I am playing Horizon Zero Dawn and haven’t gotten to the first main event, but it gives me this feeling like if I upgrade all my equipment now it might be for nothing. I know that is not the case, I looked it up, but what are some games that are the worst offenders? One I can think of is Aerith in the original FF7.
I adored to death the first 2 and 100%'d them.
The gameplay in Shadow is very much further refined/improved, but my lord it was such a disappointing story. Worth noting the underlying dev and writers changed, and it was very noticeable. There was some level of “wonder” and “holy shit” throughout the first 2 and I got invested into the gameworlds - the third never captured that and I couldn’t care less about the characters or exploring the map. That and the payoff to Trinity felt very similar to Spectre in the Craig Bond films - set up to be grand and mysterious in scale but underwhelmingly boring cartoon villainy when revealed.
Also it was short as hell
But it had an incredible world design though. The puzzles in those jungles were genuinely jaw dropping and there were certain levels that were 10 times more scarier than any regular horror game.
I will never not smile at that one mission where you have to “blend-in” with the villagers as if you are not the only Caucasian women in an entire tribe of native people.