It has become a scourge on open-world AAA games. They all have a core gameplay loop and often that works well (sometimes it doesn't). And then they have dangly bits all over because they have to have some nascent RPG character building, dialogue choices, a crafting system, collectables, challenge missions...
Plus of course the basic RPG-lite upgrade path for clothing, armor, weapons, potions, other equipment.
The thing is, these can be from jarring to completely disconnected from the game world. In the mad rush to stop the Storm King of Maud your character is approaching the last Great Black Doom Castle through a shattered burning wasteland of blood and dead bodies...and here's this merchant with his cheerful little stall set up right in front of the spiked bronze gates of doom. "Hey, stranger, you know you can buy healing potions for only a few squirrel skins and grass?"
Or, hey, real example; Tomb Raider 2013, serious student archaeologist Lara stops to loot a few war graves...on her way to fight through hundreds of crazed cultists before they can sacrifice her best friend.
Sometimes you can sort of justify it in your mind. You know you are the only one who can save the world and you know if you run out of ammo that world is going to end. So in the middle of a desperate race to get to the world-ender you stop to open every random crate you see and loot their contents. Or in the middle of a big serious conversation with the Admiral you are wandering around opening lockers right in front of everybody. Heck, I loot bodies in the middle of melee!
But picking up playing cards because there is this out-of-game bonus for each complete hand? Urg. Even games that try to justify it by having this one card collector in the wasteland who, when you find him, will offer you a couple of bucks for them...yeah, it doesn't do it.
And it's a weird thing, but so many of these seem to have been done by a different team. They are just a little brighter in color (so you can see them in the challenge runs), less organically designed (because they have to fit different aesthetic needs). It all gives off the vibe of crass commercialism. On a heavily thematic game with really nice design, they stand out like a t-shirt stand on the Giza plateau.
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Another thing that bugs me is maybe just a problem of first loves. You learn how to use the bow and you are finally getting through the story with it and it feels good, it feels natural, it feels powerful. But games inevitably level everything. The monsters get tougher, there are more of them, the basic cannon fodder start wearing extra armor and helmets so you can't take them out with the old headshot anymore, and so the game basically forces you to throw away that sweet little bow that's been your faithful companion for so long and pick up this monster with glowing bits and spikes and feathers that fills up half the screen when you use it. And just just barely enough more damage to make it necessary.
I'd been getting pretty good at stealthing my way through Eclipse cultists in Horizon Zero Dawn when the "Mother's Heart" fight came along. And there were so many damned enemies on the screen there was no longer a point in trying to use all the well-crafter sneaking and silent kills and what not. So I went back to my all-purpose AAA fighting style; run at full speed into the middle of the enemy formation and start swinging madly.
It is sad how many games this works for. The enemy AI loses lock on you and even though you are actually rubbing shoulders it still counts as "surprise" and half the time you get a stealth kill on them. The other half the time you knock them down and then you get another chance.
I have lost track of the games in which I'll jump around like an Australian jumping shrew. Because any game that gives you "death from above" as a special kill, you can activate it by jumping off a barrel, awning, wrought-iron railing, Louis XVIII chair, etc.
And I know, some people like the look, and you are really supposed to be looking at the scenery, but I hate the new clothes thing. I guess I'm fond of classic looks anyhow and the starting costumes and particularly the early armor pieces are in most games practical-looking and flattering. But, no, you are forced into combat with baddies who will one-hit-kill you if you don't put on the thing that looks like you are a broken LEGO kit covered in barbed wire...on fire.
I'm not even fond of the powered armor in Fallout 4. The armor bonuses aren't that great and the HUD is terrible. I'm more fond of stealth when I can anyhow.
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When I said "nascent," what I meant is most of the parts are there but they don't work properly. There may be a skill tree, but I've found it inevitable that all the skills you really, really want in early game -- you can't afford. And then when you have points coming out your ears and you finally buy the "get fresher vegetables" perk you are entirely past the part of the game where you need to cook your own meals.
When you are in later game any idea of a specific "build" goes out the window. Sure, you leaned on the crafting tree. You were going to make an artificer character and you bought every crafting-related skill and left all the "better dance moves" stuff alone. But by mid-game you've already bought all of that tree, and you can't afford the top-tier stuff anyhow...so you start filling in the lower ranks and branching out into botany and music composition.
Dialogue wheels are also...poorly handled. In many, many games there is a benefit to following up all the branches. Often the game won't even bother to notice that you already asked the first question, and you have to go through that all over again. But the fact that you could ask about The Storm King first, or the Storm Castle first, means both answers have to be less organic than they could be.
And when the questions are more probing, more emotional...they can't be acted as such. Because you might have asked the "I'm sorry I was rude earlier" question before you got to the "Are you lying to me?" question. So all of the voice acting has to underplay and thus undercut any emotional arc to the conversation.
I'd favor closed trees. Mass Effect sometimes did this; if you started down one path, you'd never be able to go back.
Related to this is dialogue trees/character play. Because of the way games are structured, you need to go to the thing or clear the room before the next level loads. There isn't an option within the combat to spare the bad guy or chose to sacrifice an ally or whatever. All of that has to happen in dialogue.
Kotor led in having dialog choices play in specific directions you could build. And it mattered; at certain junctures of the game you couldn't do certain things if you were too far down the Light Side path or vice-versa.
Mass Effect used this less effectively; it really didn't matter whether you were Paragon or Renegade, it only mattered if your score was high enough to unlock the special options. By the third game it was no longer a see-saw and you could be both the baddest and the goodest commander in the Alliance.
Horizon Zero Dawn gave a promise early on with the "heart, intellect, skill" wheel; the game talked it up as if these would matter. Well, I can understand why branching story lines are too much pain (Dragon Age manages it, or so I am told). But the promise of being able to make early-life personality choices and have those reflected in all the dialogue later...well, that's a lot of lines to record, but I'd love to see it.
I give Horizon Zero Dawn a pass because this is Aloy's story. It unfolds the way it does because of her character. Same for Lara Croft in her stories. It is nice to be able to sometimes chose compassion (or fisticuffs!) but most of the interactions play out the same regardless.
Mass Effect again gets kudos because there's something about Jennifer Hale's voice that the same recorded dialog, the same programmed facial animation, reads differently if there is a different emotional context going on. You do make choices that matter in Mass Effect, even if they don't cause your day-to-day interactions to change (much!) but the fluidity of that voice actor makes it feel as if they do.
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