Games That Solve Problems Big Studios Keep Repeating

There are some problems that gamers have been putting up with for years. Video game genres generally have formulas. Soulslikes, city-builders, third-person shooters, and so on; there are systems you expect to see in any entry in the genre, because they have worked for that genre for a long time. There’s nothing wrong with that, either. Not every game has to be a completely new experience. Familiarity is good too.

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Unfortunately, it’s not good when you see an all-too-familiar problem in a game you’re playing. It’s frustrating, yet these persistent problems are sometimes solved by one game. Occasionally, it’s an indie title; other times, it’s a triple-A studio with a bit of creative freedom. These next games all solve problems that big studios have been struggling with for ages, and we can only hope that these solutions are carried forward.

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Reactive Writing — Baldur’s Gate 3

Decisions Big And Small Can Change Entire Story Arcs

There’s nothing like playing an RPG and making what feels like a big decision, only for nobody to mention it ever again, even your companions. It’s a stark reminder that you’re playing a game, which is a great way to break immersion. Thankfully, a recent RPG titan has changed the game in this regard. Larian was working on the systems behind Baldur’s Gate 3 for a long time, with Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2 building towards this latest release. However, no RPG in history has come close to the degree of reactive writing on display in BG3.

Even minor, off-hand decisions like covering your face in warg dung can result in a dozen or more unique dialogue outcomes. The bigger the decision, the greater the impact on the game going forward. Character class and race choice can also impact later events. This kind of narrative reactivity has been the Holy Grail of RPGs since the beginning, as they all strive to mimic the endless changeability of tabletop gaming, but nothing has come close to Baldur’s Gate 3’s accomplishment in this area. It all comes down to writing (and a lot of it), but any studio can accomplish variety like this if they’re willing to spend the time writing and recording all the extra dialogue required to make it work.

No Repeating Dialogue — Hades & Hades 2

Every Time You Return To The Hub, Characters Have Something New To Say

Speaking of dialogue, there’s a trend that has persisted since voice acting became the norm in video games: repeating dialogue lines. Few things will rip you out of your immersion faster than hearing an NPC repeat the same line of dialogue, even after you’ve made progress in the game since you last spoke with them. It’s a frustrating neon sign reminding you that you’re not living in a different world; you’re just pretending. Even the best repeating dialogue lines will just become memes; the worst will become agonizing to listen to.

Hades and Hades 2 don’t have this problem. No matter how many times you fail a run and end up back in the House of Hades or the Crossroads, the NPCs there will have something new to say, commenting on the boss who took you out, your newly-unlocked weapons, or just the state of the world and the game’s narrative. Even during runs, the gods granting you Boons will comment on the other gods you’ve interacted with, your choice of loadout, or the boss you just took down. Even 100 hours in, you’ll still be hearing new dialogue lines. Yes, eventually the two games run out of variety, but most players will never hit that point. Much like Baldur’s Gate 3, accomplishing this just requires a lot of writing, but if the team of 16 employees at Supergiant Games can pull it off, surely a triple-A studio with hundreds of staff members can aspire to do the same.

Mitigate Resource Hoarding — Cronos: The New Dawn

Ammo And Health Are Scarce, But Combat Is Designed Around Scarcity

Pretty well every survival horror fan has experienced this: you’re about halfway through the game, you’ve thoroughly explored every space up to your current progression, stockpiling resources as you go, you just beat the area boss, and you still have 40+ handgun bullets, another 15 shotgun shells, 15 sniper rounds, 3 grenades, and more healing items than you used to clear the entire last area. Survival horror games have struggled with this balance for years, making resources scarce while ensuring that the player doesn’t run out completely at a crucial moment. Unfortunately, the “survival” part of survival horror kicks in for most players early on, and they end up looting everything they can find, to the point that resource scarcity becomes a non-factor.

Chronos: The New Dawn, Bloober Team’s latest release, has an elegant solution to this problem. First, while it provides a steady stream of resources, it’s rarely more than one or two of a given item, making it virtually impossible to get overstocked, even with thorough exploration. Second, it makes every individual resource more important by heightening the value of secondary fire. Most games with guns offer a charged shot option of some kind, but it’s usually a luxury. In Cronos, charged shots are your primary combat tool. Standard fire will cause some damage, but with so few bullets, it’s not a viable strategy. Charged shots take longer, but they’re the most reliable way to deal damage and require fewer shots to kill. Through this, Cronos ensures it can refrain from handing out tons of resources by making those resources more individually valuable to the player.

Make Enemies Fearsome, Not Spongy — Horizon Zero Dawn & Forbidden West

Machines Require A Lot Of Ammo To Defeat, But It Never Feels Like You’re Shooting A Pillow

There’s nothing like fighting a big enemy. The small ones can be scary in groups, but one big bad guy is always a bigger threat. However, fighting them isn’t always as exciting as it should be. While soulslikes have found a way to make fighting big bois consistently engaging, other games have struggled with this. You feel like you’re doing damage, but other than a red bar depleting, there’s no real indication that you’re making progress in the fight. We call these “bullet sponges,” but they can sponge up anything, from sword swings to laser beams.

