What are we, 12 years old?
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00:00So, despite what all the doom and gloom crowd might tell you, video games are actually better
00:05than ever.
00:06There's more diversity, artistry, and choice than in the history of the medium, and it's
00:11only set to get better as time marches on.
00:13But that said, the state of things is also pretty damn far from perfect, which is what
00:18we're going to be talking about today.
00:19As I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 outdated video game design
00:24tropes that need to die.
00:2610.
00:27Forced Walking Sections
00:29Because developers realised that they couldn't get away with unskippable cutscenes acting
00:33as disguised loading screens anymore, over the last decade or so, there's been a steady
00:37increase in the amount of forced walking sequences in narrative-driven video games.
00:42These sequences will typically serve as a break in the action, as the player is forced
00:46to slow walk while talking to another character and being spoon-fed plot exposition.
00:51Some really egregious examples include Gears of War, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption
00:552, and of course, Anthem, which only allowed players to move around their home hub of Fort
01:00Tarsis at an agonising snail's pace, presumably in order to pad out the game's miniscule
01:05amount of launch content.
01:06And even if developers aren't doing this to hide loading screens or elongate the experience,
01:11it demonstrates a pure lack of confidence in the game's ability to captivate the player,
01:16or that players will actually want to listen to the story.
01:19Slowing the player to a crawl and forcing a drawn-out spiel on them is never good design,
01:24and honestly, you're better off just giving players a cutscene instead, so that they can
01:28at least put down their controller for a few minutes.
01:30Instead, this misguided quest for gameplay that's more immersive and cinematic means
01:35that we have these painful asides that force the player along a rigid, mostly fixed track.
01:419.
01:42Detective Vision
01:44Ever since the release of Batman Arkham Asylum, the detective-slash-magic-vision trope has
01:48become exceedingly popular, especially in open-world third-person action games.
01:53This mechanic typically allows players to switch to an alternate viewing mode where
01:56they can see an enhanced perspective of their environment, singling out enemies, combat
02:01possibilities, collectibles, and so on.
02:03It's appeared in the likes of Assassin's Creed, Dishonored, The Last of Us, Tomb Raider,
02:07The Witcher 3, and Horizon Zero Dawn, to name just a few.
02:10Now, on the one hand, it is a tool for the developer to hold the player's hand and
02:14ensure that everyone can make their way through the game no matter what, and I'm all for
02:17that.
02:18I don't like games that are unfairly difficult and bar people from completing games, but
02:21ultimately it does diminish the incentive of players just using their own observational
02:26faculties to progress, and encourages them to ignore their beautifully rendered surroundings
02:31in favour of the typically washed-out new viewing mode.
02:34It also speaks of bad level design, as well.
02:36Can you not get the player to interact with the level in ways other than giving them a
02:40see-through-walls mode?
02:42Though these modes can usually be toggled on or off, the fact that games are designed
02:46around them often means that players have no choice but to switch up to a neon-tinged
02:50view of the action.
02:528.
02:53Stopping the Game to Dump Exposition
02:56Exposition-based tell-don't-show storytelling is one of the laziest and most irritating
03:01narrative devices that a game can employ, and you know what?
03:04It is used constantly.
03:06While games like Uncharted generally do a solid job of keeping the laboured chit-chat
03:10minimal and allowing a lot of the action to do the real talking, too often games will
03:14simply stop the player dead in their tracks and vomit up reams of robotic information
03:18about the plot and characters.
03:20Perhaps no AAA game in recent memory has done this quite as blatantly as Horizon Zero Dawn,
03:25which throughout its campaign required players to watch numerous post-mission hologram recordings
03:29which ladled out the plot in the driest and most yawn-inducing fashion possible.
03:34For a game otherwise overflowing with creative ideas, this was kind of embarrassing.
03:39The Metal Gear Solid franchise is the undisputed king of this trope, though, with Hideo Kojima
03:43frequently serving up cutscenes of up to an hour in length which mechanically outline
03:48the hilariously convoluted plots.
03:50As entertainingly balmy as these games are, they're also a prime example of how less
03:54can indeed be more.
