History Main / SlowPacedBeginning

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' dumps you straight into [[LostInMediasRes a plot-in-progress]] with no real clue as to what's going on, who these characters are, and what they're trying to do. On the subject of characters, most of them don't make a good first impression, so you're likely to spend a while hating at least one or two of them. Gameplay-wise, the crystarium and paradigm systems are completely absent, leaving you with nothing to do but use the Auto-Battle command every turn, and maybe an item here or there to mix it up a bit. It's not until the Anima fight that the gameplay gets interesting. On the bright side, it's all uphill from there.

* Several reviewers have commented that the beginning of ''Literature/TheHost'' is weaker than the rest of the novel.

** Even Alternative falls into this a bit, with the first part of Alternative effectively being a compressed and only slightly altered version of the first part of Unlimited.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXV'' seems like it will avert this, only for it to double down on this trope by having most of the first half be slow-paced. It starts off with a FlashForward to the final battle before cutting back to the group bidding Noctis' dad and town goodbye before... pushing your car forward for a bit. It then proceeds to plod its way through a very uneventful first several hours where you have to fix the car, save some random guy and then make it to a seaside harbor. Aside from meeting the villain, nothing really happens and the sections is merely just a bunch of fetch quests. Chapter 2 picks up slightly by actually introducing the main threat of the game, but otherwise it isn't until around chapter ''9'' where the game finally begins to pick up steam and never stops. Various sequences during the first few chapters even take control away from you to force you to go through the main plot every so often. Exciting events like the Titan battle are few and far between and most of the time we barely get any appearances by villains other than [[BigBad Ardyn]] and are more often forced to sit through long sequences like the boat ride to Altissia.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXV'' seems like it will avert this, only for it to double down on this trope by having most of the first half be slow-paced. It starts off with a random sequence of the final battle for no particular reason (the story isn't told in flashback) before cutting back to the group bidding Noctis' dad and town goodbye before... pushing your car forward for a bit. It then proceeds to plod its way through a very uneventful first several hours where you have to fix the car, save some random guy and then make it to a seaside harbor. Aside from meeting the villain, nothing really happens and the sections is merely just a bunch of fetch quests. Chapter 2 picks up slightly by actually introducing the main threat of the game, but otherwise it isn't until around chapter ''9'' where the game finally begins to pick up steam and never stops. Various sequences during the first few chapters even take control away from you to force you to go through the main plot every so often. Exciting events like the Titan battle are few and far between and most of the time we barely get any appearances by villains other than [[BigBad Ardyn]] and are more often forced to sit through long sequences like the boat ride to Altissia.

** ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario''. The first chapter consists of only Mario being playable, only one Pixl (which you get halfway through), and not many interesting puzzles. It picks up when you get to use Peach in chapter 2, along with more puzzle-oriented level design and slowly acquiring more Pixls.
** ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheOrigamiKing'' stars with the Whispering Woods, which primarily consists of walking between the start of the forest and the Spring of Restoration, briefly interrupted by relatively simple tutorial battles. There's also a small interlude at Toad Town afterwards, where you travel through the sewers and meet up with Luigi. The game begins to pick up at Picnic Road, which introduces a bunch of hidden secrets to find.

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'' threw many people off guard in 1998 when everyone expected shooters to be like ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}''. Instead players have to sit through a few minutes of Gordon Freeman riding the tram, then navigating his maze-like workplace, grabbing his suit, starting the Resonance Cascade, and go through a few more hallway before Gordon even picks up a gun.

* ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon'' games, a particularly notable example being ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonANewBeginning'' where the ForcedTutorial takes a ''[[UpToEleven full in-game year]]'', and you have to do a [[EarnYourFun lot of tedious scavenging for resources in order to unlock the fun elements]] and characters of the game. Before you show up, the place is a GhostTown with only two residents. You have to unlock those people by scavenging for resources to build their homes. {{Story of Seasons}} is [[GrowingTheBeard much better about the building mechanic]].

** Final Mix of ''Kingdom Hearts II'' at least sort of fixes it by adding a number of things to make the whole Roxas story more relevant, [[spoiler:most notably a battle against him towards the end of the game.]] Also, knowing what happened in the later-released side game ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts358DaysOver2'', which features Roxas as the main protagonist and is intended to be played before ''II'' according to WordOfGod, makes it much easier to get invested in the events of the prologue.

** Final Mix of ''Kingdom Hearts II'' at least sort of fixes it by adding a number of things to make the whole Roxas story more relevant, [[spoiler:most notably a battle against him towards the end of the game.]]

->''"Shit up my nose! What right does this game have to suddenly kick arse?"''
-->-- '''[[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw]]''' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im9oFIVtvcc on]] ''VideoGame/DarkVoid''

* ''ComicBook/TheInvisibles'' seems like it's going to start with a bang, as young StreetUrchin Dane [=McGowan=] is recruited by the title group, a band of interdimensional anarchists. However, by the second issue, Dane has been rejected by the Invisibles and spends the next three issues wandering around London in the company of an old homeless man who lectures him the entire time on magic and mysticism. Many fans didn't make it past this arc to the later issues, which in fairness [[{{Understatement}} pick things up]] [[MindScrew quite a bit]].

