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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2021 7:30:30 GMT -5
Since open worlds in video games have become such a prevalent part of the medium I thought it would be interesting to have a discussion about them. I have two parts to this topic I think are interesting to discuss: - - The potential benefits and pitfalls of open world structure (discussion of the overall 'genre') - Specific games you've played and how well the world is implemented
I'm going to start on the first part and go into specific examples in later posts.
In terms of potential issues that are come across regularly I have a few:
- Exposure of the weakness of the gameplay. By this I mean that some of these open world games tend to have a feeling of developers running before they are able to walk. The open environment is implemented whilst doing nothing to compliment the gameplay, or the play is so basic that world interaction is barely existent making the product feel basic.
- 'Checklist' feel causes loss of 'immersion' - This is a complaint I see a lot. I think it will depend on the game, but ultimately many games include a list in order to aid the player in not feeling lost. I think the issue comes with these checkpoints being repetitive tasks rather than being related to individual side quests. Generally though, this takes some players out of the adventure since it isn't very believable.
- Bloated feel that comes with developers wanting to ensure the world is full of things to do.
And some positives I came up with:
- Player freedom is ordinarily much greater. Being able to handle tasks in their own order will allow the player to feel part of the story.
- There is potential for much greater scope.
- There is a sense of discovery that comes along with going on your own adventure. Developers can place things out of the players way that they may or may not come across, and these moments of discovery can feel special.
- Adds a greater sense of place.
Do you have any thoughts on the points I've suggested? Do you have any more pros and cons? And are there specific examples you can point to in handling different elements of open world implementation well?
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Apr 26, 2021 13:26:30 GMT -5
Something that I feel is very cool and underrated about the realm of open world games is how they often give you the ability to make them as boring as possible, even if the game is normally designed to give you either lots to do or to be constantly exciting. I was chatting with some friends on Discord a few months back, and one of them talked about he'd play Far Cry 5 to go on nature walks or fishing. FC5 is normally never discussed for those reasons, but he took the game's take on countryside Americana as an excuse to walk around and pass the time just doing really mundane things, and the way he described it made me want to play it at some point.
It's something I've frequently done over the years with my favourite open world games. Everyone talks about swinging around the streets of New York in Spider-Man 2 and nothing else (which I've done plenty of times), but I particularly liked wandering or driving around Hong Kong in Sleeping Dogs and just taking in details like people popping up umbrellas when it started to rain, sitting outside the local park café, or having innocuous little conversations. Something I did a lot last year when playing Just Cause 2 was just picking a point on the opposite end of the gigantic map and driving my way over, while listening to either Podtoid or the music of Hiroshi Sato. No action, no grapples or parachuting, just me and the winding roads of Panau.
There's a certain amount of detail that will end up in your open world, no matter how bare bones the game is otherwise, through sheer necessity alone. And I feel that detail can help make the world an environment where you have the ability to simply exist, doing little to nothing at all and without any kind of expectation weighing on you. As someone who often gets overwhelmed by sensory overload or by how many things I feel I should do (most of which tend to be stuff I decided to make myself do), I can't describe how comforting that can be to boot up a game like Just Cause 2 or Sleeping Dogs and pass the time just existing for a while.
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Post by shelverton on Apr 26, 2021 13:52:18 GMT -5
In open world games I feel like I only ever search for the highest point (skyscraper, mountain, tower...) and then attempt to throw myself off it. After that I feel like i’m done with the game.
Open world games were such a wet dream as a kid in the 90’s, but then when they came true I could rarely get into them. Morrowind and Vice City are the exceptions cause it all felt new back then.
I still haven’t played Breath of the Wild so perhaps that’s the game that will change my mind? It seems cozy, inviting and exciting, not at all Ubisoftish.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2021 15:24:15 GMT -5
Something that I feel is very cool and underrated about the realm of open world games is how they often give you the ability to make them as boring as possible, even if the game is normally designed to give you either lots to do or to be constantly exciting. I was chatting with some friends on Discord a few months back, and one of them talked about he'd play Far Cry 5 to go on nature walks or fishing. FC5 is normally never discussed for those reasons, but he took the game's take on countryside Americana as an excuse to walk around and pass the time just doing really mundane things, and the way he described it made me want to play it at some point.
