The booming voice echoed around me, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. I blinked, my avatar's ridiculously oversized anime eyes struggling to focus in the blinding white space. Seriously, who designed this tutorial zone? Was it supposed to be a sensory deprivation chamber?
"Uh, hello?" I said, my voice sounding tinny and distant, even to my own ears. My avatar, a scrawny-looking mage with a perpetually startled expression, fidgeted nervously. I'd spent a good hour customizing him, trying to make him look like a badass wizard. Turns out, 'badass' wasn't an available slider option. The closest I got was 'mildly constipated.'
"Ah, you can hear me! Excellent! Most of you newbies are too busy trying to figure out how to walk without tripping over your own feet," the voice chuckled, a sound like rocks tumbling down a hill. "Now, before you embark on your epic quest to save the world/become the richest player/marry the demon queen – whichever comes first – you'll need to complete a few... mandatory tutorial quests."
A menu popped up in front of my face, listing the quests in excruciating detail:
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Tutorial Quest 1: Talk to the Annoying Floating Orb (COMPLETED)
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Tutorial Quest 2: Walk Five Steps (INCOMPLETE)
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Tutorial Quest 3: Punch a Training Dummy (It Doesn't Hit Back, Don't Worry) (INCOMPLETE)
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Tutorial Quest 4: Find Your Pants (Seriously, Where Did They Go?) (INCOMPLETE)
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Tutorial Quest 5: Listen to a Mind-Numbingly Long Exposition Dump About the Game's Lore (INCOMPLETE – HIGHLY SKIPPABLE, BUT WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU DON'T)
I stared at the quest list. "Pants? My avatar doesn't even have pants!" I complained.
The booming voice sighed. It sounded tired, like it had been explaining the same inane quests for the past decade. "Look, just... just find some pants, okay? It's for the immersion."
"Immersion?" I scoffed. "I'm standing in a white void, talking to a disembodied voice, and my character is missing his lower half. What immersion?"
"Details, details," the voice said dismissively. "Now, about that exposition dump..."
Before the voice could launch into what I assumed would be a ten-hour monologue about the 'Ancient Prophecy of the Crystal Unicorn's Destiny,' I frantically searched for the 'skip' button. There had to be one, right? My sanity depended on it.
"And it is foretold that the chosen one, the reincarnation of the great..."
My finger hovered over a small, almost invisible button at the bottom of the quest menu. It was labeled '>>'. Hope surged through me. With a desperate click, the booming voice was abruptly cut off.
"... ... ... Hello? Is this thing still on?"
I grinned. Victory was mine! Now, about those pants...