Sucks that you said that you don't like the idea of missing things, because some of the best narrative games in recent years, in my opinion, had bits that you could miss. Like Detroit: Become Human, which shows you how each chapter could have branched and what path you ended up taking, or Neir Automata, where you beat the game once and you've seen maybe 30% of the content in the game, because subsequent playthroughs are from other perspectives. Or Life is Strange, which has similarly complex branches like Detroit Become Human does, and the main character can rewind time and try different approaches. Or Persona 5, where it doesn't give you enough time to max out each NPC's social link, so you will miss some side stories the first time through the game, and there's bad or alternative endings you can trigger depending on what you do.

If you're into non-narrative games at all, then there's some games with novel mechanics coming out. Two of my favorites recently are Into The Breach, which is a tactics game where you know exactly how the enemies will attack, and your goal is to use your mechs to move, stop, block, or kill the bug threatening the attack so that it attacks somewhere else or doesn't finish the attack, where it turns it into a thinky puzzle.

Or Baba is You, a puzzle game which is just full of 'holy crap I didn't realize you could DO that!' moments, where you push words around to form sentences which govern the rules and mechanisms for the level, which you have to manipulate in order to solve the level.

And if you haven't tried The Witness yet, Jonathan Blow spent 7 years dreaming up every possible way in which you could possibly change-up a 'draw a line through a maze' puzzle, and the deeper you get into that game, the more crazy things you'll discover that he came up with (I would have never come up with half the crap he did, and it gets reaaaally creative). There's several 'Holy crap I didn't know you could DO that,' moments in that game too. But it's not a narrative game, not really. More of a hint of a narrative.

Yeah, the problem is that most games fail to have compelling enough mechanics to warrant replays. If things are "missable" it kinda feels like a f*ck you from the developer, or at the very least like they didn't try hard enough to have a cohesive narrative (too many hangers-on narrative ideas). Depends on the game of course. But for instance, with Nier (haven't played it, not my favorite stylistically), if you really haven't encountered 70% of the content with one playthrough, I wouldn't consider that a true playthrough.

The Witness blew me away too. At the time I played it (release), I felt the same way about it as Outer Wilds. Baba is you was recommended by a friend recently, and I'd definitely like to give that a shot at some point. I'm pretty hawkish about style, and I tend to strongly dislike tactics type games, as well as RTS. A lot of newer RPGs turn me off too, especially ones using the ATB concept (FF7 is one of my all time favs as well, but I have almost no interest in trying the new one; I reaaaally wanna vote with my dollars for new IP).

80 Days felt surprisingly novel to me because of the way it’s narrative felt so “complete” on first 3 hour play-through, knowing that I was seeing only a small fraction of the game. I’m not sure I’d get the same joy out of replays, but the joy was really in having a standard storybook experience with solid writing combined with self-determination and time pressure.

It made the world seem so rich and full BECAUSE I knew I was only seeing a very small fraction of the possible content. If I played it again and got the same story, I suspect I’d be surprised and disappointed, which is why I can never play it again!

Edit: it may have felt so novel to me because I spend most video game time in tactical games, or puzzles, and this was somehow both of those things and neither of those things.

I've replayed 80 days a few times. As long as you choose different paths, the game will tell you a pretty different story (at least for those three times I replayed it). I even died before making it all the way around the world once.

Nier is pretty fun mechanically (although it has some annoyances). You even play differently to a certain extent in susequent playthroughs. Since most people say you have to play the game three times in order to experience enough of the story, you could just treat each playthrough as completing a really long chapter in the story. But regardless, it might not be your type of thing still.

I had somehow missed The Outer Wilds (I think I kept mixing it up with Obsidian's The Outer Worlds, still not yet released), but I've started noticing people talk about it lately. If you're putting it up there with The Witness, then I need to check it out.

Even if you normally hate tactics games, I would recommend watching a video or two on Into The Breach. I do like Tactics games, but I no longer have time for a proper one. I tried playing Wargroove, spent an hour on a mission and failed it, to have to start it all over again, and I went... "Yeah...guess I'm not playing this game again for awhile." It left a sour taste in my mouth.

But Into the Breach is different. It's a roguelike, so failing is okay, you just make your survival situation tougher for yourself and might not "beat it" that playthrough. And each map has a strict turn limit to accomplish your objective, usually only like 5 turns max, so each level takes about 5-10 minutes, usually. And again, knowing exactly how the enemies will attack during your turn really changes the feel of it, and it feels less like a tactics game and more like a puzzle game using tactics mechanics. Like the difference between playing Chess or solving a Chess Problem. That example might not make it sound that sexy, but it's really addictive.

Also I heard that FF7 remake is more action oriented, and doesn't really have an ATB bar this time around. Maybe you'll like it more than you think.

If you haven’t heard of it yet, Subnautica is the last game I’ve played that truly felt wondrous to play and hooked into my brain in a major way. Highly recommend, one of my favorite games of all time I’d say. (Up there with Undertale and Super Metroid)

Subnautica has been on my wishlist since before release but as it got more fleshed out, I just never went and picked it up. I think I may have been put off by the base building element or something, and I definitely had a bad taste in my mouth about exploration after No Man's Sky. Can you give me any more insight into the gameplay that would change my mind?

Unlike most base building/crafting/exploration games, Subnautica doesn’t rely on procedural generation. It has an actual plot, and all of the environments showcase the sort of creativity and artistic choices that we simply don’t know how to teach to a computer.

Sure, I'm aware that it's not procedural, but maybe I was overly pessimistic about the world building within. I think after fallout 4 I've steered a little further away from RPGs with base building. It didn't really feel like those games were focusing enough on what I found interesting mechanic/narrative wise, but were rather taking a scattershot "give the player everything" approach to drive sales. Maybe I'll give SN another look.

...also I think Rocket League consumed my gaming time for a solid year which didn't help me work down my list.

Base building in SN is somewhat a side show. You build yourself a home on an alien world because you need one, but most of the interesting things happen outside of it.

I second the recommendation. Subnautica is hands-off one of the best games I played.

One area that's ripe and unexplored, imo, is creation of social infrastructure around playing video games, especially team games.

A family has rules, a company has rules, even HN has rules. Some rules are an unnecessary drag, but others are vital and essential to stoping a race to the bottom. Having those rules allows for much greater net freedom.

What is the difference between what you're talking about and Steam?

Simple: If I fire up DotA 2, I have a 75% chance of utterly despising my tean, and them me.

"Everything+Kitchen sink" games like MOBAs, Overwatch, etc, are caught between two masters: 1) the desire to give players lots of options, and 2) the tendency of players to abuse their teammates for how they use those options.

The solution is not to be found on that spectrum---DotA did this a while ago with DotA+ (lol, "+") restricting possible team compositions, and Overwatch did as well (also forced team compositions).

What really needs to happen is players need to start innovating socially, creating trust-based groups that can reap the best of both worlds.

This would require proactivity, but, hey, this is the thread for it.

That's a guild. Many games have them, and some guilds span multiple games. Try playing an MMO, that's where they are easiest to find. You can also find them around some multiplayer shooters.