Combat as the Default Mechanical Anchor

Discussion

We have seen this cycle play out every few years. A studio promises a deep political simulation or a nuanced social drama; then, three hours in, you are managing a cooldown timer for a fireball. It reminds me of the mid-2010s push for non-lethal paths that usually just resulted in a different animation for the same knockout mechanic. The result was almost always the same: the pacifist run was not a distinct gameplay system, but rather a puzzle about how to avoid the combat triggers. The narrative claims the world is complex, but the gameplay confirms that the only real currency is damage per second. It seems there is a persistent fear that a 40 hour experience cannot survive without a combat loop to anchor the pacing. Either the mechanics are too shallow to support a purely social or investigative loop, or developers simply do not trust us to stay engaged without a health bar to deplete. Are there any examples of games that successfully replaced the combat loop with something equally sustainable for a full-length experience, or is violence a mandatory mechanical anchor for the medium?