Edge had this wonderful interview a while back about Sam Houser. I don't remember if it was for GTA4 or GTA5, but Sam was going on about how (he) had argued with the team for GTA3 that he wanted the cars to have a certain amount of gas, and that all players would have to tank their cars at a gas station inside the game.
It would add to the randomized sensation that sometimes you would rob the wrong car- low on gas, and that would make a bad situation worse, in the best luck/unlucky fashion that games like GTA is known for.
But the rest of the team disagreed and the feature never came. But I often think about that- What could have been for GTA if obligatory gas filling was a part of the experience. Checking how much fuel there was left would be important for certain missions, some missions would make you prefer a bike, or avoid big cars that drained quickly.
There is a argument for that you respect the world more. Oblivion was ruined for me because it had the worst Instant Travel System I have ever seen in a game. Unlike Guild Wars, which popularized the idea that you had to DISCOVER a location (a town, outpost, whatever) before you could instant travel to it, Oblivion let you walsh instantly to unexplored places.
Thing is, you could choose not to do that, but you want to do it, because not doing it is a handicapped waste of time. Oblivions world is a randomly generated land mass that run on speed tree. it is boring, and I cannot deal with the shitty shallow combat system. I couldn't help myself from teleporting everywhere.
Sometimes, to feel the size of the world or the impact of dying, or the consequences of wanting to do something (like turning an entire town into a personal fortress like in Fallout) there needs to be a certain amount of... I don't want to say tediousness, but some sort of obstruction. Because if everything is instantaneously, you lose interest. The world you're playing in becomes more like Second Life. There is no game, there is no "goddamit". It's more like playing a devkit were everything is perfect, and for some strange reason, like with a lot of other aspects of the human experience, we seem to work best when we mix the sour with the sweet. Too much sweetness, and it our taste buds are dulled and we become dissatisfied. Or we want more and more sweetness due to the malleable nature and constant search for novelty.
TL;DR- Sometimes we need obstructions inside games to make it feel like it is an activity being done. There is something lost in the process when you only have to press a Button (context sensitive actions) and the game does the thing for you. Ubisoft is infamous for this. Besides the small element of timing, PoP(Warrior Within started the trend) and Assassins Creed Combat is about pressing a button and seeing the character execute someone, or wall jump or do the thing. The gameplay itself is being removed from the player, as it is easier to build a game were you press a button and it do the whole thing for you.
In movie contexts, the equivalence would be the difference between the old indiana jones movies and the new one. In the old ones, Indy had to spend a lot of time even furthering the plot. a 5 minute scene is dedicated to him exploring a church, pressing stones, tapping secret doors, looking at sun beams, just to open a door.
In the new Indy movie, he goes over to a door, presses a button, and is instantly rewarded with crazy CGI scenes.
The point is, that be it in game or film, we want a build up. When we watch a character or play a character, we often mimic and feel as they do. They misunderstand when they put in QTE and Context sensitive actions everywhere. That is not the players doing. There is a unsatisfying small level of interaction.
