Atomic Robo has a great skill list too, yes. Short, in my sweetspot of two through seven skills. I like them a lot better than the approaches. Apocalypse World also has a good list. Hot sharp hard weird. And I liked Air Fire Earth Water too. Calling it modes or abilities or capabilities or possibilites or trainings or nature or elements is semiotics since they all work just like skills. All of these that I like have skills based on what you do, not how you approach it.
Street Fighter II on the Genesis (Mega Drive) three button controller was approach based. You could fight hard or fast or medium. What you actually did (punches vs kicks) you had to toggle with the start button. To me that is completely backwards and a constant uphill struggle. Does it have advantages? Yes. Is it possible or even somewhat easy to get around the drawbacks? Also yes. But are the advantages worth the drawbacks? For me no.
When using approaches you’re saying everyone is equally good at everything. C-3PO can make the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs. You’re saying that Fate thanks to the aspects and invocations and boosts already provide enough granularity that you don’t need skills on top of it. Everyone is doing everything at +0. Skill-less Fate. A completely workable idea if you want to simplify. You removed something that had some value but you gained simplicity. Fair enough.
Then adding approaches back on top recomplicates the game and brings it back to what’s on the symbolic layer exactly as complicated as skills were, no, more complicated even if there’s even a non-zero amount of negotiation needed. (Not saying there necessarily is that bad of a problem there but even a tiny grain of sand is perceivable.) So you lost something that had some value (differentiated character capability) but you gained nothing in simplicity. And what you gained instead in terms of narrativium is a positive, yes, it is cool to say you’re good you’re doing things flashily or cleverly, but, it’s also a negative in how it limits and shapes what characters do. Do I really want one character to be better at fighting or better at lore than another? Maybe not. Do I really want one character better at being flashy, better at being careful than another? Definitively not.
Bringing it back to the video game metaphor: Mario attempts to blast fire when you press B and attempts to jump when you press A. Makes sense. The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman basics: one key for each function. Approach Mario goes wild when you press B or goes careful when you press A. But what he actually does is random. A fun QWOP-py, Default Dan style experimental game? Absolutely yes. Conveying a feeling of character identification where the rules are your interface to being in the game world? Not nearly as well as the basic one key per function version.
Fate has a lot of “meta”-based rules (“once per session you can…”, “at the end of each scene you…”, “discuss the compel or concession with the table…”) and to be fair to approaches, they fit perfectly in with these. They afford author stance. Reminds you that this character likes to primarily be careful, this other character likes to primarily be flashy. This stance is a painpoint between me and Fate. I like rules that afford me not being in the writer’s room in change of one character but rules that make the interface, the “gloves”, between me and the character be super thin. To let me dream about the game world and spell the birch leaves and the torch smoke.
Now, most good story games, to be fair to them, manage a miracle. They are set up as “you are in the writer’s room not in a sim” but take step after step after step to increase bleed, to let me fully feel with the character in spite of the fact that I am writing the character. That is awesome and I love those games for it. I love playing those games and I admire those games for pulling off that feat. They do work and they’re great. I’ve cried over what happens in Microscope or Fiasco. I’ve felt myself being there fully and identifying with the character.
But adventure games live there. They don’t need bleed because they start out already fully submerged. You’re walking up those stairs to the Lost City pyramid watching for traps every step of the way. You’re counting your torches. You’re there.