10 Outdated Video Game Design Tropes That Must Die
2. Forced "Optional" Missions
Pretty much any major RPG or open world game these days will feature heaps of additional, optional side content alongside the main campaign, and often these peripheral missions will far outweigh the size and length of the core story.
But optional is the keyword here - otherwise, why not just make it part of the core questline?
Looking at you, Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, a game so flabbergastingly disappointing for numerous reasons, least not that it throws up several brick walls over the course of the story, requiring players to complete what were initially suggested to be optional side missions.
The player has to recruit a certain number of citizens to their kingdom throughout the game, requiring them to participate in short yet soul-sappingly dull fetch quest missions for hours on end.
It's not fun, and is clearly just a listless attempt to pad out a game that doesn't have enough meaningful content.
It's not too common compared to most of the tropes on this list, but it's becoming increasingly common in the RPG genre - Xenoblade Chronicles 2 also pulled the same trick back in 2017.