Why are modern games obsessed with parrying?

My summary, for those who don't want to watch a ten minute video:

Parrying has gotten very popular.
It works fairly well.
Not everyone wants to play a game that relies on responding to cues.
It doesn't give a feel of being able to control combat.
Overuse of one mechanic can make it unappealing.

Prime 'content'

Because that’s all that content is. Stuff to fill emptiness. I hate our timeline so much.
- The guy who made the video (Ben Croshaw) is a long time game journalist. I often prefer written things over videos as well but he's not padding his run time with a story about his grandma before he gets to the recipe or anything like that. The above bullet points get to the gist of the content but the rest of the video has examples and deeper explanations
- This is fairly benign compared to the AI generated slop which is now in the process of taking over every social media.
Not everyone wants to play a game that relies on responding to cues.

Overuse of one mechanic can make it unappealing.

I feel the same about games that rely on reactions during cutscenes or climbing. On the one hand having to be on edge all the time is annoying, but on the other, the absence of interaction can hamper suspense.

For example, I've been playing Horizon Forbidden West lately - There's a lot of climbing, and the devs love to throw a mid-climb "post you're hanging on starts to fall" gag, but with no reaction mechanic, it's pretty much always harmless and kinda feels "why bother"
It doesn't give a feel of being able to control combat.

I feel this way too often. Some combat become a simon says moment. I think replayability is reduced when bosses are designed to strict - and parrying for big damage is a huge influence here.

I think, part of it is also that it's a rather isolated feature which is fun on its own. You don't need multiple systems working together to make parrying fun. Instead, you just react in the right moment and there's your endorphins. Pretty much the hardest part about implementing it, is to make enemy attacks readable, which you likely need for dodge rolls, too. And then especially for AAA titles, which can't afford to experiment much, such an isolated feature is just a no-brainer to include.

This reads like a crutch though and reflects part of the problem: games are being treated like products and not carefully curated, cohesive experiences, which's why its consistent inclusion everywhere is being criticized.

If everyone is using the same crutch, no one should be surprised if people start complaining they're seeing the same crutch everywhere instead of interesting new ideas.
- A few years ago, I would have fully agreed with you, but having tried my hand at (hobbyist) gamedev broke those rose-tinted glasses for me. It's just extremely hard to curate gameplay mechanics.
  
  The only real way to know whether a mechanic works in your game, whether it's fun, is to implement it. That means you'll be programming for weeks and at the end of it, you might end up deciding that it actually isn't fun, so you get to rip it back out.
  This is also a somewhat linear process. If you think of another mechanic at a later point, you're not going to re-evaluate all previous mechanics to see whether a different combination would've been more fun. Instead, you just decide whether this new mechanic adds fun to your mechanic-soup or distracts from it.
  
  Point is, even as a hobbyist and idealist, with theoretically infinite time, I quickly learned to swallow my pride and appreciate when something just adds fun, whether it perfectly fits in or not. You're just not going to create the perfect game. And a game that's a sum of inconsistent, fun parts is still more fun than a coherent game that doesn't exist.
  
  Of course, this does not mean, you should include mechanics even though they're overused. That seems to rather be a result from long development cycles, where games decide to include the mechanic when it's not yet overused, e.g. when a popular game featured that mechanic, but once the game comes out, then a whole bunch of other games have come out before, which had also decided to include that same mechanic.
- Would you say the same thing about dodging in bullet hells?
  
  What OP said is right. Parrying is an easy mechanic to give dopamine, just like dodging lots of things in bullet hells.
  
  At one point, the choice for defensive mechanism aren't infinite. We usually see armor, dodge and parry/block.
  
  Parrying is clearly popular by looking at smash successes from FromSoftware where this is a key mechanic in the games.
  
  People usually complain about parrying when it isn't clear when to parry, or parrying is inconsistent. It feels cheap. The mechanic itself isn't the issue, but how it is implemented.
No no no no. No.

You ever played DOOM? And i dont mean the recent incarnations, i mean the original one.

No Parry. Only damage and more damage. And lots of endorfines. BFE.

I hate parrying.
- I'm inclined to agree on the latest release, but Doom 2016 is fucking amazing.

I love Yahtzee and have since a hundred years back when a friend introduced me to him via...Amnesia or something like that (then had me play his bomb ass adventure game - the first one I ever played). I am so thankful that he posted a video on this. Cause these modern games going hard on timing based hyper-tough combat have pretty much made the inaccessible to me. Everyone has gone gaga over these modern souls-like games. I just don't think I have the brain for quick responsive reactions. That's okay, cause not every game is made for everyone. I do however love bigguns, body horror and phantasms. I have seen the majestic and creepy things in games like Elden Ring, and would love to smash the hey out of them. I just don't think there's a chance I could ever "get gud" enough to play to the expected parameters of this type of game when I can't even do quick time events right. First mil to the person who can bring Soulslikes to the common man! Until then, I'll play my turn-based clicky games with a dumb smile.

