It Gets Better: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

A pacing problem that occurs when the beginning of a story is so front-loaded with [[Exposition]] and details about the world contained within, taking forever to get to the good parts and putting all of that exposition to good use. In other words, this is a specific type of [[Info Dump]] that occurs at the beginning of a story.

Compare to [[Padding]], [[Filler]], [[Growing the Beard]], [[Prolonged Prologue]], [[Developing Doomed Characters]], and [[Arc Fatigue]]. Often goes hand-in-hand with [[Check Point Starvation]]. Contrast [[Lost in Medias Res]], where a show starts with too ''little'' exposition and [[Ending Fatigue]], when it takes forever to ''end'', not start.

 

 

{{examples}}

* [[Legend of Galactic Heroes]]

* [[Digimon Tamers]] starts like a [[Slice of Life]] show with mons, battling the [[Monster of the Week]] and exploring the character's lives and personalities. Then they go to the Digital World with lots of hopes and dream. THEN, [[Wham! Episode|Episode 34]] happens and [[Trauma Conga Line|everything]] [[Break the Cutie|gets]] [[Cosmic Horror Story|weird]]. The difference is quite shocking, to say the least. [[Word of God]] says this was intentional.

** There is the possibility that they didn't want to go over material that was already discussed in length in the 2003 anime unless it was absolutely necessary, such as {{spoiler|Nina Tucker and Maes Hughes'}} respective deaths. And in some cases, when ''Brotherhood'' did feature material that was seen in the 2003 anime, it was more faithful to the source material, such as the introduction of Izumi and Sig Curtis, which happened much earlier in ''Brotherhood'' than it did in the 2003 anime.

* [[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]: To transcribe the average reaction:

'''Episodes Four through Twelve:''' [[Trauma Conga Line|...meep]]! }}

* ''[[Rave Master]]'' has a slow start and poor artwork at the beginning of the manga. It isn't really until Sieg shows up that the series really kicks into gear, even if he leaves shortly afterward.

* ''[[Heat Guy J]]'' appears to have attempted this, and suffered a [[Cosmic Deadline]]. It starts out very slowly, and ends on quite an action-packed note, but many fans dropped off before even making it halfway through.

 

== Comic Books ==

* ''[[Scott Pilgrim]]'' doesn't play on much of its video game elements until the ending of the first book and from then on through the rest of the series.

 

== Film ==

* Dingo's ranting in the deleted scene from ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]'' (the scene is sometimes shown on TV and on the DVD) is interrupted by: The three-headed knight, Dennis, some characters from later in the film {{spoiler|(the old man from Scene 24, Tim the Enchanter, and the English army)}}, and [[God]], the latter four entries all just shouting "Get on with it!"

* Both the ending ''and'' the beginning of the horror movie ''[[The Strangers]]'': at the beginning we get a text explaining how many American citizens are estimated to be involved in violent crimes a year, a voiceover, in wannabe ''[[The Texas Chainsaw Massacre]]'' style, explaining what had happened, and ''shots from the freaking end''. And at the end they make it pretty obvious that {{spoiler|Kristen is going to let out a huge scream and [[The Reveal|turn out]] to be [[Not Quite Dead]]}}.

* ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]''. Half an hour of deserts and apes before we get to outer space exploration.

* [[Sergio Leone]] has said ''[[Once Upon a Time in the West]]'' is supposed to reflect the process of death, slow-paced with breaths of amazing (usually duels). Well, some people can get bored.

* ''[[Death Proof]]'' could be the ultimate example of the trope. 45 min. more or less of how [[The Bechdel Test]] actually works, for a time, talking about pot, dancing, jobs and everything. Halfway through it, people can walk out... except that after all that, there's a car crash in which everybody dies except Stuntman Mike.

* ''[[The Pink Panther]]'' (1963) begins very slow and moves along like a drama until it somewhat abruptly breaks into the [[Slapstick]] and chase scenes the series is known for.

