General News - RPGs are too Predictable

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The Guardian has an editorial on RPGs becoming too predictable and that a breath of fresh wind is needed.

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But every now and again, a game comes along which shows that innovation can happen without putting people off and revives a genre in the process. The Ubisoft model was once to open-world games what the Fallout model is to first-person RPGs. The blueprint: climb towers to unlock new areas, sprinkle a map with icons representing mini goals to reach, make progress at your leisure. It underpinned Ubisoft's Assassins Creed, Far Cry and Watch Dogs series, Warner Bros' Batman and Middle Earth franchises, and many others.

Then came The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, in 2017. It's got the towers, the open-world, and the plethora of smaller activities to distract you from the main noble quest. But it quietly revolutionised that stale old structure. Nothing in Breath of the Wild is gated. If you wanted (and you were extremely skilled) you could simply walk to the final boss and finish the game, though you would be far more likely to be lasered to death by guardian robots on the way up to the castle. The icon-filled map is almost entirely gone: only fast-travel points and the occasional quest-line show up. The rest is there for you to discover with your eyes and ears, rather than following objective markers like an orienteering enthusiast.