people completely forgot what the Adventure tag used to stand for.
it used to mean that part of the core gameplay loop is solving environmental puzzles using various items.
that was a constant part of the genre up until the PS2 era... and then people started using the term Adventure as some kind of standard cop-out genre tag for games they didn't know how to classify.
GTA is apparently an adventure game...
Adventure, be it Text Adventure, Graphics Adventure (Point and Click Adventure falls under that umbrella) or Action Adventure, stood for something very straight forward but now it's just a blanked classification of almost every game that isn't specifically a Sports game or Multiplayer Shooter.
lets list a few games and see if they fit the category Adventure game based on the original meaning, so a game where a major part of the core loop is solving environmental puzzles. having like 4 puzzles in a 20h game wouldn't qualify, having RPG elements doesn't make your game an RPG, and same goes with adventure game elements.
= Adventure
= Not an Adventure
= Debatable
I'll list games that I have seen people categorise as Adventure games in the past:
-Immortals Fenyx Rising
-GTA5
-every 3D Zelda
-Monkey Island
-The Walking Dead
-Darksiders
-Assassin's Creed
-Red Dead Redemption
-Metroid Prime
-Uncharted
-The Last of Us
-Resident Evil 1
-Resident Evil 4
-Classic Tomb Raider
-Reboot Tomb Raider
-A Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy
-Tales from the Borderlands
the thing is, if we just throw the term adventure game around at everything that moves, why even use it in the first place when all it ends up meaning is "not a sports game or competitive shooter", which is what it currently basically amounts to.
it's fucking sad that if you are searching for an adventure game nowadays because you're a fan of them, you'll have ro ask people if it's a "game like Zelda" if you search for an Action Adventure, "is it like Monkey Island?" if you want a graphics adventu or something along those lines because searching for adventure games online will give you back 90% of the damn market as a suggestion.