 

== Literature ==

* The opening chapter of Nathaniel Hawthorne's ''[[The Scarlet Letter]]'', called "The Custom House," is composed of between 31 and 55 pages of exposition based on which version you're reading. What does this lengthy opening have to do with the book? Nothing. It tells of how a fictional Hawthorne found the fictional documents to write The Scarlet Letter. It's [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|a thematic device]] that most people just skip over, as it's extremely dry.

** It's basically a long list of [[Take That|digs]] at Hawthorne's former co-workers, along with his complaints about being fired when [[wikipedia:Spoils system|his party lost the election.]] Some parts, in particular the description of the General, may have had some satirical value for contemporary readers. For modern readers? Not so much.

* The first chapters of ''[[Frankenstein]]'' deal with the backstory of the sea captain who met the titular Doctor on his expedition to find the North Pole. If you didn't know that the novel was a Story Within a Story (Within a Story) you would read the opening wondering "What does this have to do with the Monster?"

* Very common in the ''[[Kara no Kyoukai:]]'' novels; each part in a chapter (and there are many parts in any given chapter) usually has paragraphs interspersed through it focusing on nothing but philosophy and concepts, which even pop up in the middle of a ''very'' heated life-and-death battle.

* The beginning of Frank Herbert's first ''[[Dune]]'' book is heavily weighted down with this kind of exposition in the first hundred pages.

* The ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' series can be like this, depending on how much you like politics. Each is at least several hundred pages long, and in one instance, a book for which the title and back cover talk all about Honor being captured, said capture doesn't happen until the last 100 or so pages of the book. In ''War Of Honor'', so much time is spent on the politics leading up to the resumption of hostilities that even if you're hoping they somehow avert the war, you may eventually change the tune to "Someone shoot at ''somebody'' so something actually ''happens''." It's 450 pages in before a shot is fired, and it isn't even the main conflict.

* ''[[Ringworld]]'' spends quite a while showing the reader why Louis Wu wants to go traveling. Unfortunately the reason he wants to travel is that his life is boring and hollow, something that Niven gets across a bit too effectively.

* A common phrase said by fans to new readers of ''[[Malazan Book of the Fallen]]''. The first book throws the reader in the deep end without so much as a "can you swim?", with a whole host of characters and events and expects you to run with it. After the first few hundred pages, after the reader has acclimatised themselves, the experience quickly becomes less "Huh-wha?" and more "Ooohh! That's clever."

* The first third of ''[[Skylark Series|The Skylark of Space]]'' is rather low-key. All the action occurs on Earth and is mostly the subterfuge of [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|DuQuesne]] trying to steal [[The Hero|Seaton]]'s technology. Then they finally do get in space, and after a few jaunts to various planets, the [[Lensman Arms Race]] eventually comes in full force.

 

* ''[[The Wire]]'' isn't exactly instant gratification TV, and it certainly [[Continuity Lock Out|does not exactly make it easy for new viewers to jump in and understand the show]]. The first few episodes get hit with this problem the hardest, which almost overwhelms to the point of discouragement, thanks to [[Info Dump|detail overload]] and an [[Loads and Loads of Characters|abundance of characters to introduce and dissect]]. However, as all longtime fans of ''The Wire'' know ''very'' well, for people willing to take the time to understand the show's intricate design, they will be rewarded a hundred times over. It just takes some perseverance to get there.

* After ''[[Lost]]'' season 3 opened up with an awe inspiring first five minutes, many fans found the first seven episodes to be very frustrating and boring, not to mention a hasty death that cut off a potentially awesome future to an already great character. Some viewers during the season's original airing jumped ship around this time, which is too bad, because the following episodes were mostly wonderful, and the [[Mind Screw|completely unexpected season ending]] [[Wham! Episode|changed everything viewers knew about the show]].

* The first five episodes of ''[[The Vampire Diaries]]'' are very slow, due to hardly any characters actually being aware of the vampires' existence. Then Elena finds out at the end of episode five, and the show improves considerably.

* [[Star Trek: The Next Generation]] isn't terrible ''per se'' but the first couple of seasons struggle, with awkward storylines, jerky character development and interaction, and [[Anvilicious|often heavy handed morals]] that they [[Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped|don't get away with as easily as the original series]] did. By the third season however they've really come into their own and distinguished themselves as more than just a sequel series for a cult 60's show. Next Gen is now one of the most popular series, and is in fact [[Trope Namer]] for [[Growing the Beard]].

