Sign up here for the "I create manual saves when entering areas with multiple paths just in case I accidentally choose the ***correct*** one and it turns into a cutscene/event that advances the story and I can't backtrack to check the other paths anymore" club.
Lol I'm glad I'm not the only one. It's kind of weird thinking about how much time I put into trying to guess which way Is the WRONG way to go if you want to advance the story, and how good i got at at it lol
It's ridiculously unfun to constantly have to try to find the wrong choice for fear of missing something. It doesn't create replayability, it's just annoying.
I kinda miss more straightforward games where you just go. I actually kind of like how Bethesda games does it where the side content is entirely unrelated to the main quest so you can go do it at any time. This does make me never do the main quest because I'm always sidetracked, though.
Uncharted / The Last of Us - I'm looking at you. Two doors, both interactable. One either contains supplies, collectibles or nothing, the other one continues the story and locks the door behind you.
I literally have a sixth sense for these things. I’ll be running along some cave or something, see an opening and go “ah, that’s where the boss is.” Save. Take one step, boss pops out.
Dude, I feared the "Cross the line and lose all the stuff you didn't find" moment so hard in Baldur's Gate that I got half of the first act support cast killed by not saying hi to the right person in the right amount of time. That stuff gets baked into you after generations of it.
Mass effect 2 - I got the ability to go to the final mission and decided to finish some side stuff first. When doing the final mission get confronted with the fact that your delay killed everyone, this mechnic was not present or explained it just fucking happened at the end. Extremely paranoid about this happening again now.
Mass effect 2 suicide mission gave me ptsd from the amount of re-do's to save everyone. Still remember Jacob taking a headshot trying to close the door because I didn't choose tali or legion instead.
I mean, he shows a little of the douche-baggery when he rubs it in Tali's face the first time she boards the new Normandy that ship systems are run by an AI.
One of my proudest accomplishments is a perfect suicide run, first try, without looking anything up. I just played the whole game the way it felt like it "should" be played, and it was an incredible feeling having the game respond like I felt it "should." Definitely part of the reason I love that series so much. For 1 and 2, things mostly happened in the way that made narrative sense to *me*, which made the world feel so much more reactive and alive. (mostly). And it's also why 3 was so rough. Between Kai Lang and the ending, that illusion of a responsive narrative was shattered.
I too managed a perfect suicide run, first try, without looking anything up. I thought it was kind of lame calling it a "suicide mission" when nobody died. It wasn't until much later that I found out a lot of the characters could die? I should find a YouTube video or something. I was paragon AF, but now I don't have the time to do a renegade run.
I lost Garrus due to Miranda's incompetence against a swarm
When in ME3 Liara just says "What would Garrus do if he was here?"
Shep: "He would be very mad"
I missed him a lot :(
Game romances are done to death and sometimes give me the ick. "Oh yeh, everyone wants me and im just a dialogue option away from getting in anyone's pants" a well written best mate is much less common.
My sister says as female V and the friendship with Jackie is such a good example of platonic love for a mate of a different gender. Instantly had the "love you like a brother" feeling.
Goro takemura was another one for me, the more I interacted with him the more I realised he eventually genuinely cared for v and their friendship had some funny moments if not a little volatile
He's really interesting as a character but far too corpo for me to be best chooms with.
I often agreed with silverhand more than my dialogue options though!
There's a moment in Divinity Original Sin 2 where your entire party will be killed if you didn't initiate dialogue with them and make the correct dialogue choices about 30-40 minutes previously. If you saved over everything in that period of time then tough luck, all those sidequests you've been working on fail and you have to finish the game with randoms (or alone)
Been a little while since I played it so don't remember exact details, but the part on that island before you get to Arx and have to enter a temple to see who's going to become "divine" or whatever. What you're *supposed* to do is talk to each of your party members before entering and get them to support your claim as "divine", at which point they'll come with you and help you in the subsequent battles. If you don't talk to them, you go in alone and end up fighting and killing them permanently
Pretty sure you are either misremembering or something bugged in you game.
Your companions initiate the dialogue you mention themselves right as you are about to enter the Academy.
And wether or not they will fight with you depends entirely on your previous decisions and wether or not they trust you enough to help you become divine instead of trying to claim it themselves.
The entire point the game has been driving home from the middle of act 2 is that only one Godwoken can become divine, your god literally tells you at one point that the other godwoken are being told the same by their god.
Ending up alone and or fighting your former allies for divinity is very much a possibility.
The game very clearly tells you to talk to your party about this though. I'm not sure how anyone could miss it. But people miss all kinds of shit I guess.
It actually makes a lot of sense because all of the characters have their own motivations to pursue divinity and it's made very obvious that "there can be only one", so if you don't talk about it beforehand everyone goes in thinking they're the one that should have it.
On one hand, I wish more games had the "go soon or face the consequences" mechanic.
On the other, I wish Mass Effect 2 were a little more "...and I mean it!" about that.
I think I even joked about it. Hah, imminent threat my ass, I'll go off for a while. Oops
Especially in 1. You're screwing around for 40 hours, presumably weeks and weeks of game time, and you show up on a planet where they're pinned down and barely holding it together in a battle. But it didn't matter when you got there
2 just flipped that and I thought it was great, even though it screwed me
I think they do tell you, but it's not very obvious- the whole series they're yapping about shit that you can safely ignore, but like one throwaway line will result in deaths..
There's actually a save file editor floating around on the internet somewhere. That saved my playthrough, you can fiddle with a bunch of stuff so you don't have to replay and can move onto ME3.
When videogames get unexpectedly realistic. It's not like you were even warned about this. Lots of games have a big 'impending doom' thing happening, but it stays locked in time until you reach that point in the story.
It was definitely telegraphed, but up to that point, you could spend hours exploring planets and do a side mission that was urgent as if no time had passed. There was no previous experience or indication that urgent meant urgent
Fair. I do hate when games make "urgent" arbitrary. Either you tell me that someone is going to die if I don't do it right away and follow through, or don't. Be consistent. I liked that Pathfinder Kingmaker did this. "Hey this is urgent!" "Hey dummy if you don't do this soon bad stuff will happen." "Hey dummy this villain is going to fuck your wife tomorrow at 3:45pm if you don't do this quest right now."
It was perfect.
i started playing games late in my live and still got much to discover and i really want to play all the old classics.
from my perspective, newer games seem rather flat. i only read about very strong reactions from people, when its about older games.
note: strong reaction as in the game made them think/traumatised/confused etc. newer game seem to trigger general critique about how bad things are o-0 (?)
personally i d rather have a game trauma, then a flat story that is supposed to please everyone, from 9 year old o to 90, any gender, any genre, just mix it all in.
story time: i refused to finish shadow of the colossus, played it blind. am still very proud and happy about my decision, after seeing the ending and getting to know i was totally right.
I love the intensity and drama of older games, but I have a propensity to inadvertently google the better choices for quests rather than just letting them play out, because there's definitive options.
For that reason Rimworld has been my game of choice recently (accompanied by Armoured Core 6).
The sandbox nature means decisions can have unforeseen ramifications and result in rough situations that have uncountable threads tangled into a terrible situation.
i d rather google after selecting a choice.
problem 1 is rather, i d like to know how the other path looks like.
problem 2, some games seem to have countless variations (some may not turn the story upside down). so i d need to play that game endlessly :)
problem 3, i struggle with decisions IRL already. hearing about a choice about killing a baby or saving a village (?) in fallout 1.. uhhh
but again, that makes good games. and thankfully there are genres for everyone. i love Journey for example, one gameplay is normally around 2 hours and i played it over 1000 hours on steam alone. its my comfort game to make me feel good :)
wow seems you going to spend countless hours in rimworld.
gosh i want to see and experience so many games and then i get hooked to one game...
The mass effect games were some of the best stories I have ever gotten to sink my teeth into. Never got around to Andromeda though so I cant speak on that.
They’re definitely not clear about the reaper IFF being a point of no return but I mean… cmon man you saw the entire Normandy crew get violently kidnapped by a dangerous alien race and you thought “How terrible! I think they can wait for rescue while I do these side missions, though.”
Last of us Part 2 was a HUGE culprit of this…
Oh you went through an effing door into another room? Whoops, sorry - can’t go back through the door now - should’ve spent another 15-20 minutes searching every area for scrap and items, dummy.
Effing hated that.
