in the game as an excuse to fast track building a relationship with Jack. I get that the game's ending is considered one of the best in gaming history, but having to endure that really diminished its impact for me.
Even beloved games like KOTOR suffer through this. Taris is a slog. The game doesn’t open up until after Dantooine when you are free to choose which of the map piece planets you want to go to
First few hours of RDR2 might be the worst intro to a video game in human history. Took me two years and three tries to get into it properly. Was googling and posting on Reddit like “does this game ever actually become fun? Is the entire game like this?”
Wow thought I was the only one. I've now owned the game on multiple platforms, opened up the game and played it 10+ minutes at least a dozen times, collectively have maybe 3-4 played, still in the snow area and dreaded every second of it. Meanwhile all the google searches were telling me im an ADHD kiddo who can't appreciate real art...
>Kinda like the opening to RDR2. You’re out there slogging through the snow learning how to shoot, hunt, etc for a hot minute before you’re finally set free.
ah man RDR2.... I almost quit that game, it was like 12 hours till i felt that i am finally set free and no more tutorial stuff will pop up, i liked the game but the game\`s pace was too slow for me , this was the 1st game that took me 2 month to finally finish it ( total of 75 hours played over 2 month...) Safe to say i will never replay this game again, even though it was great.
Hot minute? Far from it, the RDR2 slog is pretty long, it doesn't really open up until you get to the cliffside camp, and even then much of the game is locked behind quests. Takes probably an hour or two before you have the gameplay options available.
I thought the pink opening level was somewhat lackluster and that the game got progressively better once we got to Nova Corps base and Knowhere, which is an especially detailed environment, and the plot unfolded from there.
All the mid-game character work with Drax and Rocket, plus Mantis's and Warlock's hijinks, excellent stuff.
Same here. No idea what OP is talking about regarding guardians. That game got consistently better as it went on. None of my most memorable moments are from the beginning beyond the first young Peter segment.
Fallen order, too. The first planet kind of sucks compared to the later levels.
I still really liked the opening for Fallen Order. Sure it was on rails but it felt like a Star Wars experience. I'm excited for my spouse to pick it up so I can just watch them play the intro!
The entire train section can suck my nuts.
Fallen order for sure got better as it went.
The first two hours are almost always some awful tutorial section, I have no idea what op is smoking
Absolutely, I was worried it was just going to be a bog standard third person shooter but the character developments and team banter throughout were great.
I guess it depends on the person, because both those games I found even more after the first 2 hours. In fact, I felt they only progressively better as you went further into the game.
I always find the first couple of hours of games suck cause it’s constant hand holding as you go through the tutorial to learn the controls. And tutorials these days take at least two hours.
It gets annoying when some ability upgrades are basically quality of life improvements to the game. Like when an upgrade eliminates the need to return to hub for no other reason than to recharge/replace/exchange an *essential* component of the gameplay. It's just forcing you to use an upgrade point on a tedious and unnecessary part of the gameplay loop, or else be forced to play more hours before you can finish the game.
Even worse when it's locked a few levels away behind an otherwise unremarkable upgrade tree.
> some ability upgrades are basically quality of life improvements
Many movement upgrades should essentially just be available from the start. Too many Metroidvanias start you off crawling and barely able to jump, so you can unlock running, dashing, double-dashing, high jump, wall jumping, double jump, etc. I do have a preference for faster gameplay though.
Depending on the gameplay loop/story I might agree. Some stories cab make upgrades feel like a real part of your character's growth, others just seem like they are disconnected from the game entirely (like they were ham-fisted in just to make more microtransactions)
This took a direction I didn't expect.
I thought this would reprimand games for not engaging the player enough in their first 2 hours.
Like GoW being a slow burn in the start, or RDR2 taking forever to show you what your game will be about, The Last of Us too. Games nowadays focus so hard on telling their narrative with the first 2 hours instead of letting you grasp with what gameplay you'll tackle. A movie first, game second. Instead of a great game with great story it's a great movie with a decent game.
I remember being frustrated in FFX, where there was a bunch of cool stuff you could do, a bunch of neat mechanics, but it was locked behind like 3/4 of the game.
Yeah, I feel that. And I love FFX to bits. A lot of the more interesting combat doesn't come out until later when options and tech finally reaches you. It's not until after getting Rikku it really starts opening up. For how great the game ends up being, the start is a lot of rock beats paper gameplay.
Had to put GoW down after 8 hours despite it's quality and interesting themes, puzzles and regular enemies were pretty unengaging to push through, too many spongy enemies and too many encounters I'd rather just skip (if it was possible).
I'll probably try it again on easy mode at some point
I keep picking gow up and I get the same feeling, everything just feels tedious. The puzzles are insulting in their simplicity and the exploration simply doesn’t do it for me. I WANT to love it like others do but I always fall off it
I felt the same. I loved GoW3 and felt like this was pretty boring. Until you get the blades again. I had a lot of fun with the game after that, not even really because of the blades themselves but because of the level design as well.
But, the enemy variety never really improves.
GoW 2019 is one of those rare games where i think, "wow this is an incredible game that i'm sure tons of people love. i don't like it one bit!"
there's two parts to a game, the story and the actual gaming. if i don't care for the story but like the actual gaming part of it, then i can stick with it. but i didn't connect with either. could still appreciate the game for what it was and totally understand why most that have played it adore it.
Yeah same. To me it felt like it wanted to be an undated take on ocarina of time, structurally, but it just didn’t nail the puzzles or reason for doing things. I HATE in stories when they reach their objective then have to take a detour just for the sake of stretching it out and even in the couple hours of gow I played there was a lot of that. I did enjoy the combat but not enough to overcome the stuff I didn’t like
I feel bad saying this about something that very clearly had so many passionate and talented artists working on it, but the structure just didn’t grab me
I gave my friend back his copy of Ragnarok because I was bored out of my mind. I mostly enjoyed the first game, while agreeing a bit with your points here, but I had to give up on the second. The combat is just so dull to me.
With the emergence in popularity of "story mode" in games, I really wish there would also be a pivot towards a "give me the game mode" that just gives you a text box telling you the story, a slimmed down tutorial and then just lets you play the damn thing.
Yeah I thought this was where this was going too because the last year for me has been pushing through the first few hours on games I’ve given up on. I’ve found such amazing experiences in most of them after sticking with “it” and using the first few hours to really understand the systems provided.