 

== Music ==

* Songs can have a filler of their own. Often they're [[Epic Instrumental Opener|near the beginning]] and can be recognized by an urge to skip forward. The most common examples are video game song remixes.

** "Singing Mountain" from ''[[Chrono Trigger]]''. A beautiful piece of music preceded by a whole minute of listening to the wind.

* An overwhelming amount of electronic dance music (house, trance, techno, dubstep, etc.) contains intros and/or outros of just the percussion, which are primarily there for DJs to use for mixing. These intros/outros are usually removed for an artist's album and their appearance phases in and out of use based on current trends: as of 2012, many producers are reducing or removing their beat intros altogether.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJzWGkgFcTU "Ghost of Stephen Foster"] by [[Squirrel Nut Zippers]] has a minute of slow, somber violin music before the catchy klezmer ''finally'' begins.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxP-KR-O2Ls "Threnody"] by [[Sebasti An]] is quite possibly the biggest build-up to a bass drop ever: out of a 13 minute song, the build-up is ''11 minutes long''. [[Sebasti An]] has played it live many times before in its entirety, often [[Troll|extending the introduction by ten or more minutes]], with [[Hilarity Ensues|hilarious results.]]

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

** This is one of the major things [[Wizards of the Coast]] tried to fix in 4th Edition. It didn't really work: combat at level one is no longer dangerous but, for the lack of abilities, still boring; and some of the [[Unpleasable Fanbase]] want the thrill of low-level danger back.

 

* The first two thirds of ''[[Our Town]]'' consists of a mind-numbingly detailed portrait of completely average small-town life. Of course, that's part of the point the author is trying to make.

* The first part of the prologue of ''[[Der Ring Des Nibelungen|Götterdämmerung]]'', with the Norns, is 15 minutes of pure exposition.

 

== Video Games ==

* In ''[[Dark Forces Saga|Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast]]'', the first few levels where the player is confined to using painfully inaccurate ranged weapons (as clumsy and random as blasters are purported to be by the Jedi, why would any non-Jedi use them if they were so useless?!) are painful to get through. However, upon obtaining a lightsaber and gaining Force powers the game becomes primary example of how fraggin' cool it is to be a Jedi.

* Pretty much every MMO ever made suffers from a form of this. The early levels are fun the first time you play through them. And then they become massively boring and frustrating whenever you make a new character and have to level through them again... and again... and again. Specific examples follow.

** Sometimes slowing down leveling in MMORPG games can invert this trope.

** Included in the tutorials is learning how to fish, usually completely optional. Then after you catch something, you need to find out how to drop it so that the cat takes off with it.

*** There is a point in the game where you have to fish for plot-related reasons, so it's not like they make you learn how just for the hell of it.

** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time]]'' doesn't have required tutorials, but there are [[Info Dump|several long cutscenes]] and a fairly pointless quest in Kokiri Village (to get a sword and shield) before Link can begin the first dungeon.

** The creators took complaints about the opening sections into account when they made ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword|The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword]]''. While it's still an hour or so before the main quest begins, most of the tutorial stuff is optional, and the main focus of the intro (the Bird Races) is still pretty exciting on its own.

** The Telos section is way worse than the opening dungeon. At least you get to kill stuff and meet several party members. Telos is a bunch of fetch quests in an area with a horrible amount of loading screens, making it downright mindnumbing. And you still have no lightsaber by this point.

* The first level in ''[[Forbidden Siren]]'' was called "easily the worst level in the entire game" by one website.

* The first hour or so of ''[[Star Ocean 3]]'' consist almost entirely of "run to this place, talk to this person, repeat." There's only two battles during the entire opening, and one is a tutorial.

* The Westopolis stage is one of the worst opening stages in the entire Sonic franchise and probably helped lower the already rock-bottom public opinion of ''[[Shadow the Hedgehog]]''. It exposes many of the game's flaws; the game starts becoming considerably more fun around the halfway point when better weapons deal with the targeting system's flaws when in close range.

