It Gets Good After 30 Hours (The Jimquisition)
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- Опубліковано 25 лис 2024
- With special guest, The Stupendium! ( / thestupendium )
An Evening with Commander Sterling: www.skiddle.co...
Is a game worth playing if it doesn't get good until you've played thirty hours of it? Inspired by Final Fantasy discourse, I tackle this thorny issue with the grace and balance you've come to expect!
#FinalFantasy #NierAutomata #SpecOps #FinalFantasyXVI #FinalFantasyXIII #TheStupendium #TheJimquisition #JimSterling #JamesStephanieSterling #Games #Gaming #videogames
N U T N U T
Blasting come
The nutnut nut is a giant nut
If you eat too much, you'll get very fat
Now, the nutnut nut is a big, big nut
But this delicious nut is not a nut
Cum
I laughed out loud then wheezed like an old man when that punchline was delivered!
The best nut nut is pingu
I think a lot of people need to realize you can love something without needing everyone else to love it as well.
Perhaps they would prefer it if their tastes were affirmed as correct
That's true, but you can also just say, "nah I'm good". When you love something people often want to share it with someone else, either to get dialogue going, they want to validate it, or because its something they think others might want to see.
i know some people irl who act like if don't like the same stuff they enjoy then i don't like them, or they just try to constantly get me into stuff that i've tried and already know i don't like. drives me nuts. like we can be friends even if we don't like the same music or video games.
Also, loving something and being able to analyze and criticize that thing shouldn't be mutually exclusive. I often wonder how much someone actually loves something if pointing out flaws in that thing make them go into a frothing break down or feel the need to defend the thing.
"(I can't get no) Satisfaction" has a line "he can't be a man if he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me". The song is almost 60 years old but somehow still rings true after all this time, people have a need for their tastes to be shared by everyone else and the only thing that has changed about it in modern times is that it's much easier to impose their preferences onto everyone via the internet.
"It gets good after 30 hours" You could say the same thing about not sleeping.
I can confirm that you cannot in fact say that about not sleeping. It still sucks no matter how many hours you go
Isn't that around the time when the hallucinations start to kick in?
Sleeping does indeed get good after 30 hours. 😸
@@mjc0961 Every thought is a zinger, every challenge is a fight you can win, your body feels like its floating all the time. Its like being on acid without any of the positivity!
THEM VISIONS REALLY MAKE YA FEEL GOOD, EVEN IF ME LIVER IS FAILIN' BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
One point in Spec Ops' favor is that, even if you *do* hate the gameplay, the whole game is maybe six hours. You can polish it off in a single afternoon and move on to other things, and the story will likely stick with you longer than any of the actual experience of playing it.
"Can you even remember why you came here?"
honestly that gameplay was nothing special but at that time that plotline really got me invested.
When I replayed the game and realized you were litterally just supposed to confirm if people were alive and then get out to report it the line got me harder. I completely forgot why I came to Dubai.
That fucking game gave me depession for the rest of the day
The two biggest problems with Spec Ops: The Line, outside the mediocre game play, are:
Firstly that all the bad things it chides you for doing are things that it *made* you do in order to progress to the point where it chides you for them. It would be clever and poignant if it presented you with situations where you can blindly do the things that other shooters at the time pretty much expected you to do and go along with without question, *_but_* you can refuse to do those things without the game grinding to a halt. I know that someone at the studio said that if you didn't want to be forced to commit atrocities you could choose turning off the game...
But fuck that.
The absolute fucking gall of telling people to turn off your game after you've already got their money, just because they already learned the lesson that you're sanctimoniously trying to force on your players is staggering.
Secondly... Spec Ops: The Line was not the first Spec Ops game. All the previous Spec Ops games were utterly mediocre, cookie cutter 'modern shooter' games played all the tropes that The Line chided players for blindly accepting in 'modern shooters' far _more_ straight than any of its more successful competitors. It may have done it extremely poorly, but even Call of fucking Duty tried to present some level of nuance more than the "Fuck yeah! Brown people bad, 'Murica good!" shit that the original Spec Ops games did.
@@RvEijndhovenThat’s why I never played Spec Ops The Line myself despite my curiosity. If I’m forced to do something in a computer game then it’s not my choice to be chided for and the message won’t get through.
@@RvEijndhoven Both of your complaints are missing the same point. Spec Ops: The Line isn't chiding you for playing *Spec Ops: The Line* but rather is chiding you for playing *any game within that same genre to begin with* .
Like, you *know* what you're getting into when you pick up a Modern Warfare or any other game of its like. Even if you're not actively dropping white phosphorous on civilians, you're still committing a fuckton of war crimes (the Red Cross held a meeting about ten years back about how cavalier Modern War-style video games were about the Geneva Conventions, in fact), all because a little objective marker told you to. Also at the time The Line was released, you were pretty much murdering brown people exclusively in all such games.
Sure, Spec Ops: The Line is also doing a pretty solid Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now homage on the surface, but all the fourth wall breaks and subtext are a criticism not of the player, but of the genre itself, and the people who keep it afloat. Much like how Bioshock Infinity didn't actually care about whatever was going on in Columbia because the actual message was that making sequels to Bioshock was a stupid idea because it's basically the same thing every time.
Brandon Sanderson talked about this in his lectures, there's this idea that many writers are all writing for cinema instead of writing for their medium. When you're writing a movie script you can just assume the audience will stick around until the end because they're socially and physically trapped in the theatre, but take that same movie and make it a game the player has to come back to over and over again for hours at a time and suddenly there is absolutely no guarantee they'll have the patience for the set up and so will never expierience the twist
Yep. Ever since I looked into the hero-worship social phenomena in Hideo Kojima, and his weird "trend-chasing" cinematography, and strange, hack writing in his games I noticed the pattern. It's clear as day Kojima wants to direct movies, which is probably why he feels "above" video game writing and doesn't exhibit much passion for video game dev as he did back then. It doesn't surprise me that he's not the only one who want to write for movies and not games, but may feel they are stuck with games. Games and movies are vastly different mediums when it comes to storytelling, and it seems not a whole lot of people get that.
@@fieryrebirthKojima should definitely be given work in movies, but he'll have to be ready for the phenomenon of people now being willing to get up and leave the cinema in the middle of a picture.
Brandon did Robert Jordan proud imo finishing those books even with the outline and guidance was beautiful.
To give Kojima credit, he directs writing and pacing quite well, and perhaps most importantly, makes sure the game good too.
Isn't that guy a cultist lol
Y'know the argument it gets better has been around for decades now I think. I always remember Josh Strife Hayes' words on this subject: "I don't care if it gets good in 100 hours if I don't even get that far."
Speaking of collabs that would blow lots of minds
This is such a good argument. And he did it in reference to a lot of mmo that focuses too much on the endgame
@@gateauxq4604 with how shallow Josh can be I think that'd be a fucking disaster
Old man Murray, as shit as they were, brought up this point often. My favorite line of theirs was something like "I paid $60 for this damn thing, I don't want to wait for the fun. In fact, all games should be shipped with balloons so I can have some fun while waiting for the game to install."
Given a choice between:
‘If you’re loving it now wait till you get 30 hours in, you’ll love it’
And
‘If you’re hating it now wait till you get 30 hours in, you’ll love it’
I know which I’d prefer to be playing.
Yeah. So does everyone.
If I had the choice of getting stabbed repeatedly in a dark alley or going to get ice cream with a good friend. I know which one I'd pick.
@@everennui1 Hmm, if you add in someone arguing that after getting stabbed enough it’ll get more enjoyable then I’ll agree with your analogy.
@jonro1091 you mean like, how so many people would argue that 30 hours of a bad time is better than a good time. I think I'm following your logic now.
This is what fans of that type of game can't grasp. The same happens with Death Stranding.
In writing I would agree but my literal favourite game I've ever played with the best story I've ever experienced within any form of media that exists is kinda one if those "gets good after x time" games. And sure during the start I would rather play something else, but if I gave up at that point, I wouldn't have experienced the best story and game I've ever experienced. So it's difficult.
30 hours=15-20 movies, or three seasons of a TV show, or nearly a full week of office work; and the latter is the only thing most people will put up with for being terrible for that long.
And YOU get paid at the end of the work, whereas you're the one paying for a slog of a game
I read through Les Miserables lately - I'm a faster than average reader, but not by much - and it took me about 25 hours. I've never understood why games are ideally supposed to reach points that are universally agreed to become arduous slogs with other media.
The TV seasons one is a good comparison. A recommendation for a TV series which goes "the first season is a little rough but it gets much better after that" or "you can skip the first season and just read a summary" might still be worth a watch. A recommendation which goes "You have to watch all of the first 3 seasons even though only season 4 onwards is worth watching" is an automatic no from me
Only gamers put up with this garbage. And they will pay more for it, and they will pay extra to make the game suck less with microtransactions.
The work comparison is excellent. If a job is awful, I'm not sticking around until Friday afternoon because free pizza is given out. I'm quitting on Monday or Tuesday and buying my own pizza to recover from the shitshow.
- Make friends with a cute blonde and play around at a fair.
