Videogames That "Require" A Wiki

hey everyone, thank you all so much for the positive reception and encouraging comments. don't take this video at face value, enjoy and have fun with how you play games. that's it. nothing more to it other than that.

is this quite a complete list or?

I feel like this idea of "not wanting to miss out on anything" is kinda ruining these experiences for players. Mostly because the people who play these games with extensive use of guides and wikis without thinking for themselves, actually do miss out on something very important; their own journey. A lot of these games like Elden Ring and Dark Souls are not meant to be fully completed, they are meant to be experinced first and foremost.

I figured out a fun solution to these games during my first playthrough of terraria: you simply are only allowed to look something up if you know what it's called. For example, when I was playing for the first time I couldn't look up "what is the strongest sword in terraria", but once I knew it was called the Zenith THEN I was allowed to look into it

With this ruleset, the wiki becomes less of a place to say "hey wtf am I doing please send help" and more of your own personal research book; the more you discover about the game, the more information you can allow yourself to look up. It was actually really convenient and fun for me; I was slowly gaining an idea of how to progress through the game, but I still had plenty of classic newbie moments (such as going two real-world MONTHS without ever getting a grappling hook, I wish I was kidding)

Best of both worlds imo

Ehh you dont really need a wiki to play minecraft

I would not include Terraria on that list nor Stardew Valley. You don’t need the wiki to beat the game buts it’s helpful in certain areas for obtaining rare items or 100% the game.

How did you go through this ENTIRE video without once mentioning Dwarf Fortress?

Noita has left the chat

Almost any rpg with dialogue choices. I'm scared to accidentally pick the "rude" option. 😢

Hey Genbear, I love this video, but it was difficult for me to understand. See, I always listen to video essays with sound only while working. And due to things like the title cards, I couldn't follow the video without looking at the screen.

People who listen like I do are a big audience, so It would probably be good for you in the future if you made your video essays more listenable. Just wanted to let you know 👍

I love games that gives you an easy quest to obtain a McGuffin, alongside simple instructions on how to get it so you'd do everything right, but it doesn't work, so you look it up on the wiki, only to find out that you have to do a moonwalk in a specific outfit at 2:45PM in real time alongside inspecting a very specific trash can, following it up by talking to a NPC with zero relevance to the story, who will give you yet ANOTHER QUEST to require you to find a whopping 239 of the mystical Bullshit Coins to be able to progress through the game.

you havent seen Star Citizen

Path of Exile says hi

That Terraria mod that shows you the stuff you can craft used to be standard in the old console version. It makes the game exponentially better. It’s the reason I put 500+ hours into it on PS3 versus only about 10 on Switch. I don’t see how anyone could play it without that. It feels super unintuitive.

I don't think it is a problem that a game particularly survival-esc games 'require' external information to play. The games tend to have a lot more stuff than other games which encourages you to seek information either by experimenting or by asking others/using a wiki. What I do mind is when an otherwise self explanatory game necessitates a wiki because the designers failed to tell you how you are meant to play. Example that comes to mind is Elden Ring which requires you to know things the game just does not tell you at all. Quest NPCs have extremely arbitrary requirements to proceed that you couldn't possibly know unless you looked it up. Where as a game like Terraria you could find out how to craft a GPS by asking the guide or find out Skeletron is a boss by talking to the Old Man. Terraria 'requires' a wiki because it has lots of things to know and a wiki is the most time efficient way to learn. Elden Ring 'requires' a wiki because it was made poorly.

I spent hours on the Terraria wiki when I was a kid before going to bed, learning everything I could and using it the next day.

back away from the mic brother jesus

Realm Grinder is one more game that very much requires a wiki

when i first started playing terraria, i didn't even know it had a wiki, but i knew it needed one, so i tried to make my own through an HTML document. i'm not even kidding.

This man has clearly never heard of Rain World.

Well, i was expecting to see you talking abou games that the player actualy NEEDS a wiki/guide, like dwarf fortress. Dwarf Fortress wont even let you undertand how the world works, and plus, the complexity of the game makes a wiki actualy needed.
You can be totaly blank in stardew valley and enjoy the game, sometimes, you see something here and there on the wiki, but that is the same thing that happened years ago with Harvest Moon, but back than we used to read the guides on magazines, or our friends told us how to find that secret or that item.

Having played multiple games on this list, rs3 is this turned up to 11. It has one of the most well maintained wikis I’ve ever seen for a game

this is why i stopped playing leaf blower

I'd say, Ark Survival Evolved is the worst in that. I don't mind exploring, figuring things out trough trial and error. But the game tells you nothing. And I don't just mean "game doesn't tell you shit". Because... I don't know how to describe it, but, somehow, it feels like it tells less than nothing. It fails to even tell you full controls. And then, on top of that - How do you tame this creature? Well, there 2 ways, depending on creature, but some require special food... wich you couldn't know about. Some have a different, unique way. Some can't be, but... you don't know wich one can and wich one can't and you don't know what creature can do something cool, or useful. You will try to tame something, fail, and maybe waaaay later learn that it can by this obscure method, and it makes the game less annoying or something. Some of them require not trial and error, they require the wildest of guesses.
To the degree of "what if this giant snail can be tamed only with this weird veggie cake that I can make for some reason"

And, while the game does tell you that you can tame creatures. It doesn't even tell you those 2 basic ways.
Yes, you might stumble on that monkey without scaring it, to see the prompt to feed to pop up.
yes, you might punch that funny bird only to see it knocked out and the "taming bar" appear. But... what next?
Mind you, some of that things might be told trogh loading screens.
But this game doesn't have that many.

