What irritates me to no end is when people say something really braindead like “Oh yeah I know the game has a slow start but it gets good forty hours in I swear!” Yeah okay smooth brain you think I’m going to waste forty hours of my life just to enjoy an alright game? No.
When I watch anime I usually decide if I’ll keep watching past the first episode within twenty minutes. Sometimes I watch for only five minutes before dropping it. And that’s because the show isn’t interesting at all. It didn’t present anything new, it didn’t have any interesting characters or settings, nothing at all.
Of course you could argue that dropping a show within the first five minutes is a little too early to decide whether or not its worth my time. And you’re right about that.
But think of it this way. Most people don’t read an entire book and then decide whether or not they liked it. Most people read the first few chapters and if they don’t like it they’ll stop reading. Which is why it’s so important for the first chapter to hook the reader. Even this first sentence should ideally catch the reader’s attention although this is pretty difficult to do.
Now back to video games. There seems to be a big problem with video games where the first hour or so is filled to the brim with cutscenes and tutorials. To the point to where you’re wondering when you get to play this video game. It could be that the developers aren’t in such a hurry to hook the player since nobody is going to drop a game within the first five minutes especially if it’s one of the first-party games that cost sixty dollars, the same way nobody is going to exit the movie theater after five minutes since they’ve already paid for their ticket. I guess the mentality is I’ve already paid for it so I’ll experience it even if I don’t like it.
Confession: I don’t know anything about writing, probably due to the fact that the only form of writing schools care about are essays. However I do have a few thoughts on how to start a story. A unique setting or cast of characters always helps, immediately starting off with a cool action scene is pretty common, and the best way, in my opinion, is starting at a bizarre place. Either by having the setting and events not making sense which leads the viewer into wanting to know what is going on or by starting not at where a story typically starts but at the climax near the end. It’s a pretty common cliche that I’m sure everyone has seen a million times: there’s some sort of crazy event going on and then everything freezes and the main character says something cliche like “Yep. That’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here.” And then the cliche happens where time goes back to the beginning of all the events and the entire movie is explaining how things got to that scene in the beginning.
It’s been done to death and is pretty stupid at this point but there must have been some reason for it becoming so overused. That must be proof that it’s an effective way to start a story.
There’s absolutely nothing interesting about listening to two characters exposition dump in order to explain everything that’s going on. A lot of shows must think that people like hearing other people talk about other people or places. Maybe everyone else does but I don’t. It’d be more understandable if the setting was a really out there concept that would be really hard to comprehend without someone telling you how it works but a lot of anime and video games just reuse an already done setting which makes me wonder why they bother to explain it at all.
The main character is just having a monologue for the first five minutes droning on about some chimp brain garbage like “I was reincarnated in this fantasy world with magic and monsters and you can level up by killing monsters and blahdogshdlgsjhld” and I’m just staring at the screen thinking Shut up already or I’ll rip your spine out. You could probably search up “fantasy kingdom”, find a random image, and it’d illustrate the show perfectly.
The last thing I want to talk about is how unoriginal everything is. Obviously all stories borrow some elements from each other but a good chunk of them just feel like the same thing but with a different coat of paint. I’m sure there’s a point where generic action films and boring romance movies will get old but Hollywood doesn’t seem to think so. My favorite pieces of work are when something new and different is tried and even though the idea sounds stupid on paper it somehow miraculously works and it works so well especially because it’s something I’ve never seen before. This doesn’t mean that different is good; there’s a lot of shows with something new but just don’t work because the idea is stupid. It takes a true genius to take that stupid idea and make it good. I don’t think there are any bad premises for a story, only that some ideas are harder to execute that others.
so guys, i hoped you enjoyed my blog, don’t bother responding because your opinion is wrong and you’re just a hater. sayonara!