When Great Games Have Terrible Beginnings

am i boring you don't set this tale aside give me just a few minutes more for someone special's about to appear in dire straits upon a scaffold it gets good eventually that's a phrase i'm sure you've heard more than once right the witcher 2 is great but only after you've slugged your way through its 20-hour introduction full of bad combat and boring exposition metal gear solid 5 now that's a really interesting game so long as you don't mind crawling very slowly through a hospital together and dota is one of the finest multiplayer games ever made but you do have to play about 100 games just to understand what's going on i've lost track of the number of books tv shows and games that have been recommended to me over the years that came with that caveat oh it starts off a bit slow but if you stick with it it gets really good i promise and as far as i'm concerned this is a grave injustice so many otherwise fantastic titles turn potential audiences away because they have boring introductions or openings that don't properly communicate what they've really got to offer meaning people will never get around to experiencing them at all a recent example of this that i've run into is the game xenoblade chronicles 2 an rpg that i and many other people bounced off of completely not because the game is bad i actually think xenoblade 2 is really quite good but because the game's introduction utterly failed to grab me were it not for me going back and really forcing myself to power through the game's opening hours i would have completely dismissed it forever rather than celebrating celebrate 2 as the diamond in the rough that it actually is i'll be getting back to xenoblade 2 later my words but it isn't alone here it feels like a really good introduction to games is becoming rarer as time goes on and a more pronounced issue as games are getting longer and more complex every year playing virtually any open worldy ubisoft style game requires you to wait for it to stop throwing systems and objectives at you before you can actually start exploring and most survival games necessitate playing with the wiki open for your first few hours just to understand what the hell you're supposed to be doing i think a lot of this problem comes from how we talk about and think about gaming introductions we in the gaming space tend to reduce intros to that boring bit at the start that tells you which button to press to make the gun go shoot and which button you press to pair the dog while this is technically true introductions are also so much more than that they're a pitch for the entire experience and by making good ones games can avoid that seemingly constant problem of being boring until you've already played them a lot and also let games show themselves off completely during your first play session rather than your fifth to do this a game needs to achieve two very important objectives in its opening moments if it wants its audience to stand a hope of sticking around to the end firstly it needs to educate by filling the audience in not just on how to play but what to expect out of the rest of the game for example hollow knight's first zone the king's path teaches you the controls and basic gameplay concepts however it's not until the second the forgotten crossroads the players learned how the game actually works the crossroads are responsible for communicating the general vibe of hallownest as a setting as well as helping players get to grips with the main metroidvania gameplay loop of exploration fighting bosses and gaining new abilities that let them explore new areas only after the forgotten crossroads does the game really start to let players off the leash and it's not until the end of the fight with hornet in the green path that the real game actually gets started now i know what you might be thinking architect of games you beautiful monster from the video game dimension that's just a tutorial what are you talking about well i'd actually argue that a good tutorial is only one half of a good introduction see not only do introductions need to educate they also need to entice or in other non-alliterative words convince players to keep playing even after their initial curiosity has worn off in horizon zero dawn right when you're let out of the tutorial zone during the quest secret of the gates you're also introduced to two very interesting ideas you're gonna want to follow up on first that these scary machines have shown up and are turning other machines red and thus evil as well as the brand new ability to mind control machines for yourself opening up a bunch of new gameplay options both of these things presented interesting possibilities for players to go and explore now that the full game is open to them kick-starting their real elevator off with some nice early momentum for both narratively and mechanically minded players if an introduction fails to educate a player they won't understand what's going on and will be unable to fully appreciate what a game has to offer and if a player isn't sufficiently enticed then they'll either stop paying attention and caring about what's going on or even worse stop playing entirely to understand how great introductions achieve both of these goals let's look at them both in more detail first education because that's the one that's probably more obvious from a player's perspective making a great tutorial is a subject that you could devote a whole video to and many clever people as well as some less clever people have done just that but in the context of a good introduction a tutorial has one function to transition players from passive learning that being through instruction to active learning or learning through experimentation and play as quickly and effectively as possible nobody likes being sat down and told what buttons to press but sometimes it's just unavoidable for more complex games however that doesn't mean the tutorials always have to be boring and take edges bayonetta efficiently uses its flashy opening segment both as a lordon and a consequence-free training ground to teach players the basics of moving and attacking in a safe environment and the tutorials of 4x games like civilization don't even bother to mention stuff like spying the world congress or electricity because they don't appear until late into the game and by the time players get to end game they'll already have the skills needed to intuitively understand these concepts all on their own the mechanics of play aren't the only thing a game's introduction can teach however it's just as important for an intro to convey the vibe and tone of a game putting players into the right frame of mind to get the most out of a game as possible failing to do this can result in a crucial disconnect that can poison the entire experience in no man's sky for example the game makes a big deal out of its survival mechanics and the feel of battling the elements in its opening hour or so but these systems are rendered all but irrelevant once you've gotten your spaceship up and running immediately turning away players who wanted an exploration focus game whilst also disappointing those who actually like the feel of surviving in a harsh wilderness on the other hand when a game sets the tone well in its introduction it can transform the way you play for the better and communicate its narrative aesthetic significantly better than a million audio logs that occurred for example x-com enemy unknown yes i finally get to talk about x-com again is absolutely genius in the way that it normalizes death and failure to prevent the game's sometimes punitive difficulty from turning players away and gets them invested in the fight against the aliens see in the tutorial think staff