What is the most boring AAA game you've ever played to completion?

Most boring AAA game huh...

Does No Man's Sky count? The marketing budget was definitely AAA.

@banefirelord: I wouldn't expect them to have SCP levels of detail on every object in the game but they really don't give you enough, combined with the general lack of answers the staff can give to any question gives the impression they've only been doing it for a couple years and don't understand a thing.
One example the "Arctic Queen", its document explains that it survived the collapse of a hotel in '73 and the bureau obtained it in '74................................. then what? Nothing apparently, no tests, no studies, apparently if you don't stare at it constantly it gets extremely dangerous but i guess there's been zero notable events for the last 45 years, they could have definitely done more.

Your SCP game idea is great.

Any Ubisoft Game.

A bad story is what makes games boring, so probably Far Cry 5.

Not entirely sure why I finished that game, but I immediately regretted bothering.

@humanity: Like in Halo 1? I remember enjoying it. Been awhile though.

the first assassins creed got real old real fast but I somehow managed to muscle my way through it. at the time I was interested in seeing where the present day story went. what a fool I was

Gotta echo the Andromeda/Inquisition sentiment. I even finish Andromeda last year out of some sick sense of obligation to see it through. Inquisition I enjoyed but like 70% of the game time was goddamn unnecessary.

Also, most Assassin’s Creed games, all the way back. Even the best of those are so full of filler that I get bored but continue to collect everything because I have a sickness in me. It wasn’t until Odyssey that I unbroke my brain enough to mainline the story. Did stop me from then reverting to my old habit for a month of Valhalla, but at least I was able to stop around the halfway point of completion and not get the DLC.

I really, REALLY need to stay away from Ubisoft games.

I wonder how I'd feel about the Assassin's Creed series nowadays. I haven't played one since Black Flag.

I remember the very first AC being pretty weak, since it literally had nothing to do in the cities other than repeat the same three encounters over and over. I saw it through because the neat parkour stuff was pretty new at the time.

I liked the series well enough as it went along, but climbing and parkour-ing and maps with a million markers are a dime a dozen now.

@ginormous76: Yah like endless identical corridors with waves of mixed baddies in increasing numbers.

Does Dark Souls count as AAA? Because I've finally dug into that and have made it through several bosses, may be ten hours in, and... I wanted to understand what people love about this and am determined to see it through, but my god. People talked about how difficult this series was but they never spoke to its tedium.

I don't know, just writing this out... I think it's just not for me and I likely won't bother seeing it through, but that's the first thing that comes to mind. I guess maybe Control falls into this—outside of the ashtray maze, I found the story and world just bland AF. Good, I guess, if you don't watch much weird cinema, but boring combat and exploration. Again, though, not sure if that qualifies as AAA.

@edens_heel: The tedium is definitely a part of what makes them difficult. Never bothered finishing either Demon's Souls nor Dark Souls. But I did make it through Bloodborne, and LOVED Sekiro. If you don't mind hard as nails bosses that require precise timing and pattern recognition, without any way to grind and way less focus on stats and upgrades, that game might work better for you. I personally love how that game let me focus on gameplay without having to worry about which stats I upgrade. It's also way better about bonfire placement and you usually don't have to walk thtt far to get to the boss. There are some exceptions though so the game still has some needlessly frustrating parts, so be warned.

Most recently, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. I was just mostly staring blankly at the screen for around 6 hours being slightly repulsed by the story until the very end when I got to exact sweet nuclear revenge on the annoying main characters.

@sweep: This is a good call. Played 1 through 3 with a friend a bit ago and while one has a few moments when it's trying to be more survival horror-y the rest of those games feel like a boring mess.

Really liked them back in the day too.

Most recently I'd probably say Ghost of Tsushima.

@csl316: I felt the same way when it came out, but I've been doing backlog work since the new year and I went ahead and bought it on PC then got all the achievements. I really liked it after all, my brain is weird.

Was TimeShift an AAA game? If not than I would say Assassin's Creed 3 and recently ME: Andromeda, but that was more intellectually insulting than boring (and the action was actually pretty good).

Outerworlds for me was pretty boring aside from the companions. Hope the next one is actually an open world and not just open areas.

@theonewhoplays: See, I -love- hard as nails bosses that require speed and precision. I admit that's what I expected when I heard about the legendary difficulty of the Dark Souls series. But yeah, the tedium is baked into them and is doing more to keep me from finishing than any of the difficulty so far. I do have Bloodborne, though, so I will be giving that a go and maybe, if i like it, moving on to Sekiro after the fact.

@cikame: The lack of answers from the staff and their general sense of confusion worked for me, since I got the impression the bureau was perpetually kind of out of its depth as a default and like 9/10s of the staff had been taken by the Hiss when the game starts, but your issue with them giving a starting point with lore but not elaborating where elaboration would logically be is a very fair criticism. I feel like Remedy can have an issue with committing too much to premises over executions. For me, the premise of Control’s setting was enough for it to soar all the way through, but I never finished Alan Wake because the combat loop never felt like they really converted the interesting premise of “fight monsters that are sensitive to light” into something actually all that fun.

I can barely play games I LIKE to completion, so I do not think I have ever played a game I found boring to completion. In fact I really don't hold my games up to a "finished" or “not finished" scale either. Finishing a game is not all that impressive in my book, if you liked its great...but that is great if you played every last bit or you only got through half.

Finishing a game, playing through all the DLC, getting a trophy, or earning a badge - its all fine. Its a nce thing if you enjoyed doing whatever you did, but there is a reason our culture does not put such achievements on a CV/resume or in your obituary.

I honestly can't remember the last big Triple A I completed. I feel like I only ever finish indie games and AAA games usually are either too long and samey to hold my attention or something. I think it was Final Fantasy 7 Remake, but I liked that. I usually just quit fast if I am bored.

Edit: Realize I wrote ones I dropped instead of ones I finished missing the point of the thread. I do intend to finish P5 so I'll leave that go, but Horizon is just not worth my time to return to at this point. Original post in spoiler block.

More accurate to the topic, FFXV like so many others here. It had moments and ideas that kept me going, but overall the combat was not where it needed to be and the story (I played the original release) was broken and incomplete. Essentially a lot of the criticism and rationale that is shared elsewhere in this thread and on the internet.

I'm struggling with this in considering a lot of what would be closer to AA. Deferring to stuff that's been mentioned I guess the number 1 would be Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I felt the urge to finish it both as a big Castlevania fan and because some of the art design and narrative hooks were kind of interesting. But the level design is so bad, and that's the worse sin you could make in a freaking CASTLEVANIA game, a series that pioneered fun level designs. It was also trying to ride the wave of character action games and failing miserably with combat that doesn't feel intuitive compared to most of its contemporaries.

@mezmero: Yeah I was in a similar boat. While I didn't hate playing it, the game definitely went on far too long. The crazy ending made me glad I played it (never got around to 2 though), but it definitely overstayed it's welcome.

I will fight for the right to have my Dota profile chiseled on my tombstone! People need to know about my 60% winrate with Dark Seer!