C.Olimar788
Member
Arguments about pace are fair, and I blame the cross-media example on the fact that my head is Star Wars All the Time right now. In any case...This is some misguided parallelism you're making here. A movie has a completely different type of fruition compared to a game where pace isn't as paramount of a factor where everything has to wrap up neatly in around two hours.
There's no heavy obligation to having internal coherence in a world where games have those nice things called menus that let you select what mode you want to play, all the while not subtracting from any main or story mode. Hence, removing such game modes basically boils down to self censorship.
Options included in a game can absolutely take away from the game overall. For a good example off the top of my head, look at Spec Ops: The Line. It includes a multiplayer mode, and that multiplayer mode inherently runs against the theme and tone of the rest of the game. Most people would agree (including the devs, last I checked!) that cutting that mode would benefit the overall experience.
For a more hyperbolic example, let's say you buy a Kirby game and there is an optional mode in some menu or another where the game presents to you a large-breasted human version of Kirby and you can make her pose as her boobs jiggle gratuitously. Would the inclusion or exclusion of this mode truly not impact the overall game?