Collectibles have always been an integral part of video games going back to Pac-Man and his cherries or Mario and his coins. Over the past decade and a half, however, collectibles have become synonymous with 100% completion and whatever reward completing touchstones is on the platform. For example: gamer score on Xbox and trophies on PlayStation.
In the 2000s, we saw the rise in the trend of 100% completion of games to get those sweet bragging rights or just for self-satisfaction. The trend became incredibly popular and every game had achievements to complete to 100% it. This was great for companies because with players wanting to 100% a game or just get all the collectibles, playtime and shelf life increased dramatically to the point where games that may otherwise only take 8-16 hours to beat got played for weeks or months on end all for that 100% completion. From here it became the industry standard for AAA games that had open worlds or large maps to have bucket loads of collectibles and secrets all over for players to spend hours finding.
For me, all these collectibles have become somewhat of a problem or annoyance in this day and age. I remember the first time I got annoyed with all the objectives or collectibles in a game was Ubisoft’s Assassins Creed Brotherhood. I had previously satisfied that nagging voice in my head to get all the fracking feathers in Assassins Creed 2 along with perfecting all the missions and so on for that 100% completion. It wasn’t a terrible experience but it did get tiring at parts. In Brotherhood, however, the number of collectibles and things to do went up a ton and following that obsessive voice made completing that game into a bad experience, despite how good the game was. The game that put me off the Assassin’s Creed franchise for a long time was Assassin’s Creed 3. When I first opened up a world map in AC3 the sheer amount of stuff on it made my eye twitch. I eventually gave up on it because there was just too much stuff to do and not doing it just left me with that incomplete feeling of dissatisfaction.
There are tons of other games that prescribe to the collectible design ideology from Skyrim to Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order to the Batman Arkham series; each one with varying degrees of collectibles, mini-games, places to find, and things to do in general to get 100% completion. And the design style will never die but I would like to say, can we please tone it down a bit? For those of us who love these games, it can be annoying to have a game taunt us with things to do, that inner devil telling you that this area must be complete before moving on to the next can make the game less fun if you listen to it or if you try and ignore it and always see that 8/10 things done.
I’m not saying I think there should be no collectibles in games, but there should be a balance to it and less of an impact on progression if you don’t collect everything. A great example of excellent collectible implementation was the first Ratchet and Clank game. There were Gold Bolts hidden in secret areas with some easy to find and others hard but it always required clever mechanics or thinking to get to them. Then once you got them they were used to unlock stuff in the extra menu from concept art to in-game cosmetic options like ship paint jobs or wearing a mask of one of the game developer's faces. I always felt this was the premier way to design collectibles in a game, something to reward clever players and keep the amount of stuff to do from being ridiculous in size.
In the end, all that I’m asking is that maybe we can have a little less stuff to do in the next AAA game. Just so that the little voice in all of us demanding perfection doesn’t take over our lives whenever we play a game with collectibles.
