It Gets Better: Difference between revisions

* 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.

* ''[[Discworld/Making Money|Making Money]]'' is possibly the only [[Discworld]] book to suffer from this. We know he's going to take the position at the bank, it's on the dust-jacket, hell it was foreshadowed at the end of the last book. It is funny at first to see him resisting [[Magnificent Bastard|Vetinari]], but eventually you want to shout "Get on with it!"

* 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."

** It's not that the first novel is bad, but it's not anywhere near as well written or complex as the rest of the series. Part of the reason is the author attempting to sell it as a script first, then making a book of it.

** However, it is possible to skip the cutscene [[New Game+|once you've already finished the game]]. The Wii remake also allows you to skip them on your first run through.

* Whenever you recruit a new character, ''[[Valkyrie Profile]]'' gives you an unskippable cutscene detailing his or her backstory. Some are good, some just have you mashing the X button in the irrational hope that it will do ''something''. Notably, the intro to the entire game- which has to introduce the main character AND her first two companions- takes nearly ''fifty minutes''. And there's also a prologue cutscene that plays [[Attract Mode|if you leave the game on the title screen without pressing start for a while]], sets up a plot twist later on, and is almost as long.

* ''[[Fallout 3]]'' takes at least a half-hour to get going, as you're forced through an extended character creation/exposition bit that, for all its attempted immersion, even ''one of the characters'' admits is a joke {{spoiler|right before he offers to change your stats for you}}.

** [[Fallout: New Vegas]], by contrast, has an extremely quick tutorial, but afterwards it does quite a bit of [[Railroading]], mostly by throwing [[Beef Gate|Beef Gates]] up everywhere. It opens up once you either get to Vegas or find enough [[Disc One Nuke]] equipment to deal with the Cazadores.

** ''[[Spirit Tracks]]'' parodies the trope. It starts out with a big chunk of back-story, told with text and still pictures, just like the beginning of ''[[The Wind Waker]]''. Once it ends, we see that the player-character got bored and fell asleep while an old man was telling the story.

*** ''[[Phantom Hourglass]]'' did the exact same thing [[Older Than They Think|first]].

* The first ten hours of ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]'' can be a real drag since the main character Luke is an unlikable [[Jerkass]] and the plot is fairly typical. Even worse is how expensive weapon and armor is, so every time you get a new character you have to waste a lot of time running around fighting monsters because you will not have enough money. But eventually you get all your characters geared up, Luke has a [[Heel Realization]] moment, and the first traditional ''Tales'' plot twist happens, making the story actually interesting.

** This is more or less endemic to the entire [[Tales (series)]], considering one of their unifying aspects is that they start off with formulaic, overdone [[The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches|RPG cliches]] and then switch it up and confound the player's expectations about halfway through. Problem is, they're usually very, very long games, so halfway through is a long ways off from the beginning.

* A lot of people dislike the tutorial level of ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] IV: Oblivion'', as it consists of a (dull) cave which they must play through before they can start the game proper. Considering one of the biggest selling points for the game when it was released were the [[Scenery Porn|beautiful outdoor landscapes]], it was particularly stupid to set the tutorial entirely inside a stuffy dungeon.

** Oblivion being what it is, [[Game Mod|there's several mods allowing you to start the game in different ways]]. Naturally, it's one of the more popular mods available.

*** Morrowind also got the complaint that its tutorial is virtually non-existent, making the game too difficult to start. Bethesda has yet to find the sweet spot, it seems.

** Skyrim manages to show off the main attractions - impressive landscapes and dragons - during the introduction. The dragonborn gets hauled across the landscape, then sent to the executioner's block, then rescued by a dragon... and after that the tutorial starts. In short, it takes a while to get to the sandbox mode. It gets quite boring when one wants to start again with another race/gender.

** Kyosuke's route isn't too bad though, as you get quickly several unique units and even some [[Super Robot|Super Robots]]. Ryusei's, in the other hand...

* The first ''[[Devil May Cry]]'' game started by forcing you to jump around the lifeless opening foyer of a mansion and find 45 red orbs to unlock a door before meeting your first mook.

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

* ''[[Earthbound]]'' starts you out with one party member, rendering any strategy beyond 'hit and get hit' nonexistant. Also, the game gives you little room for error; this isn't too much of a problem in Onett, but [[That One Level|Peaceful Rest Valley]] can be a nightmare even with the help of the rolling HP meter. After Paula joins and levels up enough for her tremendous speed and magical powers to start showing, the game gets much better.