- Watch your new friend disappear when she volunteers to engage in an experiment made by your best friend.
- Discover the experiment is a TIME MACHINE and go back 1,400 years in the past to rescue your new friend because you're a brave badass
- Find yourself waylaid by monsters while stuck in the middle of a war between humans and demons.
- Team up with your scientist friend and a TALKING FROG KNIGHT to prevent a time paradox and save your new friend who is actually a princess.
- Go on trial for supposedly kidnapping said princess upon getting back to the present and break out of prison to fight a dragon tank.
- Find yourself flung into an apocalyptic future to discover that the world eventually comes to an end via giant alien leech and resolve to stop it because, again, you are a badass.
You do this in Chrono Trigger. . . in the first three hours.
Another point about Chrono Trigger: the *entire game* is less than 30 hours! Even if you do *everything*, all side quests and so on. And I'm not talking about the speedrun, I'm talking about a normal, casual playthrough. Everything, the entire game, even the new DS content, is less than 30 hours. And clearly people are still talking about it almost 30 years later. Will people be talking about FFXVI 30 years from now, except to point out how backwards it is? Likely not.
comparing anything to Chrono Trigger is a bit unfair, that game is damn near perfect.
I will say that Square Enix started to have their games be too bloated with Final Fantasy 7. Every game they did before was like 30 to 35 hours even on 100%, starting with Final Fantasy 7 their games started to be too long, with sections where you just meander around not doing much of note. It's why i can easily replay Final Fantasy 5 or 6 because they are relatively quick, but i need to be in the mood for Final Fantasy 9.
I don't want to play that game because:
1. Fans are only bringing that game (and FFVI) up just to shit on FFXIII and anyone who likes it.
2. The characters were designed by Akira Toriyama. If they were designed by Yoshitaka Amano, Tetsuya Nomura or Akihiko Yoshida, then I would have more interest in it.
@@okagron And yet everyone loves to gush over Final Fantasy 7 for some reason I cannot fathom.
People, people, people, you may not have liked this video yet, but it get a lot better after watching it on a loop for 30 hours!
this should get pinned lol
Flawless logic is flawless.
lmao
was just about to make this comment
As someone who watched it on loop for 30 hours, I can confirm
"It gets good after 30 hours" really means "The first 30 hours are not good". It is like licking a turd to get to a yummy chocolate center
Funny thing about Breaking Bad's first season: Even though it does pale in comparison to the rest of the show, it completely changes when you rewatch it after finishing the show. The first time you watch it you're lead to believe that Walter was just this frustrated nerdy guy who was dealt a bad hand and resorted to making meth because he was left with relatively few options. But after seeing what happened to him later and revisiting it, you realize that he was always kind of a selfish bastard whose ego was going to destroy everything and everyone around him no matter what. If Walter had swallowed his pride and accepted Gretchen and Elliott's offer, the show would've been over after one episode.
yup' walter white is a bad guy.
I think this is why I kind of hated show. Walter White was always an insufferable prick from episode 1 to me, so I couldn't really get drawn into the plot of Walter making everything worse for everyone all of the time.
@@tracyh5751 do you not like villains?
For me it’s Berserk watching the first episode after the rest of the session is just wild
@@tracyh5751 Yeah, these days, we could get that IRL by watching Musk destroy twitter.
"Is this game worth reaching thirtieth hour for?" is a valuable question.
There's a big difference between "a game that starts bad and gets better later" and "a game that starts ok and gets great later"
what about a game that statrs ok and gets bad? (grandia 3)
I thought that 2nd one of Arceus Legends on the first playthrough.
No there isn't. That's still opinion.
@@sdgdhpmbp there is, but what qualifies as a bad game (that MAYBE gets better later if you have the patience to slog through the bad stuff) and what qualifies as a good game (that maybe gets better later, but who cares, you're having fun now) is what the opinion actually is
@@sdgdhpmbp Why?
You know when Steph was talking about shows need to have a good first season or else they won’t get a second, in my head I was thinking “well unless it’s on Netflix” and lo and behold Steph was on the same page
RIP Cowboy Bebop 😭😭😭
@@WebbanationX RIP Sense8.
Or you can have waifus and idiots will defend it to the death like RWBY
@@Vashkey What even is the plot of RWBY anymore?!
@@stingerjohnny9951the Grimm Brothers are literal God heads of a world. Some dumb bitch wants her sweetheart to be realived so much she throws hands, gets cursed with immortality so she can never see her sweetheart again, convinces the rest of the planet to revolt, gets em killed, the Grimm Brothers fuck off while dumb bitch tries to drown herself in pig lake from the simpsons movie only to become Joker, centuries later one Grimm brother reincarnated her boyfriend in some random dude who goes out to find dumb bitch, they meet up and start a religion with one another while getting down to bone Town, boyfriend talks about four whatsamajiggers to bring the Grimm Brothers back, dumb bitch still wants to throw hand, hijinks ensure between the two. Several centuries later red riding hood, snow white, Belle, and Goldilocks team up to stop dump bitch from summoning the brothers again in hopes of throwing hands and getting everyone but herself killed again. Ya got all that?
I remember Yahtzee saying two things on the subject.
"Why do I need to wait 40 hours for it to be good? Why can't it be good now?"
And something his English teacher once said "Is this the most interesting thing that happened in your characters life? And if not, why aren't you writing about *that*?"
Because someone's life is not a singular interesting event and not all stories should be about a singular event.
And let's not forget about something called pacing and character development.
This story takes place over...18 years or more in a 30 to 70 hours long game.
Not everything can be balls destroying, tits growing and wig wearing as the image of Jimbo (my god. He is an entire circus, costumes and all).
Take game of Thrones or rather "a song of ice and fire" and look at how many events happen and how many of those are "interesting" and how many are 2 characters talking while eating or doing mondane things. Are those moments "the most interesting thing that happens to the characters"?
All I get from your comment is that your teacher was an idiot and there's a reason he was teaching. As the saying goes, "when you can't do something, teach it".
Of something like that.
Given the state of the modern education system, I'm not shocked. If you want a real laugh at incompetence and pure idiocy, look at a gender studies class.
In the wise words of Zero Punctuation: "If someone serves you a dead dog for an appetizer, you don't stick around for the main course!"
EDIT: So FF16 wants to be Dragon Age, without anything that made DA good? See also, DA was good right out of the starting gate!
Its funny how much Yahtzee and Stephanie have shaped how criticism even works these days.
Another ZP quote I am always reminded of in these discussions: ‘Some people have told me that FF13 gets good 20 hours in. You know that's not really a point in its favour, right? Put your hand on a stove for 20 hours and yeah, you'll probably stop feeling the pain, but you'll have done serious damage to yourself.’
Do you remember which episode it's from?
Yeah when Spoony reviewed FF13 back in the back day he brought up the thing everyone said, "about 20 hours in the game gets good" and answered that with "20 hours in? F@#$ you! Why can't the game be good right now?!"
@@silak33 Ah damn, I'm going to be up all night trying to figure that out!
The problem with games involving slavery is that often the evil characters feels cartoonish, even if the portrayal is realistic. But what feels cartoonish in a fantasy world will never reach the levels of real life slavery such as buying babies by the pound or feeding children to dogs and having the parents watch. Both things which we have accounts of. It's hard to write "slavery bad" that doesn't feel anvilicious, sadly.
the problem with writing that is that its shallow and toothless if its just "haha! i have slaves because im an evil evil person!" instead of "but i NEED slaves!!!! they are my right! actually its moral and good and im justified and youre all jealous and why are you angry at me"
they invented fake science and formulated language and theology around trying to enforce everything they do to be justified
It's also a good parallel for Fantasy Oppression, wherein the oppressors have some reason for oppressing the oppressed that seems unfair or misunderstood. But that's not how fucking oppression works? Cyclops in X-men faces prejudice because people are afraid that he'll trip on the subway, have his sunglassess fall off, and his eyeballs melt a carriage full of children.
You know, an actual fear? Conservatives have prejudice against trans people for insane things they totally made up because actual prejudice is almost always intrinsically irrational, and usually is created for reason of power and control. "People fear and misunderstand my people for our magic, which i constantly use to help you inc rutal cobat fights by creating fireballs with my hand" - that's seems a rational reason innate power imbalance to be nervous about to be honest! Trans people don't have magic power. Black people can't control the weather with their minds! Prejudice is not grounded in rationality!
Sorry, "people just seem to hate and fear mutants [whose worst members keep threatening the entire planet with genocide on the daily]" is my pet peeve. People talk about how heavy-handed that TOS episode about racism is, the one with the white-on-the-left-side and white-on-the-right-side aliens, but it was right! Prejudice is grounded in arbitrary and stupid things!
Fallout New Vegas did it pretty well though. The Legion are not good people, but their methods are consistent and make sense within their logic. There is also a lot of nuance surrounding their collective because they are emulating Caesar, but their interpretation of history and Hegelian Dialectics are not completely accurate. So if their understanding is fundamentally flawed, it makes sense why they are doing these horrible things.
