I am a big fan of the God of War and Metal Gear Solid video game series. I recently picked up God of War and The Phantom Pain on Ps4 and stopped playing after a couple of hours. When I say complicated, I do not mean the gameplay, per se. More like all the extra stuff you need to do that I find unnecessary. Why am I buying multiple AND different kinds of armor for Kratos? One for the leg, another for the torso? And trying to combine and upgrade stuff? I want the Kratos of previous games…I have one weapon and upgrade it as necessary. I want to play the video game for the story, and not spend hours trying to figure out what combination of armor and weapon that serves my current purpose. Anyone else feels like video games are cluttered with unneccessary time-wasting additions like that?
Interesting concept. I would consider that what you are taking about is the amount of systems in a game like Metal Gear Solid: Phantom Pain. Additionally, you might be talking about how RPG elements/skill trees are being added in more and more games like God of War and Assassin's Creed. – Sean Gadus4 years ago
I can understand the topic you're going for here but as everyone else has stated, this needs more of a concrete thesis statement with supporting information. Perhaps something to explore is why there is so much additional content to these games. I personally loved the most recent God of War, armor upgrades and all, but if those aspects weren't there, would the game be exponentially shorter? I'm currently playing through Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain and, again, I love the multitude of additional systems and upgrades that accompany it because quite frankly, I could care less about the story. There's two sides to every coin so by exploring both you'll end up with a much more interesting article that people will want to discuss. – FarPlanet4 years ago
I concur with the others with regards to further clarifying and expanding your statement. The history of video game content and how it evolved alongside rising development costs and MSRPs ($50 -> 60 -> likely-to-be-70) is a complex one, especially when you factor in gameplay formulas like the Ubisoft-style sandbox/RPG-esque progression in multiplayer shooters, and microtransactions such as the ones seen in Star Wars: Battlefront II and Shadow of War. To make your post leaner and meaner, see if you can narrow down your statement to a few aspects of video game content such as the ones I mentioned beforehand and trace their evolution throughout the last few console generations. – Michel Sabbagh4 years ago
I don't know these specific video game franchises, but your thesis makes complete sense to me and you already have a specific focus (God of War and Metal Gear Solid). Just one game franchise is probably enough if you really get into contrasting aspects of the games in detail. If I were going to write this essay, I would pick franchises that I knew well -- such as Fallout -- and would contrast specific aspects of gameplay that have become increasing complicated from the early versions (Fallout I, in this case) to more recent versions (Fallout 3). I would work on developing my reasons for liking or not liking those increased complications and look through game reviews and online discussion boards to see if I can find other people (to quote in my essay) who comment on the evolution of the gameplay in those games in the franchise. In the end, the focus of your essay might be on the ongoing tensions between 1) playing games for the story and 2) playing games for meta-gaming, optimizing, best build design, etc. – JamesBKelley4 years ago