I also realise that I appreciate sobriety in games but also that this may not be the word I seek. Uh. Sobriété. Restraint, soberness ?
This is not a stance about how drunk the characters or developpers should be. What I mean is that I like stuff stay a bit boringly grounded or minimalistic at times. To be more "The Terminator" (a "Duel"-like chase with a human truck) than "T2: Judgement Day". I love this sequel, but maybe I appreciate even more the original tight little thriller. Sequels tend to expand a lot, and dilute their matter and its impact. Again, like the Alien franchise starts adding sentient AI, telepathy, DNA memory (or, if you broaden it, other franchise monsters), losing the force of its origins.
We're talking games here. I really liked The Escapists. It was a nifty little "Escape from Alcatraz" simulation, stressfull and annoying and frustrating but the way prison life has to be : the annoying chores were a good hindrance to your schedule, and you had to plan the escape in the cracks of these everyday activities. But the sequel expands with silly customizations and items, scifi stuff, etc. It becomes a whole other wonky universe, which certainly has its public and value (it's a more comedic take?), but I saw it as a "more" that killed the pragmatic tone of the first. I haven't bought the Rimworld DLCs either, because they expand its scifi world to too much fantasy and intrusive aspects (I didn't really want magical telepathic cults in my colony). I haven't bought the DLCs of Surviving Mars either, as I was interested in how a Mars colony would work, and not the star wars fantasy of generic dome city on green terraformed planets. I find the base subject matter more interesting than their everything goes appendices. I loved Jurassic Park Operation Genesis, but I have little interest in the recent Jurassic World Evolution games and their imaginary dinosaurs fabrication labs, which defeat the paleontological interest of Jurassic Park by making it an Impossible Creatures themed park.
I also like the original Far Cry and Assassin Creed a lot. They are derided as empty tech demos, but I find their sequels too bloated (that being said, I also like the fact tat Far Cry's sequels are devoid of mutant monsters - Far Cry's selling point was its open landscaped allowing for various sneaky approaches of the enemy, and the mutant monsters' super senses defeated this to some extent in the second half of the game). So it's not just the theme and universes, that I like to be well defined, but also the gameplay. In that sense, I understand why the fans of Mafia 1 and 2 were disappointed by 3.
And I'm thinking about that, because I follow the release of KSP2. It will eventually include interstellar travel, which gets a bit too scifi for me (what, wormholes? llightspeed travels with no time distorsion? even faster travels to bridge thousands lightyears distant systems?), and the color customizations themselves detract from the (admittedly alien and crazy) nasa transposition feel by going straight to comics flying saucer colors.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is my videogame hot take of the day : fun is awful and should be forbidden.