-->-- ''Creator/AndreiTarkovsky, explaining the beginning of his film, ''Film/{{Stalker}}''

->''"The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts"''
-->-- '''Creator/AndreiTarkovsky, explaining the beginning of his film, Film/{{Stalker}}

* It can be very hard for a contemporary viewer to understand the hype behind the original anime for ''Manga/SailorMoon''. When marathoned, the first few episodes are StrictlyFormula, and watching the same recycled animation can be very tedious after a while. Once the initial three are assembled though, the story becomes more complex and character-driven. When people praise the show, they generally talk about the second half of the first season, as well as R and S. You just have to sit through fifteen boring and repetitive episodes to get there.

* ''Literature/MakingMoney'' is possibly the only Literature/{{Discworld}} book to suffer from this. We know he's going to take the position at the bank, it's on the dust-jacket, hell it was foreshadowed at the end of the last book. It is funny at first to see him resisting [[MagnificentBastard Vetinari]], but eventually, you want to shout "Get on with it!" Creator/TerryPratchett himself has said this about Discworld as a whole, claiming that the earlier books were "[[SelfDeprecation written by a less talented author]]". He recommends that new readers bypass some of the EarlyInstallmentWeirdness and start with ''{{Literature/Mort}}''.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheAngryBirdsMovie'' starts as a SliceOfLife about Red's anger issues and the Bad Piggies arrival to Bird Island. It's not until Red, Chuck, and Bomb discover the pigs 'plans to steal the birds' eggs that the movie begins to increase its pace.

** Similarly, the first episode of ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'' is nigh-unplayable due to this. You literally spend 2 hours reading people discussing the weather and politics and being introduced to the 18 members and servants of the Ushiromiya family. [[spoiler:Then death happens. [[{{Gorn}} Lots of horrible nasty death.]] And lots of MindScrew courtesy of the magical beings.]]

-->-- '''[[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw]]''' [[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1433-Dark-Void on]] ''VideoGame/DarkVoid''

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* ''Webcomic/EightBitTheater''[='=]s art takes a bit to improve, and its writing is initially bland when compared to the later RapidFireComedy.

* The first season and a half of ''WebComic/TwistedKaijuTheater'' aren't bad or anything like that, but if you want actual coherent storylines as well as be properly introduced to the comic's universe and characters than you might as well skip that whole part. And the latter half of season 2 is where the comic really [[GrowingTheBeard grows its beard]] and its quality increases. This can be a good way to lessen the insane ArchiveBinge you'll probably end going on.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' isn't terrible ''per se'' but the first couple of seasons struggle, with awkward storylines, jerky character development and interaction, and [[{{Anvilicious}} often heavy-handed morals]] that they [[SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped don't get away with as easily as the original series]] did. By the third season, however, they've really come into their own and distinguished themselves as more than just a sequel series for a cult '60s show. Next Gen is now one of the most popular series and is in fact TropeNamer for GrowingTheBeard.

* ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}'' has a long, unskippable, if beautifully drawn, introduction detailing the historical battle between Nagi, Shiranui, and Orochi. If the player started the game only after letting the "attract loop" play, which illustrated the exact same story slightly differently, it seemed to go on for a very very long time. It is possible to skip the cutscene [[NewGamePlus once you've already finished the game]], while the Wii remake also allows you to skip them on your first run through.

* ''Videogame/{{Yakuza 3}}''; most of the first act (and several hours of gameplay) focus around Kiryu retiring from the yakuza and living in (relative) peace in a small corner of Okinawa, running an orphanage with Haruka. There's little fighting or intrigue beyond Kiryu's scuffles with a local yakuza branch that wants to buy his land, and most of the side missions surround Kiryu helping the orphans solve mundane problems in their lives. Then the second act opens with an assassination attempt on Daigo Dojima, and Kiryu heads back to Kamurocho to break up a GovernmentConspiracy.
* ''VideoGame/YakuzaLikeADragon:'' There's about three hours of cutscene-heavy backstory and exposition to get through before you can start doing all of the wacky stuff that you saw on Website/YouTube.

** ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'' are even worse about this than normal. Melemele Island, the first of the region's four main islands, is so aggressive with hand-holding that many players are discouraged from restarting for a [[SelfImposedChallenge challenge run]] simply to avoid going through it a second time. Once you reach Akala Island, the game starts to back off, and the story really starts to come through by the time you hit Ula'ula Island.

* ''VideoGame/{{Castlevania 64}}'' begins with the forest complete with CameraScrew nasty platforms, moves on to the Villa with the [[TheMaze hedge maze]], then puts you smack dab in [[ThatOneLevel the nitro level]]. Once you get past that the game actually gets pretty fun, but most people unfortunately don't stay that long and [[NeverLiveItDown its rather bad reputation stuck]].

Contrast LostInMediasRes, where a show starts with too ''little'' exposition, and EndingFatigue, when it takes forever to ''end'', not start. Also contrast ActionPrologue, which throws you into the action from the get-go. In VideoGames, the endgame version is DisappointingLastLevel (although a game can suffer from both).