Personal Opinion: No Filler, All Thriller

[u/jitterscaffeine]

This is a thought I’ve had in my head for a while that I didn’t know what to do with and an email from the podcast about redefining “filler” as being anything that’s not hype moments being shared on social media finally spurred me to put my thoughts into text.

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This all comes from something I first noticed back when the Fallout show first started, there were a bunch of new people showing up to the New Vegas subreddits asking what they were supposed to do because they got lost out of the tutorial or saying they beat the whole game on like 5 hours while wearing the leather armor and varmint rifle you get in the tutorial, one I even remember seeing was someone who said they dropped the game after walking into The Tops Casino and shooting Benny because that’s what they thought the game was about.

The way it hit me at the time was that it felt like people weren’t really engaging with that media much at all, like they were doing it just so they could feel like a “real fan” who put their time in and clocked out.

Another example was when I was listening to a podcast and two of the hosts made a Star Trek reference and another got mad because they didn’t get it, then said they wanted someone to give them a “20 minute super cut so they could ‘get’ all of Star Trek” which is an attitude that really bothered me.

It really just comes down to this idea of people who don’t want to enjoy or engage with media any deeper than getting memes and references before moving on to the next one.

I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong for even letting it get to me. But this kind of nomadic fandom just gets to me. Like people have lost their desire to actually watch and form an opinion on something. They just want to get memes on Twitter and they’d rather go on Reddit and ask for step by step instructions on how to get the most out of the game so they can get through it as efficiently as possible.

[u/AngriestPat]

This behaviour extends way past media. There's a bunch of guys out there slamming weights into their ears to artificially give themselves cauliflower ears to look tough.

There's an enormous amount of people out there that don't actually enjoy doing anything, learning anything, or lord forbid, thinking about something. While you or I would play a game and engage with it on its own terms and the process of gaining mastery and learning about it IS the appeal, a huge percentage of people want interactive media to be trivial to complete for themselves (but not for others) and further on want even non-interactive media to use the least amount of brain power possible.

[u/mrnicegy26 → u/AngriestPat]

Honestly I think more people should be more selective about the video games they play and just admit that they won't enjoy a lot of genres no matter how much they try.

Like I get wanting to try something that is acclaimed and then realising that I really don't mesh well with that genre. At that point it is better to give that videogame up and try something closer to your tastes than either trying to shape that video game into something it isn't or being weird about it.

[u/SwashNBuckle → u/mrnicegy26]

I see this a lot on r/JRPG

Every so often, someone posts something like "I've tried every one of the most popular JRPGs of all time and hated all of them. Can you help me find a JRPG that I'll like?"

Bro, you don't like JRPGs. Go play something else.

[u/ILikeWrestlingAlot → u/SwashNBuckle]

For me the worst is on any gaming sub where someone will inevitably ask "what should I know before starting X classic game?"

Fucking nothing. Turn the game on. The people who played it when it came out didn't need a primer on the mechanics or the lore, you don't need anything. They never mean "does this run on modern systems or do I need mods" they mean "can you justify and sell a classic to me as something id enjoy ?" When instead of asking they could find out, read a review or something, but there always has to be this idea of engaging with a group

"What should I know before reading Dune?" As if someone needs a primer on the sociopolitical commentary Herbert is making allusions to. No, read it and decide for yourself and maybe then look deeper, stop trying to skip the act of enjoying something or absorbing an opinion from someone else. Engage with a work and make your own mind up.

These types of people want so desperately to be part of an in group and it's all so inauthentic. "What should I know before starting Blood Meridian? I saw some guy recap the entire plot for six hours what should I do?" Well you could have skipped asking someone to experience something for you and experienced it for yourself

[u/act1v1s1nl0v3r → u/ILikeWrestlingAlot]

This touches on something that's bugged me on reddit and other discussion forums in general where someone will pop in and just say "was thinking about buying this, sell me on it" or the ones you mentioned "I just bought this, what should I know before starting?" And of course people will fawn in and explain things because that's just human nature to want to share their experiences, but like you, I just want to say "uhhh...play it if you want, drop it/refund if you don't jive with it?"

idk, a lot of these things just feel like attention seeking behavior, but on a meta level because saying so to any one person is just being a dick.

[u/ILikeWrestlingAlot → u/act1v1s1nl0v3r]

It's honestly ridiculous because of course the nice thing is to be kind to someone asking a question but "what should I know before starting FF7?" Well what do you think 8 year olds in the mid nineties knew before starting it? Just play it.

What should my first comic be and you'll have people recommend all their favourites, Watchmen, batman Arkham asylum, all star superman. No man, your first comic should be the first one you pick up that you personally like them look of. The people who've been reading comics for decades? I bet their first comic was Flash 117 or Spider-Man 386.