* It's a fairly standard behavior for fans of ''[[Animal Crossing]]'' to wax annoyed at various qualities of the [[Justified Tutorial]]. Either it's too long, it's too repetitive, or it really ought to be skippable.

* ''[[Divine Divinity]]'' is a perfect example of this. Long, linear dungeon crawl to begin with, takes at least several hours to get through before you get to the heavily nonlinear and somewhat less combat-intensive main part of the game, which has heaps of interesting quests and whatnot. Technically it's possible to skip the dungeon but sucks somewhat because pretty much every other enemy around is well too tough at level 1.

* ''[[Retro Game Challenge]]'' opens up with the earliest, simplest game in the collection: ''Cosmic Gate''. If you happen to not be a fan of ''Galaga'' then you're in for a bit of a bad time.

* The early levels of ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' can be boring if you're not playing for the first time. You have only one or two skills and no talent points yet.

* ''[[Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura]]''. Coming off the crashed blimp, you have barely any money to buy your starting equipment, and your skills are lacking. It's hard to say at what point the game manages to pick-up, but you'll just suddenly realize that it did.

** The most common complaint is "The wolves at the start of the game are too difficult, I quit." Hint: buy a boomerang.

** The sequel, ''[[Mother 3]]'', does this as well. The first three chapters cover three very important days. While they may be excellent as far as the story goes, the gameplay suffers somewhat, ''especially'' during [[Forced Level Grinding|Chapter 3]]. After the [[Time Skip]], however, you get control of Lucas and Boney, and the gameplay becomes much more enjoyable, especially after getting your [[Psychic Powers]].

* ''[[Killer7]]'' has an extremely slow start, with the introductory level throwing you straight into the action without a word of explaination, and only offering bits and pieces of exposition during the incredibly long second level...but as soon as you reach the Cloudman chapter and meet Andrei Ulmeyda, the game picks up instantly.

* The first ''[[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]]'' is the only Mario RPG that explicitly prevents you from [[Action Commands|guarding and using timed hits]] until it is [[You Shouldn't Know This Already|explained by the tutorial]]... at the end of the lengthy prologue. Until then, battle is purely "hit and get hit", and the player is forced to use healing blocks and items to avoid dying.

** Speaking of ''Paper Mario'' games, the third one, ''[[Super Paper Mario]]'', can feel a bit slow at first. Then [[Your Mileage May Vary]] on when the game gets interesting: When Peach joins, when Bowser joins, when {{spoiler|Sammer's Kingdom is destroyed}}, etc.

** Note that this is entirely because of the reduced screen size on the Game Gear; the game was ported from the Master System version, which is designed for a TV and is considerably easier because of it.

** Underground is a bad level to start on anyway - it's boring and very cheap. Then again, that game has major [[Schizophrenic Difficulty]] issues...

* The first ''[[Dragon Warrior Monsters]]'' on the Gameboy Color, while superior to its spawn in almost every other way, suffers from a lot of dull text at the start, as you're forced to wander around a [[Noob Cave]] with monsters that don't have much in the way of usable skills, then do another mediocre dungeon, before you can finally start using the customization that makes the game so awesome. The DS game suffers a little from this, but the period is much shorter.

* ''[[Izuna]]''. While the games are a [[Nintendo Hard]] [[Roguelike|dungeon crawler]], the first game has a long text introduction followed by a boring dungeon where you get few items and die in a couple of hits. The 2nd game is better for this, but still has a lot of text at the start.

** However, ''Sim City 4'' takes this to the extreme in the sense that they offer the regions of San Fransisco, New York City, and a generic "Fairview" as being ''completely empty'', as in not one town to get you started, let alone your own custom regions start off blank. It can be frustrating to get the first few towns to grow, but after you get the regional population over 150,000, getting other cities to grow actually becomes incredibly easier and more strategically challenging as opposed to being pure frustration.

