Inventory management is the bane of RPGs.
I’d like to see a series of games that accepts how big of a role this annoyance plays where literally the whole game is only inventory management.
Yeah, the genius of the game was taking the stuff that sucks the most in open world games (inventory and fetch quests) and turn it into an enjoyable experience. The game stops being fun when it starts to be less about that (once you’re ziplining everywhere the game starts to get kinda boring).
It always reminds me of a beautiful quote that I’m going to butcher from one of the Factorio devs. If something isn’t fun, no matter how sacred it feels to your gameplay, get rid of it.
It’s hard to think of a game that has been improved by having inventory weight caps. For most games there should be two systems: resource hoarding, and item unlocks. You find an item, it’s now unlocked gratz. You find gold? Hoover it all up.
Really the only game I can think of where it really adds depth to the game is Darkest Dungeon 1. You have so many inventory slots, and you start out with them somewhat filled with food and assorted supplies to help you go. As you progress through a level, you naturally use up some supplies, but you still eventually have to choose whether to keep the bandages or the loot. But that was clearly a deeply thought out mechanic in the game, core to the experience, not “oh well skyrim has inventory management so we should too”.