Open World Games

Scráib

I have a theory on open world games: Essentially these games are all about freedom of the player and the ultimate answer to that feeling of "But wouldn't it be cool if we could also do this..." that we felt playing the games of the SNES/NES era when games were constrained by the limits of hardware at the time. The freedom to explore, to do missions when you want and often how you preferred to approach them is what makes these games so appealing. At the very least, that's what makes open world so appealing to me.

I think that some developers are losing sight of that though. There are two main examples I can think of: Fallout 4 and Far Cry 5.

In fallout I was plagued by the minutemen missions. All I wanted to do was explore but every few minutes the game would force a time-sensitive quest into my log to go save a settlement under attack. It grew so irritating that I even heard of PC mods being made to switch off all minutemen quests.

In Far Cry 5 you had the kidnap missions. Missions that, though short, you were forced into playing. You could be doing anything when suddenly your character would be taken and forced to play these boring, slow, annoying quests that were only there supposedly to give character development to the story's antagonists.

I had high hopes for both games but this tendency in open world games now to force quests onto the player is frustrating and ruins the experience for me. Has anyone else encountered this?

Potential-Monke

Yes! It's why I traded in FC5 after a few days.

On the flip side, you have games that are true to the open world formula. The Witcher 3, the recent God of War (to an extent), Skyrim, to name but a few. There are so many games coming out that it would be madness to stick with a game that is not ticking your boxes. I've great faith in the upcoming Cyberpunk, the next God of War instalment, Just Cause 4. Previously, I would have played a game until I finished it regardless of how I was enjoying it. I don't have to anymore. It's great!

SeantheMan

GTA is your man then.

Most people play it as just a sandbox and don't care about the story at all or sidequest.
Just drive around or go and do what you want.

The most recent Zelda is one of the best examples of Open world I've ever played.

ShadowHearth

To be honest, definition of sandbox is very bent right now. Games like Fallout and FarCry are not sandbox games at all, at least from old timer eyes like me. A lot of these games are not even technically open world as you are still stringed to do particular paths. Some games feel like liniar games, just with levels glued together in to one map and you just have multiple entrance to a mission/quests.

Rust is a sandbox game. You do your own survival and you build up yourself. No quests, no goals, only the ones you set yourself.
Eve online is definition of sandbox game. Here is a tiny ship in this massive world, now do whatever you hell want. If I had time I would be playing it all over again.

pixelburp

Ah the hours I spent just wandering along the roads of Skyrim, taking in the scenery while making my own adventures. Before the Ubisoftification of open world games, robbing them of their character or organic sense of space & discovery. The Far Cry games are so tediously rote in comparison with the sheer joy of adventure you get with the Elder Scrolls or Fallout games. Any game that makes me think "wonder what's over that hill?" without knowing the answer is "just another guard post / tower".

I had been wondering: beyond the big franchises, are there many worthwhile Indy open world games out there? It seems like a more demanding & expensive genre to build on a micro-budget, so maybe that accounts for the poverty of independent explore-em-ups on the scale and tone of the likes of Skyrim...

J. Marston

Ubisoftification can still work. Horizon doesn't deviate much from Ubisoft's open worlds but still made it work brilliantly.

TerrorFirmer

I don't think that Fallout 4 deserves to be labelled that way, you're not 'forced' to do the Minutemen missions.

I ignored most of the requests and just played how I wanted to play. I've already 200 hours in the game and I haven't finished the main quest, most of it was just spent wandering around the map exploring and killing and doing random small quests. The first 100 hours, I didn't even do any main storyline quests at all - just explored the map.

I don't really understand the gripe - in those 200 hours I've done a scant handful of Minutemen missions in total. That's the beauty of Fallout - if you don't want to do it, you don't have to. You can play the game any way you'd like, I think it's unfair to say it's linear or non-sandbox.