Best part is - game attempts to tell you. Trough collectable dossiers spread troughout the map. Not the best way in my opinion, but ok, fine, fair, not fair, bad design, but, let's say it's fair.
Except they bloody lie to you. Maybe some were wrong by mistake, they mostly got outdated I believe. But, yeah.
If you don't have the wiki opened at all time during the game, you in some bad time.

Note, I mostly speak of solo mode.

Tarkov moment

I better see Don’t Starve on this list that game is near impossible without the wiki

Oldschool Runescape players: wow why is EVERYONE ELSE’S wiki so bad, not constantly updated empty and ugly.

I'd argue these games don't require a wiki to complete, though. They make things more efficient, sure, but the Guide NPC in Terraria gives you more than enough information with his tips to get to the final boss and to craft anything that is possible to craft from the stuff you find by exploring. I'd actually say a player who actively and smartly seeks Terraria's content probably won't miss much of it, even without a wiki. Wikis are only gonna be necessary to players who need to know what to do quickly and don't like having no clear direction. I like how Terraria does things, for the most part- a little bit more clear direction maybe wouldn't hurt, or even just making it clear to the player just how important the Guide NPC is, since a lot of players will very quickly forget about him, but in its current state, I think it's mostly fine, functional.

In games like Isaac or Enter The Gungeon though, I would prefer if they gave you more and clearer information, I honestly think breaking the flow of the game to look at the wiki is more of an annoyance in those games than in Terraria, but idk that's still just my opinion- Terraria is literally my favorite game after all so of course I'm biased.

And the kind of gaming experience I prefer also adds bias- a lot of gamers, especially those that play more AAA than indie, prefer intuitive, immersive experiences, and they're often the most vocal about not wanting to have a wiki open. But I've always been an indie guy, and never cared too much about immersion or having to put a little extra effort into experiencing the game by finding information outside of it. It's ALWAYS nice to have information clearly and conveniently conveyed in-game, of course, even for me, but it's not too big of a deal for me if I have to use a wiki or watch a guide- those kind of games are often the best experiences once you figure them out, even if the games relying less on those things would indeed improve them.

eu4 and tarkov: 😶😶

Silent hill wiki:

Warframe. SO much of that game isn't explained in game, and some of the things are hard, if not nearly impossible, to find out through just playing the game.

Ya, you can get through most of the game by not knowing what you're doing, or having a minimal amount of knowledge of the systems involved, but there is going to be a brick wall that you slam into because of not understanding something or another and the wiki is the only hope.

I love these kinds of games. Great example: My summer car. Just a goofy small car simulator with beer at first, is a giant game where you need to remember the whole map, the whole car that you need to build, different events, characters and details that just turn it from "haha build car drink beer and crash" to a freaking life simulator.

Osrs

The legend of Zelda is damn near impossible without a guide

Played minecraft in 2010 when there was no wiki, just plug stuff in logically and figure it out. You and your friends take notes and share em

Graveyard keeper does not need a wiki. You just get most things donbe by following the questline.
And yes the alchemy is cluttered. But I quickly discovered in my first playthrough that the witch sells an alchemy recipe a day. And with a bit of time and trying around yourself a little (the colors are easy to get once you have the first one) you can quickly get it.

sky children of the light is for a non gamer literally unplayable. the seasons, currencies, spirits.. its very complex and i went to wiki endless times.

Ever since I was a kid I have written walkthroughs just to compile and organise what is often a wikis worth of information. I still write and a lot wikis provide supplementary or highly detailed information which I am extremely happy about.

Like all things, it has its pros and cons.

I have a friend that says "just play Isaac" and proceeds to talk over me and explain to me in minute detail what everything does and the interactions and like fucken, no. i'm no longer having fun if you are playing it for me. and it's a shit boring game to watch too so I can't even just sit back and let him play. some games like the slower RPGs, sure. high paced rogue likes? nah fam i'm good

Everytime I play Stardew Valley I have 16 different tabs open and a fourth of them are opened to the same page of Shanes schedule

ok no unless my math is incorrect the animal crossing dude played an average of 8.5 hours a day up until today ever since the game launched, realistically he probably AFK'd more than half of that because otherwise that is completely insane and they should go to jail

games like these are amazing tho. The amount of respect for yourself you feel when you're able to just know everything and feel that sense of accomplishment for remembering that one random thing you looked up 3 years ago. And elden ring is not a wiki game almost no one that was new to from soft games used a wiki their first playthrough

Some games really do require a wiki, but I think what this video says more than anything is that we are impatient. Just like it can be good to step away from your smart phone every now and then - I think it can also be good to commit to playing a game like terraria or tboi without using any guides.