It’s something I’m strugging with in Dragon Age Inquisition. While it’s the first DA game to really hook me, and I really love the environment designs and the sense of growing your influence by “clearing out” the zones, the whole crafting material/pinecone hunting/letter delivery stuff is really grating. Whenever it deviates from its (assumed) mission statement of casting you as the lead in an action adventure story, it does so to its detriment. It’s no surprise that most players put the game down forever upon reaching the Hinterlands, because (I quote my friend here) “the game’s too damn big.”
I wouldn’t go as far as to call the Elder Scrolls games gimmicky, but I would call the now-mandatory crafting that you find in every game since Skyrim gimmicky. In Elder Scrolls, a robust smithing system is there so that you can enjoy a whole playthrough as a smith character if you like. If I were to play a gruff old blacksmith in D&D, my playtime with my character will be spent fighting monsters and travelling with the party, and not smithing. In Skyrim, my smith can actually smith, because I have the freedom to do boring shit that would waste other people’s time in a TTRPG setting. Rather than being gimmicky, Elder Scrolls offers a unique game experience and fills a specific need that narrative focused RPGs ought to lack. Sadly, Skyrim’s popularity has given the industry the idea that boring open world shit is what we want in every game. That’s where it becomes gimmicky.
Another exception to my “crafting bad” opining is Horizon Zero Dawn, as a hunting survival game you only make what you need to hunt robot fuckin dinosaurs mate. And crafting is as simple as clicking on an ingredient and voila, your stick is now an arrow. You can imagine that Aloy hid in some tall grass and whittled without wasting any time finding a crafting table or “learning a new recipeh.”
The “story” of an open world game (of which TES has always been King) is a unique confluence of your imagined role playing and the random machinations of its AI systems. The plot and NPCs, meanwhile, are convincingly bland to facilitate your second life. That’s a fine cup of tea (I’ve spent 1000+ hours in every TES game since Morrowind) but it’s not the mission statement of a narrative focused RPG like Dragon Age or Final Fantasy (although since the announcement of Final Fantasy XI, I am ever more confused as to what exactly the mission statement of Final Fantasy is...)
I mentioned this in the “One Year Later” thread but when Final Fantasy VII indulges in non-linear content like literal ratcatching, the NPCs are Elder Scrolls levels of bland*, their designs were outsourced to the Italian candy guy, their models and animations lack polish, and the narrative, characters, and setting aren’t developed at the slightest. Compare this to the (only?) sidequest in the original Final Fantasy VII: the stolen materia quest. What a sidequest! Similarly, companion quests in BioWare games (Mass Effect 2 particularly) are about as “open world” as I like a narrative RPG to be. That’s where the development efforts should be going. I did not play FFXV, but it’s idea of an “open world” experience pushes all the wrong buttons, especially since the interesting side content is all DLC and tie-in movie.
*FF7R’s good sidequests all involve the Angel of the Slums. She looks great and her quests actually develop the setting.
. My bad ya'll.