Been replaying the likes of Starcraft 2 and C&C Tiberium Wars recently, and it struck me how much of a set cadence modern RTS games have in their single player campaigns. In earlier games and games designed by people who take into account player agency, you were basically given an objective to accomplish as you saw fit. In modern RTS games, they’re more-or-less designed around the new unit showcase paradigm, where each mission will introduce a new unit, and the mission is built around said unit’s abilities. Once I realised that, a lot of the harder missions become cakewalks where it’s very easy to cheese them since the developers didn’t take into account that I may not want to do things their way; and missions I found difficult earlier became much easier.