Follow up on What I Want From Games, with inspiration from the video The 1996 Strategy Game No One Could Play - Until Now (Wages of War)
I have realized what it is!
The thing that makes or breaks a game for me is that the game assigns you a role, and gives you the means to act withing that role. I have always struggled with pinning down what unifies my favorite games, and why univerally aclaimed games (like Red Dead Redemption 2) never clicked for me.
The list of my favorite games encompasses a large amount of genres, and I have always been confused how that comes. But going down the list, from insurence inspector simulators, spreadsheet-them-ups, rallying games, grand/real-time strategy games, playing pretend soldier, sailing & traiding, the list goes on.
To further paint what I mean, I'll list some of my favorite games along with games that never clicked, and how they fit that foundation.
The ones that clicked
Kingdom Come Deliverence 2
You play as medieval blacksmith/adventurer/soldier/bastard in medieval Czechia, and while the story is very unrealistic and bombastic from a outside view, the game manages to uphold the veneer of being a fragile, make-do knight trying to make the best of his situation. Even if your kill-count will probably reach into the hundereds by the end of the game, you still feel vulnerable in most combat, especially when outnumbered by only 1-2 enemies.
The game does an amazing job of painting your charachter, his motivations and his circumstanses, along with giving you believable means and motivations to fulfill the story. Believability does NOT mean realism however. A game may paint a reality, far from our own, but as long as the systems are designed around it and the charachters act believably within them, the game stays believeable.
Return of the Obra Dinn
You are a insurance inspector, sent to write a report on a prevously dissapeared ship which has mysteriously returned. More importantly, one of the missing survivors of this ship has sent you a book along with a magical clock which allows you to see the moment of someones death. The game tasks you with figuring out the identity and fate of every participant of this voyage, for which you will have to use various clues and deductive reasoning to figure out.
Neither your clock, book nor the fate of the Obra Dinn are realistic, but within your assigned role, you are given believable means to achieve it. All the crew members act in believable ways, even in the fantasical situations the Obra Dinn encounters. The game also does a great job at pretending that these situations are not designed to be solved. It's hard to explain, but it truly feels like the various situations were not designed with the intent to be puzzle pieces, but as authentic situations. It is first after consuming the devlogs and podcasts that I understand how much thought was put into providing the player with ample clues on the various fates of the crewmen.
Rule the Waves 3
It feels like I bring up this game in every post, but apperantly I have only written about it in two posts. You play as the grand admiral of one of the great powers between 1890-1970. Importantly, you are not a all powerful leader. You do have the ability to nudge politics and diplomacy, but you are still at the whims of politicians, and they can drag you into a war you are not ready for, or even drag you into a international disarmament treaty.
You are given this role of grand admiral, and you are given the means to design, produce and maintain warships. With this, you are able to achieve your ambition within your role. The game doesn't give you a clear goal, you are free to do whatever you want within these limits. Perhaps you want to use your influence (and big boats) to secure colonies for your nation, or perahaps you want to build a bulwark against your international rivals. You are sometimes given tasks by the leader of your country, which could be to procure enough capital ships to not lose face internationally, or perhaps they think you should build destroyers or submarines to not fall behind technologically, but the rest is up to you.
Games that didn't click
Red Dead Redemption 2
You are given the role of a scrappy outlaw, living on the run with a merry band of bandits. However, your means don't reflect this. I only played like 15 hours before I gave up, but I think that should be enough to say that I won't like the rest. In one scene you are robbing innocent people trying to get by, and slaughtering enough cops to empty a minor village, in the next scene you are sad about white men hunting all the buffalos. You are supposedly a impovrished band, barely getting by, but within my 15 hours I had enough money to buy literally anything, and in-charachter enough to build a huge mansion and retire.
I played as a poor bandit who is rich, who is empathic when he isn't ruthless, who is a murdering machine while he is not terrified of being caught by the pinkertons. The dissonance between fishing/hunting one moment, to robbing enough people to become a (inflation adjusted) millionare the next, while always pretending to be a scrappy anti-hero was too large for me to actually enjoy the game.
Stardew Valley
You are given the role of a disenchanted young person working in a soulless office, who has just inherited his grandpa's old farm. However, quite a small part of the game is farming and/or making farming more efficient. The game is more focused on splunking, foraging, finding full sets of fruits/fish/plants/etc for magic fairies to restore a community center.
While not as egregious as RDR 2, I felt like my given role (disenchanted man in search for calmness in the country), and the role assigned by my means (adventuring do-it-all) were too far apart. Nothing does technically not stop you from just staying at the farm and farming, but you are actively encouraged not to do that. The game really want's you to partake in the community events, procure resources in the mine, make the forest sprites happy, etc.