When the pacing drops dead in the water (open spoilers)

Deleted member 17402 · Oct 22, 2019

***THE LAST OF US SPOILERS***

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I completed a third or fourth run of The Last of Us a few days ago, so the experience is fresh in my mind.

My opinion of the game has unsurprisingly changed in some ways over the years, but what is more apparent to me now is how much I dread the beginning Fall section meeting up with Tommy. The pacing drops dead in the water here. I understand that the story development here is important but the way in which it's executed leaves me bored to tears as a player. I think the game really fumbles here and I wish it was more interesting to play.

The only other time I feel this way in The Last of Us is in the very beginning, from the opening section to when you're tracking down that dude for the guns you're owed. But I excuse it there because the momentum hasn't started and it's practically the tutorial.

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What are some of your examples?

Acquiescence · Oct 22, 2019

Has there ever been a game to pump the brakes as hard as Bravely Default? Man does that game go to crap chapter 5 onwards.

BluWacky · Oct 22, 2019

Two obvious ones spring to mind, both of which are open world games that are "too open", as it were, and suffer from identical issues:

Final Fantasy XV and Dragon Age Inquisition.

Here you are, in the very first area. There are A MILLION QUESTS. You can go after them all! They will all give you XP! They have nothing to do with anything much... but you can still do it all!

Fast forward however many hours... and you're still there, because THERE ARE MORE QUESTS! MORE YOU CAN DO! GO DO ALL THE THINGS!

By the time you remember to get on with the main story of FFXV it's an afterthought that takes very little time at all. I never did go back to DA:I; the Hinterlands sucked the life out of me.

P-MAC · Oct 22, 2019

EDIT: ignore this

I can't even remember the part you're talking about and definitely can't remember any pacing issues, but then again I only played it twice with the first time being on launch.

Wind Waker triforce hunt was a big one, at least back on the Gamecube.

srtrestre · Oct 22, 2019

Metal Gear Solid V: The Thread.

That second half... ugh

CaptainKashup · Oct 22, 2019

But, that part is like 10 minutes tops ?
And it's kind of needed on your first playthrough since you just saw a kid die and his brother killing himself. It's a bit of a rebreather.

Quinton · Oct 22, 2019

BluWacky said:
Two obvious ones spring to mind, both of which are open world games that are "too open", as it were, and suffer from identical issues:

Final Fantasy XV and Dragon Age Inquisition.

Here you are, in the very first area. There are A MILLION QUESTS. You can go after them all! They will all give you XP! They have nothing to do with anything much... but you can still do it all!

Fast forward however many hours... and you're still there, because THERE ARE MORE QUESTS! MORE YOU CAN DO! GO DO ALL THE THINGS!

By the time you remember to get on with the main story of FFXV it's an afterthought that takes very little time at all. I never did go back to DA:I; the Hinterlands sucked the life out of me.

For what it's worth, Inquisition has more meat to it than FFXV once folks do hop back into the story.

Bulk_Rate · Oct 22, 2019

RE6 for when the pacing drops dead every 5 mins across a ~20 hour game.

Deleted member 17402 · Oct 22, 2019

CaptainKashup said:
But, that part is like 10 minutes tops ?
And it's kind of needed on your first playthrough since you just saw a kid die and his brother killing himself. It's a bit of a rebreather.

It is most certainly not 10 minutes tops. It starts with you having to get across the dam, followed by story cut-scenes, then slow walking, a shootout, and then horse riding to find Ellie. It's definitely not 10 minutes before the University section follows, which is what I actually enjoy.

As for being a breather, I can see that. But that's the interesting part about it, no? Subsequent runs of a game can change your opinion.

Grettir_the_Swole · Oct 22, 2019

BluWacky said:
Two obvious ones spring to mind, both of which are open world games that are "too open", as it were, and suffer from identical issues:

Final Fantasy XV and Dragon Age Inquisition.

Here you are, in the very first area. There are A MILLION QUESTS. You can go after them all! They will all give you XP! They have nothing to do with anything much... but you can still do it all!

Fast forward however many hours... and you're still there, because THERE ARE MORE QUESTS! MORE YOU CAN DO! GO DO ALL THE THINGS!

I didn't mind the extra side quests since the chemistry between Noctis and his bros and driving around between and during side missions were my favorite aspects of the game. That being said, the game became a chore to finish once the story kicked into the game's main focus and suddenly the game became uncharacteristically linear and repetitive for a FF title. (XIII not included because I rarely include that side series into my opinions on the series at large to begin with).

Deleted member 33533 · Oct 22, 2019

I thought this was going to be about slow water levels in games haha

P-MAC said:
Wind Waker triforce hunt was a big one, at least back on the Gamecube.