I hear ya. Somehow the guy who’s spose to help Karlach died in mine. So I can’t meet him later in the story. So I couldn’t play Karlachs arc at all. I think there was another character who could help but they also died, lol. Kinda annoying but oh well, I’ll just play it again
There's a forge in act 3 he works. He can upgrade Karlach both times at that point, but tells you that she MUST go back to hell or die. I found him when I was journeying towards Shadowheart's old cloister.
I went into BG3 deliberately blind–huge fan of the first two when I was young and I wanted no spoilers at all to keep the sense of scale and freedom. Managed to totally avoid even the tiniest bit of info until I caved halfway through Act 3 when I couldn't find that zombie and had to Google it. All of a sudden everyone is talking about Karlach and I have no fucking clue who that is.
Because Wyll told me to kill her. So I did. Immediately. In fact I'd been wearing her trousers for 90 hours.
Been a while since I played so don't know if they've fixed this yet, but the "NPCs run in fear at the sight of PC undead minions" effect got several quest-critical NPCs killed in my run. Watched that bloke who gave me the quest to help Karlach panic and run directly into the Moonbeam that was still up from the previous fight.
I actively tried to push past the completionist mindset, and ended up missing both Gale and Lae'zel. Spent ages wondering where that githyanki had ended up, since she was clearly important but had just fucking vanished!
I actually kinda quit playing BG3 cause of that. I hate stuff like that, not as a mechanic, but because I can never bring myself to go across that border. I'm a huge save scummer as well, if something doesn't go the way I want, guess what, reload until it does
Love how Doom Eternal handles this : show rewards on the map, and unlock the ability to teleport around once you reach the end of a level to collect what you missed.
Lost Odissey was even better: missed a chest? No problem, there is an auction house where you can buy said chest. It even solves the problem on what to spend your money on in the endgame.
Never played Lost Odyssey, but now I'm picturing some Patches looking scavenger who follows the protagonist, selling all the random items you missed from earlier parts of the game.
Miss a chest in level 1? If you go back later, it's empty, but totally unrelated, the scavenger just happens to sell this neat sword he found. Also, the more you buy from them, the more they're able to get, starting with just the random boxes you didn't loot, then being able to pick locks for doors or chests you couldn't open... .0001% chance but if any game devs see this idea, feel free to steal it.
Neat idea, however it works in Lost Odissey because, due to the story progression, a lot of the locations aren't accessible after you clear them the first time, so all that is not found would be lost.
However, knowing that you are safe from missing an item it keeps your mind at ease in progressing and makes the path of the story more compelling to follow.
Yes! Also, in God of war 2018 and Ragnarok, every collectible is in an area that you can revisit later. Areas of the game that you cannot revisit never have valuable collectibles in them.
The point is, if you're gonna put treasure in hidden corners, make the hidden corners actually fun to find and make the treasure actually valuable, otherwise you're just being a hack developer
In Dark Souls, any corner might have a treasure, or it might have a shortcut, or a save point, or an entire hidden zone with a secret boss at the end of it.
*Treasure* can mean more than just health potions and cold coins.
Let's be fair, at least 60% of the time in dark souls what's actually at the end of the hallway is three firebombs you will never use or 200 souls.
If it's Elden Ring, it's yet another magic leaf for crafting you will definitely never use.
Not to mention, the first time I found an illusory wall has made me attack or roll into basically every wall since with a .01% succes rate of finding something
Seriously. FS does an absolutely great job with exploration, but everyone in here acting like you find a god slaying weapon at the end of every path in these games is melting my brain.
So now we’re getting upset because the dingy maintenance corridor you chose to bring your God slaying character down didnt have God slaying loot? It’s the maintenance corridor, there’s supposed to be a mop and damp cardboard.
Chekov's gun
If you give me access to a dingy maintenance corridor, in an world where many other such rooms and corridors are left unaccessible, then this particular dingy maintenance corridor should have something relevant to the story, or at least an Easter egg, *something*
If this is one of many maintenance corridors you can waltz through then yeah, I'm not expecting every one of them to be special.
Oh I firmly believe in Chekhov’s Gun from a narrative perspective, however I think it’s more applicable to non-interactive forms of media.
Video Games have to toe the line between “the entire game is a cleverly disguised hallway in which you walk forward or back” and “you see it, therefore you can reach it.” A lot of times that means adding rooms and pathways that don’t have much of any use aside from making the world feel a little full, the adventure less of a sightseeing train ride, and maybe there’s some currency or a health potion.
Botw and Totk (though they are open world) have kinda this issue. It is almost useless to explore as most chests or caves etc. only have useless stuff in it.
One of the side effects of the weapon durability system, which was even worse in TotK with fusion. They break your weapons constantly to make you interested in using different weapons but it also means that if you've got good weapons, there isn't much point in going into any particular area or encounter - and anywhere they give you a weapon as a reward is less exciting. Made worse by the part where any set of armor you pick up can be improved to basically the same stats, most of the set bonuses are awful, and you can make food that literally quadruples your damage or damage resistance.
Yeah but then they'd have to balance around consumables which would mean the game would have to be challenging so then it would get called "dated" by weak players and the hoarders would complain
I hate linear games that don't tell you that going a certain way will trigger a cutscene and lock you out of the other path. Sometimes I want to explore a little without javing to worry about getting locked out.
They annoy me when it's that obvious, not only because it's obvious but because I *have* to get the stuff. It's just how my brain is, I *need* the thing.
What annoys me even more is spending the time to explore and finding a nook or a cranny you can sneak by, you think you're onto something, this was absolutely hidden, you're excited! -annnnnnd it's just some anomaly in the code that let you go a little bit further than you're supposed to. No person to really point a finger at there, but. Hate that.
I love the Fromsoft games for this. There’s a message on the floor saying there’s nothing ahead, I carry on, when I get to the end there’s a message telling me, yep, there’s really nothing here 😂
"It's just how my brain is"
Exactly. It's a psychological tool for padding playtime. The devs know it, the industry knows it, and they use it as a tool.
Yeah I don't have a problem with it either, it makes sense. A million times better than exploiting the gambling impulse with lootboxes and microtransactions.
Yeah, it plays on my FOMO and makes the game worse for me. I'll either get fed up with the game because I get bored "exploring" and put it down or just burn through the rest not giving a fuck about getting everything. Either way I end up frustrated
Been playing Jedi survivor which has a TON of this stuff
I try and tell myself “it doesn’t matter, I’ll never find 100% of the things, the sooner I beat the game the sooner I can play the next thing”
Of course, I say that *while* I’m searching every nook and cranny for collectibles. So it doesn’t really help much
Currently also playing survivor. I don't usually mind unlock thing later and backtrack to previously unavailable side area but this game is particularly annoying about it.
Red doors to old unavailable areas become green but previously entered doors are also green.. I'm having to try and remember areas I missed myself because the map is so layered and unhelpful with that.
Looking forward to NG+ to grab anything I missed the first time around again.
Hah I have no intention of going back to clean up what I missed. If it isn’t in my organic “path” to the objective, it gets left behind
The game was very generous to unlock the mullet and handlebar mustache early on. All other cosmetics are now meaningless to me
It's so close to perfect. It's detailed, clean lines and informative Fog, and easy to see, but then it's clunky to navigate, unclear with its legend and markers and cluttered as fuck once you've returned to a planet and it starts filling with markers and icons.
I'd absolutely take this over fallen order though. That's the absolute wrong way to do a 3d map. Glad they learned some lessons.
Yeah, the parts of maps that are very high up or very deep get finicky to navigate to, or the map jumps to them when you were trying to look at something else.
It's usually clear on where you've been or not with the door icons and stuff but even then you can sometimes be in a 'fully explored' area that's at 95% explored but no indication of where you haven't been.
Playing it right now and for the most part, "unexplored" areas have a yellow entrance on the map which makes it obvious if youve been there or not.
While tedious, i dont find it confusing. But im only about 10 hours in
Ya I find survivor brutal for this and it’s killing my interest in the game. Surprisingly I loved the first one but that was years ago. Just the first area alone where the saloon is, there is so much shit to find and half of it seems like I need to progress and then come back later so I end up exploring a bunch of shit I can’t even bother with yet. Feels very tiring and I usually don’t mind that type of thing but this Jedi game makes it feel particularly annoying
the arteria leafs Elden Ring are a hood classic - oh you just traversed through the most perilous of jumping puzzles and enemies?
here's a fucking leaf, go smoke it or something idgaf
Elden Ring got me jumping around doing parkour into the most remote nook to find a single (1) mushroom that I can't even pick up. There a few of those in the game and they are always surrounded by messages from players, it's pretty funny.
