10 Outdated Video Game Design Tropes That Must Die In 2017

Gamers have always found escort missions to be irritating, as most of the time the character you’re escorting is about as useful as a chocolate fireguard, but another mission type that is getting more and more annoying are tailing missions.

These missions have always been around, but the Assassin’s Creed series really brought them to the forefront of mainstream gaming. It made sense for those games to include them, seeing as you play an assassin who needs to track targets and gather information, but many games stick so rigidly to the mechanics of tailing someone that the end result often becomes ridiculous.

For example, in many open world games, such as Mafia 3, you have to follow a target in a vehicle without getting spotted. Stay too far away and you’ll lose them; get too close and they’ll see you.

However, to avoid getting too close you often have to stop several metres behind their vehicle, which in real life would be more suspicious than just stopping right behind them. The film 21 Jump Street parodied this scenario, which just goes to show how well known this tailing mechanic problem actually is.

Surely developers can reprogram these missions, although 2017 would be a great time to just ditch them completely.

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Which other game design choices have completely passed their sell-by date? Let us know in the comments!