03:56Nobody needed to sit through a solid 40 minutes of fart-wafting, much of which is in a visually
04:01bland codec conversation, just to get to the final boss in Metal Gear Solid 2, for example.
04:067.
04:07Pointless collect-a-thon tasks
04:09The uptick in open-world games trying to compete for players' time over the last few years
04:14has seen these titles increasingly saddle players with an absurd amount of peripheral
04:19content.
04:20And though this is sometimes in the form of meaningful side-missions, it too often devolves
04:24into developers daring players just to hoover up hundreds, if not thousands, of meaningless
04:28collectible items that are just scattered around the map.
04:31The Assassin's Creed games have practically taken this up to the level of self-parody
04:35in the past, flooding the map with more icons than any single human being can possibly keep
04:40up with.
04:41In actual fact, it's simply an attempt to keep the player glued to the game as long
04:44as possible, and therefore increase the probability that they'll splash out on microtransactions
04:49or become psychologically addicted to the game, and therefore the IP.
04:53A player who cuts through the main questline and moves directly onto another game is a
04:57publisher's worst nightmare, and so the inclusion of junkie tat to be scooped up for tens if
05:02not hundreds of hours is often mandated to developers from on high.
05:07It's almost as cynical as gaming gets.
05:106.
05:11The Tailing Missions
05:12Ah, the tailing mission, where players are tasked with following a perp but making sure
05:17that they don't get too close, or they'll spook the mark and flee the area.
05:22The Grand Theft Auto franchise is largely credited with originating the tailing mission,
05:26where players would follow a perp in their car and have to maintain a distance where
05:29they neither scared them off nor lost sight of them.
05:32Like early stealth, escort, and water missions, GTA's tailing missions were actually pretty
05:37novel and fun, but like any vaguely inventive mechanic, when it was adopted by the industry
05:41as a whole, it was driven towards the Earth's core like a giant tent peg.
05:46The Assassin's Creed series is especially guilty of this, generally using tailing missions
05:50to dryly deliver exposition, while failing to complete the tail as the game intends results
05:55in a game over.
05:56Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots also features an infamously frustrating tailing
06:01mission in Act 3, and more recently, Sega's judgement misguidedly overindulged in this
06:06tedious tailing.
06:08These missions are almost never fun, and just feel like bloated dead weight intended to
06:12piss players off, especially as making even minor mistakes can often result in a fail
06:17state.
06:185.
06:19Story choices that ultimately mean nothing
06:21If you're playing a game for the story, then there is nothing more infuriating than
06:24realising that the supposed narrative choices you have made throughout the game have little
06:28to no bearing on the overall outcome of the plot.
06:31This was most famously the case in Mass Effect 3, which took the choices you'd made over
06:37the course of the first three games and effectively cast them aside in favour of a really rubbish
06:40pick-a-colour ending.
06:42This wasn't what fans were promised, and they duly revolted.
06:44Hell, FIFA's The Journey story mode is even guilty of this, promising a narrative that
06:49will evolve tailored to your footballing success, only for the game to force the player into
06:53contrived canned dramatic scenarios that don't reflect your actual performances.
06:57And then there are games that seem to give the player impactful choices, only for them
07:01to amount to nothing, the primary offender of this being Telltale Games, whose episodic
07:05adventure titles, though fun, present a hilariously transparent illusion of choice at best, because
07:11developing enough permutations to give a true impression of freedom presumably isn't that
07:15financially viable.
07:164.
07:17The Hero Almost Falling to Their Death
07:20The action-adventure genre loves to tease players by throwing them into mortal peril
07:24as much as possible, but too often these games rehash the same tired shtick to the point that
07:29it rouses more of a groan than a gasp.
07:31The Uncharted and Tomb Raider reboot franchises are both terribly guilty of this, of just
07:36leaving the protagonist hanging gingerly off a cliff, or only barely able to reach a platform,
07:40or hell, even have the platform crumble away beneath them.
07:43We as players know that the game isn't just going to randomly kill the hero out of nowhere,
07:48so these desperation beats ultimately come across as incredibly hollow.