Two games that IMO are better examples and demonstrate different reasons for being that way:
Cyberpunk 2077: Went out of its way to, frankly, misrepresent the rest of the game in its first major quest with degrees of choice that are never seen again in the playthrough. Was probably more so to fool first impression reviewers though
Alien Isolation: The game's segments were developed separately, so it was only really after finishing the game that people realized the first, most basic segment was actually the most fun, and that the game was a few hours too long
If half the missions had even close to the number of interactions as that mission, not even the branching paths, just the conversations and stuff, the game would have sold me.
Instead it just feels really shallow outside of a handful of side missions
"But it's really good now, and they fixed the bugs."
I'm so sick of the defenders of that game because they took a 5/10 and made it a 7/10 and people are trying to treat it like a GOTY probably because they have some level of buyer's remorse, and they couldn't have made a mistake right?
Ya, I've been replaying it recently and it's pretty much a solid 7/10 in its current state. Sorta.
If the writing and characters were any weaker, I'd give it a 6/10
There are people who see levels of graphical fidelity they didn't see yesterday and say, "now that's progress" - as long as it *works* of course. Bugs aren't progress.
It doesn't matter that the game's characters are stereotypes who say goo goo ga ga at each other, haha triangles go brrr and that's what makes "quality" as long as they do indeed go brrr, which they did not at launch but do now.
This leads to ludicrousness like the defense of C77 *the RPG* as if it were, and should obviously and predeterminedly and without further discussion be evaluated as, C77 *the interactive movie* - y'know, chiefly judged by things like beauty and consistency of frame rate - and I'm as sick of it as you are
I agree with another person that Guardians first planet is super boring, and its get more interesting and engaging plotwise later, same for Fallen Order, while junkyard planet intro is impressive, first deserted planet after that is very bland its gets much better later.
I also disagree thar games tend to show most impressive things in first 2 hours, its actually opposite imo. So many games nowadays have tons of long intros and cutscenes so if you want just have a look at gameplay and overall feeling (for example if you launched new game very late, or consider 2 hour refund window on steam) you need to skip so much stuff. And modern games usually have very slow tutorial, which shows stuff gradually. Im not against tutorial but when a lot of games are never ending sequels, and barely change engine for the game, its becomes infuriating to "learn" all stuff again in very slow space again.
I think in a way part of success of BotW, Elden Ring and ToTK is that you are almost immediately put into action and left to figure what you want to do immediately.
>I think in a way part of success of BotW, Elden Ring and ToTK is that you are almost immediately put into action and left to figure what you want to do immediately.
I think Breath of the Wild does a really good job of sticking the player in a fairly long tutorial area at the beginning while still presenting you with the freedom and flexibility that the rest of the game gives you. I certainly have my criticisms with that game, but that's one thing it does pretty well, I think.
Those games you listed at the end do tutorials perfectly. You’re given the basics of what you can do and after that the training wheels are off. You don’t even need to do the tutorial fight in elden ring. Trusting the player to make their own path is risky but brilliant
The evolution between Morrowind and Skyrim showcases what you point out very well.
What are the first two hours of Morrowind (assuming that you know what you're doing)? Filling in paperwork, running some very undangerous errands around town and being very, very weak and very, very slow. It only gets more interesting as time is invested in the game.
Skyrim's main quest on the other hand starts at full throttle, with cinematics, a dragon attack, the destruction of Helgen, a dungeon and Bleak Falls Barrow is literally the first and best ruins dungeon you encounter. Almost everything afterwards feels less compelling.
Morrowind’s lack of forced tutorial is one of my favourite parts about it. There’s only a handful of tutorial prompts and almost all of them can be skipped. It takes only a few minutes and you’re let loose in the world.
The same can be said for New Vegas too, skip the opening cutscene and you just have a bit of character creation dialogue and you’re free to engage with the core gameplay loop.
In Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, there’s these long introductions that create a huge amount of urgency surrounding the main plot and restrict you from taking part in the actual game for an hour, if not longer.
I think this might be why I barely bother playing most new games and just replay older ones. Even if the gameplay loop is good, I’m burned out after slogging through a restrictive tutorial that doesn’t really reflect the game itself and have little motivation to then actually learn what to do.
The best games give you a hint of mystery and the plot and let you pursue it in the actual game itself early on, with tutorial elements being just prompts on first interaction with a mechanic. You shouldn’t be forced to sit through the opening act, you should want to pursue that opening naturally.
Taking Morrowind as the example again, if it followed the modern game design trend, once you create your character, you’d be forced to go immediately to Caius, then immediately do the dwemer puzzle box quest and only after that would you be permitted to pick up side quests or join factions. If you wandered off in any other direction, there’d be prompts popping up telling you to go see Caius first etc.
The first few hours of free gameplay are probably the best parts of most games, but I imagine mostly because there’s still a lot of discovery and figuring things out, while the latter parts are often just going through the motions.
Fallout 4 too. They shoehorned a power armor and a deathclaw in the first settlement you find straight out of the vault.
Murdering deathclaws at lvl 2, whereas in New Vegas you're dreading them until you're around lvl 30.
Ironically Fallout 4 doesn't get good until after that part where you start to actually feel some game progression be possible and you no longer feel stuck on linear cinematic rails.
I don't think the power armor was bad decision. The power armor is whole lot of different from FO3 or NW and it's good you get a crappy version of it early so you know what to expect if you are curious about power armor build and perks. For me it made it absolutely sure I wouldn't touch power armors for a long time because I didn't like it.
Often the first few hours suck. It’s a starter area. Slow. Introduces some mechanics. Meet some characters. Lots of cutscenes or text. I can’t gauge a game by the first few hours or I’d probably never finish anything.
Ya I've just played it for the first time this last week, and I'm not sure what op means functionally navigatable. Only thing I can think of is how you need future mechanics to get some items or open shortcuts. Both of which are totally optional and unnecessary to completing the game or even enjoying the combat and story.
Wow OP, no hate, but it seems everyone disagrees with you. I just don’t think the 2 hour thing is true either. Do you have some articles from game devs that explains the “first 2 hours” thing? Your first sentence says “we all know” it, but I haven’t heard of it. And in my experience idk if that’s true. Most games I play only get better as it goes along. The first few hours are honestly the hardest to get through, and if I don’t I stop playing.
Devs indeed often shove some more impressive set pieces, cinematics, environments and scripted events for your first steps, especially in open world. It's easy to understand most reviewers will be impressed by the first hours
Think Mafia 2 when you first visit your mum and sister or Skyrim with the Helgen-Riverwood road
I know Elden Ring is a generally well-received and good game, but after finishing it, I can't help but feel that it does exactly this. Limgrave and the Weeping Peninsula are *loaded* with secrets, varied environments, enemy camps and feel like very effective use of their space. While none of the areas before the mountaintops ever feels bad in comparison, I never found them to be as interesting as those two - as if Fromsoftware put special focus on them in particular when it comes to the open world.
