Do you still enjoy open worlds, or are you tired of the formula?
Do you still enjoy open worlds, or are you tired of the formula?
Do you still enjoy open worlds, or are you tired of the formula?
Hate being waffly again but... I think it depends? What counts as an open world? Are non-linear Metroidvanias and Soulslikes "open world games"? I'm not tired of those yet.
In terms of both GTA and Ubisoft style open worlds they have started to wear a little thin. I think I'm at the point where I haven't yet come to terms with the fact that I'm maybe over them. So starting to play one occasionally still sounds good to me, but they tend to wear me out before I'm finished.
Sandbox style games like a Bethesda game or - for me - STALKER still has an appeal, and I do play them occasionally. I had a good time with STALKER 2. But I probably spend less time on them now than the hundreds of hours I used to put into STALKER: Anomaly and Fallout: New Vegas.
It needs to be said that it might just be a case of game length too. Open world games tend to be long slogs, and I find that with age I'm becoming more and more drawn to shorter and more concise experiences.
All I know is Outer Worlds was not how you do an open world. Great game, but felt kinda skeletal.
That's actually what I liked about it. Every area had enough going on that it didn't feel empty, but there were still interesting stories/quests.
It effectively felt like a pared down Bethesda game that you could hit a majority of the content in 40-60 hours.
But I also get sidetracked in large open world games, get bored, then drop them before every finishing the main quest.
i planed to do such a post. I really don't like open world and almost every game that switched to open world formular got worse in my opinion. In my opinion a game that is well deisign but linear of half linear can be alot more interresting than a repetetive playground.
I'd say witcher 3 was pretty grand. halo infinite on the other hand? oof
I really like the older Zelda formula of get new power » open new area » revisit previously hidden parts of old areas. That's the ideal for me.
That said, open world works best when it has three factors:
The ne plus ultra of this is, IMO, Enderal, but Morrowind was also great and Fallout 3 was pretty good as well.
So metroidvanias
I like a variety of games, including open worlds when done well. I loved the open worlds of GTA IV, GTA V, Skyrim, and a bunch of others.
But I also like focused games where you follow a set path.
It really depends on how much the game focuses on a strong, defined storyline that requires moving the player along the path. The ones I mentioned above do have overarching stories, but having the option to just go around and explore balances out the feeling of being strung along an interactive movie.
It really depends on the world building and atmosphere as well as if it even makes sense to be open world. Some games make a linear storyline but then let you go anywhere so they can boast open world, other games make their game world feel very alive and a linear experience wouldn't make sense. For example, a game like skyrim makes more sense as open world IMO. Aside from the intro pushing you into the main questline, skyrim is your oyster. You could immediately go join the thieves guild, become an assassin, or focus on building a homestead. This game makes sense to be open world. Rumors of the various guilds exist, there is racism, a civil war numerous settlements that are always populated regardless of story progress which makes the world feel more alive.
On the flip side a game like call of duty makes less sense to be open world. The levels are linearly designed, the main story is really the only story, and it kinda mirrors real life, in the sense that a tactical team won't just leave the current mission to go to a store to hand in some other quest, they get in, do their work, and get out.
One in the middle is like borderlands. It is a semiopen world in the sense that you can return anywhere thats been unlocked, but until late game it doesn't make sense to do that because the enemies won't be leveled to your level and unless grinding for specific drops, the loot isn't worth going back for. For the most part the world is fairly static, it feels like it exists for you and not for the npcs in the game. I think borderlands could have been mostly successful without being open world as that wasn't really a core part of the gaming experience.
I think that it can be enjoyable if done well but most games don't really think it through and don't do it well.
Is the world large and empty just for the sake of being open world? Are there meaningful traversal mechanics at the short, medium, and long range? Are there interesting locations, missions, and pick ups that make exploring interesting? Do diverse systems interact in random ways to produce unique and exciting emergent game play moments?
All of these things for me can add up to an amazing experience, or a boring slog.
Ghost recon wild lands, far cry 2, fallout 3, new Vegas, GTA in general, elden ring, breadth of the wild, assassin's creed black flag, just cause 2 and 3, are all games that for me meet or exceed the goals and are some of my absolute favorites.
For most games I have started to become bored of open worlds. Half the time it feels like the quests are all just go from point A to B and return or kill people before returning from point B.
If quests were more dynamic I wouldn't have a problem, but I doubt we'll see the sort of dynamic I'm talking about any time soon. The type of dynamic where quests are basically generated as you are getting them but still manage to have multiple ways to approach it.
The problem of open world games imo is that often they seem to just stretch the map without filling in the new areas, much less filling with engaging stuff. Taking as example Final Fantasy XII and Gotham Knights, which I played back to back, FFXII is far more of an open world game that engages with how much you can do, while Gotham Knights is basically Arkham City's city stretched out and with worse character movement to put salt in the wound.
Fallout 3 and New Vegas are the only open world games I have completed. They are great.
Skyrim is good but I am not sure if I will ever finish it.
Hogwarts Legacy is so bland I gave up after a few
hours.
I have only started Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey. The problem is that I have very limited gaming time and I feel like I should finish shorter games first.
Does Mass Effect count as open world?
I still like them, though they aren't as novel as when computers really got the resources to open up the world.
For non-procedurally-generated-world games (e.g. Minecraft-type games), though, they require a large budget to do well, and not many games have the required budget to fill a large map.