Yeah, this one was pretty rough. Wind Waker's pacing is pretty all over the place. Makes sense since the game was incomplete so they basically had to close the gaps. The Triforce Hunt is just there to add some length to the game because they didn't get to do all the dungeons they intended to do.

It’s Time To Go · Oct 22, 2019

Pokemon sun and moon are so poorly paced with endless boring story cutscenes and tutorials right at the beginning it makes me less inclined to replay it.

Couscous · Oct 22, 2019

That slow part is needed after the ending of summer though.

Master Chuuster · Oct 22, 2019

Guarma

Deleted member 17402 · Oct 22, 2019

Couscous said:
That slow part is needed after the ending of summer though.

Sure, but I think it could've been executed more effectively and with more engagement.

Couscous · Oct 22, 2019

TheFallenSaboteur said:
Sure, but I think it could've been executed more effectively and with more engagement.

I think ND was also trying to hide some loading screens when you're slowly walking with Tommy. That could've been sped up otherwise.

Deleted member 17402 · Oct 22, 2019

Couscous said:
I think ND was also trying to hide some loading screens when you're slowly walking with Tommy. That could've been sped up otherwise.

I'm curious to see how The Last of Us 2 compares. Then again, that game is still being built with PS4 in mind, so I expect those hidden loading screens through gameplay segments. Maybe we'll have to wait until PS5 lol

crowphoenix · Oct 22, 2019

BluWacky said:
Two obvious ones spring to mind, both of which are open world games that are "too open", as it were, and suffer from identical issues:

Final Fantasy XV and Dragon Age Inquisition.

Here you are, in the very first area. There are A MILLION QUESTS. You can go after them all! They will all give you XP! They have nothing to do with anything much... but you can still do it all!

Fast forward however many hours... and you're still there, because THERE ARE MORE QUESTS! MORE YOU CAN DO! GO DO ALL THE THINGS!

By the time you remember to get on with the main story of FFXV it's an afterthought that takes very little time at all. I never did go back to DA:I; the Hinterlands sucked the life out of me.

The weirdest part about Dragon Age: I, and I loved the game, was that the Hinterlands were supposed to be an area you return to throughout the game. There are quests, mobs, bosses, and areas that are only viable with end game gear.

However, the game does nothing to convey this, and you can easily level your party to a mid-game level before leaving the hinterlands. If you make that mistake, the rest of the game is trivial.

Couscous · Oct 22, 2019

TheFallenSaboteur said:
I'm curious to see how The Last of Us 2 compares. Then again, that game is still being built with PS4 in mind, so I expect those hidden loading screens through gameplay segments. Maybe we'll have to wait until PS5 lol

I hope that's the one thing SSD brings to the table. The uneventful puzzles and walking segments in games like TLOU and GOW should be gone since SSD can load much faster.

Chopchop · Oct 22, 2019

Every n64 era Rare game that tells you to stop whatever you're doing and collect another hundred doohickeys before you can progress in the main quest.

Skyward Sword kneecaps its own pacing a lot by adding a lot of side shit that's obviously meant to slow you down from doing the main quest. It would have been a fantastic game through and through if it didn't keep going "but wait! Find me my fucking cat because I don't believe you're ready to continue your heroic quest" or some shit. As it is, it's a fantastic game that repeatedly devolves into an awful game on a semi-regular basis.

BluWacky said:
Two obvious ones spring to mind, both of which are open world games that are "too open", as it were, and suffer from identical issues:

Final Fantasy XV and Dragon Age Inquisition.

Here you are, in the very first area. There are A MILLION QUESTS. You can go after them all! They will all give you XP! They have nothing to do with anything much... but you can still do it all!

Fast forward however many hours... and you're still there, because THERE ARE MORE QUESTS! MORE YOU CAN DO! GO DO ALL THE THINGS!

By the time you remember to get on with the main story of FFXV it's an afterthought that takes very little time at all. I never did go back to DA:I; the Hinterlands sucked the life out of me.

Deus Ex MD does this too. Prague is great and so are the sidequests, but it's possible to drown in sidequests right away, before you even start the main story. I'm not sure if the game should have introduced so many at once.

Wamb0wneD · Oct 22, 2019

P-MAC said:
Wind Waker triforce hunt was a big one, at least back on the Gamecube.

SuperiorTrashTalk said:
Yeah, this one was pretty rough. Wind Waker's pacing is pretty all over the place. Makes sense since the game was incomplete so they basically had to close the gaps. The Triforce Hunt is just there to add some length to the game because they didn't get to do all the dungeons they intended to do.

