One that FF16 abused the fuck out of is the arbitrarily locked gate. There was a period in the midgame where you’d do a big climactic boss fight, then the next section would be running errands because a town locked their gate, then you’d rinse and repeat like five times.

Given that logic puzzles are hard to make and it’d be for a relatively niche audience, I’m not entirely baffled by no one ripping it off, but I’m surprised we haven’t had at least one developer copying Return of the Obra Dinn.

FF16. It’s by no means a bad game, but the issues it has compound and compound as you get farther into it. The worst is the pacing issue in regards to sidequests where you’re about to go into the big final mission and it just dumps like thirteen of them into your lap.

Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope’s ending is complete horseshit.

Games aren’t inherently bad at storytelling, it just has to be handled differently than a movie or show. You couldn’t make a movie like Outer Wilds or a TV show like The Stanley Parable.

Even something like The Last of Us which has sometimes been derided as a “movie game” takes advantage of the medium by letting you naturally build a relationship with Ellie and explore the setting. You can see that it the show; as good as it is, Ellie and Joel’s relationship progression is a little more abrupt simply because it can’t be done as slowly and thoroughly as the game can.