We’ve all played them. Backtracking, not knowing where to go. Going back and forth. Name some of these games from your memory. I’ll start: Final Fantasy XIII-2, RE1
Halo ce?
Morrowind, but in a good way
The first 4 Tomb Raider games on PC/PS1
Digimon World on PS1, made worse by the fact that it’s a tamagotchi roguelite RPG. I never played DW3, but I heard it can easily become a “where the fuck do I go now?” because of obtuse/asshole time sinking designs here and there
Any metroid game.
I’m sure I can think of several examples but recently I was replaying the original Darksiders and boy howdy did I get lost all the fkn time
Disco Elysium for me. Too many open directions. Too much player agency. I had no idea where I should go.
I always took Disco as just a “stumble into the plot” kind of game. You’re not supposed to go anywhere.
Most 90’s and late 80’s point and click games (Sam and Max, Full Throttle, Monkey Island, The Dig, Loom, Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Zack McCraken and the Alien Mindbenders, Kings / Space quest, Dark Seed, Beneath a Steel Sky)
Dark Seed was old school hard and explained nothing. Gave up multiple times, wasn’t playable for me. Sucked because I’m a huge fan of H.R. Giger.
All of fucking Bloodborne. Fast travel is great. Building into the narrative where you don’t tell the story directly? Fuck that.
I remember there being a few points like that in Megaman Legends 1 and 2.
Old DOOMs up till 64. Halo 1 was also very repetitive in its lookalike hallways and got me lost multiple times. I don’t miss the get lost mechanics of these games. Especially in doom where the function of the many look alike chambers was unknown to me so the architecture made no sense.
I remember playing Assault on the Control Room on Halo 1 and one of the doors glitched and didn’t unlock. I must have walked around those hallways for hours trying to work out where I was supposed to go
A couple times in Linda Cubed Again. The game’s next objectives are told to you by characters, or through the in-game voicemail system.
However, there is no “current quest” screen so if you take a break from the game, you can easily forget where you left off.
Also, it doesn’t help that the game was only released in Japan (and fan translated only recently) so there’s not a lot of walkthroughs you can follow.
Half Life 2 for me
So many times in GTA V I had no idea how to trigger the next mission. I would probably go back to it and play through if it had some sort of indicator for how to trigger the next campaign mission.
Go to a mission marker on the map?
Some missions are characteristic-specific, but those are labeled too.
It was a while back, but I feel like I remember trying this, switching between characters and going to their various markers on the map but nothing would happen. It was long enough ago that I can’t rule out hitting a bug or missing a required side mission, but I remember not being the only person saying this.
I was never a fan of just driving around the city causing havoc, so even short amounts of time with no missions felt like eternity.
The original Bard’s Tale
Me and my best friend literally spent a month of near nightly playing trying to get through the first in-town dungeon
Daggerfall also fits the bill
Jedi Fallen Order has no fast travel and the map sucks, do you often end up lost or backtracking.
Divinity Original Sin is also one that doesn’t guide the player particularly well.
Jedi survivor is the exact same way