I never personally got the hype for Far Cry. I found them tedious and largely boring (haven't played 5 though), empty 'worlds' that barely scratch the surface compared to the likes of Skyrim/Fallout.

Skerries

When I got my first 16-bit machine (Amiga) and the power that it had compared to the old 8-bits I was blown away.
2 games stick out in my mind were Ultima VI and Hunter due to the freedom to just go anywhere and do anything I wanted
I don't think I ever played them right as I just spent my time wandering around just exploring and being amazed at how much detail there was , well maybe not in Hunter as much as that had very basic 3d modelling

Sephiroth_dude

I love Far cry games but 5 was an absolute chore by the end, its stems from the side missions not being one bit interesting and all very samey, same AC Origins, beautiful world to explore but the side missions for the most part were pure kack!

Retr0gamer

J. Marston wrote: »

Ubisoftification can still work. Horizon doesn't deviate much from Ubisoft's open worlds but still made it work brilliantly.

I kind of have to disagree. While the minute to minute gameplay was fun I felt an awful lot of fatigue at about the 20 minute mark where the game just was not holding my attention due to just how rote it was.

I thought I didn't like open world games until Breath of the Wild came along and reminded me that I actually liked open world games, just not the ubisoft formula.

BotW differs from other modern open world games as it doesn't tell you were to go, you go exploring and make your own fun. It's the joy of discovery that is missing from the likes of Horizon and the ubi games what I love. An open world that lets the player make their own fun rather than the guiding hand of a designer telling them to go to the next point on a map. Its the same freedom that older open world games like GTA3 gave you where you could and were often encouraged to complete missions however you wanted. Now in GTA the world becomes a scripted instance and it's just so boring without the randomness that an open world brings.

I really hope developers learn from BotW and start applying it's teachings to their games.

Potential-Monke

In fairness, HZD was the first in the series, so it had to build the world and inform you about it. I'm sure HZD can go the open world route, similar to Fallout, where there are missions, but can have a massive open world to explore. Given that a lot of games are going full RPG these days, i've no doubt HZD will go that route at some stage, and maybe give the open world game you are looking for.

Then again, maybe not.

Retr0gamer

It's more the lack of utilisation of the open world that bothers me. It's like an inconvenience you have to cross to get to the next marker on the map and tick another thing off the checklist. All that freedom and player agency is just under utilised as an after thought. It's like it's open world because it's what the market dictates and if you just strung the story missions together in a linear fashion there would be very little of the overall experience.

The difference with the likes of Zelda or Minecraft is the actual game is the open world. It's about enjoying and exploring the vast sandbox put in front of you. They're a playground of ideas and systems and it's just fun to explore and mess about in them.

Horizon is very far from the worst offender but I'd love to see more games where you are given an objective. How you get there and achieve it is not a set scripted sequence but up to the player to figure out. The original Crackdown is probably the purest distillation of this and Zelda comes close with just the one objective of kill ganon and 4 optional sub objectives.

Jordan 199

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

I love Far cry games but 5 was an absolute chore by the end, its stems from the side missions not being one bit interesting and all very samey, same AC Origins, beautiful world to explore but the side missions for the most part were pure kack!

The side missions had me burned out. For the next Ubisoft game I'll play, well I will just crack on with the main missions and leave the side stuff behind.

TheValeyard

Jordan 199 wrote: »

The side missions had me burned out. For the next Ubisoft game I'll play, well I will just crack on with the main missions and leave the side stuff behind.

It used to be with pre ordering get more sidequests as a selling point. Now its just meh.

TheValeyard

I loved Skyrims open world. Just randomly walking around discovering everything. Its awesome. Like walking into a bar, getting drunk, waking up somewhere far away with a giants toe in your inventory.

Sephiroth_dude

Jordan 199 wrote: »

The side missions had me burned out. For the next Ubisoft game I'll play, well I will just crack on with the main missions and leave the side stuff behind.

I remember one of the Dev's saying they would witcher 3 quality, I shouldn't have believed it .