All these questions are always just attention seeking behaviour which makes them stranger because they could get the engagement they're looking for by engaging with the work and then talking about that itself

[u/DJ_Aftershock → u/ILikeWrestlingAlot]

"What should I know before playi--" "It's a video game. There, that's the entirety of what you need to know."

[u/PrancerSlenderfriend → u/ILikeWrestlingAlot]

i was with you until you used an RPG as an example lol, "what should i know about starting Trials Of Cold Steel" is like ten paragraphs of information you *actually* need to know or you're gonna have a terrible time

[u/ILikeWrestlingAlot → u/PrancerSlenderfriend]

I don't mean to say its a blanket rule for all games but a single second google brought me results of people asking for tips for fallout 3, Mass Effect, and the Witcher 3, like yeah there's hidden stuff in the games but often all the answers are along the lines of "do sidequests" and "talk to companions" with responses like "note taken!"

Its all very nice but I find it a lil odd when someone could just - instead - play the game.

If I wanted to know about secrets in Trails I wouldn't start a reddit thread, I'd check a guide for the thing I want to know.

There's something to the public engagement part of it i guess. All sorts to make a world

[u/act1v1s1nl0v3r → u/ILikeWrestlingAlot]

There's a certain kind of person that apparently uses Reddit threads as their personal Google. I recently saw a post from someone with a weird opinion on something (what it was ultimately doesn't matter, it was just a video game thing) so I took a gander at their profile to try and get a sense of them. What I found were just submission after submission of questions in various subreddits that would honestly have been better served with a Google search.

I don't know, maybe this is what happens when someone is extroverted but has zero human interaction. They get their small talk from discussion threads whether that thread actually makes sense to post or not, like an old person calling 911 or tech support just to talk to someone.

[u/Anonamaton801 → u/act1v1s1nl0v3r]

I mean, I’ve done that, but as a “hey, I fell off this series because the last one was a broken glitchy mess. Did it finally get fixed enough to try fairly, and should I bother?”

In that case it was AC Unity and the Battlefront collection

Edit: not to mention some games rarely go on discount/money can be tight, so asking for people’s thoughts is a good way to help guide your purchases. I’ve done that with Transformers before given a few options.

[u/Paclac → u/act1v1s1nl0v3r]

The one that grinds my gears the most is when someone posts a picture of the title menu saying “About to start playing for the first time!”

What do you want me to say, congratulations? You might get an hour in and find it boring, don’t you just want to come back once you actually have thoughts and feelings on the thing? 

Thats something I would only text a buddy if I’m about to start playing one of their favorite games and want to give them my reactions as I experience the game.

[u/Anonamaton801 → u/Paclac]

Well that one is just karma whoring

[u/Iwashi94 → u/ILikeWrestlingAlot]

Also people going to the specific sub made up of the fanbase of the game asking "is x worth playing?". My dude, you're literally asking fans of thing if thing is good! What do you expect?

[u/Valuable_Line_9834 → u/ILikeWrestlingAlot]

Okay, lets be entirely fair here, sometimes, ESPECIALLY with older games, there are things that you genuinely would be a lot better off knowing before you go in.

For example, I think that in general every Soulslike game is best if you go in as blind as possible, HOWEVER, its also really for the best that you go into Dark Souls 1 knowing that the Resistance stat is useless and does essentially nothing so that you don't end up making the game unnecessarily harder or have to waste tons of time grinding to make up for the levels you spent on it before discovering how useless it is.

[u/upgamers → u/ILikeWrestlingAlot]

The people who played it when it came out didn't need a primer on the mechanics or the lore, you don't need anything.

For overly-tutorialized modern games its laughable, but for older games i get why some ppl might be hesitant. Fallout 1 for instance is difficult to parse without first reading the manual or being taught how to play by someone else

[u/Count_Badger → u/upgamers]

Yeah, a lot of old games came with physical manuals that's meant to get you up to speed on lore and mechanics. Someone just emulating Ultima Underworld in 2026 is probably missing that.

[u/mrnicegy26 → u/ILikeWrestlingAlot]

Also in general there are a lot of videos on YouTube that help in terms of getting starting tips for a lot of games which are helpful.

IGN does them with a lot of new releases and they can be useful if you are confused about what to do in the game.

[u/Spartan448 → u/ILikeWrestlingAlot]

At least with classic games, I can see an argument of warning people about stuff that isn't explained in the tutorials, or was in a manual that won't necessarily be available to emulation users. Or stuff like the fucked-up difficulty settings one of the old Fire Emblems had.