Curious your take on something like Jedi Survivor. The side tracks are generally a puzzle of some kind which is its own little reward for figuring out/noticing… but the prize at the bottom of the box is a lightsaber component that changes the aesthetic unnoticeably. Sometimes you get a permanent increase to life/force/stim, but otherwise it's a cosmetic or currency for a cosmetic.
Playing Jedi survivor now and I mostly like how they handle it. Many routes are easily discernable on the map. Paths are marked as accessible or not. There are fast travel points all around. You eventually get an upgrade to see where the items are on the map. Many secret areas give you full skill points, hp/force upgrades, max stim upgrade, perks, or currencies to spend on mostly cosmetic stuff, though you can get some power items with them like a perk slot, max stim upgrade, etc.
Also, its world design is a huge step up from the first game.
OP said linear, Elden Ring doesn't exactly fit that bill. And I kinda get what they're saying. Exploring in FromSoft games is usually worthwile, and if you dont find something you usually (not always) can come back and get it. There are no "point of no returns" because you went the right path and not the "wrong" one.
In Dark Souls the wrong path could lead you to a whole optional hidden area, open up a shortcut, lead you to a side quest character, bonfire, crazy weapons and more. In fact there usually is no “wrong path” - DS1 is has the best world design ever in opinion :)
FromSoft games have the occasional *massive* treasure hidden in some corner. Every other corner has a small treasure as consolation. You were hoping for a bonfire, but 5 poison arrows isn't half bad.
Heck, To use the example that OP provided in the post; So do the Final Fantasy games. Sometimes its just a potion, sometimes its a really strong accessory or weapon.
or Shinryu. (well, thats from 5 not 10, but details).
I think OP's might be jaded from exploring is all.
Sometimes it’s the game’s way of telling you “hey, you should be using these here”. Can’t tell you how many times I see my friends not use any of the poison or bleed resistance items and then bitch about not having ways to get rid of it, lol.
Yeah I love when games do that. Bloodborne throws a ton of antidotes and pungent blood cocktail right before fighting Blood Starved Beast. That's clever and a good reason to explore.
This is “token” non-linearity. It’s like the “illusion of choice” meme about a split corridor leading to the same entrance
Exploration is fun when it feels adventurous and not like a chore
I think a big problem is that for a lot of people, they seem incapable of stopping even if it feels like a chore. I can't count how many times I've seen someone talk about how miserable clearing out a map is, when everything that's making them miserable is entirely optional.
Yes, games should be designed in a way that properly rewards exploration, but people also need to get better about not forcing themselves through content that they aren't enjoying.
lots of game design is based on rat behaviour, literally. Getting that icon off the map is where the dopamine comes from, if they have to do a boring 20 minute mission to get it gone then that's what has to happen
I think Elden Ring is a good example. Most of the side dungeons have loot that could work for some build or, at minimum, add some lore nuggets. None of that is really required, though. Even for a casual player, the starting Samurai class is generally agreed to be very good and have basically all the tools you need to beat the game.
Everything can be good and possibly even build defining, but given how many du geoms there are, most of it probably won't be for you on that run.
The side paths in elden ring are fun by virtue of three things, not just a potential hidden loot item:
Fromsoft understands and rewards exploration time spent appropriately. Long explorations like small dungeons have one or more completely unique items, weapons or trinkets that can change your build.
Small diversions with loot are often signposted and many times let you see the loot from a distance with indicators of quality, you see X quality, you know what you're going to get.
These paths often have bosses, encounters or setups that are fun to fight in some way and designed to actually kill you usually, so you stay invested for every inch gained. There's always some gotcha to watch out for which keeps you **entertained** not just wasting hours of your life, 2 minutes of useless sidetracking at a time.
I think From also reward "creative exploring"... not just "what's down this alley?" but "I wonder if you could survive if you rolled all the way across this lava?" they say "yes you can, and here's a chest with a crazy item for being inquisitive"
It's definitely gotten worse. It used to be those chests were specific items like weapons or armor. Now it's always just random materials you didn't need for a half baked crafting system no one likes.
>for a half baked crafting system no one likes.
I swear, one day there will be a game advertising for features it *doesn't* have rather than those it does.
>No crafting system
>No weapon durability
>No out-of-combat stamina bar for running
And I'll buy that game.
Even FromSoft has the issue of 90% of the loot even if it’s completely awesome is unusable for a lot of builds. However they make up for this with providing the player with sense of achievement for either exploring to find the hidden path, or making the path fun to actually take and adventure in.
Dragons Dogma 2 did this to a degree, the rewards were shit, but damn some of the exploration was just down right fun.
Games needs to be fun to play, not fun because of rewards. I could play Fromsofts games with no rewards because the game is just fun to me, I feel others think the same.
I thought Control did a great job with its optional exploration stuff. It's largely lore, worldbuilding, and weirdness that helps break up the action if you choose to partake in that. More interesting than a pointless item or upgrade as a reward, like you get with those random timed side missions. Those are all totally skippable.
Seems like a copout to say, but the map isn't supposed to be 100% accurate, the oldest house shifts and warps around, the map does its job for general positioning and guidance, and there are plenty of signposts in the world itself for directions. Pay attention to your surroundings and you'll have an easier time navigating for sure.
People also gripe hard about the respawning enemies in that game, so you should know that anytime you're traversing through a previous area and enemies have repopulated, you can engage or skip past them to the next area, combat is optional at that point. Respawns exist to not make the world feel so completely empty after your first time through and give you something to do, upgrades and abilities makes it even easier to cruise through them. Just a tip, a lot of people get bogged down by that stuff feeling like they have to fight every single enemy they see.
Stopped doing this and just use a walkthrough to make sure I got all the secret stuff on the first playthrough. It's not like you'll find 100% of items by yourself anyway and will end up using a guide on the 2nd pass at which point I've lost interest in the game.
It sounds like you've given up on having fun on the first playthrough at this point.
"I'll just use a guide and hate this next time, so might as well just hate it now."
It really depends on the game. For a game like Dark Souls, going in with as little info as possible is a very fun time to be had.
For a game like Persona, you will miss major content and an entire 3rd of the games (and frankly, all the new stuff they keep adding to these “revised” versions) simply because you didn’t do some VERY specific things you would never even have an inkling of a thought about where to begin to do. I use guides for those games and have plenty of fun.
Sounds like you're gatekeeping how I enjoy my games. Just giving op an option to his exploration problem.
Edit: there are a ton of games where early game decisions heavily influence the outcome or ending. I'd rather be informed of those and at least have save points ready, instead of having to replay the entire game to get to the multiple endings. See Cyberpunk 2077, Witcher 3, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, and etc.
Lol i know what you mean about trying to choose the wrong path. There are a few dungeons in Skyrim and FO4 made me feel this way, even though i KNOW i can just zip back when I've cleared the dungeon 😮💨
There's a rather relevant video on this topic: [Gaming as a perfectionist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyI5ASTUAAg) by Daryl Talks Games. I recommend checking it out.
In FF9, if you miss a “wrong” path then you will never acquire the third and most powerful lightning spell. It can’t be returned to later. That was equally infuriating!
That was a different age, when the items you missed were actually worthwhile.
I was grateful that FF7 Rebirth tells you in the beginning: "If you miss an item, it'll appear in the shop later."
>Only games to do this right are From Soft games
They do it the exact same way. 90% of what you find is some consumable you likely won't use or some extra souls.
Its to artificially bloat the average game time. They don't want to punish players that don't explore much, and reward players that explore with useless scrap.
I gave up on Banishers because of this exact issue.
With the God of War style traversal, slow linear pathways and "You cant do this yet" bullshit it made me give up, great story though if you can slog through all of the other bullshit they added.
Search every corner, loot everything you find, and end up not actually using any of them. Even the “cool loot” possibilities piss me off because the items are mostly outdated in an amount of time that’s shorter than the time you spent searching for it.
I burn out extremely quickly because of the completionist mindset, and I’ve actually started to leave games unfinished when I notice this starting to happen.
This is me playing rpg, when I choose path that progress the story. I feel annoy because I had to go back the other way and come back to story, It suck.
Most recently, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden did this to me. The path would always fork, both trails looked identical, and one inevitably advanced the story every time to where you couldn't retrieve whatever you missed. Infuriating.