And all slavery portrayed in games now is literally copied after American chattel slavery, which is quite different from the majority of slavery in history. Which was much more nuanced and complex
I feel like I do have to say that slavery is bad. What we're talking about is how cartoonishly simple it's portrayed as in games. Generally there is no conversation being had about why slavery is being used in these systems other than the people doing it are evil and enjoy human suffering. Bioshock infinite was pretty cartoonishly evil, but they bothered to explain why they thought it was necessary to create an underclass of people and basically were scapegoating people who were already being scapegoated at that time.
"it gets good after 30 hours" is also the precursor to "pay this microtransaction to skip the grind and have more fun than the proles"
Or "play this gacha game that has a really interesting opening hook but after that you have to slog through grindy, tedious gameplay and fluff that tempts you toward gambling for hours on end before you get to a brief 3 min cutscene that moves the main plot by one inch."
How about the Ultimate Microtransaction: Pay this much extra to start with the game already completed and skip playing entirely!
_"But of course, the message of the game only becomes clear once you've been playing it for about four hours. So why don't you give it four hours of play to make sure it's effective"_ - The Narrator
I kind of felt this way about FFXIV level skips.
I genuinely hated grinding levels in FFXIV (as in, by means other than MSQ) so much that I started feeling like they put in the level boosts to skip the inconvenience.
As much as I love you deep diving into shifty industry practices I'm so glad you are getting back into talking about and reviewing video games more
"Some people have told me that FFXIII gets good about 20 hours in. You know that's not really a point in its favor, right? Put your hand on a stove for 20 hours and yeah, you'll probably stop feeling the pain, but you'll have done serious damage to yourself."
-Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, Zero Punctuation: Final Fantasy XIII
It would probably take me 30 hours to read that damn in-game lore encyclopedia to understand any of the nonsense they were talking about in that game.
It doesn't. It's bland, boring, and confusing the whole way through
Yahtzee, you inappropriate menstruation joke!
I love FFXIII and hate the amount of hate it got.
@stephen2624 it deserves it
It gets good after x hours where x equals an exponentially increasing likelihood that you’re actually experiencing an acute case of sunken cost fallacy.
Or as I like to see it, "Stockholm Syndrome", the video game equivalent of "I can change him."
Sometimes its truth though. There are those games that do start out pretty boring and it takes awhile to get going but it really does pick up once you do get to that point. There have been many games I am glad I sucked it up for the first few hours. Other times its just fanpeople trying to justify why they like it and using timegating as a way to invalidate your argument. The really task is figuring out which camp the person trying to make an argument is in.
Why the fuck are so many people in the comments trying to act like the very concept of a piece of media getting better is ridiculous?
Like actually get a fucking grip? The fuck is wrong with you...
Then why is no mentioning TLOU2 or the entire live service genre? Why is just FFXIII?
@@stephen2624 the video is very specifically a problematization of a specific argument Steph saw made in defense of FFXVI. If you wanted a full academic dissertation on the phenomenon, then you’re looking in entirely the wrong place for it and should be on Google Scholar instead.
I think part of the issue is time - when I was younger I could slog through hours of rubbish to get to the good part, but as an adult with less time, a game has to be good pretty quickly if not from the start for me to want to stick with it
Nah, it's just that modern manchildren have the patience of an 8 year old on sugar rush and want everything NOW and for FREE. because they deserve it because they are special and unique.
People are spoiled to an extreme. A reason why so many end up drawning in politics and joining cults on a cult of fake personality cults. It's pretty funny. These people are so shallow, average and uninteresting that their cults of personality are around their skin color and sexual orientation, which is their entire personality.
Or the fact that they are vegan, the fact that they are communists, that they hate a certain person (especially those that hate a certain orange man), that they wear a dress and call themselves with a girls name.
And it's even funnier when some try to disguise their childish behavior by claiming that it's the opposite.
It's not the attention span of a toddler, it's that people don't have time.
That's why they binge watch trash childish Disney shows and movies for hours everyday. It's all about lack of time and the quality of stuff.
That's why everyone eats McDonalds: they just don't have time to cook, not that people are lazy and love all the sugar and fats prepared in a few minutes tops.
Otherwise they would only eat healthy vegetables and meats. Of course they are also fat because it's a genetic disorder than 2 in 3 people have and not because they are lazy and eat trash food.
There's something enjoyable about seeing Steph wander around being a chaos gremlin
A wild Steph in their element... so majestic. So beautiful.
Hope you really enjoyed your time at the Stupendium
It was a lovely time, they’re a wonderful host.
Even the first 30 hours?
@@eternalfailure4081 I get especially wonderful at hour 31.
@@TheStupendium Can confirm your music gets better after 30 hours of listening. Not that it wasn't great to begin with.
"It gets good after 30 hours" I beat and enjoyed Darksiders 3 in 25 hours, and it's a story focused game.
Glad to see a fellow Darksiders fan. I would like to add that Darksiders 2 gets you hooked 1 hour in the moment you enter Tri-Stone.
Every Darksiders is worth playing.
@@aureliodeprimus8018 Funny enough, I played it at the recommendation of James Stephanie Sterling.
I love my edgy bible fanfiction edition of classic God of War. It's genuinely a great experience
Darksiders represent!
Would watch an entire video of Stephanie Sterling stressing out The Stupendium.
And jacking that train off while making car engine revving sounds and telling everyone else to "please continue doing train things".
I would watch an entire musical of these two
More than one tbh.
There's something I've been thinking about a lot recently. And its that there's, like, two broad camps of media consumers. Especially in videogames. ESPECIALLY in RPGs, open world games, and all other big adventure-y games. Basically, to put it real bluntly, there's people who prefer "quality" and people who prefer, I guess like... "bang for the buck." This first really hit me some years ago when I saw a reddit poll about ideal jRPG length. One of the options was basically "the longer the better" and, wow, that seemed to be a rather popular choice at the time.
Granted, one whole reddit poll doesn't really make a case, and I haven't exactly been collecting hard statistics since then, but... I dunno, it really does kinda feel like if you ask any individual person about this, they're gonna lean towards either "I don't want my time wasted" or "please waste as much as my time as possible on purpose." And I don't necessarily mean either of those in a bad way, it's just an observation that I haven't really formulated a proper academic thesis about, heh.
Point is, I can see how the latter group is more likely to come to bat for such games as these.
Yeah, disappointingly high percentage of players in that “please waste my time category”. I suspect those pollers to represent the younger, less jaded audience
As a child, when $60 is like several months' worth of allowance, you'd of course hope a game will actually last you that long. Some people seem to just never have grown out of that mindset.
As a kid, I had a bit more tolerance for games that took a while to get good. After all, I a fair bit of time and only like three games. My choices were "keep playing this game in the hopes that it gets good later" or "go read a book or something because you don't have any other games". These days, when I have less time and more games, I need some damn good word of mouth if I'm going to wait even four hours until a game gets to the good part. After all, I can always just go play something that's good right out of the gate.
I'm 38. I have a full time job with a commute, a fiancé, and a social life. I no longer am willing to give time *or* patience, quite frankly, to a game that makes me wade through 30 hours (or more!) of mediocrity just to get to the parts that are marginally better.
I genuinely don't understand Steph's point. Clive is the son of a "good slave owner." Of course, he wouldn't be gun ho at freeing slaves from the start or even the problems of bearers. From his point of view, they "well taken care of."
It's called having a character arc.
@@StormCrownSr...clearly somebody didn't watch the video.
*ponders the days of slogging through hours of killing repetitive static imagres in final fantasy 1 to level up*
Not speaking about this specific game, but live games like you would live books or tv series. Much simpler life.
It’s really weird to me that people project their entire lives onto a game expecting the game to be considerate of you and your situation, and if it doesn’t, it’s the games fault. You’re responsible for what you buy and the amount of free time you have, if you don’t have the patience for something it’s not really that thing’s fault.
This reminds me of Hatoful Boyfriend. It starts with the premise of being a dating sim where you date birds to being an excellent visual novel. There is a point to the dating sim to learn and care about the birds but a huge issue is that the dating sim part puts off so many people that people don't get a chance to experience hurtful boyfriend mode.
People get hateful about it?
I don't think people who dislike dating sims in the first place could fully appreciate the satire, though. So those people wouldn't get anything out of it if they somehow did decide to play
Not quite since FF16 is pretty much the same boring stuff all the time
Oi that game was gold from the beginning
@@hidden105 also true
I wish my friends understood your last comment of "No amount of imposing will force someone to change their taste. It will only further incline them to reject yours". They always try to force games on me, modes within a game, or a specific way to play a game on me knowing that I don't have the patience or attention span to deviate from what I like.
This is exactly how I feel and it carries over to things that I won't have even tried yet. I get so sick of hearing about it and having it pushed that I just don't want anything to do with it.
@@mechanomics2649 that's the same as "I'll avoid that because the fandom is bad", the devs didn't make the fans lol
7:27 I've seen thousands of collective hours of pornographic content and this has been the most elegantly demonstrated display of the perfect shaft stroke I have ever seen.
Smooth, Confident, and Considerate it is a lesson of how Steph has completely mastered the maurbatory arts... oh and trains I guess.
Are you saying Steph is a trainswoman?
