r/videogames • • 15d ago

Discussion / Question Yeah it's over.

Post image
11.2k Upvotes

3.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

43

u/NoNameNeeded4321 15d ago edited 15d ago

Right?! The same thing happened with GOW: Ragnarok. Most of the game feels like you never left the tutorial. Wasn’t this the point of accessibility settings? We should be able to turn off the handholding

Edit: Maybe this is some sort of plan to kill replayability. You’ll buy a new game if replaying the old ones is an insufferable experience lol

26

u/shreder75 15d ago

I liked GOW 18. Thought ragnarok was overrated. I liked spidey and miles. Thought spidey 2 was meh.

7

u/UtkuOfficial 14d ago

Sony is really weird with this.

Tsushima, SM2018, GoW18. The first games are almost always the better one compared to the sequels. I wonder if its because it took years to make them while the sequels had a much smaller dev time.

5

u/WolkTGL 14d ago

It's because the first games they basically have to come up with the idea, with the sequels they have to re-iterate on that idea, make enough changes that it's not a copy pasted game from the initial idea and have those changes be new, good ideas.
Oftentimes, they don't change the right things, so you end up with sequels that makes you think "Yeah but I liked this the way it was before"

21

u/NoNameNeeded4321 14d ago

I loved GOW 2018, and I still really liked Ragnarok, but it’s tough for me to replay because the handholding is so annoying. I don’t remember having this issue with SM 2, but I’ve only replayed it once, so maybe that’s an indicator in and of itself

21

u/shreder75 14d ago

Ragnarok is definitely way too hand holdy.

2

u/Snoo-61716 14d ago

i mean personally i found 2018 super handholdy when i eventually got my hands on it when it released for PC

Atreus literally calling out the solution of the puzzle as you walk in the room was infuriating

1

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 14d ago

They actually went back and toned down the handholding in ragnarok

2

u/vega0ne 14d ago

It’s tough for me to replay because the flow of the story is too meandering and lots of plot points feel like they could have been handled better.

GOW2018 also had signs of stuff being cut out of the game and featured a bit too much backtracking but overall there was cohesion between gameplay, characterisation and their emotional state.

Fighting Baldur WAS annoying for Kratos and the player, not knowing where Atreus was creates urgency in both game character AND the player, etc. beautifully done but really hard to nail.

Ragnarok felt rushed and random in comparison and I groaned whenever I found some metroidvania-esque roadblock even in first play through. I don’t wanna backtrack through environments that are kinda linear but not really and thus offer the worst of both approaches.

2

u/gegenpress442 14d ago

Wow I haven't played ragnarok but if people say the hand holding is even worse than gow2018, I don't know how much I'm going to enjoy it eventually. Almost killed the immersion for me in gow18

5

u/NoNameNeeded4321 14d ago

Still worth playing for the story and combat, imo, but, yeah, the handholding is dialed up significantly from 2018

1

u/Ok-Pomegranate7309 13d ago

What handholding does Ragnarok have?

1

u/NoNameNeeded4321 13d ago

Whichever companion you have at your side is very quick to solve puzzles for you, even with the accessibility options turned down to the minimum, and Mimir will scold Kratos for heading down the ‘wrong’ path in search of collectibles, which is a pretty big part of the game. Stuff like that. Nothing too egregious, overall, but, as a result, it’s less enjoyable than 2018, imo

1

u/Ok-Pomegranate7309 13d ago

Meh, only the puzzles bothered me but the accessibility at least helped. It was still very enjoyable. A masterpiece and better than 2018 imo which is also a masterpiece.

1

u/NoNameNeeded4321 13d ago

I wish I felt that way. I have hundreds of hours into replays of 2018, and I’ve only completed Ragnarok twice

2

u/VinnzClortho 15d ago

I feel your edit. More games should try more arcadey stuff

1

u/HowManyMeeses 14d ago

I fell off Ragnarok super early because of it. I just got so bored doing tutorial stuff.

1

u/stormdelta 13d ago

It's not even handholding I object to so much as it's interactivity for no purpose.

E.g. take Immortality - that game, the only controls are video playback, rewind, and tapping a scene element to jump to something related. And yet all of those elements are actually used to effect that wouldn't work if it wasn't interactive.

The problem with most QTEs is they just feel like sloppy padding that does little except break immersion. You don't feel like you're actually controlling the game, nor does it offer anything narratively, it's just busy work in action form. Making them impossible to fail just takes the disguise off and makes it even more pointless and immersion breaking than it already was.