This is more of an open question to all game developers to think about for a moment. I could be right, I could be wrong and open to criticism about this topic, but doesn't it feel like games, newer ones specifically and even by AAA studios have abandoned the ability to let the gamer's or users think for themselves when it comes to interacting with the game the developers designed? As in just spoon feed the player in a sense? (Except anything 'From Software' creates as they're known to up the difficulty WAAAAAAAAAAAY up there.)
An example or examples, take a game like Horizons Zero Dawn or the new God of War with Kratos, his Son and the hilarious Simpsons mod replacing Kratos with Homer and his son with Bart; Horizon's dungeons have locks that are color coded based on a bunch of the stuff players pick up from earlier rooms that was easy to attain so we just plug it in so the door opens. God of War, a bramble bush that can be set on fire and the game tells you a weapon that has fire can clear the way and so on... Though that's easy to ask, as I pulled these examples from a youtube video;
But my argument still goes beyond these examples.
Such as the Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask; which if there are any retro purists, just hear me out as I'm wanting to draw a comparison between it and the 3DS remaster with an example of what I'm arguing. At the start of the game when you arrive in clocktown, you need the Deku's bush in South Clocktown; it gets blocked by a business scrub and starts a chain of unmarked quests which begin with the Bombers and needing to get into their secret base as the guards don't let you leave town for anything as a Deku Scrub. To get into their base, you play hide'n'seek, find them and learn their secret code to get in but won't let you join their club as they don't want Deku Scrubs in their outfit. (It's a kid thing, it's happened and still happening to everyone.) After you return to human form, you can now officially join their club though this is where the differences start between the 3DS version and the N64 version.
In the 3DS version, the happy mask salesman just gives you the Bomber's Notebook, which keeps track of certain side quests along with handy alarms where you need to be before the day resets. Having it means you are now a bomber though the game just gives you the book.
In the N64 version, you have to re-earn your bomber membership by playing hide'n'seek or taking it a step further and just telling the kid at the base the password to get in. Once you do, go in and step out, the leader of the bombers becomes both irritated and impressed stating that only Bombers know the code thus you must be one of them. Being one of them, you are given the Bomber's Notebook without having to play Hide'n'Seek.
The difference between the two is one just gives us everything and the other, while it makes us work for it, let's us interact with the game world in a different way thus still earning it through other means that doesn't feel like a chore, it feels more like something where we think about the objective to get what we want and took a different path not placed on the table to reach that objective. Rather, we didn't think about it until we tried it ourselves and discovered that this would happen by pure accident or by wondering 'what if' as the game didn't show us, pester us or mentioned it from a NPC, we found that path on our own.
Another example to roughly argue this, going back further than Majoras Mask would be Megaman X for the SNES; the very first level being designed to teach the player how to play the game without using prompt's such as 'Go Right to progress in the Game. You have a cannon and this button shoots bullets. You fell in a hole, you try jumping on the walls to get out and discover you slide down them, you push jump again and discover you can wall kick out of the hole.' So on and so forth as the game itself teaches you how to play without giving a text box but letting the player experiment with the controls in a somewhat safe environment; letting the player figure out things for themselves, though I admit I got this example from Ego Ratpor's Sequelitis before his chin consumed him to keep playing Game Grumps for eternity.
Video that won't play in forums outside of youtube because youtube is a jerk; there is raunchy language, but the arguments are justified.
Then there's games like Megaman Legends which is legendary in of itself as the stuff you found helped you explore and interact with the world further, like helping the police find the Servbots after the attempted pirate invasion or going to the TV studio and partaking in game shows for some quick cash and so on where players can interact and kick empty soda cans and kicking them into recycle bins give's you some free cash or inspecting garbage bins and finding broken a vacuum cleaner and giving it to your girlfr- I mean mechanical partner in tomb raiding an ancient civilization for technology, Roll who repairs it and modifies it into a weapon which can be grafted onto your arm.
I guess what I'm getting at after all of this and comparing it to something brand new doesn't explore or challenge the players ability to think as they think gamers are braindead thus they don't put any effort into exploring this in game design. Some folks of the indie community from their games don't explore it as much or they do without realizing it in a sense. It feels like an abandoned art to game design that was thrown out the window because the content needs to get out 'right-the-F#(!<-now.'
On the otherhand, games that do encourage this whole heart in a sense are tabletop RPG's where the players have to interact with the game master and see where it will lead them and depending on the GM or DM, rewards the player or tips their hand a little forward based on what thinking differently than the GM or DM leads.... Providing the GM or DM isn't a jerk, but potato-tomato.
Though that's just me asking out about this, if any of the other games you played while working on your titles have felt like this and let you rethink a little on certain quests or aspects of the design in your game?
Or post an argument where this isn't the case, which I'm open hearing that as well so long as you don't use Cuphead and the journalists trying to clear the tutorial without realizing they need to dash and not jump.