@@LectrikfroOkay that one caught me off guard and got me a good "hhhHA!!" 😆
I laughed out loud reading this and watching the time stamp
Having never given one but rather liking the idea, I did begin watching what they were doing and noting the technique.
You have to be, trains are delicate creatures. Perfect technique is just one facet of proper conducting
When I hear worlds that are "too miserable to be worth saving" writing, I think about dorohedoro. Q Hayashida does such an amazing job of showing that even when you're at the bottom of nothing in a world that doesn't want you, you still have your friends, family, and lovers and it makes it feel like the characters have no wants but their happiness and their friends only want theirs. It can be done so well
It also requires some damn good characters and writing skills to make the relationships land
This is exactly what 16 does the characters even go so far to acknowledge that the world is fuckin terrible but at the very least the people they love will continue to have a life to live at the very least.
Dorohedoro took me by surprise with the sweetness of the characters. They even befriend a giant bug!
@@freddogrosso9835A giant bug?! How SHOCKING.
@@tomshraderd4915 Jonson's the best!
I think the “it gets better after xx hours,” is directly referencing ffxivs mantra. “It gets better after ARR we swear.” And generally that’s true! But I think most rpgs try to grip you in the beginning and then gain momentum after a bit. I always love a nuanced look at the darker side of humanity and still finding hope to make it better stories
whilst I am one of those weirdos that actually really likes ARR, I can see how it would fail to grip a lot of people. which is a shame since Shadowbringers and Endwalker may be my favorite stories I've experienced in any medium, and it's hard to recommend them since you have to play for literally hundreds of hours to get there with the proper context to enjoy them.
"It gets good after 30 hours"
Well, there are a ton of shorter games that I've enjoyed all the way through.
Hellblade is about 8 hours, every single one well used, and I adored Spec Ops (5ish hours) from beginning to end. There's a ton of games where I don't have to slog through to get to the good part, so I'll stick with those.
The problem is what you wish to play and enjoy to play.I love Transistor, maybe a 6 hour game. Its brilliant but at the same time i do enjoy long rpg games like Divinity 2 original sin or Dragon age origins where i sunk dozens of hours into. The important part is making you enjoy your time.
@@619ver1 oh absolutely! I love some longer games as well. I put a ton of time into DA Inquisition and Horizon Zero Dawn.
My favourite version of this is what I've experienced with The Binding of Isaac: it's amazing until you've hit the 600 hour mark and want to put a blood curse on Edmund when your run isn't perfect
Ghost Trick is out on consoles and PC now, and I had more enjoyment playing that again, even knowing all the story beats and twists, beating it in about 9-10 hours. I'd rather have a short but tight story with interesting game-play mechanics than a 30 hour slog through mediocrity and bad writing to get to the good shit.
@@miraprime474Zero Dawn also has a goal for you a few hours in: discover things in the ruins. Then explore the Sacred Land, fight a tutorial boss, do missions, all for one ultimate moment that is the Proving. After that ends you get a bit of down time before the next goals.
It's something I can admire in a game because it feels like the finale of an arc, then a new one begins, while you learn how to play. It's also a "naturally" slow game because of how hunting works, so it melds well with the gameplay loop. Condensed narratives with a global story work wonders for a game like it.
I've never understood the X-men trope of "bully people with superpowers that could level you in a heartbeat".
That's because fear is irrational and people are prone to lashing out against what they don't understand, this is especially true when you live in a society where the people at the top are the ones pushing that kind of animosity out of malice.
In XVI's case, the superpowers literally kill the people who have them. Many of them probably wouldn't use their powers at all if they weren't forced to. They're also kept exhausted and starved. And the ones with the big superpowers are usually kept on good terms with the kingdoms and benefit from the system. It's hard to rebel when you're tired and hungry, and a fucking dragon can nuke you from orbit, or a giant man hundreds of meters tall can demolish the local geography. Even then, there is resistance and an Underground Railroad equivalent. I just listed some of the in-game reasons for why the average Bearer is so hopeless and downtrodden.
It doesnt make sense in xmen (whos gonna bully magneto?)
but bearers have basic lvl 1 magic. You might kill 2 or 3 but thats it
@@keybladesrus the fact that you think any of that stops a slave from using their lvl 1 magic to fill their slaver's lungs with water, turn their hair on fire, or rip out their eyes in a last act of suicidal and defiant liberation, puts into context just how little you actually know about real world slavery.
gotta love privileged white guys talking about shit like this as if they should have any fucking opinion in the matter.
Because most of the “people with superpowers” can only light a lantern, or dry the laundry, or fill a well with those powers, and Steph is kinda misrepresenting the dynamic.
This is just another branch of the gatekeeping that tells you to show people your fully completed save file before leveling criticism at a thing that they like. It's not just a video game thing either, but pretty much every medium with a rabid fanbase. I've made statements of a lot of the popular music artist whose output I can't stand and I am always countered with "you need to sit down and listen to this hour to an hour-and-a-half album because it shows how great the artist is". I've already heard an album's worth of those artists since their music played literally everywhere and I don't like it. being forced to sit with them for an hour is not going to make me like them better. It's probably going to make me hate them more out of spite.
We really need to get out of the practice of judging the validity of a review/opinion of a game based on how much or how little someone has played the game. What you described is totally right, you DON'T need to have finished a game to have formed a good opinion of it, nor do you have to have to make an opinion immediately. As you said, I don't need to listen to the entire 20 year backlog of a singer's songs to decide I don't like their music. That's the point of sampling something, you can get a good idea of what it's like and decide if you are a fan or not.
We see the invert a lot with live service games, where people with dozens or hundreds of hours in the game pen a negative review and people do the old "well if you hate the game so much, why do you have *large number of hours* on it?" People want this weird sweetspot of playtime before a review is considered "valid." Enough playtime for the person to have just barely grasped the whole game, but not a minute more
I hear after being baked for 30 minutes, you won't feel nearly as bad being set on fire. I haven't exactly tested this but I believe indeed the nerves will be well past gone by then. I've heard of this one guy who actually laughed while being cooked alive, telling them to 'turn me over, I'm done on this side' as his execution was being committed. Perhaps it's something I ought to give a shot at if that's true! I've tried 10+ hours of 13, though and still ponder where this resurgence of popularity came from.
Well said, sir!
St Lawrence, Patron of cooks, chefs and comedians. Religion makes some people act strangely
You’ve captured the energy of Yoda going through Luke’s stuff. ❤
Josh Strife Hayes says on his MMO first impressions series that it doesn't matter if the game "gets good" after 100 or 200 hours in. If the game's not good in the first 10 minutes you're not going to have players.
Obviously not the case though: See FFXIV.
@@emilsoderman3691 To be fair, from what I've heard from other XIV players who have played other MMOs, XIV's boring part is still good for an MMO. I remember when there was a flood of WoW players joining XIV before the Endwalker launch. A lot of players were telling them to sick with it because it gets so much better. But I saw quite a few WoW players who didn't know what they were talking about because they were already having a blast with ARR. Makes me wonder what a miserable experience WoW must have been. XIV is my only MMO, though, so I can't speak from firsthand experience.
@@emilsoderman3691See, for me, having come from WoW and FFXI, AND having started ARR at beta, there's never been an easier time to get into the meat of that content than now. They've done a lot to throw off the shackles of the ruins of 1.0 and tighten up the gameplay and story of ARR, and it shows, because I see new folks all of the time. Storywise, is ARR slow? Yes, but I don't think that makes it bad. Yes, a lot of it pays off in spades through later expansions, but I do feel like there's something there even now. To me, from the perspective of having played XI, played XIV from the start, and having made new chars since every wave of changes, it was worth it. That won't apply to everyone though, and I understand that. I know some of my fellow XIV fans don't.
The problem people don't get with a slow burn is that it still has to, y'know, burn.
The part that exists to build up the really good bit needs to be engaging in it's own right, otherwise you've just made an impenetrable preamble of boredom. The best example I can present is a comparison of Jaws and Godzilla 2014, which many people compare to Jaws because of how little they show the titular monster. Jaws uses it's first two acts building suspense and makes sure to show you people getting dismembered to keep you hooked. Godzilla 2014 managed to dig some pathos out of you because Bryan Cranston could make a Wiseau script come to life but once he's dead we're stuck with Kickass in Camo trying to get to the interesting stuff while the movie plays coy with the fact that it's a kaiju movie. And the actual kaiju stuff in the third act is good enough to be a thing but the fact that I just sat through watching an hour of people running away from monsters sans seeing the monsters is a bit of a damper on the whole thing.
For games I think of FF10-2. Starts out very light-hearted and nonsensical but starts developing real plot in Chapters 3-5. With any media it comes down to pacing. Some people can handle the slow burn, others can't and will bail.
it's why i think survival horror works so well when it DOESNT rush you along with a stalker enemy. Silent Hill games got in my head because I'd spend time just...being in that oppressive world, even the odd half hour or so wandering around lost or trying to figure out a puzzle is stuck in this quiet, scary, gross environment...and it get's unnerving, by contrast if i'm playing something like outlast, I don't have time for that post adrenaline exhaustion because the panic and anxiety never end, you are always being chased. The quiet moments are as meaningful as the loud ones, because you know you have to step back into danger, and must do so willingly. In jaws, they could have just stayed on land...but knowing they needed to go back into the sea and face the monster, and giving the audience/player the time to worry about what's in the darkness, in the depths of the sea, and forcing THEM to choose to take the plunge, THAT is how you build suspense, THAT is how you build fear.
