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".