I'm subscribing to this rather clever dude on Youtube, Super Bunnyhop, and in his latest video he talks about length of games and what it means for value when a game is 100+ hours long.
Now, George didn't mention DA:I but I felt it was an obvious example when he was talking about games doing the open-world non-linear with storytelling genre wrong, but most notably I actually stumbled across a part when he says something about HUD and interface prompts "spoiling the illusion of the world being organic".
My biggest gripe with DA:I aside from being too bored with its majority of content was that it felt artificial and inorganic, and that's wrong in a game that's all about open exploration and stuff. I think one reason was that, while the NPCs certainly feel too static as well, the amount of HUD clutter and dots on the radar makes you feel like all objectives draw attention to themselves and try to addict you to them. Even worse, is how they make everything feel too organized and a potentially big part of the sense of discovery was lost.
I will say DA:I consistently made me feel the scope and size of its worlds in a good way because it has so many amazing backdrops and skyboxes and monuments that intrigue you, but because of the quest design and because of the HUD being such a big detractor, I stopped being so intrigued after 30 hours or so because I knew at that point that there wouldn't be anything surprising... just another fetch quest.
ME:A is going to be all about exploration and wonder too, even more so than ME1, I believe. I could be wrong, but let's assume it is for now. Please, Bioware, keep thinking about ways to not make it feel inorganic by limiting the use of button prompts and HUD stuff for drawing attention to sights or objectives.
I was replaying ME3 and two things that always stuck out to me like a sore thumb was:
1) The "Press [Button] to see point of interest" contextual moments. These moments happen during gameplay, but I assure you, they'd be so much more effective if you let me discover them for myself instead of the game showing me where to look.
2) The objective marker. There's a part I noticed today on Menae. I'm running around with Garrus and James looking for Primarch Victus and Garrus litterally says "We have to find out where he is", I press R3, and the objective marker points towards the exact spot where he is (I'm not even at the camp yet) and it says "Primarch Victus".
These things are mechanics that work against delivering an effective narrative in a video game IMO. I hope Bioware Montreal will be more careful in making ME:A in making the story surprise you and letting you be in the moment, during main quest, during side-quest etc. etc. I think Half Life 2 is the most immersive game in the sense that it's a video game where control is never forced away from the player's own instincts, but the game does a wonderful job to subtly point you in all the right directions, whereas Bioware games and tons of other AAA titles do too much to handhold you and make it all seem less surprising.
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