In regards to the topic, I believe I should borrow from/mostly quote one of your old colleagues, who put it best years ago and did so over another Final Fantasy game:
"Some people have told me that FF[16] gets good about [30] hours in. You know that's not really a point in its favor, right? Put your hand on a stove for [30] hours, and yeah, you'll probably stop feeling the pain, but you'll have done some serious damage to yourself."
I can tell you and stupes had a bit of fun, and I love just how good they are at acting.
“Ooh! Colourful things!” 😂😂
That felt supremely genuine 😅
I love genres of games that often take 10+ hours for fans of the style to work out if they actually like them. 4X games, space traders/combat games, city builders etc. I'm not going to tell someone who can't get past an hour of one they're wrong. *Negative reviews* have convinced me to play games because I get my tastes aren't everyone's and the review had information that pricked up my ears. And they've told people who wouldn't like it not to bother so win win.
I've had a similar experience with negative book reviews.
I looked at the reviews for a fantasy book (hybrid of litrpg and cultivation novels) and saw a 1 star review complaining that later on (le gasp) characters "turned" gay. I promptly decided to check it out since a lot of books in those 2 genres (again litrpg and cultivation) don't have any representation of queer folk. Turns out, I was right too as that series is awesome.
@@katlyncoker8488 SVSSS?
It's a little jank, but if you haven't tried it, Graveyard Keeper might be something you enjoy. Figuring out how to do everything is a lot of the game, since while it sort of falls into a Stardew Valley type of game, it's not as well-laid-out when it comes to finding out how to make some basic things. :P
@@mirkiekishka I have read that series, and did enjoy it, but I'm actually talking about the infinite realm series by Ivan Kal. It's really engaging, and when I read it I can't help but get sucked in. Detailed lore and world building but always keeps the characters at the forefront. It also kinda has 2 Main characters, one of whom later falls in love with a gender (and sex) fluid character (they can transform like loki). There's also a bi orc lady and another (i think) bi lady who get together who are also part of the ensemble cast of important characters.
@@katlyncoker8488 apart from Pratchett I'm not the biggest fan of fantasy books so didn't realise there was a major lack of representation. I'm mainly a sci-fi fan and not so snobby to not realise they're closely connected though so expected modern stuff to have a massive minority be totally against while also having a balance in the other direction. Glad you found something that sounds like it should be supported though. I'll definitely give it a go.
I did complete FFXVI, and it does not get better. In the last quest of the town of Dalimil, an important NPC is revealed to be a magic user. And while he was an important figure in the town, they all immediately turn on him, calling him a liar, and much worse, they start throwing stones at him. A litteral, biblical lapidation. And then two kids start defending him. And they get lapidated too. But then the child-lapidating villagers are reminded that actually, that guy is a pretty useful blacksmith and he helped the town in the past. And so they "forgive" him. And the victim, still bloodied from the stones, helps them against the bandits, instead of fucking off and letting them die.
As Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer taught us a long time ago, difference is acceptable IF you can be useful.
it's extremely on par w ffxiv writing too (see: eulmore) despite different writers being in charge
Maybe the bandits have a point
@@meowstakenot sure I see the similarities there
Wow, basically: "The beatings continue until morale improves" narrative in a JRPG story.
Maybe you mean that one particular aspect doesn't get better, because the event you're talking about there is from a side quest, it's not even main story related.
The discourse around the FF MMO drive me up the wall. But it was "it gets good after 100 hours"
Personally, I enjoyed FFXIV from the moment I tried it during the A Realm Reborn pre-release period. But I also say two things about how people talk about the game:
1) The "it gets good when you get to the first expansion after lvl50" line is a huge exaggeration. The game phases out its tutorial period and gets into the story proper at around lvl17, and the story is *good* from that point on. At least if you enjoy kinda traditional JRPG stories. It's just that it starts delving into *exceptional* territory once the expansions hit.
2) If you don't enjoy your first hours of playing, you're under no obligation to continue. In fact, if you get past the lvl30 mark and aren't having a good time, I highly *encourage* you to quit, because that's no way to be spending your precious time.
Sad truth it, that was the case. They thankfully revamped the start, making it much smoother, less sluggish and grind instensive and generally more interesting. I honestly deinstalled the game 2 seperate times before they changed the starting till i tried again and stuch with it.
@JediMB I couldn't get to level 20 before deciding I'd much rather play anything else in my steam library.
Even worse, it made me briefly consider playing WoW again and that's a feat with how horrible Blizzard is these days. (Thankfully sanity prevailed and I did not.)
Shadow bringers being so dam good but needing so much investment will forever be a sadness to me.
@@JediMB I completely agree with your first point about story quality.
However, unless you are making an argument about the enjoyment one can get from the hotkey combat style in general, most jobs don’t really “click” until around level 60. That’s when Warriors have access to Fell Cleave and their self heals, Summoners get their instant cast burst window, White Mages get off global cooldown heals and lilies, etc.
Yup. Every time I’ve enjoyed something where the consensus is “it gets good after x”, I’ve found it enjoyable from the beginning. It’s never worth it otherwise.
Two of my favourite youtubers together! You look like you're having such a great time :D
It shouldn't take 30 hours to be good yet here we are
It doesn’t, it’s quite good from the start
@@debrucey
here is the thing
NOT EVERYONE WILL ENJOY THE SAME THING
and its stupid to tell someone who found the game and story boring "it gets better in this many hours"
If you enjoyed the game. Great! More power to you!
But if others do not let them be. They don't need to play further if the game is boring or bad to them.
@@elvingearmasterirma7241 ok but it’s completely fine to tell that to people who haven’t played the game yet, especially if they’re basing their decision not to play the game on criticism that I think is inaccurate and unfair
@@debrucey Oor hear me out
They know what they like. They looked up reviews, playthroughts etc and decided
Yea. I dont wanna play it.
People. Are allowed. To make decisions.
About what they consume
HOW THEY LIKE.
@@elvingearmasterirma7241 yeees, they are? Did I say otherwise?
The anime equivalent would be "It gets good after 30 episode... trust me bro" Why can't it be good from the start? Writing a compelling beginning is also part of being a good storyteller.
The 3 episode test is pretty much that. And it's just as stupid, sure I've seen a couple shows start on a meh episode but pick up steam and good or even brilliant later on but I've never seen a show start on a shitty episode and get good.
@@nerdaitami7205I have, but I'm not willing to defend my opinion, so I won't name the show
@@Gloomdrake go ahead, I'm curious now. I won't judge
@@nerdaitami7205 No Game No Life
@@nerdaitami7205 I've seen exactly one show in my life where the first episode was, let's say, a pretty bad introduction where it went on to be amongst my favorites, and that was Shin Mazinger where for some asinine reason they decided the first episode was going to be this like 23 minute preview for the finale. The only other one I can thing of is Victory Gundam which I think is alright but the studio decided that the first episode had to have the gundam in it, seemingly pretty late into production, so episode one is actually like episode 5, then 1-4 is the actual start of the show.
Now, more than ever, games need to respect a player’s time. Games that only become “good” after hours upon hours of play display a lack of respect for players’ time almost as egregious as the games that try to frustrate you into paying for micro transactions.
Problem is, sometimes stories need time to develop. Yes, rpg games are notorious for that but lets take another example, Divinity 2 original sin. Its a great game. The D&D like freedom of approach to problem being its main charm but that also opens up only after some Hours of Gameplay. The most tricky part is the beginning of such games, given you Need to take things slow to a degree to not overwhelm the player but can not drag your feet to the extend they just want to be done with it.
Or, you could respect that not all media has to conform to your needs or wants. I'd rather play a game that has ups and downs but is super unique and memorable, than some cookie cutter cinematic experience that 'respects my time' by neatly and rapidly railgunning me through a pre chewed mishmash of set pieces. Or, in the case of this game, i'd rather they take a while to ramp up to the story they want to tell rather than artificially fluff up the intro so barely impatient players don't get bored. There's more than enough validity in a game taking some time to hit its highs.
Slow starts can be good, actually. 30 hours of misery might be a line, though
@@NefariousbigSure, but I'm not going to play for 10+ hours in the hopes that I'll start enjoying it eventually. I've finished games that have a slower start when I'm having fun during the slow start. But I have no reason to believe a game will become fun if the first several hours have done nothing to draw me in.
@bleh329 no, it's just a lot of people are impatient.
This is an incredibly well done video that explores both sides. Dare I say you got a classic, Steph.
Your bits with The Stupendium had me rolling! XD
This reminds me a bit of the beginning of Phantom Brave.
