Everything having to be some enormous “open world.” A little bit of exploration is fun, but when I don’t even know where to go to continue the main story because I get 14 interwoven side quests just on my way to start the first main quest, it’s too fucking much.
My personal favorite game that strikes a good balance between open world and on-rails is the original Mass Effect trilogy. Enough exploration and side questing to make the game feel big, but not so much that I’m too overwhelmed to even bother playing it - I don’t play for 3 hours and feel like I accomplished nothing but making some stat numbers bigger. I don’t need every single NPC to give me their own stupid quest - sometimes I just want to interact with them to make the game feel more alive.
Everything having to be some enormous “open world.” A little bit of exploration is fun, but when I don’t even know where to go to continue the main story because I get 14 interwoven side quests just on my way to start the first main quest, it’s too fucking much.
My personal favorite game that strikes a good balance between open world and on-rails is the original Mass Effect trilogy. Enough exploration and side questing to make the game feel big, but not so much that I’m too overwhelmed to even bother playing it - I don’t play for 3 hours and feel like I accomplished nothing but making some stat numbers bigger. I don’t need every single NPC to give me their own stupid quest - sometimes I just want to interact with them to make the game feel more alive.