It’s interesting to me how rich story and characterization is showing up everywhere these days, sometimes to a fault. I still think that there is a certain calming purity to the idea of exploring for exploring sake which is, I suppose, what the adventure genre is all about. But even as other gaming genres intersperse some adventuring, once the needle tilts to a more aggressive gaming achievement experience the player’s motivational psychology switches away from the subtle connections of story and environment. The focus becomes almost exclusively to efficiently learn the skill to achieve the goal, at the expense of the wonder at the world around them. This isn’t bad, it’s just different.