The first time I tried the game, the entire world is just dumping on your main character: An orphaned little girl that's able to see and communicate with ghosts. Even after you save the village from bad guys, they continue to verbally rip apart this child for several scenes! I put it down the first time cause it was just depressing and didn't seem like worth continuing. Years later, tried again and kept going this time, I see the world lighten up eventually, but SHEESH. Early bad impressions that last too long can totally sour a mood to continue playing a game
I think that's why they introduced Castille at chapter 3.
They had to have SOMETHING nice in the middle of the shit storm that is everyone's opinion of a little girl.
I was actually surprised at how bad it got considering it's from NIS. From my experience at the time the worst it got was Soul Nomad (not THAT path in Soul Nomad I wasn't even aware of that at the time).
@@Technature7567 NIS is really good about using goofy/light settings and chars to cover a much darker undertone in their games. It is what I always loved about their games. Phantom Brave is one of the few where they just let the bad being a lot more surface level, but I don't think this game would hit as hard with their usual light-heartedness.
@@corey3290 Oh definitely. It felt necessary for the story by the end. I was just saying that it caught me off guard is all.
@@Technature7567 Totally agree. I think the same thing is happening with FF16. People are just taken aback really badly by how dour the game's world is.
Honestly, as someone who's worked in customer service - being treated like the scum of the earth despite the fact that society would pretty much come to a halt without us is actually a pretty relatable experience.
I also find it frustrating how docile people make slaves as if they never rebelled so it was their fault they got enslaved when in reality history of slavery is filled with rebellions
Considering the people who run things would have you believe that "there was slavery, then slavery was ended, and then there were zero problems ever" there's no wonder that a lot of people creating media tend to ignore the details of what actually happened.
I've definitely heard a lot of provileged white guys very confidently declare they could never have been enslaved because they wouldn't have "put up with it". Curiously from some of the same people who dismiss police brutality with "it wouldn't happen if they just complied"
Reminds me of the people who say the Jews are to blame for "letting themselves be transported to concentration camps like lambs to slaughter", as if there wasn't any resistance and armed rebellion.
@@theomegajuice8660- THIS 🙄💯
Yeah, I'm really weirded out by the whole concept of magic-users as slaves. I hope the game does a damn good job of explaining how that happened, because in my head it plays out like this:
"wizard, you are now my slave"
"slaver, you are now ashes"
The "It Gets Good After 30 Hours"-type argument is something you see regularly in other media as well. Star Trek TNG is infamous for having its early seasons be mediocre, and I struggle to recommend the original Urusei Yatsura to anyone since it took a couple dozen episodes to hit its stride.
I didn't see this collab coming. But I HAVE to insist on more. Nevermind the fact that a three-way collab between Steph, The Stupendium and Dan Bull would actually be fun.
Thank god for James Stephanie Sterling.
Yeah, knew this was coming. Gamers (tm) need to learn that people dropping out early is a normal risk of a slow burn story
And that not everyone likes what they like
But ah. That lesson is still taking years to learn
I happen to really like slow burn stories but only when the slow burn bit is good on it's own. If you're just slogging through the early bit to get to the explosions that isn't a slow burn, it's a damp squib
Nothing wrong with a slow burn. The burn just has to be engaging while it takes its time.
I get the argument but it doesnt really work with Ff16 imo. The game is really good from the start with good pacing. To be fair, some side quest arent up to par with the Main Story, but the Main Story is filled with great characters, efficient cut scenes (not like mgs4 with 30m debriefings, fun battle System and yes, despicible villians. I get that steph didnt like it, and that is fine, but some of her descriptions of it doesnt seem repressentable with the game I played. Maybe she Was in a bad head space for a game like this.
You mean Steph needs to learn that? Rather than presenting their opinion as a valuable or meaningful judgement on the games quality, and making up a load of shite about anyone who thinks it improves.
Like legit how can you justify saying that absolutely everyone who thinks this very long piece of media might improve as it goes on is just 'angry about review scores'?
First impressions are everything. and that goes for any media.
What about final impressions? Remember when Game of Thrones was a pop culture sensation but the last few episodes were so bad, it permanently damaged the brand?
@@stephen2624 I personally don't think a bad finale can ruin an entire franchise/brand. Sure it can sour your experience to have an unsatisfying ending but not so much that it destroys the brand.
@@Ashurman666 But it makes it's impossible to rewatch GoT or give House of the Dragon a go because we all know how it ends. It's always why LotR: Rings of Power was a mistake and why Yoshi-P should've read the room and reworked a lot of FFXVI to make the NPCs less hateful and not copy tropes from GoT for the sake of it.
I hope the FF will be lighter in tone but dark where it counts. If FFXIII didn't dictate the future of later FFs, then neither should FFXVI.
@@stephen2624 I think it's slightly different for videogames. One game with band ending(Or one bad game in general) isn't going to destroy the whole brand. IT's different when each entry is it's own thing and they aren't all interconnected
Seems like the first impressions were incredibly positive. YT is full of content creators talking about the fantastic demo. Hell I wasn’t even going to buy this game before I played it. Now I’m over 25 hours in and loving every minute.
That first 30 seconds had me creasing 😂
The “woof” got me 😂
I hope you changed your pants afterwards.
You see? You didn't have to wait for 30 hours...
butt creasing?
The video gets better after the first 30 seconds...
This review starts off slow, but it gets really good around 22:52
How does one replay a game that sucks for the first 30 hours is the real question.
The solution is *SPEED* (running)
*loud clipping out of reality noises ensue
I think the heart of this discussion can be boiled down to whether we engage with something because it's "compelling" or if it's "entertaining".
In the TV world, all the big dramas that may take time to reveal their brilliance (Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul, Game of Thrones, Ozark, etc.) can be compelling as hell but not necessarily entertaining the whole time.
In the video game world, we've sort of conditioned ourselves into playing games explicitly for entertainment. "Spec Ops: The Line" is one of the few games I can think of that is compelling without being even a little fun. I respect the hell out of that game but never want to play it again.
But going beyond that, I think in the video game space part of the reason it can take time for a game to reveal its brilliance may be due to the number of mechanics they have to introduce. I love Fire Emblem games, but I'll freely admit they start slow often by design. You only ever start with 1-3 characters with 1-2 weapons and there just aren't many interesting choices you can make. This is great for newcomers, but for series veterans it can be a slog. And if the initial batch of characters/lore isn't compelling enough, it can be tough to get through that. But the depth of the gameplay and strategy reveals itself as you recruit more characters, have them level up, interact, evolve and so on. And by its design of your units being able to be killed off, there's a lot of organic storytelling that can happen as you get further along. But again, that only works once you feel attached to your units in the first place, which just won't happen after 2 missions.
You hit on it, IMO. I don't think many games are able to overcome enjoyment in order to reach compelling. Spec Ops, maybe Papers Please.
I've never played the beginning of a Fire Emblem game and thought this is boring for hours. There is always some sort of hook and because the core gameplay loop is fun, it is compelling.
@@quintushavis7498 The reason for that is that mostly we play games to have fun. Games certainly can be compelling and thought provoking but then they are immediately aimed at a different target group than the entertainment-focused games. It's the same with other forms of media as well - movies, books, music, they all have their artsy-fartsy pieces and their fluff for a "less involved" viewer. For a piece of art to be both compelling and fun at the same time so that both of those qualities don't interfere with eachother takes quite a bit of mastery.
@@zenithquasar9623 To be clear, I've never been bored with the beginning of a Fire Emblem game. But I can also easily see someone playing it for 1-2 hours and thinking: "This is it? Generic Anime characters moving around a board and clicking 1-2 options?". The depth of both gameplay and characters only reveals itself when you have more characters. And I think most Fire Emblem games do a decent job hooking you in narratively (though I will say as much as I'm loving "Engage", it's biggest problem to me so far is the slow start), but in terms of gameplay, it can be tricky.
Honestly, I think most RPGs have this issue. I love Persona 5 to pieces, but the gameplay really only opens up after about 4-5 hours when you have 4 party members. Thankfully, it's got such a good intro, hook and narrative that it's no problem at all to dive in.
@@quintushavis7498 Indeed. Another game series that dances around that is "The Last of Us" (especially the second...). They are oppressively miserable games about bad people doing bad things. If you find a character you do like, by the end of their story, you'll find they've done stuff so heinous that you can't really justify still liking them.
It's compelling as hell though because it's so well presented. It's no wonder it transitioned to a hit TV series so easily; it basically already was one. But is it entertaining?
Well, the core gameplay feels more involved, thoughtful and cathartic than something like Spec Ops, and it does suit the world well. Then again, I feel like the reason Spec Ops' narrative does work so well is because of how unfun and generic it is. If it had the same level of cathartic feedback that your average Call of Duty game had, it wouldn't work. That's always been the conflicting thing about The Last of Us that I could never resolve.
I think one game that, for all one can criticize about it that does hit both entertaining and compelling in this kind of way is Bioshock Infinite. It's also unbelievably violent, but the gameplay is so varied and wild that it's very entertaining. But the game has a twist up it's sleeve that ties into this, and the game is really good at distracting you so you never feel the weight of your actions in the moment. I think it also helps that of these games, it's the LEAST realistic so it can get away with bigger contrasts in tone.
Stephanie Sterling and Stupendium!? On the same shot?!
