@Sushiglutton
yeah you can circumvent, but that's not necessarily a good thing.
the fact you're having to do that is symptomatic of going down the ubisoft, open area, heavy-on-the-side-quests route. and i don't think that route does the game any favours. for a cinematic game it means sacrificing things like pace, urgency, focus and cohesion, all for the sake of content, a lot of which feels superfluous, and in that genre, it's not a good trade off, especially when the base gameplay is so limited.
my view is, if you're in cinematic movie game territory, i'm going to compare you to what i think is best in class, and that's tlou2. for all tlou2's problems, when you get to the actual game bit, they're oceans apart in terms of sophistication, and tlou 2 is four years old.
if you take the point where both games properly begin, after the prologues (i.e. indy the vatican and tlou2 seattle), they're quite similar conceptually giving you an initial goal and big open area to explore. at this point, the way tlou2 weaves presentation, story, discovery, character development, environment interaction and gameplay together is borderline seamless. it's entirely organic and clearly very carefully crafted. you don't have to decide which content to circumvent, it's not structured or delivered in that way, it's much more fluid and natural, and none of it is filler, almost the antithesis of that comparatively dated, accumulate-a-big-list-of-side-quests-and-follow-map-markers notorious ubisoft style.
and beneath tlou2's narrative is a good game. at times it's one of the best survival stealth horrors out there, mechanically richer and more varied than indiana jones. as you explore seattle you encounter increasingly tense scenarios with both infected and human enemies, where you have to adapt your approach based on the items in your arsenal. you need to think fast on your feet, use stealth where possible to conserve limited ammo because all it takes is one loud noise and they're all coming for you, which means you better start shooting quickly or running. then it becomes frantic, desperate and survive-by-any-means-necessary. the enemy ai is fantastic. and because these encounters are all about survival, you have real incentive to explore to find supplies. there's a legitimately good game propping up the narrative, whereas i can't say the same for indy, even though there are similarities in its style.
tlou2 isn't perfect by any stretch, it has its own set of problems and it might not be the high bar to compare cinematic games to for others. but it is to me, and in 2024, whether compared against tlou2 or taken in isolation, i just don't think indiana jones is a good game. it's regressive. maybe a fun experience if you really like indiana jones but that's not enough for me to overlook all its shortcomings
edit: tried to edit my post on mobile and the quote formatting went to shit lol
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