by
Mark Nielsen
, posted 2 hours ago / 282 Views
Halfway into the decade and the 2020s has been an interesting one for gaming in both good ways and bad, with the restructuring of the industry, a mix of innovation and the same old, and of course many, many long waits. But there have also been many quality titles, to be sure; the last three years in particular have seen a number of critical darlings. Something the most acclaimed ones have had in common (with the obvious exception of Astro Bot) has been an absolutely massive scope, easily boasting 100+ hours of content. In my own experience that massive amount of content hasn’t always been a positive; in fact I would go so far as to call their slightly overeager strive for quantity a shared flaw of these games. I’ll be looking at four titles in particular here and going over the different ways in which these otherwise solid experiences became victims of having just a bit too much fluff.
Elden Ring – Repeat Bosses
There’s no doubt that Elden Ring has been one of the decade’s highlights in terms of pure atmosphere and style, taking us to the Lands Between to explore an epic world and face down increasingly deadly foes, so it’s a shame that the second half of the experience is regularly interspaced with exclamations of “You again!”. Seeing a couple of bosses a few times might not sound like the biggest of deals, but with around 70 boss types in the base game and 165 boss encounters (+73 mini bosses), you’re looking at more than a fair amount of repetition. And with FromSoft’s Soulslikes already being games where you tend to stick to the same weapon for long periods of time, and you eventually reach a point where most drops beyond the souls themselves are unimportant, it’s hard not to feel a bit of that sense of discovery got lost somewhere along the long journey to the Erdtree.
Tears of the Kingdom – Here a Shrine, There a Shrine, Everywhere a Shiny Shrine
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is about as massive as they come, with the already-expansive world of Hyrule from Breath of the Wild being turned into a triple-layered sandwich, with sky islands floating above a dark underground below, not to mention the many caves being added on the surface throughout the land. Considering its size, Nintendo did a pretty impressive job of filling Hyrule with stuff worth doing, but on top of the downside of most players having already explored the surface once before, there’s another area where it falls short of its predecessor: there are too many shrines.
With a larger overall game space one would think having more shrines than Breath of the Wild is only logical, but the issue is that despite the increased space they’re actually much easier to find this time around, thanks to your increased mobility and newfound aerial capabilities. These two things combined have an unfortunate effect: finding a shrine doesn’t feel quite as much like an interesting discovery in Tears of the Kingdom as another bullet on the to-do-list. That doesn’t change the fact that most shrines are in fact very compelling once you venture inside them, but there are outliers, like some very questionably-placed tutorial shrines or there being too many escort-a-shrine quests in the sky, making it all the more clear that cutting a few of them would have been for the better.
Baldur’s Gate III – The Act 3 Slouch
For both better and worse, having an overabundance of content is one of the core elements of Baldur’s Gate III; it wants to provide you with an experience where you can keep discovering new things on subsequent playthroughs, and at that it no doubt succeeds. However, as highly regarded as the game is, it’s not uncommon to hear complaints about its third and actually biggest act. In a game that both burrows from and differs from its predecessors, it seems one thing they all have in common is a titular city that’s too big and not interesting enough. I will be quick to say that there are most certainly some great quests and story moments in Act 3, but frankly nearly all of them began in previous acts, while the new things the city has to offer on its own fall a bit flat by comparison. It doesn’t help that while a big sprawling city sounds cool on paper, it’s frankly the least interesting area to traverse in the game when compared to a wilderness interspaced with enemies and areas of interest.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth – A Mini-Game collection with RPG Elements
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was a big departure from both the original game and Remake in several ways. For one thing it switches to a more open-world format, and for another its switches genre. Rebirth has enough mini-games to fill a game all on its own, ranging from the well-executed & compelling Queen’s Blood and Chocobo Racing, to the ones that make you want to press the skip button or choke a Moogle. While some of them are legitimately great parts of the experience, all in all there are definitely more mini-games than there should be. They’re also a symptom of a larger issue, as Rebirth has a few too many filler side quests, and the open-world exploration elements, while fun at times, can become quite repetitive. As much as Rebirth also brought great things to the table and overall provided an excellent experience, it’s hard not to feel it’s dragged down a tad by Square trying its damndest to justify the decision to split the remake into three titles.
Conclusion
While I enjoyed every game listed here, and I even consider some of them among my favorites, I strongly believe all of them would have stood to gain something from the developers trimming a bit more of the fat. Most of the issues mentioned above of course relate to optional elements of each title, which makes them less problematic to be sure, but the best massive games are the ones that manage to make the full experience compelling and where you never get moments of fatigue or start to ask “why is this here?” on a regular non-completionist playthrough. That’s certainly a feat easier said than done, but one that I hope developers will at least strive for, because at the end of the day neither player nor developer stand to gain anything from spending time developing elements that feel like filler. While these four games are certainly far from being the worst sinners in this category (*cough cough* Ubisoft) and all of them have other – and perhaps bigger – flaws to speak of as well, it’s still worth pointing out that even highly lauded GotY winners are not immune to this trend, particularly as of late.
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