I think a lot of people in this thread are contradicting their own point.

If you have no problem absorbing the story through youtube, then what does it matter if "story mode" is tied to savage? OP and plenty of people love the reward of story as well as loot from difficult encounters, and there's something kinda meh about having to go through the trivial version before unlocking savage.

If we're talking about choice here, people who want to digest the story as a reward from a challenging fight don't get one. We are forced to do the story-mode version first.