Enemies are absolutely nowhere to be seen till you hit the exact spot on the ground, and then as if by magic they are suddenly everywhere trying to kill you.
Yes! That seems to have become more and more prevalent over the years. And nothing is more annoying than a game where you're supposedly going at it stealthily and think you're doing good, but because of a plot-mandated checkpoint they throw the wolves at you. At this point, I wouldn't really call it stealth. Stealth is when you can avoid enemies and the environment to your advantage, but to have a pre-determined ambush kind of kills the mood. That's kind of the difference between a linear game like the Tomb Raiders and a more open-world game like Horizon: Zero Dawn.
Ok, here's another one: the cleverly marked footholds, branches, vines, etc, anything to mark places where you can traverse. Some are more subtle, depending on the game, but in some games they are rather absurd, but we're supposed to think they've been there naturally? Playing two different games of this time at the moment. Shadow of Tomb Raider, which I've just started, and the 2015 version of Prince of Persia (the cel-shaded one).
Tomb Raider at least tries to blend in more naturally with the environment, to the point that sometimes you need the game to highlight to see them. But Prince of Persia is laughably obvious. Kind of like it's in its own physical world, where you can wall-run (wall scratches denoting where you can), flag poles, wooden beams, and cracks between walls to grab onto. But then the game also takes it to an extreme by having you unlock special powers that are activated via special glowing glyphs around the world, that only have one very specific purpose of flinging you around or run up buildings to more of these glyphs in order to reach a very specific spot. Which begs the question, if you're the only one who can use these, then how did they get built on supposedly very old buildings and why?
And regarding temples, I just love how there will be artifacts just sitting there as collectibles free for the taking. Or in a related manner, nobody has been there in a million years and you just happen to be first, nevermind the fact that your enemies are letting you get there first guide them, or that upon exit, you set off a chain reaction that destroys said temple, after taking a sacred relic. Oops? Those sum up Uncharted/Tomb Raider for me. At least Lara felt guilty in Shadow of the Tomb Raider when that caused the entire town to flood.
All characters are instantly attracted to the main character regardless of their own personality, desires, orientation or whether their body shape is even remotely compatible the moment the main character wants them to be. Whether or not the main character even talks.
Relatedly, everyone everywhere having the same 10 or so repeated lines, as if to say they all have the same thoughts. "I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took an arrow to the knee!" Well gee, there must not be many adventurers out there anymore then! And wooo boy, everyone wants to tell you their life story it seems. Even if you go out of earshot, they still continue on. Poor guy, must be really lonely.
The Elder Scrolls and Fallout have Radiant AI, allowing them to have their own schedules. I think the next step would be to have cloud-processed speech, so that lines could truly be unique and random.