as you'd expect with the basics of movement and cover but when you get into your first actual fight rather than a pushover skirmish you might be expecting it's instead an absolute bloodbath and the fight is scripted such that only one of your four soldiers can escape alive this immediately puts the player on the back foot and makes their inevitable future deaths feel much less punishing because rather than feeling like a draconian punishment for messing up death has been communicated from the start to be an expected part of gameplay but that's not all not only is xcom about fighting against a vastly more powerful enemy force it's also about learning from their tactics and eventually getting revenge that's why the lone tutorial survivor is guaranteed to immediately promote into a heavy weapons specialist meaning that when you bring them to the first real mission of the game you get to get your own back on those filthy sectoids by going to town with a sweet rocket launcher that can annihilate entire packs of enemies in one go cementing the game's fundamental gameplay loop of this ever increasing arms race between you and the aliens with both sides fighting dirty and taking heavy losses along the way making an effective intro to a video game is much harder than it is for almost any other medium not only are they on average orders of magnitude more complex from a technical perspective video games have the added disadvantage of usually being played over multiple sessions and require the player's active input in order to work at all citizen k never asks you to stop and do a couple of quick time events to get really sad about a sled you used to own the represents your last moments of childhood innocence because it's just kind of on the screen so it doesn't really matter if you're not 100 getting it because the movie is going to continue anyway and you're not expected to come back once it's all over because video games are so reliant on the players effort and enthusiasm though it's more important than ever to get them to come back and play some more after what can often be one of the least exciting parts of the game the introduction the easiest the most consistent way to ensure a player's investment and long-term interest in what's going on is to create what's known in the biz as a hook because you know it it hooks someone in a hook usually takes the form of some sort of unanswered question or interesting possibility that invites the audience to stick around to find out what the answer is wow that ring certainly looks interesting wonder when that's gonna turn up what's the deal with this cynically marketable character hell at the start of most of shakespeare's plays someone stands up and tells everyone the ending not as a spoiler but to get them wondering about how that happened and eager to find out via the rest of the performance video games are no different in order to hook players in they need to create some sort of long-term question in a player's mind relating to the game's narrative its mechanical possibilities or ideally both for example legend of zelda breath of the wild is smartly designed so as to show off all of its most interesting mechanics that being the physics system fire and sheika state abilities during the opening leaving the player to wonder about all the cool potential applications they'll have once the game lets them off the great plateau and ring of pain reeled me in not only with its incredibly creepy aesthetic and its surreal dreamlike setting containing horrible monster owl but also the really unique take on dungeon crawling that comes from all the levels being rings to go a little bit more in depth let's revisit our good friend xenoblade chronicles 2 as well as its older more successful brother celebrate chronicles 1 to illustrate why good hooks are so important xenoblade 1 engages players on a mechanical and narrative level right from the outset for example from almost the very beginning of the game you have access to the status effects break topple and days which form part of a chain these statuses correspond to each of your three starting characters shulk is an aggressive supporter and so he can use break which makes enemies more vulnerable to status effects rein the tank of the team can topple crowd controlling enemies by briefly immobilizing them and fiora the starting trio's damage dealer can daze causing enemies to forget who damaged them the most and not attack your squishy damage dealers of which fiora is the squishiest this combo adds a great dimension to fights on top of your regular positioning damage and healing concerns and even has unique applications against particular enemies armored mekong the main baddies could normally only be damaged when toppled or dazed so you've got to build up the combo then unleash all of your moves at once in one big burst chain attacks which let you freeze time and combo moves together as well as shulk's super powerful monado arts once he gets his hands on it also add a lot of combat depth as you unlock more moves and character combinations in essence xenoblade 1 throws all of its most interesting mechanics of players right from the get-go and slowly expands upon them as the game goes on to keep players interested this is a philosophy that extends to its story small spoiler warning for the intro of xenoblade 1 it happens very early in the game but it is very important to the plot so skip here if you'd like to avoid it use your own judgment about 90 minutes into the game the harper town of call 89 gets invaded by those mekong i mentioned earlier and after a cool showdown with this big me [ __ ] fiora gets murdered yep she she's just dead she's gone what it took final fantasy 7 half a game to build up to xenoblade chronicles does in the tutorial fiora's death at the hands of metal face is the catalyst for the entire story and is pretty emotional with players really looking forward to getting revenge on the mekong even mechanically minded players will be sad that they no longer have a dedicated day specialist and won't get a new one until the seventh and final party member about two-thirds of the way through the game by putting its best foot forwards at all times and using hooks aggressively xenoblade chronicles 1 creates some fantastic starting momentum that can carry players all the way through to the end of the game xenoblade 2 on the other hand does almost none of this let's start with the mechanics shall we unlike its predecessor zelda blade 2 is a much more complicated game and the game wisely locks off some of its more complicated mechanics to avoid overwhelming new players unfortunately the game cuts out too much forcing you to spend the first few hours of the game watching ranks slowly auto-attack lobsters to death and occasionally getting to use an ability instead of allowing players to get into the fun stuff right away celebrate two leads with its weakest mechanics like the poorly explained and badly balanced pouch items and the mind-bogglingly stupid gadget mechanic requiring new party members why this is in a single player game i will never know the brake topple combo when chain attacks are both actually in xenoblade 2 and are much more nuanced this time around the problem is that you can't really access any of the interesting combat stuff until you're about a third of the way through the game which is just too much of a time commitment if you're asking players to wait upwards of 15 hours longer than most games just for the combat to start being fun a similar complaint can also be levelled with a story xenoblade 2's story is actually pretty good as far as jrpgs go it just makes the critical error of forgetting to give players any easy narrative hugs at the start of the game ranks