Please hear me out here.
The reason why people feel like they hit a brick wall once the triforce quest comes up is because Nintendo struggled to tell their story like in previous Zelda games but pair it with that open world exploration approach. If you strictly follow the storyline and only visit few of the islands off the track, you will hit a brick wall. If you actually explore the map, you'll already have a lot of the pieces once it prompts you to collect them.
They failed to incentivise that enough, but it is absolutely possible to not hit a brickwall at that point. Granted, a lot of people don't feel like there's enough interesting stuff on the other islands, but still.

It's not about padding anything. Last time I played the game (on Gamecube) I took like half an hour to collect the ones I was still missing. I never was short on rupees for Tingle, either. Because I unlocked the maps in between my dungeon visits and other storybeats. They just had people follow the storypath like in OoT and other prior games, and as a result a lot of people suddenly had to collect almost all of the pieces at once.

Paperchampion23 · Oct 22, 2019

BluWacky said:
Two obvious ones spring to mind, both of which are open world games that are "too open", as it were, and suffer from identical issues:

Final Fantasy XV and Dragon Age Inquisition.

Here you are, in the very first area. There are A MILLION QUESTS. You can go after them all! They will all give you XP! They have nothing to do with anything much... but you can still do it all!

Fast forward however many hours... and you're still there, because THERE ARE MORE QUESTS! MORE YOU CAN DO! GO DO ALL THE THINGS!

By the time you remember to get on with the main story of FFXV it's an afterthought that takes very little time at all. I never did go back to DA:I; the Hinterlands sucked the life out of me.

The one piece of advice I have for FFXV is that aside from the Behemoth, Royal Weapons, DLC and collab quests (they added several DLC hunts and a new summon) and the DLC episodes itself, there is literally zero reason to play the side quests, and there are a dumb amount of them. You get way too much EXP for the rest of the story and they do nothing except provide more unique dialogue for the bros. Thats the only good thing.

Argus · Oct 22, 2019

Master Chuuster said:
Guarma

It was amazing how it went from "Oh boy a new large secret area to play in!" To, "Is that it? It's really bad." over the course of like 2 hours.

aett · Oct 22, 2019

Chopchop said:
Deus Ex MD does this too. Prague is great and so are the sidequests, but it's possible to drown in sidequests right away, before you even start the main story. I'm not sure if the game should have introduced so many at once.

It's ridiculous how many quests I was able to do before getting Adam's HUD fixed in, what, the first plot point after the opening mission.

Deleted member 49319 · Oct 22, 2019

That change of pace is needed after the emotional rollercoaster towards the end of Pittsburgh chapter.
Also

Deleted member 11182 · Oct 22, 2019

Speaking of water, I just hate Maridia in Super Metroid for one reason especially. The moving sand. One of the most frustrating mechanics in gaming I can think of. I don't understand how Nintendo allowed that to go into the final game.

Duxxy3 · Oct 22, 2019

I like the Tommy section because it's a bit of a breather between the grueling Pittsburgh level and the brutal winter level. I think it was designed like that.

Deleted member 17402 · Oct 22, 2019

Couscous said:
I hope that's the one thing SSD brings to the table. The uneventful puzzles and walking segments in games like TLOU and GOW should be gone since SSD can load much faster.

Let's hope they don't think we actually enjoy sections like that

Mato said:
Speaking of water, I just hate Maridia in Super Metroid for one reason especially. The moving sand. One of the most frustrating mechanics in gaming I can think of. I don't understand how Nintendo allowed that to go into the final game.

Maridia in general is my least favorite part of Super Metroid, closely behind exploring the ship wreckage.

Deleted member 33533 · Oct 22, 2019

Wamb0wneD said:
Please hear me out here.
The reason why people feel like they hit a brick wall once the triforce quest comes up is because Nintendo struggled to tell their story like in previous Zelda games but pair it with that open world exploration approach. If you strictly follow the storyline and only visit few of the islands off the track, you will hit a brick wall. If you actually explore the map, you'll already have a lot of the pieces once it prompts you to collect them.
They failed to incentivise that enough, but it is absolutely possible to not hit a brickwall at that point. Granted, a lot of people don't feel like there's enough interesting stuff on the other islands, but still.

It's not about padding anything. Last time I played the game (on Gamecube) I took like half an hour to collect the ones I was still missing. I never was short on rupees for Tingle, either. Because I unlocked the maps in between my dungeon visits and other storybeats. They just had people follow the storypath like in OoT and other prior games, and as a result a lot of people suddenly had to collect almost all of the pieces at once.