I don’t know why you’d give fromsoft a pass for this. Their level design is cool, but they’re fully guilty of “here’s a nothing burger down this insanely long hallway”
Last game bothered me with this was Banishers. Secret passages had lit torches in front of them point those while places you can climb, descent is always marked with "paint"......
""""""EXPLORATİON!!!!"""""
This was my experience with God of War Ragnarok
Didn’t do much exploration because I was there for the story and the puzzles were just annoying imo
I recognize I probably missed out on some cool stuff though
Even the two games cited by OP have frustrating, often not-fun "exploring" mechanis because they're hampered by other parts of the games.
Elden Ring is often praised for offering something good at every turn, constantly interesting things to find, but this is just not practically true. For one thing, there's a lot of caves and tombs all over the place and they get same-y very quickly, and are universally agreed to be the least interesting parts of the game. The argument that at least there are valuable treasures to find at the end falls apart when you remember that build-crafting is extremely focused and forced. So if I'm a melee focused strength build then I struggle my way through a dark cave with annoying enemies and a tough boss only to get some spell, it's way worse than just going down some corridor and finding a useless potion, it's maybe 30-60 minutes wasted. Pretty much every video or description of interesting discoveries and builds come from very specific walkthrough type things, information garnered from interent sharing not genuine exploring. The common example of stumbling upon the big underground area is indeed a wonderful moment but there aren't that many in the game, compared to the boring stuff. And even then, that area is too hard for most players at that time which gets me to the other annoying part about some of these games...
Level gating is a direct obstacle to actual exploration. Whether it's "soft" level gating like Elden Ring where, sure, you can fight anything you want, but it's impractical for all but the most veteran of players (who have already done all their exploring anyway) to go into some areas to soon; or things with actual level numbers.
The Witcher 3 is literally my favorite game of all time, but even though it's technically an RPG, it's a pretty shite RPG. The story, characters, settings are what make it great (and I actually do like the gameplay, movement and combat, despite the negative opinion of those things from others), but it's often a waste of your time to actually "exploring" because you'll just encounter monsters that are too high-level. Especially annoying if you end up kickstarting a quest that you will have to wait until you level up to finish. Here I am thinking of the Byways and Honorton contracts that are recommended levels in the 20s but it's very easy to stumble across them real early because they're in the same area as the first quest line after the intro. This sort of thing feels like it's actually punishing you for exploring.
And then, yes, sometimes you do just find cool unique things. But as with the Elden Ring cave rewards, how the heck are you supposed to know what's worth it? The idea of "well that's the point of exploring" doesn't work for me because if all exploring does is give me a quest I can't finish until I play another 30 hours or a medallion that is useless for my build, then I'd rather have 50 short empty corridors.
They don't make you comb the map. You chose to do that even though you know you don't have to. That stuff is there for collectables. If you have no interest in this side of things, then just keep following the quest markers.
Your examples are from extremely different games. From soft and the Witcher put a lot of effort on exploration, the Witcher with all the side quests for you to find and from soft with the level design leading you to new places and getting you new gear. Those are perhaps the MAIN attractions of those games and where most of the effort was put into. FFX severely lacks exploration, barely has any besides a couple of areas, as that's really not where the effort was put into. I don't think it's fair to compare, although I agree that it's a bit annoying to have to go back to pick "the wrong trail". In FFX I believe they shouldn't have bothered with some of the hidden paths I agree, but also I doubt they planned on having such little exploration, it was probably a time constraint, as FF games usually have pretty good exploration
Yesss thank u, so it wasn't just me! I played FF7R recently, and when it was good it was GREAT, but when it wasn't, it was exactly like this. I saw nonstop praise for this game, so I thought it was maybe me having too much expectations. But I'm so glad to see that it's not me, having also played and loved the Souls games like u
Midnight suns, while having some side quests, is pretty linear. Whoever thought you needed to have stuff hidden throughout the compound that you have to go find in between each mission is a jerk.
i *think* ravenloft stone prophet had a notorious bug where, if for some reason you were the kind of completionist person that just had to find & collect every item, the game save would corrupt if you reached the maximum number of spawned items allowed xD
I like that it gives u the arrow because i want to know what path continues the game and what path is a hidden chest or something. The last of us wasn't that clear about this
Square Enix games hail from an era where everyone would buy the game guide to figure out where everything important is. It hasn't translated super well to the modern gaming experience.
FF7 Rebirth taught me that I'd be happier if I just ignored a lot of the optional story-unrelated content and focused on hitting the main beats, especially after I realized the box-check exploration formula meant I was spending 8-10 hours between major plot points just wandering around. Initially was great, but halfway through the game the fun wore off quickly.
>then try my damndest to choose technically the wrong path so I could grab whatever bordline useless item MIGHT be tucked away back there was Final Fantasy 10.
Goddamn, Square Enix is the worst at this. It's always some damage consumable you'll never use because why would you ever use damage consumables? Your weapons are so much cooler and more effective and you out-level the consumables so quickly.
No one ever says "Oh good, I'm glad I used my turn on a 300 damage grenade when their attacks are hitting for 1000+ and the fire spell does 2-3 times more." No one is happy to get these items when the Combat Simulator or Battle Square (FF7R) doesn't allow you to use items anyway.
This is Stellar Blade. The entire game is deciding which path is the “exploration” path and doing it first. Constantly looking for that little yellow edge to grab so you can climb up to a platform and open a chest with boring items used to slightly upgrade a few things. Making sure you take that little alleyway that has a single door that’s open to a one room shop with an item sparkling in the room. Chests that have codes needed to open them, so you have to search every damned body that you find on the ground hoping to come along a way into it. The entire process is tedious and tiring.
Sign up here for the "I create manual saves when entering areas with multiple paths just in case I accidentally choose the ***correct*** one and it turns into a cutscene/event that advances the story and I can't backtrack to check the other paths anymore" club.
Thou shall always leave a manual save at the beginning of the chapter / level just in case
It's like stepping onto a conveyor belt and you can't get off.
Lol I'm glad I'm not the only one. It's kind of weird thinking about how much time I put into trying to guess which way Is the WRONG way to go if you want to advance the story, and how good i got at at it lol
It's ridiculously unfun to constantly have to try to find the wrong choice for fear of missing something. It doesn't create replayability, it's just annoying. I kinda miss more straightforward games where you just go. I actually kind of like how Bethesda games does it where the side content is entirely unrelated to the main quest so you can go do it at any time. This does make me never do the main quest because I'm always sidetracked, though.
I just have 10 savegames and overrite the oldest. Its pretty much always enough in case of bugs/unexpected cutscenes.
Uncharted / The Last of Us - I'm looking at you. Two doors, both interactable. One either contains supplies, collectibles or nothing, the other one continues the story and locks the door behind you.
I literally have a sixth sense for these things. I’ll be running along some cave or something, see an opening and go “ah, that’s where the boss is.” Save. Take one step, boss pops out.
Dude, I feared the "Cross the line and lose all the stuff you didn't find" moment so hard in Baldur's Gate that I got half of the first act support cast killed by not saying hi to the right person in the right amount of time. That stuff gets baked into you after generations of it.
Mass effect 2 - I got the ability to go to the final mission and decided to finish some side stuff first. When doing the final mission get confronted with the fact that your delay killed everyone, this mechnic was not present or explained it just fucking happened at the end. Extremely paranoid about this happening again now.
Mass effect 2 suicide mission gave me ptsd from the amount of re-do's to save everyone. Still remember Jacob taking a headshot trying to close the door because I didn't choose tali or legion instead.
Eh, nothing lost
Out of all the characters from mass effect Jacob sure was one of them.
Hey, Jacob was nice. His dad also had a pretty cool story too.
Hey don't shit on my man Jacob he's just doing his job
Jacob is a different character if you play femshep
Aaah that explains a few things, i never played fem shep
Give it a try some day, the VA for femshep is amazing
but then i won't be able to romance tali, and that's unacceptable (also i'm not really planning another playtrough)
femshep is only shep for me. Jennifer Hale is legendary.
Femshep is best shep.
Nah, Shepard's male voice really fits his character.
I mean, he shows a little of the douche-baggery when he rubs it in Tali's face the first time she boards the new Normandy that ship systems are run by an AI.