and pyro the two main characters don't really have any easy to relate to character motivations at the start beyond the former doing whatever the mysterious booby lady tells him to as well as some vague plot about stopping these big titans from dying and the bad guys jin and malos are about as generic as anime bad guys can get complete with hammy scene chewing dialogue the frustrating part is that pirate actually has some really interesting character motivations the law behind the titans is a great reveal and jin in particular is probably the best written character in the game but new players are given no indication that this is the case and no reason to care about anything that's happening until it's much too late meaning that all they're left with is and oh boy now these are some pretty damning criticisms but i think i know what xenoblade 2 was trying to do namely cater to people who've never ever touched anything resembling a jrpg at all and so need the gentlest possible introduction that's why it tries not to overwhelm people with a complex story or mechanics rather start and introduces things they're going to be familiar with asap two things to be precise unfortunately because most people who are going to pick up xenoblade 2 the third entry in a popular series of a fairly well established genre are already familiar with what to expect this conservative intro is only going to frustrate people but that brings up an interesting point introductions are all about conveying information to the audience but anyone who picks up a piece of media for the first time is never going to be a blank slate people are always going to come into an experience with pre-existing knowledge and expectations and it's important to keep that stuff in mind a good example of how to do this right can be seen in doom 2016 which probably has one of the best opening 15 minutes in any game ever and it all hinges around the idea that players know exactly what they're getting into when they boot up the game instead of treating you to a long dire tribe about the nature of the doom marine or what's going on at the ark facility doom 2016 gives you a single instruction as you boot up the game for the first time rip and tear until the work is done everything after that is designed to give players exactly the feeling they came for in the first 10 seconds you cave in a zombie's skull just after that you get lined up for a series of awesome headshots and after that you get to see people literally worshiping you you feel like a badass almost instantly even the environment design reflects this gratification first ethos like in the case of this little sign reading demonic invasion in progress which is the silliest thing in the world if you think about it for even a second but it helps to sell the idea that this is a universe operating under zero pretense as to why you're really here the game doesn't need to hinter the demonic threats or even really give you a reason to fight them because you bought a doom game you already want to shoot demons ago the game spends most of its opening letting you do just that it introduces an imp specifically to let you splatter his brains all over the wall with your new shotgun the first combat arena is all about setting up a bunch of different angles for you to do glory kills from and the doom marine shows the same active contempt for the lame story that the player no doubt does making them feel like a badass for wanting to skip the law and get to the blasting even doom eternal which i'd say has the far weaker introduction of the two games does the same thing it assumes that most people picking it up have already played doom 2016 and so hands you some of its most iconic weapons really quickly you get the chainsaw and an upgrade for your shotgun before you've even had your first real fight with the machine gun coming not long after because the game wants you to feel just as cool as you're used to feeling as soon as possible when you get right down to it that's what an introduction is supposed to do to harmonize the player's expectations and the developer's intent putting you both on the same wavelength if players aren't getting what they want out of a game or worse don't know what kind of experience a game is trying to give them there's no way they're gonna stick with it without some sort of outside incentive and it's probably not a good idea for developers to rely on everyone being a professional gamer like me by investing effort into making the introduction of their games more punchy and resonant with the rest of the game not only can developers improve retention rates but they'll also enhance the middle and ends of their games with fun moments of payoff metroid prime for example shows you some cool abilities really early on and then takes them away giving you a great motivation to go and get them back and making you feel really powerful when you do similarly if we players can learn to see the starts of games not as obligatory stumbling blocks but the appetizers that prepare our palette for the main course not only will we have a much easier time getting into games but we'll also be able to spot games that try to trick us with their openings as well like how card games like hearthstone start off generous and match you against bots but slowly get stingier and stingier the more you play creating a big disconnect between the intro and the main body of the game some games take time to get good but more often than not they don't really need to as more and more games master the art of the intro we can spend less time waiting around for them to get good and more time actually having fun because at the end of the day if a player is not enjoying themselves at the start of the game they're probably not gonna be enjoying themselves at the end either right with the introduction to introductions out the way let's get to the real topic of the video that being how super mario brothers world 1-1 teaches you how to jump i know it sounds pretty crazy but just stick with me hello my lovelies how are you doing good ah great here at the end of an unexpectedly long video i'm going to thank my lovely patrons who you can see on the side of the screen over there and promote something that i think deserves my beneficent attention this time around it's the yogscast jingle jam which is a yearly charity drive that comes with a bundle of awesome games as an incentive for donating some highlights being transistor for the king and sunless sea all of which are great and come with my recommendation and of course the charitable causes are more than worth your money a thing that also comes with my recommendation is becoming a patron of me people who become patrons get early access to videos extra behind the scenes looks at stuff and even special bonus content not that kind of special bonus content for that you've got to be a member of my only fans anyway in addition to all that my top tier supporters also get a special shout out and those people are alex delaunch andrew lebrono assaran ashley shade alsakav baxter heel big chess brian atariani constantinapunct daniel medjes david setzer dirk jan karen beld ekton edward franklin woods eugene bulkin evie philip magnus gaskill george sears greta hannahsen jacob dylan riddle jesse rein joey bruno jordan gear joshua binswanger janos faketa kai gillespie lee berman lucas slack lunar eagle 1996 mace window 54 max philippov nate graff nwdd patrick romberg philby the bilby redder x regal regex rey's dad samuel vanderblatz sheldon hearn simon jacobson steve reilly strategy and ultima we're toss and chow there we go thank you very much for watching i'm gonna try and sneak out a video before the special end of the year one but we'll see how that goes all right bye