I must be dreaming
It's one thing to have a world full of unlikable characters. Its another to have a world full of uncompelling characters who don't interest you enough to care what happens to them.
That's how I felt aboit FF13.
That 40 hour mark, the game stops being a corridor. But I still dislike the party. I still think the villains plan is counter to their actions. The gameplay and plot are both still "grind for EXP to make yourself stronger"
The only thing that changes is the corridor gets wider.
@@DragonNexus
Thiiiiiiiis
Underneath the corridors and incomprehensible plot of FF13 are still characters I mostly don't like, except Lightning who I like to make fun of in a meta sense (They cracked the code this time! We know why people liked Cloud! Sign her up for two and a half games! *OH NO*) and has thus brought me hours upon hours of joy, intentional or not, a battle system that I never thought was interesting even before the game "opened up" with options I might have explored if I had been allowed to at the beginning, but couldn't care less about after 30 hours of being chained to, and a bunch of other complaints that would bloat this more than I already have.
FF 13 DOESN'T get better after 30 hours, it gets slightly less bad in mostly insignificant ways. The fact that you can grind on your choice of Adamantoises, or Not Adamantoises now, now with bad, underlevelled classes on everyone doesn't really fix the core issues of the game.
Eight deadly words that spell doom for any story:
"I Don't Care What Happens To These Characters"
I usually agree with your harsh but firm stances, but here, I'm gonna say that FF16 is far from the being the most heavy handed with its thematic elements. FF4 has a world where genocide occurs quite often, people still want to live in it. FF6 has village after village, town after town, facing disaster after disaster, at least a couple genocides, racial persecution and slavery of the Espers constantly, with a couple psychopaths near the top of the hierachy, and decent men who end up working for those psychopaths like General Leo. And that's BEFORE the apocalypse occurs and we have one of the party driven to a suicide attempt. FF7, which is the majority about how the planet is dying and people kinda only vaguely care until it comes to their doorsteps, ethnic cleansing, slavery and experimentation of sentient beings, the whole nine yards.
FF8, kids being conscripted as soldiers where military academies churning out mercs is commonplace in a world basically teetering on the whim of a couple witches, and poor victims who randomly get "chosen" for habitation of those witche's souls. FF9 is more fanciful about it, but its got a majority of the game is about basically artificial humanoids and finding their place in a world that again, has random genocides with the Eidolons, racial disparity and persecution which results in those genocides, and the planet kinda just wanting people to accept death.
FF10 is all about religious persecution (and in some cases racism) from start to finish.
The list goes on. I don't know if people just have nostalgia glasses going on, but FF has been pretty in your face with its themes since early on and hammers them in. People rise up in them to try to make them better, just like in FF16, so its not like this story in particular is being too heavy handed.
The difference is Nier Automata is always kind of fun. The combat is good, the music is amazing, and you're playing some awesome characters.
true...but the b route really is a slog, you could cut it from the game entirely (and just add it's big reveal as a cutscene) and A and C would make a much better paced game.
And 2B's ass is literally top tier.
I never found the combat fun but I did force myself through route A and a little of B before dropping it
That's right, JSS. Nier Automata still offers you an appropriately entertaining and interesting experience before the big twists. It does get better, but you're starting from a solid foundation. Which is why this particular trope needs the audience to already have a certain degree of acceptable joy and fun. If you're bored for 30 hours, you won't stick around.
As someone show has gotten 2/3 through Nier Automata before letting it languish _twice_ now, despite quite enjoying it, this spoke to me.
Yeah same for me. It was engaging enough for me to go through it, but I had no interest in ever touching it after the end.
@@shis1988 Which end? There are 5.
The difficulty spike on C I wasn't ready for.
The only thing that gets good after 30 hours is getting stabbed in the eyes so I don't have to watch Jim and his circus attires.
Nier automata is a masterpiece and final fantasy 16 is awesome. Both were good from the first minute and kept getting better. No idea where he pulled the "it gets better after x hours" from but his ass.
"It get's good after 30 hours." That's what they said about FF13, that's what they said about FF 14.
I say "FF 5 started getting good after about 5 minutes, FF 7 starts getting good after about 1 minute, Oblivion starts getting good from the first second because it starts with Patrick Steward doing a monologue, WHY ISN"T IT STARTING AT THE GOOD PART?!"
FFX gets good at minus 37 picoseconds
Sry but 14 did get good at the first expansion which is why I didn't play it for years. Good thing they made a skip cutscene button. But I get it. Entertainment should be good from the start.
For FF14 they at least had the remaking the game from the ground up to explain why their plotting was pretty mediocre in ARR
I have more patience for the argument for a game you can theoretically spend thousands of hours in but if the game is 60hrs or so? I don't want to play anything I don't like for HALF the duration
@@erikaswanson2170 If I could sell out those Kingdoms to the Garliand empire on condition it spare me and Admiral Blowfish - the ONLY NPC as annoyed as I was that her guards couldn't fight off a group of bandits and needed me to do it. I would have. A sea of golden exclamation marks 90% of which are fetch quests from characters I am not supposed to care about, I finally quit when the rebel leader got kidnapped and the HQ for super cool special former rebel leaders that I was only allowed in to do her shopping for her was raided and I realized, I didn't care. "Yeah but if I save her, then I'd have to put up with being her gofer again... Yeah, not worth it!" That was at lvl 45 and it still hadn't "Gotten good.
Video games aren’t the only medium where people will say “Act I was kinda weak but then it finds its footing”.
Chaotic gremlin Sterling is now my favourite.
I don't agree with bearers being spinless victims when The Hideaway has an entire group of bearers that free other bearers.
Like, people will talk about the sidequest and ignore everything they say.
its funny because if someone told me to give a show an Entire Season before giving up if I'm bored, I'd laugh in their face
@bleh329 dang remember the Level Select Screen? I shd call her...
I think it's perfectly acceptable to not want to a play a game your not into even if it "gets good 30 hours into it". The common response is that "I'd rather play a game that's good right away", but even then, it's still your time and you get to choose how you spend it, you don't have to invest 30 hours in something you don't like on the off chance it suddenly becomes better at the end of it all. Not to mention, even if it is good 30 hours into a game, is it really worth the slog it took to get to the good part?
...That's a rhetorical question, by the way. Clearly people have different standards and what they're willing to put up with. My friend hated most of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but admitted it DOES get better towards the end of the game. I also try my best to finish a game before I give full judgement on it, but if I can't finish it, then I make sure to clarify that I didn't and explain why I couldn't get into it to do it. Regardless, though, I totally understand why someone wouldn't want to do this, and I don't judge them not doing it.
The problem is people with these kind of opinions on media are always super insistent about asserting them and claiming they're under attack if there's any push back whatsoever. Always some arbitrary condition that makes them write off things whole cloth, and even the suggestion of a discussion about it is interpreted as a personal attack. It's fucking bizarre.
You can not want to play something or watch something or read something that 'gets good after x', sure, but if you're gonna then make a judgement on it and try and ignore that fact, or imply people saying it aren't genuine baselessly you're just being obnoxious and self absorbed. Having personal opinions doesn't alter reality. FFXVI doesn't NOT get better just because Steph won't commit past the point it does.
Makes me genuinely a bit sad to see Sterling acting like the exact sort of shallow ignorant melvin they used to be able to laugh at.
"I think it's perfectly acceptable to not want to a play a game your not into even if it "gets good 30 hours into it". [...] Not to mention, even if it is good 30 hours into a game, is it really worth the slog it took to get to the good part?"
Why yes, that's an entirely reasonable opinion, just the sort of down-to-earth response I'd expect from a... person with a One Piece avatar and username, wtf?! You guys are the KINGS of "yeah I know it's rough at first, but just give it 50 episodes and then I PROMISE you're gonna love it, bro!"
(And by "you guys" I of course mean "we", lol. 🎶Yohohoho, yo-o ho ho🎶)
I think that people who say “One Piece gets good after (insert number) of episodes” are wrong. One Piece is good in the first Saga. And it’s also a show that has been running for a long time so obviously it’s going to look better in 2023 than in 1999.
@@LPTheGas That's a load of bullcrap, One Piece doesn't "start out rough", it's good from the get-go, and any One Piece fans who claim the series doesn't "get good" until however many episodes into it is lying through their teeth. (I WILL say that while the series starts out good, the series gets GREAT once it reaches Arlong Park, which is why I sometimes suggest to newcomers that if they're not willing to read the first few chapters or watch the first few episodes to at least read/watch the Arlong arc and see if you're willing to invest from there)
@@Rubberman202 I think the people who say the beginning isn't good are people who likely skipped that part anyway. Like the people who watch Dragon Ball Z but when you ask them if they saw Dragon Ball they act like a vampire who was just offered garlic.
Some other things that get better after 30 hours: underwear, meth amphetamine, being buried alive, picnic pasta salad, international plane rides
19:25 - With your Nier Automata example, I bounced right off that game after only a few hours because I'd already had my fill of Platinum Games and playing another one of their games where you control someone's fetish doll was just tiresome and pathetic.