The Horizon games solve this by making their giant machine enemies out of a bunch of smaller parts (like a machine would be, right?). These could be anything from weapons to energy cells to sacs of poison gas, and Aloy’s bow is the ideal tool for shooting these individual parts until they fall off. This can have several effects, such as giving you a new weapon to pick up, causing a gas explosion, or exposing more vulnerable parts beneath the outer layer. You’re still shooting these enemies over and over again like you would a typical bullet sponge, but in Horizon, you’re doing it with purpose. You’re targeting specific components with a goal in mind, so even though you’re attacking just as often, you don’t feel like you’re shooting into a wall.

The Perfect 3D Map — Prodeus

Complex, Layered Levels Can Be Fully Navigated On The Map Screen

It’s wild that we still haven’t figured out maps yet. Sure, some games make their map intentionally vague, like Elden Ring, and it works just fine. You don’t want it to reveal too much because the point of the game is discovering things for yourself. However, in many other games, like God of War: Ragnarok or the Star Wars: Jedi games, the map isn’t up to par. You can’t really tell where something is (i.e., above ground or below), your path there is unclear, and in some cases, you can’t even be sure you’re heading for a location you can access. Let’s not even touch on the Assassin’s Creed franchise and the problems with those maps.

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Funny enough, a little boomer shooter has found a perfect solution. Prodeus isn’t the biggest indie hit in recent memory, but it does a great job of capturing what makes boomer shooters special. It also features an Auto-Map system, which is actually a modernized version of a system once standard in 90s FPS games. It gives you a full 3D map of every level, one that you can rotate to view at any angle and zoom in on any room. Then, as you progress through the level, the Auto-Map populates with everything you see: an ammo pickup, a healing item, or even a door you missed. Sure, a boomer shooter’s maps aren’t the same as a semi-open area in God of War, but having the option to see an area in 3D so you can find a clear path to your objective is hardly beyond today’s gaming tech, and it’s just weird that it hasn’t become standard at this point.

Contextual Combat Animations — Devil May Cry 5

Using The Right Weapon And Attack At The Right Time Triggers A Unique Combat Event

Devil May Cry 5 is almost 7 years old now, so it’s surprising this hasn’t become more common, especially a full console generation later. Character action games, no matter how bombastic and visually off-the-wall they get, are consistently hampered by one thing: repetitive animations. This is simply a limitation of the medium. Every game has to denote actions through animations, and if they are pre-animated, there are only so many that a developer can design and fit into their game. The other option is to use physics-based animations, but those have limitations of their own (just look at how goofy the movement is in Baby Steps).

Devil May Cry 5 doesn’t remove this limitation entirely, but it employs an interesting workaround. There are specific contexts in which attacks, weapons, and enemies will synergize to create a unique combat animation. It’s most noticeable during boss fights. Equipping the right arm for Nero when fighting the Goliath — the game’s second boss — and executing a grab will throw the boss through a nearby building. When Vergil creates his doppelganger, if Dante is in the right style and executes a grab, he can grab both Vergil and the doppelganger and slam them back together. These are just a couple of examples; there are more to find. Triggering these animations is rare, but when it happens, it’s a moment of pure elation. Frankly, it’s just surprising more games haven’t tried to expand on this idea further, but maybe 2026’s Phantom Blade Zero will be the one to do it.

Fast First-Person Melee Combat — Ghostrunner & Ghostrunner 2

Transition From Running To Fighting And Back Again Without Losing Your Bearings, Or Your Lunch

Plenty of games have attempted first-person melee combat, to varying success. A game like Skyrim wouldn’t be globally popular if its combat didn’t feel right. The thing is, think about most first-person melee combat games. They’re all pretty slow, aren’t they? Swings are heavy and impactful, sure, but they can sometimes feel a bit plodding, making that “badass” feeling harder to chase down. Even first-person action games struggle with this, often leaning on firearms to deliver spectacle instead of melee weapons.

The Ghostrunner games don’t just improve this; they embody the solution. Everything in Ghostrunner is fast, from movement to jumping to combat. It keeps your visual field clean and easy to read, ensures that your inputs translate directly into on-screen action, and makes sure that attacks feel powerful and accurate. While an open-world RPG probably wouldn’t include combat quite this fast, Ghostrunner just proves that speeding things up doesn’t necessarily mean making them messier. There’s even a bit of this in Cyberpunk 2077 with the samurai swords and Mantis Blades, but first-person fantasy RPGs in particular could use some faster-paced combat like what Ghostrunner offers.