* The ''[[Suikoden]]'' series can take varying amounts of time to get to the best parts of the game, but ''Suikoden V'' is the real offender as far as this trope goes - it takes a good 10–15 hours (as in, probably the better part of a real life day) to get past the initial go to various towns, talk to various people, see cutscenes, and okay, we'll let you fight a *few*battles here and there stage to where the game starts opening up, letting you get your base and actually starting to explore, recruit, and really get into the actual game. But once you do get past that, it's actually probably the best Suikoden game other than the revered "Suikoden 2".

* ''[[Infinite Undiscovery]]'' was (rightly) criticized for its obnoxious opening hour. It starts with the player running up a long series of cut and pasted stairs, being chased by an invincible boss, proceeds into a ridiculously long and mostly pitch black forest full of enemies, all with only two characters and about as many health items. After the forest, the player gets a proper party...controlled by the AI, with the only player-controlled character being unable to attack, being required to carry another character to a nearby town. Fortunately, it picks up immediately afterwards.

* ''[[Gabriel Knight]]'' suffers from this for those not interested in backstory, historical minutiae, and/or drawn-out interview processes, especially when controlling Grace (audio tour of the museum, anyone?). Each of the three games takes about half the game for the action to pick up, which is good when it does, but until then...

* ''[[Eversion]]'' seems like a [[Sugar Bowl]] Mario-clone platformer at first, but after a few levels, you need to figure out how to "evert" in order to solve the puzzles, and it becomes very... interesting, to say the least.

* ''[[Star Ruler]]''. At the start your industry is poor, your ships are short-legged, slow, weak and don't carry much ammo, early-game rushes are nearly impossible. It's only after some tech buildup that you can start making war in earnest.

 

* A ''lot'' of webcomics, a natural consequence of learning to cartoon, plot, and write by the seat of one's pants.

* ''[[Homestuck]]'' starts out about a kid in his house. It then proceeds to [[Growing the Beard|grow a]] [[Mind Screw|very, very strange]] [[Growing the Beard|beard]] when the reality-altering video games come into the plot. According to the author's Formspring, this is one hundred percent intentional.

* ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'' was an amusing, [[Narm Charm|albeit narmful]], comic with mediocre art and a ridiculous amount of [[Gender Bender|gender bending]]. Eventually, it evolved into an extremely intelligent comic [[Art Evolution|with great art]] and a ridiculous amount of [[Gender Bender|gender bending]].

* It's often recommended to skip straight past the first five chapters of ''[[Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures]]''.

* ''[[Girl Genius]]'' starts as the story of a [[Loser Protagonist]], in black-and-white. But here, this is voluntary: the story begins with her intelligence limiter removed. So ''she'll'' get better.

 

== Web Original ==

* The web puppet series "Robot Rampage" suffered this in its first episode. While it essentially sets up the plot for the first season (building a Robot), the episode is a bit slow and expositional.

* [[The Nostalgia Critic]]'s early videos were ''okay'', they just weren't particularly laugh out loud funny or the Critic himself especially interesting. But then Doug tried something new by challenging [[The Angry Video Game Nerd]] and the comedy and character started falling into place.

 

== Western Animation ==

* While they probably stand out compared to G3 and 3.5, which by popular admission are pretty terrible, one could argue that the first two ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episodes are heavily clichéd and predictable. While these two episodes certainly aren't ''bad'' exactly, it's the later, slice-of-life episodes that are the real gems of the series.

* ''[[The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes|Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes]]'' begins not with the founding of The Avengers, but with about two hours' worth of shorts detailing how each of the first eight members fought crime ''before'' becoming part of the team. Regardless of whether you watch each short one by one, or watch the five episodes compiling them, they make a rather disjointed introduction to the show.<ref>The individual shorts were released in an order that caused the heroes' exploits to constantly interrupt one another, while the episodes compile them in a manner that sometimes fails to give each hero equal prominence.</ref> Even after the Avengers get founded, it takes six ''more'' episodes for all eight of those superheroes to join. However, a number of the episodes detailing the team's founding and early expansions became regarded nearly as highly as those that followed, if not more so.

 

== Real Life ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Exposition]]

[[Category:Pacing Problems]]

[[Category:Bad Writing Index]]

[[Category:Videogame Culture]]