Roguey do you see some of the push-back against Stygian (for example, the warehouse and lantern segment) as reflective of a modern cadre of game players who are unused to games and UI that don’t hold their hands? I’m reading your back and forth with Yosh-whatever and trying to imagine them playing Fallout 1 in 1997, or Baldur’s Gate in ‘98, and I do not see the problem solving / think outside the quest-compass mentality that was the assumed baseline player competence in the late 90s.
Look, I get that it's cool and edgy to dismiss my criticisms as coming from someone who just doesn't 'get' out-of-the-box-thinking gameplay, but this is bullshit. I played Fallout and Baldur's Gate a long time ago (and have played them again since), and ever had a problem with any of the gameplay they had. Furthermore, I actively mod things like quest compasses out of games (or disable them when I can) because I much prefer to solve problems with my own critical thinking.
The issue here is not that the warehouse issue requires
critical thinking, but that is
confusing and
unintuitive to see a crate (admittedly it is difficult to make out, but it
can be seen) and be unable to interact with it unless a lantern is activated. I'm not calling for handholding, although a simple 'It's too dark to see here..' prompt wouldn't go amiss (not the perfect solution, though). I would much rather that area be
completely dark, so that I as the player intuitively think "Well, I better get a light, because I can't see what's here..."
This kind of unintuitive gameplay is more reminiscent of old-school point'n'click games, a genre infamous for its 'try-to-imagine-what-the-developer-was-thinking' gameplay, than it is of games like
Fallout. (A genre which, by the way, I adore, despite that criticism.)
I freely admit that the trouble I had with the statue puzzle was my own stupidity for not having paid more attention to the globe the NPC gave me, though. Still, there, too, there could have been even the slightest nod to the player that they had been given an item which might be useful. In the older IE-type games, there are text logs which indicate things like when you've been given an item, which Stygian lacks.
Anyway, personal criticism of me aside, I don't disagree entirely with your point that players these days are unused to games and UI that don't hold their hands, but I think there's a godamn spectrum when it comes to these things. We can make the experience pleasant to the player and still require a modicum of critical thinking, without turning the game into an exercise in masochism.