I want to agree with your comment in its entirety…but I do have a significant caveat that’s important to consider when building a game experience. It needs to b

I want to agree with your comment in its entirety…but I do have a significant caveat that’s important to consider when building a game experience. It needs to be communicated. I am not talking about a hold your hand tutorial necessarily (though sometimes those are useful). I just need some indicator that I am about to get in trouble. You brought up BOTW, and that is actually where I think it is very poorly implemented in some ways. I spent so many hours in the beginning dying because I went in the “wrong direction.” There is almost no warning that you are going to get rocked, and travel in that game is incredibly slow until you unlock enough towers to jump around the world/have reliable horses and good climbing. I probably spent the first 5 to 8 hours of that game just bashing my head against the wall trying to figure out what was bad design vs. my poor decision making/inability to read cues. For a father of 2 it’s hard to commit the 2-3hr sit down a few days a week required to learn a game like that and pick up the subtleties (if any exist). I go one way: “hey some baddies by a big skull.” Bop em, no problem. I walk 2 min another direction: “hey the same baddies by a big skull.” One hit, I die, I’ve lost 20min of progress. Not everyone wants to deal with that headache. And I get it, not every game is designed for every person. But if you’re going to not scale up, you need to tell me when I am way out of my depth. And BOTW does a terrible job of that as it invites you to explore this open world.