I read this article by Tom Bissell on Grantland.com and thought it might be interesting to discuss (be warned that the article is pretty long):

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6963024/video-games-killed-video-game-star

While I understand Tom's basic frustrations about the game (especially the sequence he describes at the end) I generally disagree with his premise which essentially boils down to "This game is to game-y". For instance, he rails a bit against the RPG skill tree and progression mechanisms in general and suggests that all that stuff should be kept 'under the hood' and away from the player. But why have progression in an RPG if the player can't see and influence it?

Corvall

Oh that tribal chief escort part, that part pushed me very close to stopping playing. I had to restart that chapter and re-spec my upgrades to get past it.  
 
While I certainly see where he is coming from in that article, it's not that the actual presence of the gamey-ness that hinders the game so much, it's the fact that they're handled very poorly. 
 
Still an interesting read though, even if he does take too long to actually get to his point. 

I read it, but could not disagree more. I like my leveling and skill trees in your face, it gives me a sense of progression and a reason to keep playing. I also liked seeing numbers fly off enemies in Borderlands and chuckled a bit to myself when I saw the same happening in Dead Island as they looked similar, but I like seeing how much damage I am doing in an RPG.

Also, when he says things like, "It should have involved weapons that visibly degrade in your hand" I wonder if we played the same game. I saw my weapons visibly degrading in my hand as I used them.

@Corvall said:

I generally disagree with his premise which essentially boils down to "This game is to game-y". For instance, he rails a bit against the RPG skill tree and progression mechanisms in general and suggests that all that stuff should be kept 'under the hood' and away from the player. But why have progression in an RPG if the player can't see and influence it?

Corvall

Bioshock has an RPG system but doesn't have numbers flying off of people, or even numbers on the upgrade screen.

When you upgrade Electro Bolt in Bioshock, the effects get bigger and louder, and it starts immobilising people. When you upgrade the shotgun it starts looking and animating differently n has new effects. There are not "crits" or poisoning effects or anything- when you set someone on fire they run around screaming.

I think that's WAY WAY BETTER than having an up-front old-school RPG system.

Well ... that was awkward.