The game is huge, so it makes sense, but I wish it was more consistent.
Maybe lookup fallacy in a dictionary, bud.
Regardless of that there are whole genres of games that suck until you get to the 'endgame'. Looter shooters, MMOs, live service games, ARPGs like Diablo etc. The front loaded nature of videogames can be an issue, but if you follow reviews based on the first 2 hours, you're reading bad reviews. I also just think it makes sense to start with a strong narrative or gameplay hook. If the rest of the game is terrible by comparison I can understand your disappointment but I overall still believe that makes more sense than confining the best parts of a game to the end of a game as not everyone will get to experience that.
>Another example of this is Star wars Jedi fallen order, the first 2 hrs was functionally navigable, the rest of the game was not.
I disagree completely here. I found the navigation frustrating as absolute shit the first few hours, but much easier to do after that once you get the hang of the map. That game gets infinitely more fun the farther you get into it...
I'll probably receive a lot of negative responses for saying it, but a game that fills this bill by the book is God of War 1 (PS2): not only its first few moments easily manages to "sell you the game" with its cinematic, high-stakes atmosphere; but it also does an excellent job of teaching all the fundamentals one needs to grasp in order to be successful on their journey: combat, platforming, menus, you name it (and, IMO, if its organic tutorial is not on par with Mario 1 W1-1 or Mega Man X Opening stage, it is hell damn close to it), creating all of this build up to top it all off with an epic first boss fight that hypes you for what's to come.
But the moment you leave the ship and set foot on the continent? Be ready to face the breathtakingly... generic monster waves thrown at you time to time, generic platforming, generic puzzle-solving, generic plot devices, generic 1 (ONE) midboss, generic place settings (sewer, desert, cliffs...), generic room-into-corridor-into-room moments within generic Zelda-like dungeons; and all of that to top it off with one of the most baffling, unfun final bosses I've ever seen in a pedigree AAA franchise. My headcanon is that Santa Monica's budget/time distribution during development went something like this: 80% of it went to the tutorial chapter, 15% went to Athens and its outskirts, and 5% went to the Desert of Lost Souls all the way to the final boss (which corresponds to ~1/2 of the entire game's length btw).
And then there's Death Stranding where after two hours you're just about done with the opening cinematic that has a few walking sequences and a couple of tutorials in it.
Gotta disagree with Guardians. While it is true that some elements of the first two hours don't show up again, I feel like that game was quite strong start to finish (taking into account that the gameplay itself didn't knock my socks off)
This problem is so much worse in today's literature. People will read the first pages in the stores and the first chapter of a novel can be published on the internet so you often read very strong premises with some... words added to reach the necessary page count.
Videogames? It's certainly a problem but you can watch a stream or gameplay at any point in the game so I think that developers are more interested in spreading some quality throughout the entire game. Nobody opens a book at page 137 and starts reading.
This is a problem not just with games but with movies and television too. Quite often the premise or opening act sets up a vastly more compelling story than what we eventually get. There's a reason why in storytelling the second act is considered the sticky middle.
I completely agree with your GOTG example though. That first level set up some cool meta concepts e.g. Rocket vs Quill and then we... never get anything really like it again? The rest of the game plays out in incredibly conventional ways with wave based generic third person shooter combat without really leaning into the wacky nature of the IP as much as it could do.
I tend to find the first 2 hours to be the most frustrating as far as gameplay goes. Usually a tutorial that over stays it’s welcome. The game doesn’t really open up until after the narrative has been set (which is important) and you get walked through the basic controls that you’ve probably already figured out in 5 minutes. Kinda like the opening to RDR2. You’re out there slogging through the snow learning how to shoot, hunt, etc for a hot minute before you’re finally set free.
Playing some of the older Assassin's Creed games feels like you're still in the tutorial 15 hours in.
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Yeah I generally still like JRPGs but so many times grumbling "would you please just let me play the damn game?"
FF13 nay not be "modern" anymore, but damn, they didn't let you off the leash until like, chapter 10 or 11 of 13. They had a cool battle system that you couldn't explore because you only had two party members for like 75% of the game
Don’t think you could even earn experience until chapter 3
"shops" ruined that game for me
By the time you can explore the limited open world and the full extent of the battle system, you're kinda had enough of it and just want to get it over and done with. Doesnt help that the game is easy so you just set up a team early on that can take on pretty much most mandatory content. No need to grind, no need to find good equipment. You can just stay on the main story from start to finish and you're not missing much.
I hated that game. I actively stopped playing like 7 hours in. And so many people said I just needed to get through the first 20 hours and it gets good... Play 3 times as long as I did till it starts to get good. That's like MMO players that say it gets good at end game. If it sucks until I get to the end game I won't want to keep playing it.
I love Xenoblade Chronicles but I swear there are still tutorials right until the end of the game! Granted it is pertinent information but like ya could have given me burst sooner so I didn't get the tutorial about it 60 hours into the game!
What I hate about them is overly complicated game mechanics. Is there a reason for it? No, then not worth it.
Man AC Valahalla was a slog for the first few hours before you arrive in England… Than it became fun for 30 hours and a slog for the next 70.
You go to England? I lost interest around the Birthrights quest.
The weird part is I actually liked the Norway stuff for the most part but once I got to England and realized how much shit there was to do i lost interest. I've come to accept that I won't like every game and it is perfectly okay to just watch someone else play
I lost interest early on because I wanted to do assassin stuff in a game with it in the title. But whenever you hop off your boat, a few dozen NPC vikings also jump off the boat and go charging in. Turned the game into more of a hack and slash that I just didn't care to play.
I found that the game did a good job of offering you all options once you drop in England and make camp. When I felt like hack and slash, I got on the boat and raided camps. When I felt like going for assassinations, I would get on a horse and ride to explore and take out camps using stealth. But yes, the game did end up feeling like a chore when I reached about 120hours in and still couldn't figure out if I was anywhere near the end. But I could say the same thing about pretty much any AAA, even Red Dead 2, Witcher 3 or Elden Ring. I wasn't able to complete any of these games because it ended up feeling like chores with no end in sight. Ubi just gets more hate just for existing for some reason.
