A cut scene that reveals several plot twists and sheds light on the motivations of key characters went completely unwatched yesterday afternoon. The fourteen-and-a-half minute scene – which took writers, programmers, musicians, and animators over three months to complete – was skipped over by nineteen-year-old college freshman Jerome Wittlebock in favor of more time spent killing enemies and collecting items.

Mr. Wittlebock, a political science major, claims that he had neither the time nor the energy to sit through a “bunch of talking,” adding that “these ammo boxes aren’t going to collect themselves.”

Hitsuru Natamashi, the head writer on the game, expressed his displeasure with Mr. Wittlebock’s choice of skipping over what he considered a crucial element of his work. “Of course we could make it so that [the player] could not skip over the fourteen minute cut-scene, but we didn’t think it was necessary. [He] didn’t have to do anything but watch. Who wouldn’t want to learn a little more about the man whose back you’ve been staring at for the past twenty hours? We all thought people would be itching to learn about his tortured childhood, or the love-triangle he’s in with a racecar driver and a robot dog.”

Natamashi’s grievances fall on deaf ears. “These guys, all they want to do is waste your time with people talking,” Mr. Wittlebock told me as we stood in his kitchen, waiting for his hot pocket to cool, “It seems like all that time making rounded, intriguing characters could have been spent on adding more weapons.”

After beating the game with 100% of all items collected and quests completed, Mr. Wittlebock plans to jump on the internet and tell all his friends how boring it all was.