Channel: Adam Millard - The Architect of Games

Views: 734,266

Rating: 4.8995194 out of 5

Keywords: Games, Video Games, Gaming, PC Gaming, Adam, Adam Millard, Architect, AoG, Architect of Games, Review, Analysis, Game Design, Xenoblade, Xenoblade Chronicles, Definitive edition, Xenoblade 2, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Shulk, Rex, Pyra, Mythra, Walkthrough, Tutorials, Best tutorials, Worst tutorials, Citizen Kane, Breath of the Wild, Witcher, The Wticher, Cyberpunk

Id: PnTZLXTUFU0

Length: 21min 0sec (1260 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/unholyswordsman]

For me personally, I love The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess but the first 2-3 hours of the game feels like a slog with the exception of the Forest Temple. After that, it's fairly smooth to me. I guess it's just because the beginning has a huge exposition/lore dump.

[u/AwesomeX121189]

Xenoblade chronicles 2 as the thumbnail is perfect.

It’s the first game that comes to mind for me for one that has a incredibly slow beginning for both story and gameplay. I was like 50 hours in and still getting tutorial pop ups for new mechanics mid fights.

[u/reverendmalerik]

Final Fantasy 13's combat system (not the story, that never gets good unfortunately, it's a confusing mess from start to finish) is FANTASTIC after you complete the 25 hour long tutorial.

Also everyone tells me RDR2 is great, but my god I played it for like 6 hours and it still didn't feel like it had started.

[u/WhiteWolfofRivia0914]

This is one of my biggest problems with Kingdom Hearts 2 - the beginning segment with Roxas is so painfully dull and uninteresting to me. I completely understand why it's there and why they did it, but that doesn't make playing through it any more enjoyable. I always just skip through it as quickly as I can.

[u/Bay0net]

This is my biggest problem with the JRPG genre. Japanese games seem to be the worst for this (outside of Dark Souls - being the exact opposite of this). I could not keep playing Dragon Quest XI because I felt like I was in the tutorial 20 hours in it, and I genuinely wanted to like the game. The new Pokemon is nearly unplayable for me and I hear it has the most minimal tutorial of them all.... About to try Persona 4 here soon, hoping it isn't as bad but not holding my breath.

[u/Jagarippy]

TIL people think The Witcher 2 starts poorly?

First I'm hearing it.