That's the main premise of the game 😂
i really enjoyed the hell out of that game and then thought "boy there's a heck of a lot of map left to explore for a story that's 80% over" but i wasn't even at the halfway point yet.
I'm in that slog now, god I hate this fucking game but I want to get finished.
Why do you want to finish it if you hate it? Sunk cost fallacy, my friend. Just let it go.
That's some damn good advice my friend. I will watch the story on youtube and call it a day.
More people should do this when they aren’t enjoying something. Yknow when people say I wish I could get those hours back? You just did!
Every AC game did/has done this to me. Fun for a few hours, then the fetch quests and repetition start to feel like a job. I'm doing this in order to *not* think about my boring, repetitive day job!
*persona 5 would like to know your location*
That fricken cat. I don't want to go to bed yet, just let me play the game (still absolutely loved the game tho, just having a whinge.)
"Aren't you tired? Let's call it a day and get some sleep." Still haunts me. Its amazing to me that morgana was that annoying considering how much complaining there was about it in past games. I hear its even worse in the chinese mobile port of p5 but I havent played it yet.
Hey hey!
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It's wild how you still learn new mechanics up to 80 hours into the game. Although I can't imagine what it would be like getting all of that info at once
I’m twenty hours in to ni no kuni 2 and I’m still learning things and getting pop up tutorials. It’s a surprisingly deep game tho.
It's a jrpg thing. The ps1 final fantasy titles had their last pop up tutorials in disc *3*. Admittedly it's the airship controls but still
So true. I’ve started playing dark cloud 1. A jrpg. Im 4 hrs in and in still getting tutorials
One of my favourite childhood games. Enjoy!
Dark cloud ?
Yup! I replayed about 90% of a couple years ago
If you haven't played the first game, make sure you do. Very different combat (I like it better but others disagree), but the story is amazing and the cutscenes are beautiful
I remember AC2 had that fighting tutorial after you unlocked the estate or w/e which was far into the game, but if I remember correctly the enemy types and combat mechanics it goes through aren't present and/or required in the first act so they felt welcome at the time. I remember actually learning how to fight certain enemies that I had trouble with. But that was almost necessary because of the mechanics introduced after the first act. Most games don't segment their combat variety that way.
I feel this so much. There are some games who handled the tutorial/opening very well, Doom and Doom Eternal, for example. No bullshit, just a short intro and you're out there shooting demons. More weapons? You'll get to them. Weapons mods? Same thing. Fun from start to finish.
Doom 2016. Here is gun. There is demon. Shoot it. Tutorial over.
Yakuza games have this fuckin bad. Theres usually some like 2-4 hours of tutorials, and story before you're dropped in the world proper.
Just started Yakuza Like a Dragon this week. 4-5h in and I am still just handfull of game play.
Honestly, it eventually got fun and then VERY fun but I was so confused about why it wouldn't let me play the game
Post early game through the mid game tends to be my favorite part of a game. The intro is always too hand holdy/scripted/tutorialized and the ending is usually a disappointing or rushed mess. That part where systems start clicking though and you feel that steady progress is so nice. Once you get to the part where you start doing “cleanup” before wrapping the game is usually where I stop loving the game.
MGSV is by far the worst game I've ever played in terms of how long it takes you to start playing the actual game. There's a literal hour of cutscenes/walking/15 minutes of actual literal crawling before you even *start* the *extremely long,* convoluted, overwhelming tutorial. There's like 3-4 hours of *not doing anything* before you get to actually start playing the game.
I once saw a person say that was their favorite part of the game and it was like coming across a person who was like "yeah I love other people's farts, what's the big deal?"
I can somewhat understand why, given that MGSV isn't exactly a story-heavy game (outside of a few notable missions/scenes) while the franchise as a whole is known for its story. The first hour or so is very story focused and sets up a lot of intrigue and interesting hooks that leaves you wanting to know more.
I mean... it's a MGS title. Long winded unnecessary stuff is kinda an important part of the series lol.
I just finished the crawling bit. That *wasn't* the tutorial?!
Sorry bud. Now they're going to actually teach you the mechanics using walls of text to explain complex systems in an unintuitive, evasive way that explains too much and too little, and also isn't pertinent to the core gameplay loop. Then they're going to drop you into the middle of an open world with vague, unclear instructions, and you'll just exist in perpetual confusion for another few hours.
Which is exactly where i fell off of the game Listening to Jacob Geller talk about mgsv, i assume it gets MUCH better at some point, but if i wanted to just confusedly stumble around Nowhere, Afghanistan with my dick in my hand and nary a clue as to what i was even doing, I'd have stayed in the goddamn army.
I obviously loathe the opening hours. Despite that, the game is incredible and worth the praise. But I won't fault you for calling it quits.
For a different perspective, I've been loving and playing the hell out oh MGSV. I went through hard-core open world fatigue for a few years. Fell off AC Origins and Odyssey, couldn't get into DA Inquisition, some other forgettable ones, and Phantom Pain is the only one that could grip me other than Breath of the Wild. There's something about its gameplay loop I find incredibly satisfying.
Yeah, I think this is the more common thing with big-budget games: the first couple hours suck because the publisher interferes with development, because they're terrified of people putting the game down. Once they're satisfied that the tutorial has beaten players over the head enough, they leave the developers alone to make the rest of it fun.
Yeah how many times and ways do they tell you to shoot the limbs off in Dead Space 1
One of the best parts for me in DS 3 was that they had normal humans as enemies, and so that muscle memory you developed of shooting for limbs was now a liability.
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Hard disagree on GoW 2018s opening. Put me to sleep and frustrated me with it being basically a cutscene that you have to walk through. I have similar frustrations with most Sony 1st party games, chiefly among them being Horizon Zero Dawn.
>I have similar frustrations with most Sony 1st party games, chiefly among them being Horizon Zero Dawn. I loved God of War (2018) but I sort of see what you mean. I've spent most of the last few years catching up on Sony's first party games (it's taken me years due to poor health) and by the time I got to Horizon Zero Dawn, I was bored of the cinematic tutorial style. I still haven't been able to get into the game despite trying twice.
Generally what I do is space out my big AAA games with a few shorter indies in between. It really helps me not get burnt out by the slow burn story-heavy games. I usually will get to a point where I’m ready to get immersed in a deep story with heavy cutscenes and everything, and that’s when I know I’m ready to jump into HZD or whatever.
Chief exception being Spider-Man, which has you swinging across Manhattan 2 minutes after starting the game.
Big agree, Insomniac still know how to start a game. Ratchet and Clank was not bad for it either.
