Steering

One frequent game-design error that almost takes the wind out the enjoyment consists in games that seem to think that they're too good to let the player play as they want such that the game feels compelled to steer the player in whatever direction the game considers to be legitimate.

Steering leads to a whole string of problems, including:

It is impressive how many games slant this way, and, grantedly, most of these games are the "new" RPG games that are more of a novel with some combat scenes. However, it is worth mentioning that RPG modernly means a blend of adventure and action, or what used to be an "action-adventure" game, either perceived as the first or third person in terms of perspective, yet even adventure games allow a player to fool around, even if there is just one single solution in an adventure game.

Index