Gaming inventories are both a blessing and a hideous curse.
Let's dispense with the 'blessing' part of this quickly. Inventories exist to allow the player freedom to collect all manner of gubbins to aid them in their quests. Developers usually put a limit on said inventory (be it weight, quantity or some other measure) to force the player to specialise in a skill or to play strategically instead of becoming monstrously overpowered. All very useful stuff.
Having read that description, you might now be wondering where the curse could possibly lie. The curse comes when weight-based inventory meets imagination.
The developers of Skyrim, Fallout 3 et al probably forgot to include people like me in the beta testing stage. People who decide that their character is just the sort of jerk who would take a coffee cup (or related trophy) from each of her kills. People who think that if a skeleton went to the trouble of keeping some loose change and a teddy bear about his person, then perhaps he knew something we didn't. People who would rather get rid of weapons than their painstakingly gathered collection of hats or mobile library of scorched books.
Eventually - or rather, immediately - you become overburdened. From this point onward you have to implement a strict one-in, one-out policy and every new item must be subjected to intense scrutiny before it can be shoved into the magical backpack or whatever receptacle you have been given.
Occasionally someone sitting next to you on the sofa may mistakenly think they can be of some assistance.
During the third such trawl through my Skyrim inventory for things I could get rid of a friend decided to help.
"Do you actually need that bear pelt?"
What a stupid question - of course I did.
"Well, you have two of them. Just get rid of one."
Were they mad? What if I needed a spare?
"How about all those bizarre home-concocted potions that drain something vital while restoring your magic?"
I didn't even bother to dignify that with a response.
So what's the answer? I'm not entirely sure how viable it is but I suggest a two tier system with a 'things that are useful' limited inventory for your plasma rifles and your quest items and an entirely separate Mary Poppins-esque sack for everything else.
This way you'll never have to choose between your armour and your spoon collection again.
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This blog originally appeared on GMA-nominated gaming site Ready Up.