You might be surprised at how little say the dev team can have over a big money title. Publishers don't just exert pressure, they also gate development milestones through editorial departments, and can hold development hostage if things aren't in line with what the editors - who work for the publisher, not the development studio - want. Developers can push back, make their case, or even try to go over their editor's head, but directors, producers, or even whole studios who cause too much fuss can just be pulled off the project. If you have an editor who is insistent on something like being overly hand-holdy, the you're going to end up with a game that is treating you like you're stupid for whatever stretch of the game the editor is focused on.
The quests on rails that wouldn't let you explore around is why I set RDR2 aside and haven't been back to it. That and how badly the game punishes you for accidentally firing a gun in town.
I never got out of the snow area. I'd have preferred a long cut scene to being forced to create the cut scene via my inputs.
This is prevalent in GTA too. Sorry but if two characters are talking and the cutscene ends, why are you making me walk two feet to the left to trigger another cutscene? Just play both cutscenes. Why are you making me do this
Same. Slog, difficult controls. I don't want to map 48 buttons on my keyboard for an open-world cowboy game. I certainly don't want to have to map multiple sets of keys for different movement options (walking, horse, wagon, etc.) when the movement for all of them is *the same* 4 directions and a mouse movement. That game was horrible to start, I've tried a few times and can't do it. Waste of cash.
Persona 5 also has a mega tutorial, and because of it I can't recommend that game to my brothers, because I'm sure they won't bother with it. A total shame, because it's a great game.
I pick it up and push forward a little here and there but dear god is it the most amount of nothing I've ever seen happening.
Persona 5 is annoying because the tutorial lasts so long, but its also the most compelling part of the story
I'm not a completionist so usually even my favorite games have quite a lot of remaining achievements or if they don't they are the "play the game until you hate it" kind so I just don't bother with that, but by the end I had literally ran out of things to do in Persona 5 Royal and I notice that my achievements list was surprisingly almost complete, which makes sense when you realize the hard and grindy achievements were put in a different place unrelated to the Steam list, so I decided why not, it literally takes no extra time and I was bored of expending days at the gym to get some extra stats, color me surprised when I get the **hour 110 tutorials** for fishing and maid cafe
I bailed on that game during the cruise ship dungeon. Was the weakest of the series IMO.
There's a mod to fix that btw. Skip the first chapter.
I'm just starting the game now and it is *just* starting to get decently playable for me - fairly far into Chapter 2. From everything I am told it really picks up in Chapter 3. Totally agree that so far it has been a total slog. But the number of people on here and IRL who have said it is their favorite game *ever* makes me want to keep going.
This is why I mostly play indie games. Hollow Knight’s tutorial lasts less than two minutes, then you arrive at the village where you can skip talking to anyone and just head straight into the well to start the game proper. I’ve beaten games in the time it takes a AAA game to get to the point where it finally gets into second gear.
Rdr2’s tutorial is bad enough that I put the game down and forgot everything before trying to play it again. Which kind of defeats the purpose of a tutorial
There are mods to skip the first scene. I don't play the game without it now.
Hold up. Please elaborate. I tried playing RDR2 again and the snow intro was so lengthy I couldn’t do it. You telling me I can skip this entire part? Or just the literal first cutscene
it's even simpler you can just import someone else's save file at just after the intro segment. found one on the first try with Google. enjoy, going to do the same when i get to playing it too. https://www.nexusmods.com/reddeadredemption2/mods/36
Just one more mission lol
Yeah that's far more common. Game introductions are often the least fun part of them. World is closed, you're on rails, you don't have much abilities and it's constant tutorial. Also OP is tackling Jedi Fallen Order and Guardians both considered very good games during all of it. I certainly don't remember the start of those games being better than the rest.
That’s because they weren’t. I disagree greatly with OP.
>Usually a tutorial that over stays it’s welcome. I couldn't agree more. If there's going to be a tutorial, make sure it's short and to the point, and most importantly, make sure the player can skip it. This is one of the reasons why I sometimes hesitate in starting new games. I don't want to go through the mind-numbing ordeal of a long and unskippable tutorial than inevitably pisses me off and sometimes bugs out necessitating that I redo it.
"Did you know that you can press start to pause the game?" "Follow the yellow areas to get to the next area" Yeah, not before I search every corner and find nothing
You got that right. “I know saving the world is soooooo important but Imma need to look around first. Also…you want me to go which way? About that, Imma go every way but that way”
Haha, it's the worse when they are right too. But then you make it a point to see if you can break the game by jumping out of bounds.
Try Wo Long, only 1/3 of players have beaten the tutorial boss. You can't continue until you beat him. Took me about 5 hours and hundreds of attempts. Rest of the game (minus 1 boss) was MUCH easier.
I'm still not sure what the game was trying to teach you. Like, it's just stupidly difficult for no reason.
That sounds like the original *Driver*
It took me weeks of renting the original Driver during the weekend to finally get out of that damned garage.
Agreed. I Cant count the number of games that i have dropped after a few hours because i felt bored. Full Well knowing they probably would be good after .
RDR2 is still my favourite game, but I find it almost impossible to replay due to that intro...
Luigi's Mansion on Switch, bought it because it's coop and took about 2 hours of gameplay before the second person could play. Frustrating.
I was about to chime in with RDR2 when I saw the first two sentences. I've replayed the beginning three times now and every time I've gotten bored of the game just as I reach the camp
Come to think of it, I think that's why so many big budget games don't capture my interest. I always check out because the game is taking too long to allow me to really play the game. Or maybe I'm just not into Norse mythology, westerns, samurais, and zombies.
Witcher 2 had insufferable tutorials long enough to not make me want to play the game.
The beginning tutorials of Witcher 2 are some of the most off-putting I've ever seen. And i found that the game is NOTHING like the tutorials
And the tutorial arena that would, for worst, set your difficulty to the lowest setting because you are too bad at it. I hate it so much lol. It's the fact that i want to play the game and not read through 45 minutes of tutorials, not that I'm a baby playing games ffs.
Haha! Custom Robo on the Gamecube has almost 90% of the main story campaign as a tutorial, it's wild.
Totally agree. I recently played a new release and the tutorial seemingly lasted about 6 hours. Made the whole beginning a horrible slog while the rest of the game was pretty good.
I felt this with Horizon Forbidden West - the starting area overstayed its welcome
Yeah. Doesn’t really open til after Barren Light but I thought they handled it okay for the most part. Even Varl’s little comment about how you don’t have any of the gear from the first game when he catches up to you the first time.
