Know Thyself -

Thief vs ~~Thief 2014~~ AAA

That video critiques certain elements modern video games have picked up. Elements and trends which can also be found in many modern movies and probably books as well.

23:10 onwards it is all downhill.

Automap and Quest-markers

Basically the equivalent of GPS navigation in cars.
Instead of having to clue together where to go by observing the environment, the actual thinking process is reduced to a follow this map, this plan, this recipe approach.
The reward the player experiences is not from overcoming a challenge but consists of mostly visual stimulation, of seeing new environments, of seeing new variations, being stimulated by newness. New impressions, new, more outrageous killings through new weapons.
The reward is not found in mastering a system, an environment, any challenge but a continuous stimulation via seeing new things. This exposing of the player to sensual stimulation and variation to keep him interested is not only found in video games. It’s the bread and butter of most modern products of entertainment and infotainment.
Neil Postman in his Amusing ourselves to death writes about this as well.

Story-telling via gameplay/environment

Is when you reduce the obvious story element, like the written elements, the dialogue, the obvious exposition scenes and make room for qualities of environments and the parts within to let the player piece things together by experiencing them. This can also be done in other media, even books. It’s about stating things implicitly, hiding story elements in plain sight for the reader to pick up on and piece together into something coherent.
This is achieved (if it’s not just used as an excuse for incoherent story telling) by conceiving of a coherent story and fitting environments and then leaving parts out of the narrative but with still enough clues in place for the player/reader to be able to come up with at least one coherent possibility for a conclusive story.
If the story was never thought out in a coherent manner behind the veil in the first place by the designer/author then this does not work out well and no coherent story can be constructed.
However, this could also be the intention of the author, as to drive people mad or to allude to ones’ genius by implying that nobody can figure it out coherently.

And there is a difference between being incoherent and having some parts remain hidden because of a lack of information. Some puzzles just lack pieces but the possibility remains that they could be finished with the right pieces. Conclusively incoherent is when enough information and puzzle pieces are present to conclude that some of the pieces will under no circumstances be made to fit an overall picture, not any coherent picture.