The book is so much better than the game

Remedied by not starting at recruit.

Imagine if we had to follow The Predator sniperman on his sniper adventures and flashback segments talking to his commanding officer, no one cares. Its literally filler.

You mean predators talking to each other…

YES!!!

I’D LOVE TO SEE HOW PREDATORS INTERACT WITH EACH OTHER

at least in conversation.

Not to mention conversation are an important (albiet not the only) way to establish character

I mean

Mass effect’s entire thing is literally conversation

TLOU1 is literally infamous, for guess what, the relationship between Joel and Ellie. Which guess what, is built apon heavily with conversation.

You probably already know this but I’m going to hammer it in anyways.

What about stories that’s literally about a recruits rise through the ranks?

And how are time skips bad writing?

Things take time. We don’t need every detail of how some one got promoted one small rank. And if we did have all the details it would ruin the pacing.

And do you have a problem with flashbacks as well?

Time skips. Dont even get me started on time skips.

Time skips have ruined so many anime over the years.

Even the Witcher was ruined with time skips. Like they could have hd three seasons with just the first season if they didn’t time skip every 39 seconds

no its people. like cheesiest possible military hoo-rah dialogue for over half the book

Thats not what Predator is.

Flashbacks and time skips are literally filler unless you’re writing a thriller/mystery.

Then the problem would be dialogue not flashbacks

Every story is different. And it still defeats your point about time jumps in general

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…

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Time skips literally skip over filler to the main it that happens in future events.

Flashbacks can help add context to a story like a characters backstory.

A. Zero stakes? What about a situation where a group of characters doesn’t know what happened to X, a survivor/generic tells them what happened in a flashback. Maybe X died. Maybe they escaped. In fact

Lord of the rings did this literally. When Merry and Pippin went missing. We don’t know whether they died and so it used a flashback to show us what happened.

And filler?

What about a characters backstory that’s plot reviliant or like the previous example of a “what happened”

It sounds like your using generalizations rather than inherents.

No it doesn’t. Flashbacks helps pacing when done well. Imagine having a characters backstory shown until they show up say, halfway through a season, or book, or game, all for a side characters side story.

No properly used flashbacks are used to add to the current story at hand.

And time jumps are literally there to jump to the main story. Oh god we didn’t learn how this character got promoted 5 times in 10 years which has little to no bearing on the plot.

Zero stake filler.

Jumping around time periods destroys pacing to begin with. Even excessively disjointed mysteries become annoying to follow.
Its giving up on natural plot progression to begin with and just jumping ahead or backwards.

If you have to cut to black and interrupt the whole storyline to give some 10 minute explaination of a characters backstory to characterize them its because you’re a hack and couldnt present it to the audience in any other way besides explaining it directly to their face.

Its braindead and lazy.

Yep, mystery as I said above. Or some kind of anthology like v/h/s where its just cutting between stories and time periods with 0 investment which is what this book is & executed poorly.

Plots dependent on time skipping as a vehicle for storytelling are redundant garbage. Anthologies are also a meme just to throw a bunch of short stories together because there’s not enough substance there.

Your entire point here is “flashback bad”

And why does it have to take 10 minutes?

Flashbacks can be short too. Like the one in lord of the rings.

A. You wrote about genres not moments but I’ll say that was an error on one of us and just move past it.

B. Basically it needs to be plot relevant and you can’t know what happens/needs to have a reason for it to exist.

That’s literally any scene. Any scene can be not plot revelant. Any scene can retread old information.

Your problem seems to be common problems rather than inherents.

You even admitted that the Lord of the rings flashback was good so clearly there isn’t an inherent problem with them.

No it’s not each story builds on each other.

It’s either building Dutch’s and Zues’s trust of each other, Dutch’s first appearance which establish’s his role in the world, establishing character connections, or building up Zues’s knowledge of predators which is what gets Dutch’s trust in the first place. (So basically my first point)

Regardless let’s go back to time jumps and say the book is bad.

If you removed the time jumps would that solve anything?

Congratulations now your jumping from base to base doing the same things as before except now Zues is a rookie the entire time.

“Time skip bad”

What’s wrong with short stories?

Length doesn’t determine quality.

(With exceptions like Mag size for guns if you want to be technical and go outside of stories)

Imagine the Predators intro but after they’re parachuted in they give you a black and white flashback of each character. What do you call that? Filler. They ask Isabelle what happened before she got abducted and it transitions into 'nam tier flashbacks…
no one cares.
Its autistic filler & could have been covered in a couple lines of dialogue. Just panning time and reducing screentime for things that could actually be relevant. Red flag sign of sparse content.

No one cares how they rose through the ranks, we know they are spec ops, we don’t need to see their medals. None of this is a mystery. What they were doing before the movie began doesn’t matter.
Predator movies drop you right into the action.

