I Prefer Linear Storytelling

Yesterday, I was playing Cave Story, and I got to a point where an important side character had apparently died. I wasn’t sure if she was really dead or not, but I found out while reading a GameFAQs guide to get through the next area: as it happens, I could’ve saved her if I’d picked up a particular hidden item beforehand, but since I didn’t have that, she was doomed to die. Gay.

Here’s a problem I have with an enormous number of Japanese games: I don’t want to play them over and over again to get the whole story. I’m not a gamer to begin with, and it’s hard enough for me to get through a video game once, much less do it over and over again until I find everything. Most of the games I end up beating are shorter action games for this reason: I can play through it once, and then I’m done. Maybe I’ll play through it again later, like rewatching a show or rereading a book. 

This is compounded by the fact that video games already require repetition to get through once. It took me ten+ tries to beat “Monster X” in Cave Story, and I’ll be damned if I have to do that again because I fucked up something and ruined the story. I found out that Cave Story has 3 endings, and I’ve really got no desire to play it three times to see all of them. More likely, I’ll just read spoilers for everything.

Actually, reading spoilers is my solution to a lot of these problems, though I feel that’s pretty lame. I don’t mind being spoiled, but doing it as opposed to playing the game is lame. Nonetheless, this is pretty much how I have to get by to keep up with things. Like, no way am I going to count on myself playing Fate/Stay Night all the way through, then doing it again for alternate storylines, in time to stop from letting people spoil the whole thing for me in the comments of my Fate/Zero posts.

I have too many interests.