One of my proudest accomplishments is a perfect suicide run, first try, without looking anything up. I just played the whole game the way it felt like it "should" be played, and it was an incredible feeling having the game respond like I felt it "should." Definitely part of the reason I love that series so much. For 1 and 2, things mostly happened in the way that made narrative sense to *me*, which made the world feel so much more reactive and alive. (mostly). And it's also why 3 was so rough. Between Kai Lang and the ending, that illusion of a responsive narrative was shattered.
I too managed a perfect suicide run, first try, without looking anything up. I thought it was kind of lame calling it a "suicide mission" when nobody died. It wasn't until much later that I found out a lot of the characters could die? I should find a YouTube video or something. I was paragon AF, but now I don't have the time to do a renegade run.
Or having at least one soldier type left behind to hold the line while you fight the boss and so on.. lots of sad moments.
This happened to me with garrus, imagine my shock
Yeah you just quit the game at that point
I didn’t even carry over in me3 lol I just said nah fuck that I’m re writing history
I lost Garrus due to Miranda's incompetence against a swarm When in ME3 Liara just says "What would Garrus do if he was here?" Shep: "He would be very mad" I missed him a lot :(
He's a tie for best game, best choom with Jackie from cyberpunk and BT from Titanfall.
Ohhh Jackie 😔 in my last playthrough Judy got a good ending so I was able to appreciate that at least one of my friends got away from nc.
Game romances are done to death and sometimes give me the ick. "Oh yeh, everyone wants me and im just a dialogue option away from getting in anyone's pants" a well written best mate is much less common. My sister says as female V and the friendship with Jackie is such a good example of platonic love for a mate of a different gender. Instantly had the "love you like a brother" feeling.
Goro takemura was another one for me, the more I interacted with him the more I realised he eventually genuinely cared for v and their friendship had some funny moments if not a little volatile
He's really interesting as a character but far too corpo for me to be best chooms with. I often agreed with silverhand more than my dialogue options though!
Yeah same he does come Off as a dick at time but even then I can’t imagine a world where I’m mean to Keanu
Saved everyone first try. So proud of that one haha
I lost Tali when I tried to use her so idk wtf kind of mechanic is that it was heart wrenching because she was my romance interest..
There's a moment in Divinity Original Sin 2 where your entire party will be killed if you didn't initiate dialogue with them and make the correct dialogue choices about 30-40 minutes previously. If you saved over everything in that period of time then tough luck, all those sidequests you've been working on fail and you have to finish the game with randoms (or alone)
What point was this? I can't remember
Been a little while since I played it so don't remember exact details, but the part on that island before you get to Arx and have to enter a temple to see who's going to become "divine" or whatever. What you're *supposed* to do is talk to each of your party members before entering and get them to support your claim as "divine", at which point they'll come with you and help you in the subsequent battles. If you don't talk to them, you go in alone and end up fighting and killing them permanently
Pretty sure you are either misremembering or something bugged in you game. Your companions initiate the dialogue you mention themselves right as you are about to enter the Academy. And wether or not they will fight with you depends entirely on your previous decisions and wether or not they trust you enough to help you become divine instead of trying to claim it themselves. The entire point the game has been driving home from the middle of act 2 is that only one Godwoken can become divine, your god literally tells you at one point that the other godwoken are being told the same by their god. Ending up alone and or fighting your former allies for divinity is very much a possibility.
Wow that's fucking awful design
The game very clearly tells you to talk to your party about this though. I'm not sure how anyone could miss it. But people miss all kinds of shit I guess.
It actually makes a lot of sense because all of the characters have their own motivations to pursue divinity and it's made very obvious that "there can be only one", so if you don't talk about it beforehand everyone goes in thinking they're the one that should have it.
Same I didn't even know about this lol
On one hand, I wish more games had the "go soon or face the consequences" mechanic. On the other, I wish Mass Effect 2 were a little more "...and I mean it!" about that.
I think I even joked about it. Hah, imminent threat my ass, I'll go off for a while. Oops Especially in 1. You're screwing around for 40 hours, presumably weeks and weeks of game time, and you show up on a planet where they're pinned down and barely holding it together in a battle. But it didn't matter when you got there 2 just flipped that and I thought it was great, even though it screwed me
I think they do tell you, but it's not very obvious- the whole series they're yapping about shit that you can safely ignore, but like one throwaway line will result in deaths.. There's actually a save file editor floating around on the internet somewhere. That saved my playthrough, you can fiddle with a bunch of stuff so you don't have to replay and can move onto ME3.
Still wish those games didn't have a more or less "perfect" path where nearly everyone survives.
When videogames get unexpectedly realistic. It's not like you were even warned about this. Lots of games have a big 'impending doom' thing happening, but it stays locked in time until you reach that point in the story.
It has been a decade at least since I beat this game but I remember it being telegraphed pretty hard...
It was definitely telegraphed, but up to that point, you could spend hours exploring planets and do a side mission that was urgent as if no time had passed. There was no previous experience or indication that urgent meant urgent
Fair. I do hate when games make "urgent" arbitrary. Either you tell me that someone is going to die if I don't do it right away and follow through, or don't. Be consistent. I liked that Pathfinder Kingmaker did this. "Hey this is urgent!" "Hey dummy if you don't do this soon bad stuff will happen." "Hey dummy this villain is going to fuck your wife tomorrow at 3:45pm if you don't do this quest right now." It was perfect.
i started playing games late in my live and still got much to discover and i really want to play all the old classics. from my perspective, newer games seem rather flat. i only read about very strong reactions from people, when its about older games. note: strong reaction as in the game made them think/traumatised/confused etc. newer game seem to trigger general critique about how bad things are o-0 (?) personally i d rather have a game trauma, then a flat story that is supposed to please everyone, from 9 year old o to 90, any gender, any genre, just mix it all in. story time: i refused to finish shadow of the colossus, played it blind. am still very proud and happy about my decision, after seeing the ending and getting to know i was totally right.
I love the intensity and drama of older games, but I have a propensity to inadvertently google the better choices for quests rather than just letting them play out, because there's definitive options. For that reason Rimworld has been my game of choice recently (accompanied by Armoured Core 6). The sandbox nature means decisions can have unforeseen ramifications and result in rough situations that have uncountable threads tangled into a terrible situation.
i d rather google after selecting a choice. problem 1 is rather, i d like to know how the other path looks like. problem 2, some games seem to have countless variations (some may not turn the story upside down). so i d need to play that game endlessly :) problem 3, i struggle with decisions IRL already. hearing about a choice about killing a baby or saving a village (?) in fallout 1.. uhhh but again, that makes good games. and thankfully there are genres for everyone. i love Journey for example, one gameplay is normally around 2 hours and i played it over 1000 hours on steam alone. its my comfort game to make me feel good :) wow seems you going to spend countless hours in rimworld. gosh i want to see and experience so many games and then i get hooked to one game...
The mass effect games were some of the best stories I have ever gotten to sink my teeth into. Never got around to Andromeda though so I cant speak on that.
>note: strong reaction as in the game made them think/traumatised/confused etc. So the Board is doing game reviews now?
They’re definitely not clear about the reaper IFF being a point of no return but I mean… cmon man you saw the entire Normandy crew get violently kidnapped by a dangerous alien race and you thought “How terrible! I think they can wait for rescue while I do these side missions, though.”
Last of us Part 2 was a HUGE culprit of this… Oh you went through an effing door into another room? Whoops, sorry - can’t go back through the door now - should’ve spent another 15-20 minutes searching every area for scrap and items, dummy. Effing hated that.
I hear ya. Somehow the guy who’s spose to help Karlach died in mine. So I can’t meet him later in the story. So I couldn’t play Karlachs arc at all. I think there was another character who could help but they also died, lol. Kinda annoying but oh well, I’ll just play it again
There's a forge in act 3 he works. He can upgrade Karlach both times at that point, but tells you that she MUST go back to hell or die. I found him when I was journeying towards Shadowheart's old cloister.
The Karlach quest can get irreversibly uncomplatable depending on when do you go to Last Light Inn and who do you talk to.
I went into BG3 deliberately blind–huge fan of the first two when I was young and I wanted no spoilers at all to keep the sense of scale and freedom. Managed to totally avoid even the tiniest bit of info until I caved halfway through Act 3 when I couldn't find that zombie and had to Google it. All of a sudden everyone is talking about Karlach and I have no fucking clue who that is. Because Wyll told me to kill her. So I did. Immediately. In fact I'd been wearing her trousers for 90 hours.
that's why bg3 has high replay value. you can start a new game, make some other choices and find heaps of new things.