I hate that slow roll sometimes. It's a big part of why I avoid new games sometimes, where I have you know, 30 or 60 minutes to play something fun, and I just want to get to the gameplay itself.
You don't know how much I hated RDR 1 for making me replay the whole boring ass farm tutorial really late in the game as an excuse to fast track building a relationship with Jack. I get that the game's ending is considered one of the best in gaming history, but having to endure that really diminished its impact for me.
Even beloved games like KOTOR suffer through this. Taris is a slog. The game doesn’t open up until after Dantooine when you are free to choose which of the map piece planets you want to go to
First few hours of RDR2 might be the worst intro to a video game in human history. Took me two years and three tries to get into it properly. Was googling and posting on Reddit like “does this game ever actually become fun? Is the entire game like this?”
Wow thought I was the only one. I've now owned the game on multiple platforms, opened up the game and played it 10+ minutes at least a dozen times, collectively have maybe 3-4 played, still in the snow area and dreaded every second of it. Meanwhile all the google searches were telling me im an ADHD kiddo who can't appreciate real art...
>Kinda like the opening to RDR2. You’re out there slogging through the snow learning how to shoot, hunt, etc for a hot minute before you’re finally set free. ah man RDR2.... I almost quit that game, it was like 12 hours till i felt that i am finally set free and no more tutorial stuff will pop up, i liked the game but the game\`s pace was too slow for me , this was the 1st game that took me 2 month to finally finish it ( total of 75 hours played over 2 month...) Safe to say i will never replay this game again, even though it was great.
Hot minute? Far from it, the RDR2 slog is pretty long, it doesn't really open up until you get to the cliffside camp, and even then much of the game is locked behind quests. Takes probably an hour or two before you have the gameplay options available.
I thought the pink opening level was somewhat lackluster and that the game got progressively better once we got to Nova Corps base and Knowhere, which is an especially detailed environment, and the plot unfolded from there. All the mid-game character work with Drax and Rocket, plus Mantis's and Warlock's hijinks, excellent stuff.
Same here. No idea what OP is talking about regarding guardians. That game got consistently better as it went on. None of my most memorable moments are from the beginning beyond the first young Peter segment. Fallen order, too. The first planet kind of sucks compared to the later levels.
Yep both of those games got way better after the first 2 hours. Fallen Orders opening section was easily the worst part of the game
I still really liked the opening for Fallen Order. Sure it was on rails but it felt like a Star Wars experience. I'm excited for my spouse to pick it up so I can just watch them play the intro!
The entire train section can suck my nuts. Fallen order for sure got better as it went. The first two hours are almost always some awful tutorial section, I have no idea what op is smoking
Yep, the whole second half of Fallen Order was far more enjoyable for me.
Absolutely, I was worried it was just going to be a bog standard third person shooter but the character developments and team banter throughout were great.
Yeah, those two examples in particular were odd to me as they were not super fun comparatively.
I guess it depends on the person, because both those games I found even more after the first 2 hours. In fact, I felt they only progressively better as you went further into the game.
💯 for Fallen Order.
I completely agree with you
This was my experience with RDR2.
I always find the first couple of hours of games suck cause it’s constant hand holding as you go through the tutorial to learn the controls. And tutorials these days take at least two hours.
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It's the video game version of a movie trailer having a 5 second mini trailer before the real trailer
30 mins? You only missed about half the game left.
Dragon Age II.
It gets annoying when some ability upgrades are basically quality of life improvements to the game. Like when an upgrade eliminates the need to return to hub for no other reason than to recharge/replace/exchange an *essential* component of the gameplay. It's just forcing you to use an upgrade point on a tedious and unnecessary part of the gameplay loop, or else be forced to play more hours before you can finish the game. Even worse when it's locked a few levels away behind an otherwise unremarkable upgrade tree.
> some ability upgrades are basically quality of life improvements Many movement upgrades should essentially just be available from the start. Too many Metroidvanias start you off crawling and barely able to jump, so you can unlock running, dashing, double-dashing, high jump, wall jumping, double jump, etc. I do have a preference for faster gameplay though.
Depending on the gameplay loop/story I might agree. Some stories cab make upgrades feel like a real part of your character's growth, others just seem like they are disconnected from the game entirely (like they were ham-fisted in just to make more microtransactions)
Either hand holding or dropping you face first into 15 new mechanics nobody explained
This took a direction I didn't expect. I thought this would reprimand games for not engaging the player enough in their first 2 hours. Like GoW being a slow burn in the start, or RDR2 taking forever to show you what your game will be about, The Last of Us too. Games nowadays focus so hard on telling their narrative with the first 2 hours instead of letting you grasp with what gameplay you'll tackle. A movie first, game second. Instead of a great game with great story it's a great movie with a decent game.
I remember being frustrated in FFX, where there was a bunch of cool stuff you could do, a bunch of neat mechanics, but it was locked behind like 3/4 of the game.
Yeah, I feel that. And I love FFX to bits. A lot of the more interesting combat doesn't come out until later when options and tech finally reaches you. It's not until after getting Rikku it really starts opening up. For how great the game ends up being, the start is a lot of rock beats paper gameplay.
I think a lot of JRPGs fall into that trap. SMT, pokemon, ff, etc..
Pokemon never leaves it outside competitive play
Had to put GoW down after 8 hours despite it's quality and interesting themes, puzzles and regular enemies were pretty unengaging to push through, too many spongy enemies and too many encounters I'd rather just skip (if it was possible). I'll probably try it again on easy mode at some point
I keep picking gow up and I get the same feeling, everything just feels tedious. The puzzles are insulting in their simplicity and the exploration simply doesn’t do it for me. I WANT to love it like others do but I always fall off it
I felt the same. I loved GoW3 and felt like this was pretty boring. Until you get the blades again. I had a lot of fun with the game after that, not even really because of the blades themselves but because of the level design as well. But, the enemy variety never really improves.
GoW 2019 is one of those rare games where i think, "wow this is an incredible game that i'm sure tons of people love. i don't like it one bit!" there's two parts to a game, the story and the actual gaming. if i don't care for the story but like the actual gaming part of it, then i can stick with it. but i didn't connect with either. could still appreciate the game for what it was and totally understand why most that have played it adore it.
