Why do so many JRPG give spilers in the intro?

This is something that has been quite common in JRPGs for about as long as animated intros have been a thing: Major late game plot spoilers in the intro.

I'm currently playing Tales of Zestiria, a good game (that is starting to feel padded…), and it spoiled major events in the last 3rd of the game in the intro (as the game was starting to feel padded, I looked up roughly how much was left, that's how I know it was in the last 3rd). It also spoiled some other plot twists along the way. While the intro never outright says "this will happen", it's very easy to put two and two together and figure out that based on the events & characters being shown in the intro, certain major events will happen later on.

Lates of Symphonia does this as well, showing things that makes it very easy to figure out what will happen.

The Tales series is not the only one that does this though, Valkyra Chronicles also does this, as does Lunar and a bunch of others.

So why do they do this? Why give major late-game spoilers in the intro motive?

I agree, that's why I always skip the intro song.

Originally Posted by Fnord
So why do they do this? Why give major late-game spoilers in the intro motive?

The answer is easy. They believe their audience wants it and they don't read feedback.

Man. This has been going on literally forever in JRPGs. Not sure why. I don't watch the intro videos anymore before I play the games!

I remember even Suikoden 3 on PS2 had this. Heck, even as far back as Chrono Cross on PS1 had this!

I think part of the problem is that the intro shows all the characters, while in most if not all JRPGs, companions are introduced slowly as part of the party progression. Perhaps they feel like making an intro with only the main protagonist is boring or something.

JRPGs? How about all those movie trailers? The summary on the back cover of a book? The preview of next week's episode on TV? These things go way, way back and aren't limited to JRPGs by a long shot. Heck, showing the end of a story at the start then having the rest of the story being about how it happened is a tried & true technique!

Psychologists have been getting in on it lately, too. For instance, check this BBC article regarding a 2011 study. On the other hand, this article on Live Science cites a study that says they are detrimental, though not as detrimental as people seem to think. (The Live Science article has links to both studies if you really want to get into this.)

So don't just go writing this off as a case of the company not listening to the fans.

Originally Posted by Zloth
JRPGs? How about all those movie trailers? The summary on the back cover of a book? The preview of next week's episode on TV? These things go way, way back and aren't limited to JRPGs by a long shot.

Yes, it happens with trailers, and sometimes with the blurb at the back of a book (though very rarely will they actually spoil major twists after the first 1/3 at the back of a book), but these are for different reasons. Movie trailers and blurbs at the back of a book are there to make you go and buy the book/see the movie and thus they'll show you the things that the trailer makers/blurb writers thinks are most exiting. With the intro you've already bought the thing. A good trailer will show you some highlights, but not actually give you enough information to be able to piece together things so that it spoils the major plot twists, a bad trailer will give you the important bits of the movie.

Originally Posted by Zloth
Heck, showing the end of a story at the start then having the rest of the story being about how it happened is a tried & true technique!

Starting at the end of a story and then going through the events leading up to it is a specific way of telling a story, and it will influence how the story is told. That's not how it's utilized in these intros though. From what little I've seen of FF X it uses such a storytelling technique, you know that the main characters will be there around the campfire shown at the very start of the game, and that's intentional, in the case of how it's used in most other JRPGs the story is not told with this in mind, in fact the story is told in such a way that the writers of it clearly did not intend you to know these things.

From the linked article:

Knowing how a book ends does not ruin its story and can actually enhance enjoyment, a study suggests

I've lost tracks of how many books & TV-series I've just stopped reading/watching because I've had major plot elements spoiled. Game of Thrones is a big one, started reading the books, got bored because I knew what would happen due to having had major plot elements spoiled and only got through 1/3 of the first book. Spoilers will of course depend a lot on the movie, book or game itself and how the story is structured, for some major plot spoilers are worse than others.

Because they don't consider showing all playable characters to be a spoiler. A lot of people want to know such information before they play the game. I'm not one of them, so I feel your pain. I skip intro videos, too.

Why did Shakespeare spoil the ending of Romeo & Juliet in the very beginning? Probably because it was a very predictable ending so he didn't think it mattered. In my experience, most JRPGs are full of cliches. It's telling the same story over & over again but with slightly different characters. To be fair, many WRPGs have the same problem.

But that's what makes an RPG with a more original story really stand out. Even if the writing isn't all that great, it's mind-blowing in comparison to all of the amnesiac chosen one saving the world from an ancient evil RPGs.

Originally Posted by daveyd
Why did Shakespeare spoil the ending of Romeo & Juliet in the very beginning? Probably because it was a very predictable ending so he didn't think it mattered. In my experience, most JRPGs are full of cliches. It's telling the same story over & over again but with slightly different characters. To be fair, many WRPGs have the same problem.

But that's what makes an RPG with a more original story really stand out. Even if the writing isn't all that great, it's mind-blowing in comparison to all of the amnesiac chosen one saving the world from an ancient evil RPGs.

Even if you make a cliche story, why spoil the handful of plot-twists you put into it, if you've not written your story with people knowing the end in mind? Some stories are written in such a way that the reader/watcher/player should know what's going to happen later, some are not. Tales of Zestiria had a clear case of this, had they not shown a specific character in the intro, I would have figured that that character would have been plot important after seeing them in game for the first time
and actually seriously hurt about 2 hours worth of in-game story, plus made the things leading up to it far more predictable than it should have been.