» Sat Mar 09, 2013 7:57 pm
I'll be honest, I don't understand your rage.
Personally, I think it's great that there's stuff like this. Not everything has to be a huge freaking dungeon complex that spans for miles. That's boring, if you ask me. I like to see a random cave, and not know if it's going to be a single room with nothing in it, or a sprawling cavern system full of monsters and mystery. Some of the best designed dungeons in the game are things that look like they're not a dungeon at all, but actually are if you figure out how to gain access. There's not many of those of course, especially compared to some of the older games, but the few that do exist are great.
It's about mood, immersion, and storytelling. Most of those caves and random dead ends you're talking about have a story behind them, if you look hard enough. Here, someone was trapped by a rockfall and desperately tried to escape only to die, so on and so forth. It doesn't have to be an exciting battle and loot filled dungeon romp. One of the few things that got nearly universal acclaims in Half Life 2 were the random stories like that you could puzzle out from otherwise empty and useless spaces. Every location has a story, and I think they should be treasured, not admonished for having no loot or much combat.
One of my favorite places in Skyrim is a small cave high in the mountains, where a single troll resides. Within the cave is an ancient corpse, with a unique 'trollbane'-esque hammer. Clearly, some ancient hero (or wannabe hero) thought the he would kill the troll with the weapon, only to be killed by it. It's somewhat ironic, really, that he was killed by that which his weapon was made to fight.