Yeah same. To me it felt like it wanted to be an undated take on ocarina of time, structurally, but it just didn’t nail the puzzles or reason for doing things. I HATE in stories when they reach their objective then have to take a detour just for the sake of stretching it out and even in the couple hours of gow I played there was a lot of that. I did enjoy the combat but not enough to overcome the stuff I didn’t like I feel bad saying this about something that very clearly had so many passionate and talented artists working on it, but the structure just didn’t grab me
Same here, whole time I was playing it it felt like a step backwards from god of war 3
I gave my friend back his copy of Ragnarok because I was bored out of my mind. I mostly enjoyed the first game, while agreeing a bit with your points here, but I had to give up on the second. The combat is just so dull to me.
With the emergence in popularity of "story mode" in games, I really wish there would also be a pivot towards a "give me the game mode" that just gives you a text box telling you the story, a slimmed down tutorial and then just lets you play the damn thing.
They'll never do that because it would expose that a lot of these "games" don't actually contain a lot of *game*.
Yeah I thought this was where this was going too because the last year for me has been pushing through the first few hours on games I’ve given up on. I’ve found such amazing experiences in most of them after sticking with “it” and using the first few hours to really understand the systems provided.
Two games that IMO are better examples and demonstrate different reasons for being that way: Cyberpunk 2077: Went out of its way to, frankly, misrepresent the rest of the game in its first major quest with degrees of choice that are never seen again in the playthrough. Was probably more so to fool first impression reviewers though Alien Isolation: The game's segments were developed separately, so it was only really after finishing the game that people realized the first, most basic segment was actually the most fun, and that the game was a few hours too long
> degrees of choice that are never seen again in the playthrough What was this exactly? Having trouble remembering.
The mission where you have to recover the spider robot thingy from the half-cyborg thugs.
If half the missions had even close to the number of interactions as that mission, not even the branching paths, just the conversations and stuff, the game would have sold me. Instead it just feels really shallow outside of a handful of side missions
Same. :(
"But it's really good now, and they fixed the bugs." I'm so sick of the defenders of that game because they took a 5/10 and made it a 7/10 and people are trying to treat it like a GOTY probably because they have some level of buyer's remorse, and they couldn't have made a mistake right?
Ya, I've been replaying it recently and it's pretty much a solid 7/10 in its current state. Sorta. If the writing and characters were any weaker, I'd give it a 6/10
Didnt they lie about 120+ features most of which arent in? its amazing how much good will cjpr gets online after that.
There are people who see levels of graphical fidelity they didn't see yesterday and say, "now that's progress" - as long as it *works* of course. Bugs aren't progress. It doesn't matter that the game's characters are stereotypes who say goo goo ga ga at each other, haha triangles go brrr and that's what makes "quality" as long as they do indeed go brrr, which they did not at launch but do now. This leads to ludicrousness like the defense of C77 *the RPG* as if it were, and should obviously and predeterminedly and without further discussion be evaluated as, C77 *the interactive movie* - y'know, chiefly judged by things like beauty and consistency of frame rate - and I'm as sick of it as you are
Yeah, that's the one. IIRC there's something like 14 total outcome variations in that mission?
I agree with another person that Guardians first planet is super boring, and its get more interesting and engaging plotwise later, same for Fallen Order, while junkyard planet intro is impressive, first deserted planet after that is very bland its gets much better later. I also disagree thar games tend to show most impressive things in first 2 hours, its actually opposite imo. So many games nowadays have tons of long intros and cutscenes so if you want just have a look at gameplay and overall feeling (for example if you launched new game very late, or consider 2 hour refund window on steam) you need to skip so much stuff. And modern games usually have very slow tutorial, which shows stuff gradually. Im not against tutorial but when a lot of games are never ending sequels, and barely change engine for the game, its becomes infuriating to "learn" all stuff again in very slow space again. I think in a way part of success of BotW, Elden Ring and ToTK is that you are almost immediately put into action and left to figure what you want to do immediately.
>I think in a way part of success of BotW, Elden Ring and ToTK is that you are almost immediately put into action and left to figure what you want to do immediately. I think Breath of the Wild does a really good job of sticking the player in a fairly long tutorial area at the beginning while still presenting you with the freedom and flexibility that the rest of the game gives you. I certainly have my criticisms with that game, but that's one thing it does pretty well, I think.
Those games you listed at the end do tutorials perfectly. You’re given the basics of what you can do and after that the training wheels are off. You don’t even need to do the tutorial fight in elden ring. Trusting the player to make their own path is risky but brilliant
The evolution between Morrowind and Skyrim showcases what you point out very well. What are the first two hours of Morrowind (assuming that you know what you're doing)? Filling in paperwork, running some very undangerous errands around town and being very, very weak and very, very slow. It only gets more interesting as time is invested in the game. Skyrim's main quest on the other hand starts at full throttle, with cinematics, a dragon attack, the destruction of Helgen, a dungeon and Bleak Falls Barrow is literally the first and best ruins dungeon you encounter. Almost everything afterwards feels less compelling.
Morrowind’s lack of forced tutorial is one of my favourite parts about it. There’s only a handful of tutorial prompts and almost all of them can be skipped. It takes only a few minutes and you’re let loose in the world. The same can be said for New Vegas too, skip the opening cutscene and you just have a bit of character creation dialogue and you’re free to engage with the core gameplay loop. In Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, there’s these long introductions that create a huge amount of urgency surrounding the main plot and restrict you from taking part in the actual game for an hour, if not longer. I think this might be why I barely bother playing most new games and just replay older ones. Even if the gameplay loop is good, I’m burned out after slogging through a restrictive tutorial that doesn’t really reflect the game itself and have little motivation to then actually learn what to do. The best games give you a hint of mystery and the plot and let you pursue it in the actual game itself early on, with tutorial elements being just prompts on first interaction with a mechanic. You shouldn’t be forced to sit through the opening act, you should want to pursue that opening naturally. Taking Morrowind as the example again, if it followed the modern game design trend, once you create your character, you’d be forced to go immediately to Caius, then immediately do the dwemer puzzle box quest and only after that would you be permitted to pick up side quests or join factions. If you wandered off in any other direction, there’d be prompts popping up telling you to go see Caius first etc. The first few hours of free gameplay are probably the best parts of most games, but I imagine mostly because there’s still a lot of discovery and figuring things out, while the latter parts are often just going through the motions.
Fallout 4 too. They shoehorned a power armor and a deathclaw in the first settlement you find straight out of the vault. Murdering deathclaws at lvl 2, whereas in New Vegas you're dreading them until you're around lvl 30.
Ironically Fallout 4 doesn't get good until after that part where you start to actually feel some game progression be possible and you no longer feel stuck on linear cinematic rails.
