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Recent AA-AAA games that avoided the mainstream trends

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Dec 17, 2013
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By recent, I mean maybe in the last 10 years or so. These have to be at least AA-level games or higher, obviously a lot of indies and low budget games can be as old school as they wish, but which games with actual modern graphics and production values have bucked the trends of quest compasses, map markers, too much exposition, dumbed down gameplay, SJW stuff, etc?

Some obvious ones:

Dark Souls series
Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Subnautica
 

JDR13

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I was going to say ELEX as well. Piranha Bytes seems to be the only developer left that still lets the player figure out some things on their own.

Not sure about Subnautica though. Isn't that considered an indie title?
 

Ash

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There are not many. Most of the legit good games of the past decade are indie or generally low budget. I want to suggest New Vegas but it of course suffers from some modern trends e.g objective markers, it's a bit easy...I consider it a modern classic but it is not without its inkling of decline.

Souls and other From Software games, that's literally all that comes to mind. Just one lone console dev among a bunch of sellouts.
 
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SumDrunkGuy

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The last few Resident Evil games.

And Monster Hunter World felt pretty different, though I grew tired of the gameplay loop after 15 hours or so and quit playing.
 

ADL

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By recent, I mean maybe in the last 10 years or so. These have to be at least AA-level games or higher, obviously a lot of indies and low budget games can be as old school as they wish, but which games with actual modern graphics and production values have bucked the trends of quest compasses, map markers?

Some obvious ones:

Dark Souls series
Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Subnautica
Assassin's Creed Odyssey/Valhalla, unironically. Exploration and Pathfinder modes in these games turned otherwise forgettable open worlds into locations I grew to learn just as much as Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Gothic or Morrowind. They're optional but they even say it's the way the game was intended to be played.
bxgRbcN.png

3068802-assassins-creed-odyssey-exploration-mode.jpg

In Valhalla, points of interest became pillars of light visible in your eagle mode so you'd know something interesting is there but not know what. Also social stealth made a comeback which you can see here.


Don't listen to a bunch of jaded boomers who haven't played a game in the series in ten years if they tell you otherwise. These games are mainstream
incline.png
 
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Harry Easter

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Both Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2.

Larian only became so successfull after publishing the second game.

Otherwise, hmm, maybe the Trails of Cold Steel - Games?
 

SoupNazi

Guest
I didn't consider D:OS2 an AA/AAA game when it was coming out (even though it came out as one, and I do consider it one of the best RPGs of the decade at least). But if we consider it as such, it definitely counts too. While it has map markers that are quite clear, they often lead to areas you shouldn't be going to, or greater areas that you then have to explore yourself. It's not perfectly dodging the bullet, but better than most games.
 

Wunderbar

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I thought it was fairly obvious that by modern trends, i meant the bad ones, that I specifically listed in the OP: "quest compasses, map markers, too much exposition, dumbed down gameplay, SJW stuff, etc", not the shit you might not like, e.g. survival games, which are not a trend per se, but a genre. And if you don't understand the difference between BotW and Ubisoft games, I can't help you, bre.
 

Lemming42

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Assassin's Creed Odyssey/Valhalla, unironically. Exploration and Pathfinder modes in these games turned otherwise forgettable open worlds into locations I grew to learn just as much as Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Gothic or Morrowind. They're optional but they even say it's the way the game was intended to be played.

Don't listen to a bunch of jaded boomers who haven't played a game in the series in ten years if they tell you otherwise. These games are mainstream
incline.png

Odyssey was a great game but I wouldn't say it avoided mainstream trends. Exploration mode is kind of cool but you still get the quest marker, you just have to locate the region yourself and travel there before sending the eagle up to scan for the location. I suppose you could disregard the eagle mechanic and go looking for the location yourself anyway, but the quests aren't designed with that in mind.
 

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