There are some games which, for whatever reason, I just don’t vibe with enough to keep playing even if I want to see the story. Some of these games will have a “story mode” difficulty which is just meant to be a really easy version of the game you could play to just get the story without worrying too much about needing to overcome the challenges.
Recently I tried going back to a game I had previously dropped because I wasn’t really enjoying the combat. I had dropped it down to story mode, but this wasn’t really enough to keep me engaged. And on some level, I don’t really enjoy games when they’re too easy anyway. It may not be that important or necessary to engage with the mechanics to succeed, but you often still need to go through the motions with them and the act of doing this with systems that don’t actually serve a purpose at that difficulty. The result of this is that the story that you’re continuing to play drains your energy and is potentially paced poorly.
When I was talking about this with a friend, we discussed how let’s play videos could serve as a substitute for playing the game if you just want the story. But of course this has it’s own problems. The pacing may still be bad, the video maker’s commentary might be distracting, and if you decide to go this route before even purchasing the game, the dev isn’t even financially rewarded for the work they did at least creating a story you liked.
So I had a thought: It might be nice if for exactly these kinds of games: Linear, cutscene heavy, and story based games, that currently choose to include a “story mode” instead just straight up edited together a movie from some combinations of the cutscenes and either recorded gameplay or perhaps some additional cutscenes to fill in the gaps that would normally be filled with gameplay. That way, if all you care about is the story, you get the best version of that story that you possibly could.
Of course there are plenty of kinds of games this wouldn’t work for, but for the ones where it could, I think it would be a nice replacement for “story mode” difficulties, or at least an addition. What do you think?
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When I was talking about this with a friend, we discussed how let’s play videos could serve as a substitute for playing the game if you just want the story. But of course this has it’s own problems. The pacing may still be bad, the video maker’s commentary might be distracting, and if you decide to go this route before even purchasing the game, the dev isn’t even financially rewarded for the work they did at least creating a story you liked.
Just mentioning this because you might not be aware of it, but there’s “no commentary” players, actually. They just play the game and never speak, so you get to watch the gameplay, the story, etc. without someone interjecting their thoughts. One channel that plays quite a lot of games is MKIceAndFire. They sometimes upload alternative endings/choices, and “story cuts” where a story-rich game is stripped from most of the gameplay so you can watch the story.
And I think the devs still get compensation, because these let’s plays are basically free advertising. I’ve bought games after watching a few episodes of a game I wasn’t sure of, which would have given me a lot of pause with the 2-hour limit to refund on Steam.
MKIceandFire is probably one of the best no commentary Let’s Players on all of YouTube. It’s just gameplay and no bullshit. And they edit out any grinding and unnecessary side stuff; like their playthrough of Spider-Man 2, they would regularly edit around breaks and collecting things to just show you more of the story. And they have different ways to watch, from one long video of the entire story, to breaking it up into multiple 15 minute+ videos in their own playlists.
Agreed. I regretfully left out a lot of it when mentioning MK.
They also leave any readable lore open long enough to give you time to pause the video and read it at your own pace. And they’re very throughout about exploring, looting, etc but as you say, they edit out anything boring like grinding. So you get a very smooth gameplay video that is worth watching, and hardly frustrating. I’ve used their videos to find collectables in some games, too.
I guess I should have some stance on this. I played Nier Automata, and the combat was horrendous to me. I still think there must have been some core mechanic that was unclear to me, but even on brief review, I didn’t see anything.
I dropped the difficulty down to nothing so I could quickly force through all the story content and see “what’s so amazing about this game”. And the story did nothing. It had me burst out laughing in mockery at the times players were supposed to be crying.
That could just be a quirk of that game’s story in particular. I do think some scenes I’ve enjoyed out of long JRPGs were only notable because I’d invested time and effort in them, so I think a lot is lost if the player isn’t interacting with the premise at all. It’s why I’d prefer forms of difficulty adjustment, removing just one form of challenge, over total removal of the entire gameplay system. Unfortunately, I think a lot of action games handle that poorly, in a very lazy way that doesn’t appreciate what challenges players.
Personally I enjoyed Nier Automata’s story, but I think that’s mostly because I enjoy camp/anime trash. I can definitely see why it wouldn’t be appealing if you went in looking for a more well put together story. That said, I don’t really remember the gameplay well enough to have an opinion on it.
To the point about being more granular with the difficulty settings: I’d definitely like that if it were done well. There are some types of gameplay I really enjoy and some which I don’t and depending on how intrusive the parts I don’t like are, I either put up with it or it’s enough to make me abandon the game. For me, while I like games that make me think and make decisions like RPGs, card games, strategy games, etc, I get really overwhelmed by too much complexity. I like games which enable me to make deep decisions using relatively simple interactions. So there are almost certainly some games I’d play if I could flip a switch that hid/automated all of the stuff like making complicated character builds and just let me do the parts I like. The game that actually prompted this thread was Expedition 33. I really wanted to play it because of all the good reviews it got and I enjoyed the combat, story, setting, etc. But I just got exhausted by having to mess around with the character builds. I supose I could have just looked up some builds online and who knows? Maybe I’ll go back to it some day and do that, but it would have been nice if there were a difficulty option that just said “Choose my skills/passives.” That way I could still engage with the combat at a level that was challenging for me without getting overwhelmed by the build stuff.
I can’t comment on Nier, as I’ve never played it. But I did notice the reverse situation— after beating Final Fantasy X, I replayed it with a “no sphere grid” game… and suddenly found a lot of these scenes far more impactful. What used to be a “meh, another stupid boss fight, whatever, no big deal…” suddenly became impactful fights to the death that carried emotional weight for me. So I think you have something there in your hypothesis.
Well, the movie would be playable on any device. I have an Xbox, and my computers are Macs, so I have fewer options for running games, but anything can play video.
The other consideration is that most people aren’t going to pay to watch the video. They’ll watch it on YouTube with ads but they’re not gonna pay game money to watch it played.
