Threads
- Walkthroughs can help overcome difficult parts of a game but often turn the experience into a checklist, reducing the sense of challenge and discovery.
- Watching walkthroughs can spoil key moments and surprises in games, diminishing the overall enjoyment and sense of awe during gameplay.
- It’s better to use short, specific guides or articles rather than detailed walkthroughs to maintain the excitement and surprise in gaming.
Quite often, I’m stuck at a point in a game, and I can’t figure out for the life of me what to do next. The obvious solution to this problem is watching a walkthrough, which is usually to the detriment of my gaming experience. Keep reading to find out why!
How Walkthroughs Help
From their humble beginnings from being magazines filled with tips, tricks, and secrets, game guides and walkthroughs have taken a much different approach these days, though to achieve the same purpose still.
Walkthroughs generally tell you exactly what to do in a game, how, and in what order. This can be very helpful when it isn’t obvious what to do next. In addition, they also help you with challenging sequences like tricky platforming and bosses by telling you techniques that these walls fall to.
Even though they don’t have all the possible ways to find a solution, they usually have one that works. Pulling up a walkthrough is worth it if you find yourself at a section of a game that you just want to get through as fast as possible because you don’t like it too much.
What Can Go Wrong
These days, video walkthroughs are becoming shorter and shorter, with fewer and fewer views on the more long-form videos on a certain game. The following sections will explain why we think gamers don’t get a good gaming experience after watching walkthroughs.
Turning Into A To-Do List
If you decide to play a game or a level of a game after watching a video on how it is supposed to be played, the charm of the experience gets ruined. Games get turned into a to-do list instead of a meaningful and challenging experience.
Making shorter walkthroughs showing how a certain item is acquired or how a certain platform is cleared, pushes people to explore the rest of the experience for themselves. This is what a lot of gamers want to do; to get the most enjoyability out of their games.
Ruins The Surprise
Walkthroughs take the exploration out of games out of the players. When you’ve seen a video with where a cool moment is and what the cool moment is, you don’t get the feeling of awe you’d get with a vanilla play-through.
Of course, nowadays, almost no one buys a game without some awareness of the content within, through trailers, short-form content, and the like. The problem lies when you know everything surrounding that moment, when you’ll get to it, what leads up to it, and what happens thereafter.
Walkthroughs show this information blatantly, and even if you just want to watch until how you get there, it is very hard to restrain yourself from seeing the whole fight which degrades the spectacle in your playthrough.
Walkthroughs Aren’t Evil
I recently got hooked on From Software games, starting with Dark Souls Remastered. I initially watched walkthroughs to gauge the challenge, but it spoiled the surprises. Determined to finish Dark Souls 3 without help, I hit a roadblock at Farron Keep and watched a walkthrough, which spoiled a key boss fight for me.
After finishing the Souls series (excluding Dark Souls 2, for good reason), I began Elden Ring and occasionally used walkthroughs. When the DLC came out, I decided to rely only on brief guides to preserve the surprises.
My point is that while walkthroughs can be helpful, they detract from the experience. I recommend using short, specific guides or articles instead (The latter part being out of goodwill, not to get more of you guys here, but keep visiting; we love your company!). Keep the surprises intact for a more enjoyable experience!
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News Reporter
Abdullah is an avid gamer who primarily plays single-player titles. If you can’t find him anywhere, he’ll probably be at his desk playing The Witcher 3 for the millionth time. When he isn’t playing games, he’s either reading or writing about them.
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