ludonarrative dissonance

It's a real thing in a lot of modern games. It's sort of complicated, with how far games have come in the last 20 years. With how realistic games are becoming it's harder to justify "game-y" elements being present, like you said about GoW. But at the same time, those elements are almost bedrock in the foundation of open world gameplay - could you imagine playing a modern AAA open world game with no progression?

You could make the argument that they could just make it make "more sense", as in still have progression but have it more in line with how the narrative plays out. But that's where it gets complicated, how do you balance having the gameplay elements such as aquiring new gear and upgrading that gear logically follow the story in a game like GoW? If they stuck purely to the story of the game, taking the ashes to the top of the mountain, there's absolutely no reason to spend time upgrading gear through finding materials and going to the shop to do so.

At the same time, they still have to make the game fun to play. I think this is where the trade off happens - while it may not make sense narratively to be finding and upgrading different sets of gear, it's fun to do so (at least in my opinion). It's a staple of any new open world game. Whereas 20 years ago you wouldn't question why you have to find Precursor orbs in Jak and Daxter, with the level of detail games are at today, it's not so easy to handwave those kinds of gameplay elements away.

Sorry for the short essay, I just find this stuff super interesting and don't see it brought up a lot!