Modern Open World Games Have Ruined Dragon Age: Origins' Secrets For Me

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tessa Kaur

Published Jul 6, 2024

Followed

I complain a lot about the modern open-world game. I have lots of issues with the genre as it exists today, but first and foremost, I hate that exploration has been reduced to clearing a foggy map and completing checklists of collectibles. It’s rare that a big open-world game makes me feel like I’m actually discovering a world and its secrets, uncovering detail💫s about its inha🌠bitants and finding things I don’t expect to.

Mo🌟re often, I find myself hunting down collectibles and systematically killing groups of enemies placed all over the map so I have something to do. A cute little story might pop up that requires me to do some fetch quests to unlock some optional lore, but that’s about it. Really, my motivation for scouring every square inch of a map is driven by checklists.

That’s not to say that open world games don’t have secrets. has plenty, and you’ll find has 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:lots of cool easter eggs too. I was very fond of Stranܫger quests, and of course, a💮nd are also exceptions, as is .

Most open world games don’t have secrets that build out the world substantially, and I’ve learned over time not to seek them out. More than that, because open world games are now designed to make things extremely easy to find, therefore demanding less attention and effort from the player, I’m even less motivated to actually explore. I don’t want to put the time into seeking out small, unmarked nuggets of lore if they’re not going to be satisfying or reward me♎ for the effort.

Much to my dismay, as I’ve been playing through , I’ve found myself ignoring smaller side quests because they require actual work on my part. Thinking back to my favourite game, , I realise that back in the good ol꧅d days, when I played video games for fun and not for my job, and I was a kid with nothing better to do, I chased down every last m🦩ission in my datapad, no matter how trivial.

Somebody needed beating up? 🌃I would and get down to it. Random aliens in a cantina getting harassed by their employer? I would be the one to set them straight. Someone had to collect some datapads, or win a swoop race, or join a fight club? Sure, I had nothing else going on. I’ve discovered everything thꦿat KOTOR has to offer, because those side missions had value to me.

Elden Ring's Map Is Beautiful, But Also Pretty Useless

Gett🌼ing lost in the Shadow of the Erdtree is w❀ay too easy.

Posts 1

Dragon Age: Origins’ has plenty of side quests, and considering the similarities between the two games, I thought I’d care a lot more than I do. But every time I dℱiscover the beginning of a new mystery, I can barely be bothered to read the wall of text and see what’s 🐟going on there. I received four side missions within the Korcari Wilds alone.

One had me chasing trail signs, and I found a couple, couldn’t find the last few, and therefore couldn’t be bothered. Another had me going to a specific unmarked point on the landscape, sprinkling ashes 𝓰and killing a shade that spawned, which netted me some rewards and nothing much else. The other two had me wandering through the wilds for a little bit, confused and frustrated, before I gave up and decided I didn’t care any more.

Every area has a bunch of side quests, some unmarked, and many that I simply can’t be bothered to go out of my way to do. I don’t want to traipse through maps, collecting resources or chests or whatever, just to see what the game feeds me. Origins is al⭕ready better written than most of modern RPGs, but even with this knowledge, modern RPGs have trained me to feel like side quests that aren’t made easy for me t♔o finish simply don’t matter all that much.

I wish I could find out what secrets Ferelden is hiding, but my god, I can’t bring myself to care enough. If I had a time m⛦achine, I’d probably go back to w🐈hen I was 13, before my understanding of open world conventions irreversibly broke my brain, and play it on release. Unfortunately, I’m stuck in the present, and a ton of side quests in my journal are going to stay undone.