Trying to develop a character within 2 paragraphs.
Which is essentially what these flashbacks are.

The good short stories don’t and just let people infer details because there’s content they have to actually get to. The only thing more filler than constant character flashbacks are sex scenes.

If your story doesnt need to take place over the span of YEARS then tighten it up simple as.
The audience is capable of infering details without cutting-to-black infodropping someones history in detail. Exposition dumping is reserved for worldbuilding and things later relevant to the story, character flashbacks are just bad. Show not tell. Why start the story at the point you did if you’re going to jump around? Not including prologues ofc.

Half the book would skip worthless details and he’d have to write things relevant to the plot so yes.

Will yall just stop bickering with each other and make my dam Dinner you lazy weed parents like fuck. You made me and @Weevo540 eat kraft mac with no cheese powder for the last 6 nights.

But mom @Finessology out here with a new weave and an 90$ set of nails. Like come on

And dont even get me started on dad @Eshtion with his Precious Moments collection. Dad drove 15 hours to get a Morton Salt moment like dam. And it was 2,290 and he wouldn’t stop at McDonald’s to keep me quiet either

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I dont know why I was suprised you’re awake lol.

you’re always here at like 2 am

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Im on Break at my 3rd Shift job!!

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You want to watch the main character play catch up for half the book? If theres anything that shouldve been timeskipped its this guy learning everything we already know.

lol what if aliens started with not-ripley in a white room being flashback dumped in full detail because thats essentially why the book sucks then at the very end there’s a relevant encounter with xenos & its already the the last chapter at that point.

slog slog slog

The characters weren’t that deep in the first place. In order for a character centric story to be good the character has to be good.

Predators is the old fashioned muscle men fighting Pred.

Plus also

THOSE THINGS AREN’T REVELANT TO THE STORY

Story is preds hunt criminals

Show. Don’t tell. That’s a basic of writing. And that’s exactly what flashbacks are for.

A. Again this is assuming it’s even that long in the first place

B. Flashbacks can be revelant.

Exactly my point. The time skip avoids this because it doesn’t matter.

So every predator movie has to be the same?

And what actually…

No.

Predator

Chopper comes in

Debriefing scene

Chopper scene

Exploring the jungle

Coming across the bodies

Coming across the camp

THEN we finally get an action sequence.

Pred 2 did

Predators has the parachute scene but after that it’s exactly the firstovie until the mob A.I action scene.

A. With short stories you can devolop a character through action

B. Flashbacks are apart of a characters devolopment, not the entirety of it.

SO SHORT STORIES AREN’T BAD IN THE FIRST PLACE

Why does it have to be constant?

One is enough.

God this just makes me hate bad writers

Yes.

Sex scenes are just blatant sex appeal.

The time skip adds a bit of realism to the world.

Things take time, rookies get promoted. Not everything happens at once.

In fact most cod games probably do this under the radar.

Since when is flashbacks info dumping?

Would you describe the Lord of the rings-

KNOW WHAT YOU ALREADY SAID THE LORD OF THE RIMGS FLASHBACK WAS GOOD SO CLEARLY IT DOESN’T MATTER

That’s what flashbacks are

In fact

YOU LITERALLY SAY JUST USE DIALOGUE WHICH IS THE EPITOME OF TELLING

Flashback is showing. It presents an unknown element of a character as it’s own short story that compliments the current story.

Because pacing. In long media, showing a character backstory before they’re even revelant is awful.

Imagin a series showing off the backstory of a character that’s not even introduced until episode 5 and it ends up he’s a side character.

Or imagine a cold character, who both the rest of the cast, and the viewer, slowly learn about.

Either way your going over the information. Only difference is that you actually get to see it instead of being told a long winded conversation.

Like?

Yes. It was fun watching some one discover it slowly.

Like in predator

Or predator 2

What?

A. Nowhere in the book is there a flashback

B. You mean one of those intros where it likes “this is what happened”

Ya. Those are fine as a plot introduction. Aliens is already slow paced as is so I don’t think it’d work.

A. You mean like it built up Ripley’s daughter being dead, built up to the board meeting, built up aripley leaving for LV-426, built up the marines in the locker room, cafeteria, load up, and the drop scene, and then built up the missing colonists, then built up the barricades, then built up Newt, then built up finding the colonist, then building up the hive, AND THEN WE SEE ALIENS

A lot of set up till we actually see the namesake.

And the one chapter things is completely exaggerated. Predators are sprinkled multiple times during the book.

oh cool is it same place same characters etc ?

By characters you mean Zues then yes

As well as Dutch.

Literally the only character here.

As for place…

There’s a jungle

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Dutch check
Scary pred check
jungle check
Sold

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Don’t forget Zeus dont got no legs

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From what I recall wasn’t he just permanently injured?

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Permanently injured no legs whats the difference. Lol

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