The First Descendant's tutorial robot is talking so fast, players are having to screenshot its dialogue just to learn about the game

News
By published

I'm beginning to feel like a rap bot, rap bot.

The tutorial robot for The First Descendant, who speaks far too quickly for its own good.
(Image credit: NEXON / Yellowexz on The First Descendant subreddit)

The First Descendant (TFD), Nexon's take on Warframe-slash-Destiny, has been doing pretty well in terms of raw numbers. Hitting a mightily-impressive all time peak of around 260,000 players, the game does look a little derivative of Bungie's live-service giant—to the point where both games went to the same pool of free-to-use icons, an entire wasp's nest fellow PC Gamer writer Andy Chalk appears to have stubbed his toe on yesterday.

Although, despite the fact that everyone and their mum appears to be playing it right now, TFD isn't exactly beloved by its playerbase. It's sitting on "Mixed" reviews at Steam to the tune of only 51% positive reviews at the time of writing.

The funniest one, at present? The tutorial is also a reading speed test—at least, in the English translation. As displayed by user Yellowexz on the game's subreddit, the "Descendant Instructor", a robot meant to convey vital info about TFD and its mechanics, seems entirely unwilling to actually let you learn anything:

I can’t for the life of me read anything this mf is saying from r/TheFirstDescendant

The tutorial in question is about Reactor Enhancement—a core cog in the machine of the game's loot treadmill and upgrade system. There's no option to slow this dialogue down, and no option to pause it at present, which sounds like a bad time when your game lives in a genre rife with obscure numbers and enough proper nouns to fill a glossary. 

Doing a little digging in the game's Discord, I found a handful of threads complaining about this issue—which appears to have been in the game for a while: "The Defendant Instructor speaking too fast has been an issue through all 3 betas," writes one player, with some debate proceeding as to whether Nexon even tried to slow it down before the game's full release.

A quick search of the server's community support channel confirms this, with similar complaints going back past the 30 day mark, the earliest being made in September last year.

(Image credit: The First Descendant Discord)

The only workaround right now is to either record the tutorial, or take screenshots of every individual piece of dialogue to pore over later. This, as you might have guessed, is not ideal. Still, considering we gave Destiny 2's latest expansion a 92 in our Destiny 2: The Final Shape review, as well as the fact that Warframe isn't going anywhere anytime soon, the competition's still stiff—so TFD needs to up its game, and soon.

Harvey Randall
Harvey Randall
Staff Writer

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.