07:51At best, it typically requires the player to spam a few buttons in order to free themselves,
07:56and within a few hours of play, it quickly feels totally played out.
08:003.
08:01Considering Fan Service
08:02So what I'm going to do right now is just get the editor to put up images of the following
08:06people, Lara Croft, Quiet from Metal Gear Solid 5, Lulu from Final Fantasy X, Catwoman
08:13from Batman Arkham City, and of course, basically anyone from Dead or Alive.
08:17Now what we're going to do here is just say, I wonder, are the costumes that they're wearing
08:21right now designed for practicality, or for a teenage sexed up demographic?
08:25You tell me.
08:26I'm just saying that this is a medium that is still struggling to be taken seriously
08:30by a lot of the world's adults, so it would sure be nice if developers didn't cynically
08:34assume that we were out of control horndogs who won't play a game unless it's full of
08:38sexy imagery.
08:402.
08:41Forced Optional Missions
08:43Pretty much any major RPG or open world game these days will feature heaps of additional
08:48optional side content alongside the main campaign, and often these peripheral missions will far
08:53outweigh the size and length of the core story.
08:55But optional is the key word here, otherwise why not just make it part of the core quest
09:00line?
09:01I'm definitely casting a glance over at Ni No Kuni Tuni Revenant Kingdom, which is a
09:05game that is so absolutely flabbed out because it throws up several brick walls over the
09:09course of the story that requires players to complete what were initially suggested
09:13to be optional side missions.
09:15The player has to recruit a certain number of citizens to their kingdom throughout the
09:18game, requiring them to participate in short, yet rather soul-sappingly dull fetch quest
09:23missions for hours on end.
09:25It's not fun, and is clearly just a listless attempt to pad out a game that didn't have
09:29enough meaningful content.
09:31It's not too common compared to most of the other tropes on this list, for example Xenoblade
09:35Chronicles 2 also pulled the same trick way back in 2017.
09:391.
09:40Unreasonably Grindy Unlock Requirements
09:44Grinding is a core component of so many games, especially RPGs, but in more recent times
09:49it's a practice that's become roped into the gameplay loop of some rather unconventional
09:53genres such as shooters and sports games.
09:56This is entirely the fault of microtransaction-based game economies, which place desirable unlockables
10:01in the far, far distance, and present players with just two options.
10:05Tough it out the hard way for potentially hundreds of hours to unlock maybe one thing,
10:10or just buy some virtual currency and unlock it in seconds.
10:132K's WWE and NBA games are hugely guilty of this, as was EA's Trainwreck that was
10:18Star Wars Battlefront 2.
10:19These games all thoroughly disrespect paying customers by dangling a carrot miles away
10:24from them and allowing them the opportunity to effectively buy their time back with a
10:29workaround.
10:30It's pathetic, and undermines the sense of reward that players get, because when you
10:34unlock a character or item after giving it your all and truly earning it, it feels great.
10:39But only if that unlock approaches a reasonable runtime.
10:42Knowing that somebody else has just spent 50 quid on tokens and done it with a few clicks
10:46creates a wholly uneven and unsatisfying player dynamic that is, let's face it, just
10:51gross.
10:52And there we go my friends, those were 10 outdated video game design tropes that need
10:56to die.
10:57I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in
11:00the comments section below.
11:01As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter at RetroJ with a zero,
11:04or you can swing by Live and Let's Dice where I do all of my streaming outside of
11:08work, and it'd be great to see you over there.
11:10But before I go, I just want to say one thing.
11:12Hope you're treating yourself with love and respect my friend, because you deserve
11:15all of the best things in life, alright?
11:17You deserve much better than the tropes these games were trying to force feed you, let me
11:20tell you that.
11:21And I want you to go out there with love in your heart for yourself and your neighbour,
11:24because that's the only way we're going to get through this crazy thing called life,
11:26and that is together as a society.
11:29Big love to you my friend, now go out there and utterly smash it.
11:32As always I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak
11:36to you soon.
11:37Bye.