The solution is to have dynamic personalized tutorials.
Lets take Death Stranding 2 for example, since I think its played a lot by working adults.
Death Stranding has a lot of story, relationships, and game mechanics they slowly throw at you. But when you take a break for 1-3 months it can definitely be difficult to remember what you were doing and how to do it.
They already have tutorials in their VR system, but that just goes over the basics. It would be neat if the game took the metrics they collect on you, to teach you how to use your most common moves and such.
It would also be neat if they could have a mentor system where the tutorial would then teach you new mechanics you ignored if it would help you out immediately (totally optional of course).
I don’t care. I play helter-skelter anyway. Just jumping around to whatever is fun, forgetting where I was, repeating stuff I liked. Never finishing the game. It’s all good.
I miss tutorials on the start screen.
Also minecraft books are a good idea, but lack the “hey btw youre gonna get busy and drop this game for 6 months and have no idea what your goals are. Care to take a note?”
My solution is a captains log after video game sessions, but i forget sometimes
Kim’s dialogue in disco elysium is pretty much this dressed up as a conversation
Disco Elysium is not that big of a game though.
I mean, any deckard cain-like character can act as the “catch me up on what’s going on” menu
Blizzard would totally paywall that as we speak
This is a must have feature in today’s world. My busy adult life taught me to avoid anything with a steep learning curve and almost anything with open world
Dragon Quest XI does this, you also can talk to party members that will remind the player of different aspects of the story. It’s actually quite well crafted
Is that the Nine Inch nails Guy?
Also grinding should be less difficult. Like we get twice the exp or money
I really like the fact that Dave the diver - after dying multiple times to a boss - offered me to double my damage for the next try. 😁
This is something I noticed about Elden Ring that I genuinely don’t get the same feel from Dark Souls and Bloodborne.
I’m not sure if its caused by the open world or something else, but grinding for levels feels genuinely more tedious in that game, and made worse by how the game all but tells you to explore with the use of the Tree Sentinel at the starting area.
Problem is that it’s difficult to explore when everything is set to one shot you with a light breeze throughout the world.
If you’re getting one-shot by every enemy in an area, then that usually means that you shouldn’t be there yet and you should leave and explore elsewhere until you find a place with enemies that are closer to your level.
I think the open world of Elden Ring is better in that regard because you can just go somewhere else if enemies in an area are too tough.
Grinding shouldn’t even be a thing.
It means the game mechanics failed so badly that the user feels forced to repeat the same thing over and over just to get past something.
Maybe if the game is old it has an excuse. But new RPGs should have 0 grinding. It is a bad game mechanic.
It will never go away as long as in-app purchases are a thing. It’s far more profitable (which is a problem in and of itself) to just offer a “buy <x> to progress NOW” option to bypass grinding.
Sort of agree but it also depends on what you mean by grind. A game like war thunder or enlisted you could call it a grind to unlock top tier things, or throw money at it. Or you can just play the game for fun while spending little to nothing.
Seriously, I have had conversations with other players before and even if I wanted to spend £100 on either game there is nothing really worth me spending it on. Even subscribing to the game just isn’t worth it as the main benefit is more xp. But that is more xp to unlock things I don’t care for. The other benefits are so small it isn’t worth bothering with.
agree to disagree. Numbers go up simulators are digital crack to my AuDHD brain… brother ive spend hours running in literal circles in runescape just to raise my walkjng fast stat (and that sweet sweet gear set)
Death stranding 2 does this perfectly. Gives a summare of the story so far when it seems like it has been a while since I played last time.
Too real. Was really hard coming back to Celeste and any of the Witchers.
It took me years to complete skyrims main story because I load in and have no idea what character I have or what I was doing so I would start again.
That and my chronic obsession with getting side tracked
Like genuinely fuck triple dash
I quite liked this in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

This was incredibly helpful for me, as I took a long pause between playing after ending up on the second map
Cool! I’m on the last quest of the first game and will be starting KCD2 at some point. I got sidetracked by horror games (tis the season). The Medium and Silent Hill 2 are so good I decided to buy Cronos as well. I’m on a Bloober kick.
Please! I’m half way through BotW and every time I pick it back up I need this.
There’s no real story in botw though? Just look at your quest log and that should be enough
It’s a Zelda game? You traverse Hyrule trying to defeat a manbearpig by the name of Ganon and once in a while the princess shows up and gives you some encouragement.
You never get to the final boss or trigger story cutscenes in BOTW. If you do that you’re playing it wrong.
Doesnt the gba line of pokemon games have a feature like this? I think it recaps what you did last time.
Pokemon FireRed (and LeafGreen) does this!






By the way, these “flashbacks” aren’t static images. Your player sprite would be animated doing the last thing it did in that frame!
Also, the controls are simple enough in this game. No need for any tutorials.
Even though you say that, there is a tutorial for the controls. Funny though, I forgot which button it is. 🧓
forgot which button it is
I believe pressing either L or R works.
This was such a great implementation. I want this in literally every game.
The best part to me is how it emulates the anime recaps
I think it’s the opposite (unless fire red specifically is inspired by the anime?)
I was gonna say all the games were but I forgot red and green came out first lol
I’d assume fire red was mirroring the anime, though. I mean there were definitely anime recaps before it
Ahh nostalgia! The last ones i played, next thing i know they’ve got pokemon modelled after a garbage bag.
Leave Trubbish alone, he’s one of my favorites.
Damn, that’s a cute name. I could imagine a street dog with it.

Doing Seymour Asses dirty
There’s a journal feature in DPPt too! Not as dynamic as it was in FRLG though
You beat me to it. As soon as I saw this post I immediately thought of FRLG, which are probably my favorite Pokémon games. The only change I would make would be to implement the phys/spec split
This is why i never finished Bloodbourne… twice. Fantastic game. Take a month off. Load in, walk around in a few circles. Absolutely nothing to reference for what my goal or progress toward it was. Probably taking notes would help, yeah.