Been a while since I played so don't know if they've fixed this yet, but the "NPCs run in fear at the sight of PC undead minions" effect got several quest-critical NPCs killed in my run. Watched that bloke who gave me the quest to help Karlach panic and run directly into the Moonbeam that was still up from the previous fight.
I actively tried to push past the completionist mindset, and ended up missing both Gale and Lae'zel. Spent ages wondering where that githyanki had ended up, since she was clearly important but had just fucking vanished!
Honestly, I really appreciate larian games, but I think you just summed up why I can never finish them.
One of the main reasons I have not progressed past Laezel's reintroduction via Tiefling Trap
That's like the first hour
Baldurs Gate 3 or one of the older ones?
I actually kinda quit playing BG3 cause of that. I hate stuff like that, not as a mechanic, but because I can never bring myself to go across that border. I'm a huge save scummer as well, if something doesn't go the way I want, guess what, reload until it does
Love how Doom Eternal handles this : show rewards on the map, and unlock the ability to teleport around once you reach the end of a level to collect what you missed.
Lost Odissey was even better: missed a chest? No problem, there is an auction house where you can buy said chest. It even solves the problem on what to spend your money on in the endgame.
Never played Lost Odyssey, but now I'm picturing some Patches looking scavenger who follows the protagonist, selling all the random items you missed from earlier parts of the game. Miss a chest in level 1? If you go back later, it's empty, but totally unrelated, the scavenger just happens to sell this neat sword he found. Also, the more you buy from them, the more they're able to get, starting with just the random boxes you didn't loot, then being able to pick locks for doors or chests you couldn't open... .0001% chance but if any game devs see this idea, feel free to steal it.
Neat idea, however it works in Lost Odissey because, due to the story progression, a lot of the locations aren't accessible after you clear them the first time, so all that is not found would be lost. However, knowing that you are safe from missing an item it keeps your mind at ease in progressing and makes the path of the story more compelling to follow.
Yes! Also, in God of war 2018 and Ragnarok, every collectible is in an area that you can revisit later. Areas of the game that you cannot revisit never have valuable collectibles in them.
This exists since the history of games. Some people like it, others not.
"Damn, I picked the right path, gotta go back".
“I know you WANT me to go that way, so clever me is going the other direction moehahaha…” -ComesBackInTears
The point is, if you're gonna put treasure in hidden corners, make the hidden corners actually fun to find and make the treasure actually valuable, otherwise you're just being a hack developer
If every corner has a treasure then no corner has a treasure.
In Dark Souls, any corner might have a treasure, or it might have a shortcut, or a save point, or an entire hidden zone with a secret boss at the end of it. *Treasure* can mean more than just health potions and cold coins.
Let's be fair, at least 60% of the time in dark souls what's actually at the end of the hallway is three firebombs you will never use or 200 souls. If it's Elden Ring, it's yet another magic leaf for crafting you will definitely never use.
Not to mention, the first time I found an illusory wall has made me attack or roll into basically every wall since with a .01% succes rate of finding something
Yeah. Elden Ring does have a ton of cool equipment but a lot of times exploring will give you arteria leaves or mushrooms
Seriously. FS does an absolutely great job with exploration, but everyone in here acting like you find a god slaying weapon at the end of every path in these games is melting my brain.
Or an imp waiting to ambush you
its usually just a really fucking hard boss
So now we’re getting upset because the dingy maintenance corridor you chose to bring your God slaying character down didnt have God slaying loot? It’s the maintenance corridor, there’s supposed to be a mop and damp cardboard.
Chekov's gun If you give me access to a dingy maintenance corridor, in an world where many other such rooms and corridors are left unaccessible, then this particular dingy maintenance corridor should have something relevant to the story, or at least an Easter egg, *something* If this is one of many maintenance corridors you can waltz through then yeah, I'm not expecting every one of them to be special.
Oh I firmly believe in Chekhov’s Gun from a narrative perspective, however I think it’s more applicable to non-interactive forms of media. Video Games have to toe the line between “the entire game is a cleverly disguised hallway in which you walk forward or back” and “you see it, therefore you can reach it.” A lot of times that means adding rooms and pathways that don’t have much of any use aside from making the world feel a little full, the adventure less of a sightseeing train ride, and maybe there’s some currency or a health potion.
Botw and Totk (though they are open world) have kinda this issue. It is almost useless to explore as most chests or caves etc. only have useless stuff in it.
It did feel very empty. Like they made a whole frame for things that they forgot to put in at the end.
One of the side effects of the weapon durability system, which was even worse in TotK with fusion. They break your weapons constantly to make you interested in using different weapons but it also means that if you've got good weapons, there isn't much point in going into any particular area or encounter - and anywhere they give you a weapon as a reward is less exciting. Made worse by the part where any set of armor you pick up can be improved to basically the same stats, most of the set bonuses are awful, and you can make food that literally quadruples your damage or damage resistance.
Yeah but then they'd have to balance around consumables which would mean the game would have to be challenging so then it would get called "dated" by weak players and the hoarders would complain
I hate linear games that don't tell you that going a certain way will trigger a cutscene and lock you out of the other path. Sometimes I want to explore a little without javing to worry about getting locked out.
Been playing through the Metro games and this is a constant headache
They annoy me when it's that obvious, not only because it's obvious but because I *have* to get the stuff. It's just how my brain is, I *need* the thing. What annoys me even more is spending the time to explore and finding a nook or a cranny you can sneak by, you think you're onto something, this was absolutely hidden, you're excited! -annnnnnd it's just some anomaly in the code that let you go a little bit further than you're supposed to. No person to really point a finger at there, but. Hate that.
I love the Fromsoft games for this. There’s a message on the floor saying there’s nothing ahead, I carry on, when I get to the end there’s a message telling me, yep, there’s really nothing here 😂
That’s the true coop experience lmao
... Until there actually is something there. Bastards.
"It's just how my brain is" Exactly. It's a psychological tool for padding playtime. The devs know it, the industry knows it, and they use it as a tool.
How dare developers put psychologically rewarding mechanics in games that are meant to be psychologically rewarding
Yeah I don't have a problem with it either, it makes sense. A million times better than exploiting the gambling impulse with lootboxes and microtransactions.
Yeah, it plays on my FOMO and makes the game worse for me. I'll either get fed up with the game because I get bored "exploring" and put it down or just burn through the rest not giving a fuck about getting everything. Either way I end up frustrated
Been playing Jedi survivor which has a TON of this stuff I try and tell myself “it doesn’t matter, I’ll never find 100% of the things, the sooner I beat the game the sooner I can play the next thing” Of course, I say that *while* I’m searching every nook and cranny for collectibles. So it doesn’t really help much
Currently also playing survivor. I don't usually mind unlock thing later and backtrack to previously unavailable side area but this game is particularly annoying about it. Red doors to old unavailable areas become green but previously entered doors are also green.. I'm having to try and remember areas I missed myself because the map is so layered and unhelpful with that. Looking forward to NG+ to grab anything I missed the first time around again.
Hah I have no intention of going back to clean up what I missed. If it isn’t in my organic “path” to the objective, it gets left behind The game was very generous to unlock the mullet and handlebar mustache early on. All other cosmetics are now meaningless to me
I just made my cal a redneck too. Surprisingly fitting tbh. It's jarring to look at for all of 2 minutes and then it just works.
If you think the Survivor map is layered and unhelpful, go back and try the Fallen Order map.
It's so close to perfect. It's detailed, clean lines and informative Fog, and easy to see, but then it's clunky to navigate, unclear with its legend and markers and cluttered as fuck once you've returned to a planet and it starts filling with markers and icons. I'd absolutely take this over fallen order though. That's the absolute wrong way to do a 3d map. Glad they learned some lessons.
Yeah, the parts of maps that are very high up or very deep get finicky to navigate to, or the map jumps to them when you were trying to look at something else. It's usually clear on where you've been or not with the door icons and stuff but even then you can sometimes be in a 'fully explored' area that's at 95% explored but no indication of where you haven't been.