I had to give up on Soulslike games. It's not that I can't do it, it's that every boss makes me feel frustrated for 30 mins to an hour and I'm cursing a blue streak, pissed off when I'm supposed to be having fun. Not worth it to me or my blood pressure.
- Yeah, this is how I feel sort of in general. I think as I get older. If I am not having fun, it doesn't really seem worth the venture. No matter how pretty something is, or how good everyone says something is. I also think often a lot of these games aren't really designed with a player like me in mind. Which is fine, cause I suppose I am a minority in gaming. I just figured if someone could make a Soulslike that mobile gamers could play (easy enough to adapt) they'd make a mint.
- That's a fine take. If you realize you're not having fun, there's no shame in stopping. For me, the dopamine rush of finally killing a boss after several attempts is worth it. Although the number of attempts I'm willing to put in is quite limited (~15), and I have quit several games after hitting a road block.
- It's funny, I think soulslike games gave me a lot more patience and endurance, I remember several times fighting a boss for an hour+ over and over until I "get it" then when you finally win... The victory feels sooooo earned.
- I've tried a couple soulslikes and I think I could get into them but it seems like they need a decent chunk of time dedicated to them before you can have any fun. I did enjoy a more stripped down version that I found in Titan Souls though-- it's a boss rush game with simple and tight mechanics, so you can jump in and try a boss or two without any other lead up.
  
  https://youtu.be/afIZ1AS7BAY?t=111
Dude, I'm fucking AWFUL at parrying - to the point that it's just a mechanic I simply don't interact with at all - in Soulslikes (and I'm not great at dodging tbh either) and I've made it through the majority of the bosses in Elden Ring base (haven't gotten the DLC), ALL of them in DS3, and I'm currently working through DS2. (Plus both the Star Wars Jedi Souls games completely solo, which are honestly just My First Dark Souls with a SW skin lol)

If at first you don't succeed, roll a caster and summon people lol
- I beat every boss in base game Elden Ring without parrying once, using melee only, and no ashes or player summons either (I summoned NPCs a few times if it was an NPC I liked or an interesting story, which meant summoning them for Morgott, Fire Giant, and the two gargoyles). I even got Malenia, eventually! I don't say this as a brag, because I am NOT good at these games. I say it to say that if I can do it, basically anyone can.
  
  I think it's a matter of mindset. You've got to go in psychologically prepared to fail a over and over again, and you've got to be analytical enough to figure out why you failed. If you're really struggling with a boss, maybe don't even try to attack for a couple of runs, just focus on figuring out when to dodge and when you have windows. Maybe your current weapon isn't the right one for the job because it's a bit too slow to hit this boss or it does a damage type that the boss resists. Maybe you just need to go somewhere else for a bit and come back with more vigour and a better weapon. Elden Ring is really good for letting you do that.
  
  Obviously that's not going to be a process that everyone enjoys, and if someone doesn't enjoy it that's totally fair enough. It's a game, we're all just here to have fun. But the actual skill floor is one almost everyone can achieve if they want to and approach it ready to experiment and learn
- I think of the lot of them the two that would be the most interesting to me would be Dark Souls and Elden Ring. I didn't have an X-box and I left gaming for quite some time. So I didn't even know about any of these games until I came back. I like the idea of sneaking around a castle slowly. I liked it in Ico at least. So I figured it might be like that. Idk too much about it though.

The funny thing about Clair Obscur is that because they made parrying "mandatory" people now focus on all-hit runs as the hard thing to do instead of no-hit runs. So they're proving that it is actually not mandatory and that the game is really a normal JRPG that is just a bit hard in the beginning.

It's a core game mechanic

This like complaining that jumping is required to beat Mario

Cuz it's a fun mechanic

It can be, if it's implemented well (like Sekiro). A lot of games just do it lazily to hide that their combat doesn't have a lot going on (Doom The Dark Ages for example).

To make people who can't parry complain about parrying.

That's not it though. No one complained about parrying in Bayonetta or Ninja Gaiden II because this is where the mechanic belongs. But when you start seeing it in Resident Evil or Doom, or even new IPs like Slitterhead, you have to start questioning if combat designers are being pushed to ride a trend or if they're being lazy and using parrying as a crutch.

I think no discussion about parrying is complete without mentioning Ultrakill. It strikes a good balance between being usable without being an auto win button.

In Ultrakill, besides from dealing extra damage and gaining style points, parrying enemy attacks is one of the most effective ways to regain health. Low on health? Find an attack to punch and you’re back in action.

This creates a risk reward system. Committing to a parry is risky. If you miss you lose health - and it’s easy to miss when there’s 10 other things going on at the same time. It’s not always easy to find an opening to commit to.

It also had a bug in early development where the player could also parry their own shotgun bullets if timed correctly. This was developed an intended mechanic, so Ultrakill is the game where punching your own shotgun bullet makes them go faster.

Didn't Furi do this in 2016? I'd be surprised if it was the first game to tie parrying to health gain either. In the slew of action games that came out in the PS2 era, someone must've done it.
- Pretty sure this kind of game mechanic (expose yourself to an enemy attack for a skill check that regains health) can be traced back at least to the Dodgeball DLC for Outside™. Game mechanics are like TV tropes, they echo what came before them, almost without exception

When dabbling in fencing and (watching) Historical European Martial Arts, I find parrying pretty satisfying IRL.

Somewhat related, parrying system is almost a requirement in many VR games to prevent melee from devolving into just twisting your wrist fast to dice everything in front of you.

If you ask me, if done correctly it's very satisfying when parying, feels like a rhythm game.

I agree..

It's very rewarding

I like how it's used in the new Indiana Jones game. You can approach fights like a hack-n-slash and just wail on people, but occasionally they dodge or parry, and you need to react. But fights aren't about waiting to parry like Jason Bourne, it's just a useful ability.

Because Dark Souls made money

Why are modern games obsessed with parrying? | Semi-Ramblomatic