Fair point, I was playing on MiSTER.

It the same with Spiderman: Miles Morales. There are some cut scenes you cannot skip. Worse they they are cut scenes that don't actually affect the main story arc.

This makes replays painful as the story isn't particular interesting and in some places actually quite nauseating to watch (Miles is constantly conflicted on very straight forward things), but the game play itself is quite fun. I've looked for a mod for this game where you can skip all cut-scenes but it doesn't seem to exist.

> FF7 really had this nailed - flashy, mysterious cut-scene to first battle in, what, 3 minutes?

Except when you use the Knights of the Round summon, then you go grab a coffee while waiting for the animation to finish :).

Most of the Final Fantasy games have been like that, which is why I've (most of the time) been a fan since since FF4/2. I can't remember how many times I've been turned off by a game when it starts with the protagonist being woken up by his mom, followed by endless wandering around town.

FFX’s balance is awful if you go straight from point to point and don’t take some long grinding breaks. You’ll hit exactly the kinds of boss-walls you mention, and yeah, the cutscene placement is simply abusive.

Last couple plays I’ve used zig-zag approach when traveling through random encounter zones, effectively ~doubling distance traveled, and encounters. Stretches those out, but removes most of the separate, dedicated grinding.

(Not defending the game design that makes this necessary, mind you)

I think at that point I'd call it and mark that one as "finished it".

[dead]

I could ask you a similar question: why play an RPG if you don't care about playing? Go watch a movie.

The point of many posters, I imagine, is that there is too much non-playing parts all at once, it's not strictly about them not being skippable.

This is especially damning when the long unskippable cutscene is during a boss fight or something which you might fail afterwards and cannot save.

I agree with your take here that he should care about the cut scenes/story if bothering to play, but this has gotten especially bad in newer games where they try to shove you right into the game before you can tweak settings. I never played through Bravely Default on 3DS because the opening scene used the English dub instead of the original audio, and I had to skip it to access the settings and change languages, then there was no way to rewatch that opening scene. I've similarly avoided their other games like Octopath Traveler as I suspect they have the same issue. It seems like an accessibility issue. I don't think they should ever stop you from getting to the settings first thing. I am not entertained by them trying to be overly cinematic. I don't think it would kill them to wait until you hit "start new game".

Starting off with 10min of exposition is too much and it’s lazy. You don’t even know if you’re going to like the game yet. Do some en media res story telling and get on with it.

Most games I don’t care about the deep exposition. I’m fine with a vague notion and then starting from the main character’s insertion into it where the gameplay starts.

Not letting the player skip it is just hubris.

For me, it isn't about not liking the story, but about having to watch a movie when I want to play a game. Don't show it to me. Let me do it.

Dopamine only hits when the numbers go up. So no min/maxing when the cutscenes are playing

Oh I do care about the story, but please don't front-load the credits and make me sit through them.

I play RPGs for the fun of turning time and grind into more advanced abilities (eg going from getting slaughtered by dragons in Skyrim to being the one doing the slaughtering).

There are few games where the story has mattered to me, and even basically no games where the cutscenes did.

Edit: the presence of story and cutscenes in a game I enjoy is basically correlation and not causation (for me).

You can typically skip most dialogue and cut-scenes in the MGS games. Also quite a number of the cut-scenes are interactive and can actually help you in game play (codec numbers are show, clues etc).

MGS-4 though is has ridiculous cutscene length.

Nope, MGS was big on Playstation when I was growing up and the whole stealth gameplay does not appeal to me.