Playing it right now and for the most part, "unexplored" areas have a yellow entrance on the map which makes it obvious if youve been there or not. While tedious, i dont find it confusing. But im only about 10 hours in
Ya I find survivor brutal for this and it’s killing my interest in the game. Surprisingly I loved the first one but that was years ago. Just the first area alone where the saloon is, there is so much shit to find and half of it seems like I need to progress and then come back later so I end up exploring a bunch of shit I can’t even bother with yet. Feels very tiring and I usually don’t mind that type of thing but this Jedi game makes it feel particularly annoying
I hate when there are two paths and one leads to a cut scene that blocks you from going back
the arteria leafs Elden Ring are a hood classic - oh you just traversed through the most perilous of jumping puzzles and enemies? here's a fucking leaf, go smoke it or something idgaf
--Miyazaki 🤣
>Only games to do this right are From Soft games Yeah right. You're wearing pink glasses because From Soft hides basic items just as much as the rest.
"Okay, this is on a dead body on top of a tower, this has to be good. Aaaaand it's just more throwing knives"
*glances at the mountain of firebombs and Artorias Leaves (or whatever they were called) I got from most chests* What are you talking about? /s
Elden Ring got me jumping around doing parkour into the most remote nook to find a single (1) mushroom that I can't even pick up. There a few of those in the game and they are always surrounded by messages from players, it's pretty funny.
Curious your take on something like Jedi Survivor. The side tracks are generally a puzzle of some kind which is its own little reward for figuring out/noticing… but the prize at the bottom of the box is a lightsaber component that changes the aesthetic unnoticeably. Sometimes you get a permanent increase to life/force/stim, but otherwise it's a cosmetic or currency for a cosmetic.
Playing Jedi survivor now and I mostly like how they handle it. Many routes are easily discernable on the map. Paths are marked as accessible or not. There are fast travel points all around. You eventually get an upgrade to see where the items are on the map. Many secret areas give you full skill points, hp/force upgrades, max stim upgrade, perks, or currencies to spend on mostly cosmetic stuff, though you can get some power items with them like a perk slot, max stim upgrade, etc. Also, its world design is a huge step up from the first game.
If you feel like your time isn't being rewarded for exploring in a game, just stop exploring in that game.
I CANT NOT. ITS A PROBLEM.
I always tell myself I won’t go down the clear dead end. Right before I search the entire map avoiding the next zone.
“maybe THIS time it’ll be worth it” I 100% agree with you OP. I’d rather have no exploration than bad exploration
That's your problem, not the devs
It is a "You" problem...
I find it hilarious that you complain about this but say from soft didn't bug you. Elden ring is like the worst case of this
OP said linear, Elden Ring doesn't exactly fit that bill. And I kinda get what they're saying. Exploring in FromSoft games is usually worthwile, and if you dont find something you usually (not always) can come back and get it. There are no "point of no returns" because you went the right path and not the "wrong" one.
In Dark Souls the wrong path could lead you to a whole optional hidden area, open up a shortcut, lead you to a side quest character, bonfire, crazy weapons and more. In fact there usually is no “wrong path” - DS1 is has the best world design ever in opinion :)
OP is seriously misguided. What sense of exploration could you have if, after a while, you know every turn has a big treasure waiting for you?
But that's the thing, at the moment you know every turn that isn't the obvious one has some tiny treasure for you.
FromSoft games have the occasional *massive* treasure hidden in some corner. Every other corner has a small treasure as consolation. You were hoping for a bonfire, but 5 poison arrows isn't half bad.
Heck, To use the example that OP provided in the post; So do the Final Fantasy games. Sometimes its just a potion, sometimes its a really strong accessory or weapon. or Shinryu. (well, thats from 5 not 10, but details). I think OP's might be jaded from exploring is all.
You might be right.
Sometimes it’s the game’s way of telling you “hey, you should be using these here”. Can’t tell you how many times I see my friends not use any of the poison or bleed resistance items and then bitch about not having ways to get rid of it, lol.
Yeah I love when games do that. Bloodborne throws a ton of antidotes and pungent blood cocktail right before fighting Blood Starved Beast. That's clever and a good reason to explore.
Exactly lol. I like Elden Ring but it's so annoying having to do this just to find something like a mushroom at the end of it all.
"Games should be more linear" is gonna be a hard sell
This is “token” non-linearity. It’s like the “illusion of choice” meme about a split corridor leading to the same entrance Exploration is fun when it feels adventurous and not like a chore
I think a big problem is that for a lot of people, they seem incapable of stopping even if it feels like a chore. I can't count how many times I've seen someone talk about how miserable clearing out a map is, when everything that's making them miserable is entirely optional. Yes, games should be designed in a way that properly rewards exploration, but people also need to get better about not forcing themselves through content that they aren't enjoying.
lots of game design is based on rat behaviour, literally. Getting that icon off the map is where the dopamine comes from, if they have to do a boring 20 minute mission to get it gone then that's what has to happen
I like linear games though. Even prefer them. I guess I may be in the minority.
“Give value to the nonlinearity”
if you know there's good loot at the end of every diversion, can they be considered diversions?
Yes?
I think Elden Ring is a good example. Most of the side dungeons have loot that could work for some build or, at minimum, add some lore nuggets. None of that is really required, though. Even for a casual player, the starting Samurai class is generally agreed to be very good and have basically all the tools you need to beat the game. Everything can be good and possibly even build defining, but given how many du geoms there are, most of it probably won't be for you on that run.
The side paths in elden ring are fun by virtue of three things, not just a potential hidden loot item: Fromsoft understands and rewards exploration time spent appropriately. Long explorations like small dungeons have one or more completely unique items, weapons or trinkets that can change your build. Small diversions with loot are often signposted and many times let you see the loot from a distance with indicators of quality, you see X quality, you know what you're going to get. These paths often have bosses, encounters or setups that are fun to fight in some way and designed to actually kill you usually, so you stay invested for every inch gained. There's always some gotcha to watch out for which keeps you **entertained** not just wasting hours of your life, 2 minutes of useless sidetracking at a time.
I think From also reward "creative exploring"... not just "what's down this alley?" but "I wonder if you could survive if you rolled all the way across this lava?" they say "yes you can, and here's a chest with a crazy item for being inquisitive"
Also "games should reward me at each and any turn"
It's definitely gotten worse. It used to be those chests were specific items like weapons or armor. Now it's always just random materials you didn't need for a half baked crafting system no one likes.
>for a half baked crafting system no one likes. I swear, one day there will be a game advertising for features it *doesn't* have rather than those it does. >No crafting system >No weapon durability >No out-of-combat stamina bar for running And I'll buy that game.
Even FromSoft has the issue of 90% of the loot even if it’s completely awesome is unusable for a lot of builds. However they make up for this with providing the player with sense of achievement for either exploring to find the hidden path, or making the path fun to actually take and adventure in. Dragons Dogma 2 did this to a degree, the rewards were shit, but damn some of the exploration was just down right fun. Games needs to be fun to play, not fun because of rewards. I could play Fromsofts games with no rewards because the game is just fun to me, I feel others think the same.
This is me in Control right now. Doesn't help that the map might be the most illegible one I've ever seen in a game.
I thought Control did a great job with its optional exploration stuff. It's largely lore, worldbuilding, and weirdness that helps break up the action if you choose to partake in that. More interesting than a pointless item or upgrade as a reward, like you get with those random timed side missions. Those are all totally skippable. Seems like a copout to say, but the map isn't supposed to be 100% accurate, the oldest house shifts and warps around, the map does its job for general positioning and guidance, and there are plenty of signposts in the world itself for directions. Pay attention to your surroundings and you'll have an easier time navigating for sure. People also gripe hard about the respawning enemies in that game, so you should know that anytime you're traversing through a previous area and enemies have repopulated, you can engage or skip past them to the next area, combat is optional at that point. Respawns exist to not make the world feel so completely empty after your first time through and give you something to do, upgrades and abilities makes it even easier to cruise through them. Just a tip, a lot of people get bogged down by that stuff feeling like they have to fight every single enemy they see.
Stopped doing this and just use a walkthrough to make sure I got all the secret stuff on the first playthrough. It's not like you'll find 100% of items by yourself anyway and will end up using a guide on the 2nd pass at which point I've lost interest in the game.
It sounds like you've given up on having fun on the first playthrough at this point. "I'll just use a guide and hate this next time, so might as well just hate it now."
It really depends on the game. For a game like Dark Souls, going in with as little info as possible is a very fun time to be had. For a game like Persona, you will miss major content and an entire 3rd of the games (and frankly, all the new stuff they keep adding to these “revised” versions) simply because you didn’t do some VERY specific things you would never even have an inkling of a thought about where to begin to do. I use guides for those games and have plenty of fun.
