I can see where you’re going @Draco_V_Ecliptic as I’ve experienced similar alterations in expectations after enjoying a seminal game. But I do like variety, so I haven’t felt my games are “ruined” by any new or innovative game mechanic or style. For example, I just finished the second Batman Telltale game. I liked it, although not as much as Detroit Become Human, a game which does choice-and-consequence / branching-narrative gaming miles better, yet I at no point did I want to give up on the Batman game even if the gameplay and story choices were so much less developed. I still enjoyed the game for what it was, albeit a simpler, ‘lazy-Sunday’ type of enjoyment.
But I do remember after playing Bloodborne that I felt an emptiness in other games for a while. And when I say “emptiness” I don’t mean the landscape or in-game world, I mean an emotional emptiness where the exact dopamine rush of the Soulsborne combat with the oft-cited “it’s so satisfying” aspect of finally killing a boss was absent. So, although I was enjoying my waking sims, narrative games, and open world action-stealth games, the exact satisfaction of the FromSoft nightmare-turned-adventure was noticeably absent. I think if you push through however, that you’ll eventually distance yourself enough from the crack cocaine-like rush of a FromSoft game and eventually grow to appreciate the other game mechanics out there to relish in.