I was told everything about how the game picks up on a second playthrough because the story shifts and gets really philosophical. I didn't care. That shit only matters if "Bayonetta French Maid Edition" ISN'T already a deal breaker for you.
I think this is my favourite episode this year. Great stuff 😁 I was smiling like an idiot most of the way through. Made my Monday, cheers Steph.
Nier Automata was glorious, it first slaps you around the head with being like 5 different games and when you recover from the whiplash you get into the insane story.
The first few hours are not bad, you just wonder:
"Yeah, that's fine, But I don't get the hype. But since I barely got through what has to be Tutorial, I really wanna know what's coming." And oh boy does it keep coming after a few hours. It also helps that you destroy a giant robot in this Tutorial.
Also I think the first:
"Are we the baddies?" Thought comes well before the 30 hour mark.
Don't you beat a giant robot to death with its own arm, after of course, said giant robot was actually the level you just went through beforehand, all in the first 20 minutes? Nier Automata opens fucking gloriously.
Something I've been wanting to get out of my system for a while: I kind of feel like a *lack* of negative reviews is a condemnation of a game. In a world full of inoffensive people-pleasers, where every game is made to cater to every demographic just enough to convince them all to buy it, the best games are always the ones that know what they are, know who they're aiming to be *for*, and double down on that with content that those people will adore- without shying away from it just because some other people won't care for it. Games that want to be great at what they are have to be something to begin with, and nothing is universally likeable. The only way to be universally liked is to be nothing.
Games that people hate are hated because they do something that those people don't like.
If everyone likes a game, that's almost always because it's more mediocre AAA slop that just doesn't do anything worthwhile or interesting.
Certainly an interesting point, but one I see merit in.
The Emperor's New Producers
This doesn't really hold when scrutinized, though. Elden Ring is an amazing game that got great reviwes across the board. Same with RE4R. Even when you look back in time, games like the original RE4, Mario 64, FF7, ect. There are so many games that are universally loved, are they all AAA slop? Or are they free from the lable just because they came out before your eyes had jaded? You can say you don't like those games, but to say that they're somehow AAA slop is downplaying all the artistry found within. Idk, seems like a very "I'm not like other gamerz" type of opinion.
@alexandriasmothitel1243 Problem with that? Not everyone loves those games. As someone who grew up in the 2000s, I find Mario 64 to be outdated and janky, despite its significance. And I certainly feel the RE4 remake is weaker than the original by watering down the campiness and outright removing one memorable boss. There's no such thing as a universally loved product.
@@Miriam_J_ None of those games are universally liked.
The first game I remember like this was probably Symphony of the Night. I remember playing through that, killing Richter and then, thinking I had beaten it. I thought the game was amazing but way too short. It was almost a full year later when I read some article about there being a whole other part of the game hidden behind a secret that I missed. So I went back to play through it again and, I had missed like three fourths of the entire game. I've basically been playing it ever since. LoL it's now my favorite game of all time. x_x
I enjoyed it from the very start. The fact that it got better as more abilities unlocked seemed like a natural progression to me.
Yeah, same. I just got the 7th eikon and am still enjoying the game a lot.
Idk if you noticed, but Jim is a far left lunatic and he was more preoccupied about the fact that the branded were slaves rather than anything else. Just the existence of slaves.
He is more preoccupied with getting brownie points by some cultists that hate the game for some reason (I think it's because the entire cast has only white people... which is a unicorn in modern media. Way easier to find a game with only black and Asian people than only white. They could have gone and made it completely diverse and unique with only straight people too, but nope, they have diversity and exclusion departments so they had to make Dion gay so he can suck the face of a dude for 3 seconds, otherwise the game would have never been made).
Idk if you noticed, but Jim is a far left lunatic and he was more preoccupied about the fact that the branded were slaves rather than anything else. Just the existence of slaves.
It's so nice to see you enjoying life and having a good time with friends Steph
If a game "gets good after 30 hours" I'm simply not playing it. Do the people saying that realize how many good shorter games I could play in 30 hours? Movies, TV, books? 30 hours is an incredibly large amount of free time to waste on something that isn't good when you don't have a lot of free time to begin with.
Conversations I've had:
Me: Nier Automata is a fantastic, deep, and emotionally moving game. And it plays with how videogames can tell a story in a way no other media can.
Them: Isn't that the one where you can make the maid girl's skirt disappear by having her explode?
Me. ... yes.
Don't worry, Stupendium, Steph's visit will become enjoyable after a few hours...
I miss being being completely blown away by a game the way NieR did... anything after Automata hasn't reached that kind of magic for me. The rare gems like Omori come close but NieR really is the greatest experience that video games have given me.
You should try Outer Wilds.
Automata fucked me up in ways nothing has for a VERY long time. For not being horror the final level of the first playthrough was one of the scariest things I've ever played, and then the third playthrough has one of the hardest emotional gut punches i've ever encountered in a game. I don't think anything will ever top a certain moment about halfway through. For all it's faults, Automata is an absolute masterclass in storytelling.
I've played hundreds of games in my life, and with some luck I'll play hundreds more.
So far, Automata is the second greatest game I've ever played. It's second only to Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic 2, which I consider to be the greatest story ever told across all media. Not just peak Star Wars, not just peak story-based game. It's peak everything.
In terms of story and storytelling, these two games (and their predecessors, KOTOR and NieR Replicant, which are somewhat flawed but still exceptional games) are in a league of their own. Nothing comes close.
Would "Everyone major character in WoW needs to eventually be a raid boss" be an example of the poke plot problem?
Imagine an MMO with no raids whatsoever.
Can ye, even...? What more is there usually?
Also, as for if that would count, is "Raid Boss" or some *loose* equivalent acknowledged narratively as a state a person can be in? Would the Raid Bosses themselves or the other NPCs be able to delineate the precise moment the change had happened?
No, the Warcraft lore is quite varied, if insane.
It's more if everything in WoW was about, say, the Horde-Alliance war.
Every single character talks about the war, every major plot point revolves around the war, every single local issue and event is somehow a proxy for the war, everyone constantly wears their blue/red armbands, every internal argument is about how much they should hate the other side in the war, and nobody has anything going on in their lives that isn't somehow about the war.
It's an entire world with a single conversation topic.
Not quite. Many NPCs and characters in WoW talk about non-raid boss stuff, and it's made clear that while there are gods to kill in the distance, there are boars that need to be removed from gardens and hunting trophies to collect in the short-term.
That example would be a case of an "All too predictable Chekhov's Gun", wherein plot points can be guessed from the mere fact that they get mentioned, but that's not always bad.
I find these "it gets good after X" comments can be useful, but they really have to be presented in the right way. Not as an accusative "you're not allowed to dislike it until you get here" but just as an informative "this is where it really settles into its groove".
Whenever I recommend a game, or a TV show, or the like, I'll often say upfront that you'll need to get however many episodes in or whatever before it finds its feet... Which is to serve the purposes of both (a) letting them know that if they aren't feeling it early on, whether they can expect it to change later, or if this is just how the show is and they can just pass on the whole thing... but also (b) let them decide ahead of time that if it's just an unreasonably long time like 30 hours, then they can just elect to not bother at all, which is a fair response.
I wasn't ready for the intro but I commend you nonetheless *hat tip* ❤
It gets good 28 hours after the refund period. You know, 28 hours after people are already sick of it.
Stephanie Sterling channels Tom Scott on the Stupendium's set in the intro. The mood I did not knew I need....
I wonder how much overlap there is between "Git Gud" people and "It Gits Gud" people.
@bleh329I meant venn diagram overlap of people.
I remember that back when it came out, people would defend Spec Ops: The Line by saying that it's actual gameplay being so thoroughly mid was actually something the devs had done intentionally as part of the meta-commentary on Shooter games. My response was always a paraphrasing of something I heard from Yahtzee at some point; that if a dev knowingly makes their game boring or unenjoyable to play to make some artistic point, they've officially gone so far up their own backside they've collapsed in to the universe's most pretentious black hole.
My friends who played shooters definitely felt that, but as a person who doesn't play them, since I didn't have preconceived ideas on how it should feel, it actually hit me harder.
Either way, I respect the decision to not deal with some shit that isn't adding to your life. I just have more patience for a game that is short and imperfect as opposed to one that is long and supposedly decent after a requisite several dozen hours of suffering.
Yeah, no. The reason Spec Ops' gameplay was weak was because making particularly compelling gameplay is tough, and they were forced to waste their budget on a tacked on multiplayer mode which was demanded by the publishers.
The irony being Yahtzee thinks Spec Ops is a great game.
especially since spec ops the line while it has some amazing moments can also be unbearably pretentious.
I'd been playing FF16 for the past week or so when I was gifted a copy of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Needlessly to say, not only am I having more fun with Rift Apart, but the game looks *_and PERFORMS_* way better than FF16 as well.
(Seriously, BTW! Rift Apart is a *_seriously_* overlooked PS5 game. Especially if you have a 120Hz Display - the game is *_butter smooth_* and looks like a Pixar movie at the same time)
Truly a Stupendous opening!🎉
This video is brilliant. Also love The Stupendium. Ending had me laughing my ass off.