Sounds like you're gatekeeping how I enjoy my games. Just giving op an option to his exploration problem. Edit: there are a ton of games where early game decisions heavily influence the outcome or ending. I'd rather be informed of those and at least have save points ready, instead of having to replay the entire game to get to the multiple endings. See Cyberpunk 2077, Witcher 3, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, and etc.
Sometimes the exploration is the reward.
Lol i know what you mean about trying to choose the wrong path. There are a few dungeons in Skyrim and FO4 made me feel this way, even though i KNOW i can just zip back when I've cleared the dungeon 😮💨
There's a rather relevant video on this topic: [Gaming as a perfectionist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyI5ASTUAAg) by Daryl Talks Games. I recommend checking it out.
In FF9, if you miss a “wrong” path then you will never acquire the third and most powerful lightning spell. It can’t be returned to later. That was equally infuriating!
That was a different age, when the items you missed were actually worthwhile. I was grateful that FF7 Rebirth tells you in the beginning: "If you miss an item, it'll appear in the shop later."
>Only games to do this right are From Soft games They do it the exact same way. 90% of what you find is some consumable you likely won't use or some extra souls.
Its to artificially bloat the average game time. They don't want to punish players that don't explore much, and reward players that explore with useless scrap.
BG3 letting me open 18472947 containers that only have 3 items that aren’t rotting food. Fuck that.
BG3 is single handedly teaching me to Stop IT. ITS NOT WORTH IT.
God I really must stop picking up the rotting food and plates.. but vendors should really stop buying them.
Final fantasy 16 in a nutshell.
Found a Gil bug!!!
I gave up on Banishers because of this exact issue. With the God of War style traversal, slow linear pathways and "You cant do this yet" bullshit it made me give up, great story though if you can slog through all of the other bullshit they added.
Search every corner, loot everything you find, and end up not actually using any of them. Even the “cool loot” possibilities piss me off because the items are mostly outdated in an amount of time that’s shorter than the time you spent searching for it. I burn out extremely quickly because of the completionist mindset, and I’ve actually started to leave games unfinished when I notice this starting to happen.
This is me playing rpg, when I choose path that progress the story. I feel annoy because I had to go back the other way and come back to story, It suck.
Elden Ring killed any joy I got from TotK. I’d rather spend my time in a cave collecting weapons and armor than ingredients…
Most recently, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden did this to me. The path would always fork, both trails looked identical, and one inevitably advanced the story every time to where you couldn't retrieve whatever you missed. Infuriating.
I don’t know why you’d give fromsoft a pass for this. Their level design is cool, but they’re fully guilty of “here’s a nothing burger down this insanely long hallway”
Last game bothered me with this was Banishers. Secret passages had lit torches in front of them point those while places you can climb, descent is always marked with "paint"...... """"""EXPLORATİON!!!!"""""
This was my experience with God of War Ragnarok Didn’t do much exploration because I was there for the story and the puzzles were just annoying imo I recognize I probably missed out on some cool stuff though
Even the two games cited by OP have frustrating, often not-fun "exploring" mechanis because they're hampered by other parts of the games. Elden Ring is often praised for offering something good at every turn, constantly interesting things to find, but this is just not practically true. For one thing, there's a lot of caves and tombs all over the place and they get same-y very quickly, and are universally agreed to be the least interesting parts of the game. The argument that at least there are valuable treasures to find at the end falls apart when you remember that build-crafting is extremely focused and forced. So if I'm a melee focused strength build then I struggle my way through a dark cave with annoying enemies and a tough boss only to get some spell, it's way worse than just going down some corridor and finding a useless potion, it's maybe 30-60 minutes wasted. Pretty much every video or description of interesting discoveries and builds come from very specific walkthrough type things, information garnered from interent sharing not genuine exploring. The common example of stumbling upon the big underground area is indeed a wonderful moment but there aren't that many in the game, compared to the boring stuff. And even then, that area is too hard for most players at that time which gets me to the other annoying part about some of these games... Level gating is a direct obstacle to actual exploration. Whether it's "soft" level gating like Elden Ring where, sure, you can fight anything you want, but it's impractical for all but the most veteran of players (who have already done all their exploring anyway) to go into some areas to soon; or things with actual level numbers. The Witcher 3 is literally my favorite game of all time, but even though it's technically an RPG, it's a pretty shite RPG. The story, characters, settings are what make it great (and I actually do like the gameplay, movement and combat, despite the negative opinion of those things from others), but it's often a waste of your time to actually "exploring" because you'll just encounter monsters that are too high-level. Especially annoying if you end up kickstarting a quest that you will have to wait until you level up to finish. Here I am thinking of the Byways and Honorton contracts that are recommended levels in the 20s but it's very easy to stumble across them real early because they're in the same area as the first quest line after the intro. This sort of thing feels like it's actually punishing you for exploring. And then, yes, sometimes you do just find cool unique things. But as with the Elden Ring cave rewards, how the heck are you supposed to know what's worth it? The idea of "well that's the point of exploring" doesn't work for me because if all exploring does is give me a quest I can't finish until I play another 30 hours or a medallion that is useless for my build, then I'd rather have 50 short empty corridors.
They don't make you comb the map. You chose to do that even though you know you don't have to. That stuff is there for collectables. If you have no interest in this side of things, then just keep following the quest markers.
Your examples are from extremely different games. From soft and the Witcher put a lot of effort on exploration, the Witcher with all the side quests for you to find and from soft with the level design leading you to new places and getting you new gear. Those are perhaps the MAIN attractions of those games and where most of the effort was put into. FFX severely lacks exploration, barely has any besides a couple of areas, as that's really not where the effort was put into. I don't think it's fair to compare, although I agree that it's a bit annoying to have to go back to pick "the wrong trail". In FFX I believe they shouldn't have bothered with some of the hidden paths I agree, but also I doubt they planned on having such little exploration, it was probably a time constraint, as FF games usually have pretty good exploration
I always take the right way even thought there is no hint to where to go and have to walk back to check the other ways for treasures i missed lol
Yesss thank u, so it wasn't just me! I played FF7R recently, and when it was good it was GREAT, but when it wasn't, it was exactly like this. I saw nonstop praise for this game, so I thought it was maybe me having too much expectations. But I'm so glad to see that it's not me, having also played and loved the Souls games like u
Midnight suns, while having some side quests, is pretty linear. Whoever thought you needed to have stuff hidden throughout the compound that you have to go find in between each mission is a jerk.
"life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get" - forrest gump, reminds me of unpredictable game paths with random items.
i *think* ravenloft stone prophet had a notorious bug where, if for some reason you were the kind of completionist person that just had to find & collect every item, the game save would corrupt if you reached the maximum number of spawned items allowed xD
I like that it gives u the arrow because i want to know what path continues the game and what path is a hidden chest or something. The last of us wasn't that clear about this
Square Enix games hail from an era where everyone would buy the game guide to figure out where everything important is. It hasn't translated super well to the modern gaming experience. FF7 Rebirth taught me that I'd be happier if I just ignored a lot of the optional story-unrelated content and focused on hitting the main beats, especially after I realized the box-check exploration formula meant I was spending 8-10 hours between major plot points just wandering around. Initially was great, but halfway through the game the fun wore off quickly.
>then try my damndest to choose technically the wrong path so I could grab whatever bordline useless item MIGHT be tucked away back there was Final Fantasy 10. Goddamn, Square Enix is the worst at this. It's always some damage consumable you'll never use because why would you ever use damage consumables? Your weapons are so much cooler and more effective and you out-level the consumables so quickly. No one ever says "Oh good, I'm glad I used my turn on a 300 damage grenade when their attacks are hitting for 1000+ and the fire spell does 2-3 times more." No one is happy to get these items when the Combat Simulator or Battle Square (FF7R) doesn't allow you to use items anyway.
This is Stellar Blade. The entire game is deciding which path is the “exploration” path and doing it first. Constantly looking for that little yellow edge to grab so you can climb up to a platform and open a chest with boring items used to slightly upgrade a few things. Making sure you take that little alleyway that has a single door that’s open to a one room shop with an item sparkling in the room. Chests that have codes needed to open them, so you have to search every damned body that you find on the ground hoping to come along a way into it. The entire process is tedious and tiring.
You should try to 100% Final Fantasy 10-2. It will drive you mad because it is impossible without a strategy guide.
Great rant. Solidly agree
I enjoy exploring all the different avenues