Players are already “escaping” Escape from Tarkov, and the reason is surprising

With Escape from Tarkov’s 1.0 launch, players finally get to experience the full story promised so many years ago.

However, some players are realizing that there’s another way to “escape” Tarkov: by not playing the game. Many plan to simply watch the whole story as soon as someone figures it out and puts it up on a video-sharing website.

Escape from Tarkov’s grueling main story

While there’s already a good chunk of players staying off the game because of a rocky launch, the true believers pushed through all the server and technical issues and went straight into rushing through the long and tedious story questline.

Throughout Escape from Tarkov’s pre-launch journey, all the hundreds of quests were only ever listed as “side” quests. It makes you think about how some of these are unbelievably jarring when you first encounter them, like The Guide, Test Drive, Punisher, and more, and they are still considered side quests, even while somewhat contributing to the lore of Tarkov.

When the top content creators and streamers started blasting through, players realized how ridiculously “grindy” the story is.

Some of the maps became locked through the story quests. Some story quests had absurd requirements. Players were already reluctant to go through the story since most of them revolved around your typical fetch quests. Even the Tour, the earliest main story quest chain, feels like you’ve hit a brick wall when you are suddenly asked to gather $20,000 quite early in your progression.

For the average player who can dedicate 10-20 hours a week to playing the game, it could take them several months or even a year to complete, which is why they are turning to their favorite streamers to watch them complete the story as a community.

Why have players just turned to watching someone get the ending instead

To put the Escape from Tarkov story grind into perspective, the top players who play almost 80 to 100+ hours a week are still far from getting the complete story, and it has been two weeks since the launch.

These amazing players are among the best in the game, finishing the hard quests with ease, and are still far away from finishing the story. With this sad reality of the long grind ahead, players turn to watching someone complete it instead, and maybe play a few games to reminisce on the good old times.

There are so many in-game restrictions that came with launch, such as items tied to a certain level being sold at the flea market or maps being locked. If your favorite map is Lighthouse, you won’t be able to play it anymore unless you progress. Even one of the most exciting additions to Escape from Tarkov 1.0 is locked behind the story, which is the new map, Terminal.

In short, players are unmotivated to progress through the story that the developers worked so hard on. Nevertheless, fans are still locked in on finding out the culmination of Escape from Tarkov, especially since it is confirmed that there are at least four endings, including a bad and a true ending, depending on how you tackled the story.

It is only a matter of time before we get a compilation of these endings, and hopefully, the community gets it before GTA VI.

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