Happy Monday, folks, and welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread! I’m in the middle of a very intense writing process, but, you know, why not write an overcomplicated prompt that you’ll probably largely ignore in favor of talking about Monster Hunter Wilds? I’m complaining, but I actually would like to hear about your Monster Hunter progress, if you’ve got any.

Anyway, last week, I got surprisingly invested in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. This conclusion to Lara Croft’s “Survivor Trilogy” was compelling in ways I did not expect. It also had something really dumb. See, the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot decided to give Lara an RPG suite. She could gain Experience Points, had a gigantic skill tree, and these were all very blatantly there as a way to pad out the game. It’s not like you needed to keep this stuff gated behind EXP instead of something more interesting. Shadow has expanded on this dramatically, since Lara can also hunt and skin animals, kill spiders for their venom, and it’s all… a lot. I was mainlining the game to just get to the end and was comfortable ignoring it, but there’s something a bit disappointing about realizing that every single thing to do is checked and tallied. Like, I turned Achievements off for a reason!

Tomb Raider (2013) was only an early instance of what has become one of the largest trends in modern video game design: the appropriation of role-playing elements. EXP, skill trees, loot drops, gear with colors designating how worthwhile they are, and grinding. Lots and lots of grinding. Personally, I’m rarely a fan. This is fine in more dedicated role-playing games; it’s fun to juggle armor in Dark Souls or EV train in Pokémon. But I do think these dilute experiences in the interest of gamifying stuff that should be fun for its own sake. Perhaps I use the modern God of War games too often for this discourse, but it’s crazy to me that Kratos has to rifle through crypts so that his axe can be three percent better at ice damage or whatever. Whenever I see them, all I see is a game desperate to keep its players hooked in the most artificial way imaginable, and it’s sad. If you ignore those, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a lot more fun!

But that’s just my caterwauling. You all know me, principled about game design to a fault and always looking to complain. God, when did my search for joy end? Whatever, my point here is that while I have obviously strong and specific thoughts on the matter, they aren’t the only ones. What are yours? If you disagree with me, what do you like from this shift in game design, and do you feel like there are ways to make them better or worse? If you agree with me, do you have issues I didn’t mention? And no matter what, here’s the most important answer of all: what’s the best and what’s the worst examples you can come up with for RPG elements in distinctly non-RPG games?

And here’s the actual most important answer: what did you play this weekend?

…You know, I went back through my entire five years of making prompts for this website to make sure I wasn’t stepping on my toes. Well, sort of. I Command-F’d “rpg” on every page. Maybe we did this one before, or maybe Brakeman or Bones or someone chose it.

So tired.