Dhruin
SasqWatch
Alec Meer's periodic rant piece on Rock, Paper, Shotgun today focuses on action/RPG inventories. It doesn't really draw any conclusions but he does get across his annoyance:
More information.I’d slaughtered my way through a good seven or eight hours’ worth of beastmen and harpies before I had one of those catch-yourself-in-the-mirror moments. What was I doing? Theoretically, I was killing an awful lot of monsters, big ol’ hero that I was. Actually, I was obsessively picking up shiny things from the ground until a number of small squares on my inventory screen were full up, teleporting back to town to sell said shinies, then repeating the process. This was not, I realised, making me a better person. I’ll stress that I’m fine with a few hours of mindless hacking, slashing and looting (though I’ll tire of it before too long), so my objection is not to the basic nature of these games. It’s an objection to the fact my hacking, slashing and looting is so regularly interrupted by thankless commuting. And lo, I became annoyed enough with both myself and the game(s) to make some sweeping generalisations. Not novel ones I’ll admit, but as we’re in digs-at-gaming-clichés mode today anyway… Whee!