The spongebob game wasnt so bad. It had like a login bonus but it didnt seem to be too bad But once we got into the lego star wars game the f2p bullshit started. And oh god. This game clearly designed for kids had all the f2p bullshit. Login bonuses. Gridnyness. Multiple in game currencies. The daily/weekly ect missions. The unlockables
But god the racing game was even worse. 100000 things to unlock and basically nothing is by default basically. Sooooooooooo absurdly grindy. And most harrowing of all… i swear to god… 5 seperate in game currencies.
I want to reach out and scream to him “games werent always like this maaaaan”
Second/middle acts tend to be a hard sell in most stories, I noticed, with a few exceptions where for some reason the second/middle act is considered the high point, like in the first three Star Wars movies for most people.
For a very funny and jokerfying example of this in gaming, most people consider 2009s “Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2” to be the peak of the original Modern Warfare trilogy. And I have to say that I agree with them lol. As cheesy as those games were, MW2 probably has the best story of the three.
I never played Halo because I didn’t have an Xbox, but yeah I’m glad that the people who finished your book trilogy enjoyed the ending. That’s a good sign.
I admit that sometimes I wish I started with the second book and somehow crammed in some “so you might be wondering how I wound up here piloting a mecha while fighting billionaires” record-scratch exposition after the fact.
There are some trilogies where the final part is basically a prequel to the first two parts, it’s a narrative device that can work well in certain contexts. The Ace Combat trilogy on the PlayStation 2 does this, the final game in the trilogy is titled “Zero” and explains how the game world ended up the way it did. Just don’t go around making an entire prequel trilogy to explain the previous trilogy (Star Wars… )