Some (reasonably) early thoughts on FFXIII

[Elly]

once again that would break the flow, if Sazh or Lightning were to stop everything and explain it all to said newcomer, in i'd guess a 15 minute cutscene would be enough, the game would grind to a halt before it began... SE took the best course of explaining things to you as you went along and if players payed attention almost everything in the datalog is told directly or indirectly to the players through the story parts...

ive been wracking my brain trying to figure out why so many people are adverse to this type of storytelling and i think i got it...
Culture Shock...
they generaly dislike being dropped in the middle of the action in a foreign location with foreign ways and ideals without being prepared for it ahead of time, without proper preparation they feel even more alienated...
a proper game manual with the general terms listed with general character descriptions used to prevent this in most cases, now they put all that and more in a Codex or Datalog instead, and no one seems to wanna look there...

[Mirage]

You wouldn't have to do it right in the middle of the action. But then again, the action never actually let up in 13 because it wasn't too well paced.

[Elly]

thats what im getting at... the action doesnt really let up untill Chapter 11, with only a few extremely short breaks before then, the only logical option was to tell it to you in the 13 Days flashbacks, and sporadicly in short pieces of dialog along the way...

the pace is something i liked about XIII, it forced me to keep going... far too often in previous titles have i stopped in one place and power level for hours, days, weeks at a time and never leave that spot because i could, XIII didn't allow that as i was lvl capped by chapter and had to keep moving if i wanted to advance levels and stats... thats the point of the "hallway" you're being herded to your next destination by Barthandalous, hes not allowing the party to go anywhere else, he even says so in-game, just with different words...