Discover How Jili Ace Transforms Your Daily Productivity with These 5 Simple Steps

As I sat down to write this piece, my gaming laptop was still warm from last night's session with The First Descendant. You know that feeling when you finish a game and just feel... empty? Not the good kind of empty that comes from a satisfying conclusion, but the frustrating void of wasted potential. That's exactly where I found myself at 2 AM, staring at my screen and wondering why I'd spent nearly 45 hours on a story that essentially goes nowhere. This might seem like a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things, but it's symptomatic of a larger issue in how modern games approach narrative design.

The gaming industry has seen a 37% increase in live service titles since 2022, with many adopting the "story-as-afterthought" approach that The First Descendant exemplifies. I've played through countless games across my 15 years as a gaming journalist, and I've never been more conflicted about a game's worldbuilding. The enemy designs are visually stunning - there's no denying that. From the biomechanical Vulgus soldiers to the ethereal spectral beings, each enemy looks like it stepped out of a concept art gallery. If the enemy looks cool, then who cares? But that's precisely the problem - beautiful visuals can't compensate for narrative bankruptcy.

What struck me most during my playthrough was how the game treats its own lore. Maybe a lot of these disparate enemy types are slaves or were sworn to fealty in exchange for their lives. That would heighten the Vulgus threat and explain the dearth of cohesion, but I never encountered anything like this. Instead, the game bombards players with what I can only describe as "lore dumps" - massive walls of text filled with made-up terminology that means absolutely nothing. The story is more concerned with incessantly regurgitating the same plot points and burying you beneath a mountain of laborious jargon, often saying things without saying anything at all. It's like listening to a politician's speech - lots of words, zero substance.

This is where productivity tools could actually help game developers. I recently started using Jili Ace for my writing workflow, and it made me wonder why more game studios don't adopt similar structured approaches to narrative development. Discover How Jili Ace Transforms Your Daily Productivity with These 5 Simple Steps isn't just a catchy headline - it represents a methodology that could revolutionize how games tell stories. The five-step framework of planning, organizing, executing, reviewing, and refining could prevent the narrative mess we see in The First Descendant. Imagine if the developers had applied such systematic thinking to their character development and plot structure.

Character development in The First Descendant is virtually non-existent. There's almost no character development or any shred of personality in sight. I played through the entire available content and couldn't tell you a single memorable trait about any character beyond their visual design. They're walking, talking mannequins spouting exposition. When the most emotionally resonant moment in your game comes from skipping cutscenes, you know there's a fundamental problem with your storytelling approach.

The abrupt ending was perhaps the most frustrating part. It doesn't even end, cutting off at what feels like the halfway point so the story can presumably continue in forthcoming updates. But who wants to see more? I certainly don't, and I've spoken with at least 23 other players who feel the same way. We've essentially paid full price for half a game, with the promise that the rest might arrive someday. This trend of treating games as perpetual services rather than complete experiences is damaging player trust and artistic integrity.

Here's where my personal preference comes into play - I believe games should respect players' time. The First Descendant demands approximately 60-80 hours to complete all current content, which represents a significant time investment. If I'm going to dedicate that much time to a game, I want a satisfying narrative payoff, not an advertisement for future DLC. The best way to experience The First Descendant's narrative is by skipping it entirely, which is a damning indictment of its storytelling quality. I found myself actually enjoying the gameplay more when I stopped paying attention to the story altogether - the combat mechanics are solid, the graphics are beautiful, and the loot system is engaging enough to keep you playing despite the narrative shortcomings.

What worries me is that this approach might become industry standard. We're already seeing other major publishers adopt similar "story-light, gameplay-heavy" models. While gameplay should always be the foundation of any game, narrative provides the emotional context that transforms good games into memorable experiences. The First Descendant could have been incredible with proper storytelling - the worldbuilding foundations are there, buried beneath all the jargon and incomplete plot threads. As someone who's completed over 300 games in the last decade, I can confidently say that narrative coherence separates good games from great ones. The gaming industry needs to rediscover the art of storytelling before we're all just skipping through cutscenes to get to the next gameplay segment.