10 Popular Video Game Mechanics The Industry ABANDONED

10. Destructible Environments

At the turn of the century, it truly seemed like destructible environments were going to be the next big thing in video games.

With Red Faction's innovative Geo-Mod mechanic allowing players to obliterate large swaths of the environment all the way back in 2001, it appeared that the floodgates had opened and environmental destruction would only become more complex and detailed in the years that followed.

Yet aside from a few notable examples - such as Battlefield: Bad Company - destructible environments quickly disappeared from the AAA sphere entirely.

Considering how popular open-world games are these days, it's a damn shame that destruction tech has basically come and gone.

Yet it's also worth noting the technical side of the equation. For starters, allowing players to deform the environment in a granular way is extremely resource-intensive, and in an era where modern games often struggle to hit a stable 60fps as it is, the performance-related risks speak for themselves.

Furthermore, there's the general game design issue, that it's difficult to create an immersive world if the player is then given carte blanche to level it all to the ground.

All the same, that this mechanic is largely absent from the modern AAA realm is a massive letdown given how much fun it's been in the past.