I recently played Shadowrun Returns, which is a game that has a pretty unique aesthetic in that it combines fantasy - right down to orcs and elves and magic - with an environment pulled right from Blade Runner and countless other science fiction dystopias. It’s fun. It's very pretty. And at around six hours into its default campaign, I stopped playing. I will explain why, but first I want to mention another game.
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a standalone spinoff from Far Cry 3. You play as an action movie cliché called Rex Power Colt. Cutscenes are rendered in 8-bit. At one point, Rex refers to the waves of approaching enemies as “rusty cumbuckets”. It is not a subtle game. The overarching plot is basically crap. Once it’s over, you have the opportunity to explore the island and liberate a bunch of garrisons. I did this for a little while, and then stopped.
Games fatigue me more these days, even though there are different ways that it manifests. In the case of Shadowrun,where I ended up watching the final scenes in a Youtube long-play rather than attempting to play through the last, awkwardly-balanced fight for the third time. I don’t have patience anymore for this kind of game, especially one with an overarching story.
I’m happy to fail, and take newly-acquired knowledge, and then succeed; if I’m still failing on the third try, then I’ll get bored. Anything can sell a game to me, but if there’s a story that wants me to be invested, then putting up a skill barrier before encountering the next chapter is infuriating.
With Blood Dragon, it was something else. The gameplay, inherited from Far Cry 3, is incredibly impressive - the environment is lush, and as awful as the story was, the campaign around which that story limply hung was a brilliant power trip from start to finish. And then you do finish, and it all gets a bit crap.
There are collectibles, but no real impetus to collect them. In the last mission, you get a weapon that effectively renders you invincible, so liberating garrisons is no longer the interesting challenge that it was previously. The environment that previously seemed oppressive and alien transforms before your eyes into a fairly dull, neon-soaked playground. There were dozens of things left to collect, and even side missions to complete, but I stopped because this game - which prided itself on being fun - wasn’t fun anymore.
I’m not saying games have to be fun. It’s more a case of expectation. If you make a game that relies on narrative progression as a hook, don’t create a system that prevents that narrative progression unless you’ve picked a certain character class. If you create a playground with a survivalist bent, don’t make your character effectively immortal. Don’t add in collectibles unless they somehow add to the experience. Steam Achievements don’t count as added value.
I imagine it can be hard to get all of this right. Shadowrun has an incredibly complex system, and it clashes with the prescribed way that it wants to tell stories. Blood Dragon feels like it was made with a lot of money, and came down to a “let’s see what sticks” approach to game design. There’s probably a reason why most of the games I’ve loved recently have been fairly simple in terms of design - even now, I always end up gravitating back to point and click adventures, and it’s because there’s less room for the designers to experiment. There aren’t going to be any sudden bubbles where the demands on my time inflate. There’s a coherency to games like that, and coming from an upbringing that put books front and center, I always find them more comforting.