Like you said, the game never tells you to go looking for these triforce shards. You only really know to start taking care of it early on when you've played the game before. Even if you explore the map, it's not likely you'll just come across shards because it's not like you can just find them laying about on islands. You have to find the charts, pay Tingle to decipher them and then find the location where you can pull them up. They put it behind enough BS that the average player isn't going to have actual triforce shards just by playing normally. At most they'll have a chart or two and not quite know what to do with them.

And I think it's not just that the game fails to give you incentive to explore but it actively encourages you to do the opposite. The game is almost always pushing you along until the second half of the game. The King of Red Lions doesn't allow you to deviate from the path to Dragon Roost or to Forest Haven. Then you get caught up in the whole weird endless night thing (another placeholder for a dungeon) which throws you right into the Tower of the Gods. It would be like if in Breath of the Wild, you had to travel directly to Kakariko Village and Zora's Domain on a set path before the game opened up.

Even disregarding all of that, coming in as a person who has played the game multiple times and knows to start searching for those charts early on, it still slows down the pacing. The beginning of the game is dungeon > sail > dungeon > sail > dungeon > sail rinse and repeat and then it's just sail > sail > sail? The whole hunt only exists because the dungeons they had planned for the game weren't finished.

Chopchop · Oct 22, 2019

TheFallenSaboteur said:
Let's hope they don't think we actually enjoy sections like that

Walk and talk sequences are one of my most hated tropes in modern games. They almost always kill the pace of the game.

mhayes86 · Oct 22, 2019

Acquiescence said:
Has there ever been a game to pump the brakes as hard as Bravely Default? Man does that game go to crap chapter 5 onwards.

While you're definitely not wrong, I'd argue that the content from chapter 5 onward is mostly optional and you can blow through it fairly quickly despite having to revisit the crystals. It's great for grinding and getting better equipment, but it definitely drags if you feel compelled to do every sidequest. It could have been executed in a more enjoyable way, though.

Deleted member 5764 · Oct 22, 2019

Gears 5 slows to a darn-near crawl in Act III and it really got to me. I almost considered just dropping the game because it felt like I was never going to be done.

Deleted member 6263 · Oct 22, 2019

For me, the first time I played Final Fantasy VII disc 2 without a guide. After the end of disc 1 you're thrust into a weird snowboarding game and then a blizzard where you aimlessly run around until you pass out. It still feels so out of place.

Deleted member 17402 · Oct 22, 2019

Chopchop said:
Walk and talk sequences are one of my most hated tropes in modern games. They almost always kill the pace of the game.

I think some can be executed very well. For example, I think the driving sections in Uncharted 4 serve as great vehicle (pun intended) to execute a walk-and-talk sequence. I don't think those sections were intended to hide any loading screen and they're actually enjoyable to traverse. I could be mistaken. Anyway, that's only one example of a way in which I enjoy experiencing it. For the most part, I dislike it. Which is why I dislike the beginning of Fall in The Last of Us, because whether or not they're hiding loading screens, I can't proceed any faster than the conversation with Tommy allows me to.

Linus815 · Oct 22, 2019

from recent memory, days gone has some of the worst pacing of any game i played.

the first 5-10 hours of the game is arguably its weakest point, but its gets going after that, and becomes pretty good... until.... you reach like, the last 5 hours of the story. For some reason, the final camp sends you on 2-3 hours worthy of fetch quests and the story, just when you think is about to have it climax, slows to an absolute crawl. it really tested my patience. If i didnt know I was close to the end, I probably would have stopped playing there and then.

Deleted member 17402 · Oct 22, 2019

Linus815 said:
from recent memory, days gone has some of the worst pacing of any game i played.

the first 5-10 hours of the game is arguably its weakest point, but its gets going after that, and becomes pretty good... until.... you reach like, the last 5 hours of the story. For some reason, the final camp sends you on 2-3 hours worthy of fetch quests and the story, just when you think is about to have it climax, slows to an absolute crawl. it really tested my patience. If i didnt know I was close to the end, I probably would have stopped playing there and then.

I haven't played it yet but all the mixed reviews have certainly put me off from trying it unless it's heavily discounted in the future. Has it done well enough for a sequel? If so, hopefully they iron out these issues you and others speak of.

Linus815 · Oct 22, 2019

TheFallenSaboteur said:
I haven't played it yet but all the mixed reviews have certainly put me off from trying it unless it's heavily discounted in the future. Has it done well enough for a sequel? If so, hopefully they iron out these issues you and others speak of.

it sold extremely well. A sequel is coming, for sure. There's several sequel hooks too.
I think if the pacing was improved, it'd be a legitimately fantastic game.

When the pacing drops dead in the water (open spoilers)

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