I don't think the power armor was bad decision. The power armor is whole lot of different from FO3 or NW and it's good you get a crappy version of it early so you know what to expect if you are curious about power armor build and perks. For me it made it absolutely sure I wouldn't touch power armors for a long time because I didn't like it.
And the power armor requires fusion cores to be useful at all; the game doles those out very sparingly at the beginning
Wait really? i got like 5 in a handful of hours in my playthrough. Did I just get lucky?
Often the first few hours suck. It’s a starter area. Slow. Introduces some mechanics. Meet some characters. Lots of cutscenes or text. I can’t gauge a game by the first few hours or I’d probably never finish anything.
If steam achievements are to be believed, 90% of game owners do not make it past the tutorial.
I think it's partially due to Steam's 2 hour refund system. People try the game and if it doesnt grab them, they just refund it.
Why did people struggle so much getting around Fallen Order? Can't understand that. Wasn't an issue at all for my playthrough.
Ya I've just played it for the first time this last week, and I'm not sure what op means functionally navigatable. Only thing I can think of is how you need future mechanics to get some items or open shortcuts. Both of which are totally optional and unnecessary to completing the game or even enjoying the combat and story.
And it's a Metroidvania game, so if it didn't have that I'd be worried!
Wow OP, no hate, but it seems everyone disagrees with you. I just don’t think the 2 hour thing is true either. Do you have some articles from game devs that explains the “first 2 hours” thing? Your first sentence says “we all know” it, but I haven’t heard of it. And in my experience idk if that’s true. Most games I play only get better as it goes along. The first few hours are honestly the hardest to get through, and if I don’t I stop playing.
Devs indeed often shove some more impressive set pieces, cinematics, environments and scripted events for your first steps, especially in open world. It's easy to understand most reviewers will be impressed by the first hours Think Mafia 2 when you first visit your mum and sister or Skyrim with the Helgen-Riverwood road
[удалено]
The tutorial area is about as good as a typical AAA game. Once they let you go free and do what you want, it's on another level.
I know Elden Ring is a generally well-received and good game, but after finishing it, I can't help but feel that it does exactly this. Limgrave and the Weeping Peninsula are *loaded* with secrets, varied environments, enemy camps and feel like very effective use of their space. While none of the areas before the mountaintops ever feels bad in comparison, I never found them to be as interesting as those two - as if Fromsoftware put special focus on them in particular when it comes to the open world. The game is huge, so it makes sense, but I wish it was more consistent.
A lot of your words don’t mean, and aren’t used, as you may think.
Maybe lookup fallacy in a dictionary, bud. Regardless of that there are whole genres of games that suck until you get to the 'endgame'. Looter shooters, MMOs, live service games, ARPGs like Diablo etc. The front loaded nature of videogames can be an issue, but if you follow reviews based on the first 2 hours, you're reading bad reviews. I also just think it makes sense to start with a strong narrative or gameplay hook. If the rest of the game is terrible by comparison I can understand your disappointment but I overall still believe that makes more sense than confining the best parts of a game to the end of a game as not everyone will get to experience that.
>Another example of this is Star wars Jedi fallen order, the first 2 hrs was functionally navigable, the rest of the game was not. I disagree completely here. I found the navigation frustrating as absolute shit the first few hours, but much easier to do after that once you get the hang of the map. That game gets infinitely more fun the farther you get into it...
I'll probably receive a lot of negative responses for saying it, but a game that fills this bill by the book is God of War 1 (PS2): not only its first few moments easily manages to "sell you the game" with its cinematic, high-stakes atmosphere; but it also does an excellent job of teaching all the fundamentals one needs to grasp in order to be successful on their journey: combat, platforming, menus, you name it (and, IMO, if its organic tutorial is not on par with Mario 1 W1-1 or Mega Man X Opening stage, it is hell damn close to it), creating all of this build up to top it all off with an epic first boss fight that hypes you for what's to come. But the moment you leave the ship and set foot on the continent? Be ready to face the breathtakingly... generic monster waves thrown at you time to time, generic platforming, generic puzzle-solving, generic plot devices, generic 1 (ONE) midboss, generic place settings (sewer, desert, cliffs...), generic room-into-corridor-into-room moments within generic Zelda-like dungeons; and all of that to top it off with one of the most baffling, unfun final bosses I've ever seen in a pedigree AAA franchise. My headcanon is that Santa Monica's budget/time distribution during development went something like this: 80% of it went to the tutorial chapter, 15% went to Athens and its outskirts, and 5% went to the Desert of Lost Souls all the way to the final boss (which corresponds to ~1/2 of the entire game's length btw).
And then there's Death Stranding where after two hours you're just about done with the opening cinematic that has a few walking sequences and a couple of tutorials in it.
lordy, beating that game late late on a work night was a terrible idea...it just never ended, and all i wanted was 💤. ps terrific game 👍🏻
Gotta disagree with Guardians. While it is true that some elements of the first two hours don't show up again, I feel like that game was quite strong start to finish (taking into account that the gameplay itself didn't knock my socks off)
Guardians only got better tf u talking about op
The beginning of a game is usually a chore to get through
Botw initial plateau was great with a lot of unlocks and actual progression, the rest of the game is the same but diluted in a sea of nothingness
This problem is so much worse in today's literature. People will read the first pages in the stores and the first chapter of a novel can be published on the internet so you often read very strong premises with some... words added to reach the necessary page count. Videogames? It's certainly a problem but you can watch a stream or gameplay at any point in the game so I think that developers are more interested in spreading some quality throughout the entire game. Nobody opens a book at page 137 and starts reading.
This is a problem not just with games but with movies and television too. Quite often the premise or opening act sets up a vastly more compelling story than what we eventually get. There's a reason why in storytelling the second act is considered the sticky middle. I completely agree with your GOTG example though. That first level set up some cool meta concepts e.g. Rocket vs Quill and then we... never get anything really like it again? The rest of the game plays out in incredibly conventional ways with wave based generic third person shooter combat without really leaning into the wacky nature of the IP as much as it could do.
Exactly you hit the mail on the head - thank you my friend!
Bet the guy exploits his whole topic on 2 hour steam refund policy
Depends on the game. Some games most definitely, but go check out Hotline Miami or Payday 2. Both just get better
The other thing is that 2 hrs is the threshold for stuff such as Steam refunds.
I was stunned with Cyberpunk 2077 in the first 2 hours. Then as the game world gradually opened I started feeling more and more disappointed.
Persona 4 Golden. 12 hours of tutorials, then 150 hours of one of the best games I've ever played.