It’s a debate as old as role-playing games themselves: should players have to deal with encumbrance?
The recent release of Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 and Bethesda’s Starfield have thrust the encumbrance debate back into the headlines, with both games employing a system that restricts how much stuff you can carry.
While each game employs systems and mechanics that let you carry more and more, it is inevitable that as a player, you’re going to have to spend a decent chunk of your time fussing with managing your character or characters’ carry weight limit.
In Starfield’s case, encumbrance is a big enough issue for some that they are willing to lose access to gaining achievements in order to increase the carry limit via console commands on PC. This in turn has made a mod designed to prevent the achievements from being disabled one of the most popular on NexusMods.
Isn’t this just typical of pretty much every game of this type?
It’s part of the game style, is it not? Any action/RPG-type game I can think of has encumbrance as a mechanic, so I don’t see how this is something to write about.
My issue is, encumbrance is fine if it’s engaging. Limit me to a few weapons and pieces of armor. But if ALL of the junk is going to be lootable, then make it 1. Worthwhile and 2. Not a hassle. If you give me a shiny, so help me imma loot it, and if it’s actual trash, that’s just a big waste of time and disappointing
I don’t disagree.
Just saying I pretty much expect it from this type of game.
Not really. Some have space-based inventory instead of encumbrance, some have no limit, and some don’t have many items to pick up.
Weight-based inventory is relatively rare in my experience, though it’s very common for Bethesda games.