JcDent

Deus Ex gives you points for achieving objectives, and not for hacking panels and shooting guards.

Meanwhile, both DX:HR and Cyberpunk 2077 gives you XP every time you fart.

One effect of this is remaking the old DnD anecdote "I need 5xp to level up. How much XP is that cow in the field?" chop

In DX:HR, I ended up hacking every alarm pannel even if they posed no threat for me as I had already given every guard in the local metropolitan area the gentle snooze hug. It's free XP, baby. Similarly, in Cyberpunk, I sometimes manually disable cameras for Engineer XP.

It also enforces gameplay styles.

In the original Deus Ex, you get XP for the objective, no matter if you achieved it via stealth, hacking, or indiscriminate violence. The real fallout is in characters reacting to your actions.

In Human Revolution, being the stealth sleep-spreader nets you 200 xp vs. going guns blazing.

This is not the same as the player chosing to go non-lethal because JC's brother Paul urged them to or they have an aversion to killing.

I don't know if it's as borked in Cyberpunk 2077 - if anything, it doesn't reward stealth enough and hacking straight up sucks - but it would also be better if you couldn't farm XP by being stealth Hypnos hacker.

he "golden era" of PC games was one where you could skip bosses. Fallout 1. Thief. Planescape: Torment. Deus Ex.

Others didn't have boss fights: Homeworld, Age of Empires 2, Alpha Centauri, RCT2.

I'm stuck in this era because I hate modern boss fights and get no pleasure playing them.

When I hear about the biggest FromSoft world ever made, the most open and most explorable, and the most celebrated thing about it is "Let Me Solo Her" because the boss is supposedly the coolest thing, all I feel is fatigue over this being what gaming is now.

I think about how one of my favorite games of all time, Systerm Shock 2, has the universally most panned and least fun thing being either the first boss or the second boss, the only two such things in the game, right at the end. And how nowadays, if there aren't boss fights, it doesn't get made.

I feel tired, or like part of me is just disconnected from others. It feels alienating. I don't really know what to do about it.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Hey, remember how cool it was when Deus Ex didn't have real boss fights? When "bosses" worked on the same rules as every other enemy? Where two of the biggest characters could be neutralized or avoided? Where I killed one of the major characters by just lobbing rifle grenades in his face?

What if we put in unskippable mandatory boss fights in the sequel and they specifically fucked over stealth pacifist, the most powerful build in the game?

Dawn of War 2

We're taking our revolutionary RTS and making it into a quasi-RPG! Of course we'll have boss fights!

Base Game: apparently had plenty of boss fights! I remember none of them, which is a mark of good game design.

Chaos Rising: yo, we made a boss out of this light Imperial Guard vehicle. No explanation why, it's just extra strong. Fuck you, eat shit.

Retribution: you asked for campaigns for every race, and we give you campaigns for every race. All of the missions are identical! And if you think this isn't dog shit enough, wait till you meet our immobile final boss and his sequence pillars! Fuck you, player, you stupid fucking piece of shit!

Cyberpunk 2077

If you liked the first boss fight of the game, you'll love it when we repeat it two more times as cyberpsychos!!!

My favorite gaming boss is Walton Simons because I defeated him by shooting him with the underbarrel grenade launchers as he charged me.

No bullshit patterns, dodging, or any other boss-fighty shit. Just another dude acting under the same rules as I.

Conversely, boss fights in Human Revolution are dogshit precisely because they're boss fights.