10 Modern Video Game Tropes We're Totally Sick Of

1. The "Souls Formula" & Control Scheme

This is... complicated.

Because the Souls formula has led to some of the best games of all time, but I'm going to say that only FromSoftware seem to be able to do it right. Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro - all are exemplary; well thought-out rollouts of weaponry, detailed levels and excruciatingly hard bosses that require a lot of player investment to surmount.

Everything that cribs from these core tenets, though? That's where we see one company's signature work get stretched to breaking point.

The Surge, Ashen, Lords of the Fallen, Nioh, Salt & Sanctuary - Assassin's Creed Origins also saw the franchise remap its controls and combat to be more like a Souls-like, and though it's succeeded in making AC popular again, you have to wonder just how many more titles are going to do the same.

The "Souls template" has become a unifying control scheme for third-person action, and any mass experimentation on how characters can control outside of this has mostly been discarded.