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Between work, sleep, errands, and other demands, the average gamer doesn’t have as many hours as they’d like for their hobby. When you finally get the time, there’s a nearly endless bounty available: ambitious narratives, professional voice acting, character customization, adaptive simulations, deep lore, and more.
This is great, but please, I beg you: Let me skip ahead. Starting a game I’ve already played once before, or would otherwise be familiar with, only to hit cutscenes, tutorials, and low-risk levels meant to train you—just stop. I’ve halted a number of games, games I would otherwise enjoy, because of their outsize preambles. It’s not an entirely new problem, but I can’t believe it hasn’t been worked through yet.
Most cutscenes offer a way to skip them. I’m looking for similar graciousness for everything else a game mandates that is not directly related to its actual gameplay or core loop. When I have the time to play a game that won’t be new to me, I don’t want to play the “Hold B to crouch” tutorial level or slowly unlock powers or areas. I’ve got one, maybe one and a half hours between dinner clean-up and a proper bedtime and a few spare hours on the weekends. Let’s get on with it.
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