It's something I've frequently done over the years with my favourite open world games. Everyone talks about swinging around the streets of New York in Spider-Man 2 and nothing else (which I've done plenty of times), but I particularly liked wandering or driving around Hong Kong in Sleeping Dogs and just taking in details like people popping up umbrellas when it started to rain, sitting outside the local park café, or having innocuous little conversations. Something I did a lot last year when playing Just Cause 2 was just picking a point on the opposite end of the gigantic map and driving my way over, while listening to either Podtoid or the music of Hiroshi Sato. No action, no grapples or parachuting, just me and the winding roads of Panau.
There's a certain amount of detail that will end up in your open world, no matter how bare bones the game is otherwise, through sheer necessity alone. And I feel that detail can help make the world an environment where you have the ability to simply exist, doing little to nothing at all and without any kind of expectation weighing on you. As someone who often gets overwhelmed by sensory overload or by how many things I feel I should do (most of which tend to be stuff I decided to make myself do), I can't describe how comforting that can be to boot up a game like Just Cause 2 or Sleeping Dogs and pass the time just existing for a while.
That was a really nice post Apollo. Thanks for taking the time to write it. This sense of 'existing' within a game (I call it 'dicking about') is something I see that works well in the genre. I've found games set in more real world environments to have handled this better. Particularly this is why I enjoyed the GTA games on PS2 so much. More recently I have revisited some of them to play the missions and it just isn't the strong point, but driving around, just seeing what there is to see and do is what was so interesting about them. Shenmue is another one. There was this sense to the game of living within the world that was created. The boredom you mentioned, that I was fulfilling myself with every day tasks; the mundanity of it all helped to create an atmosphere where I truly felt a part of the world Sega had created. Being able to exist in a world that could be 'boring' was what made it more real, and something that made the game more evocative. One thing I will add that in the open worlds which give me the greatest sense of place, of existing, I never use fast travel features. That takes me out of the world somehow, and travelling naturally feels more true to the spirit of the game. shelverton - Breath of the Wild does take cues from Ubisoft to some degree, and also Elder Scrolls. The game does a lot of things more interestingly than a Ubisoft game, but I think the standout difference maker is that Nintendo are masters of creating handcrafted level design for the player to interact with. Generally this is an area that most developers seem to be weak at and it is commonplace that the worlds aren't built in a way that we can interact with them interestingly (if at all) and don't give the player reason to react differently in varying areas across the landscapes. BotW of course brings this handcrafted feeling. Every part of the level layout feels like it was thought through and is done so in such a way to create dynamic gameplay where the user must think how to react to a given situation. Everything is created as a puzzle. This kind of attention to the world layout means that every part feels fresh until you have explored the game in it's entirety.
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Post by spanky on Apr 27, 2021 5:57:13 GMT -5
Not necessarily a pro or con, and I don't think you can attribute it entirely to this, but the scope of open world games has been a bit of a genre killer for some smaller genres.
Billiards/pool games used to be a common sight. Why would you really need these when every GTA has fairly decent pool minigame? Likewise, Crazy Taxi was a fairly healthy and popular series...but GTA basically has Crazy Taxi as optional side missions.
Open world games are very hit and miss for me- there is no telling if I am going to find one of them compelling enough to stick with it. Time is a big factor - I loved the first Red Dead, but when the sequel came out a couple years back, my thought was "I don't have time for this." Like, I played PS4 Spiderman and enjoyed it quite a bit but I dropped it at the endgame because I figured I had seen everything worthwhile. On the other hand, I loved Breath of the Wild, played the whole thing and even made it pretty far in hard mode. I picked up Shadow of War (the LotR one) for free and only made it a couple of hours into the game before I got bored.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Apr 27, 2021 10:23:48 GMT -5
I haven't really played enough of them to contribute that much, at least not in the GTA, AC or ES molds which seem the most popular since GTA 3. But that's a good list of pros and cons.
I think if basic traversal is fun or not is basically the first pre-requisite for me enjoying one, which I guess is why I tend to prefer more non-linear MVs or Spyro 2/Banjo-Tooie-style games over the aformentioned style. Otherwise it either needs to be an Adventure game or RPG with interactive story and character interaction, have great combat or puzzles, and not have too much dead space to make up for it.
I can say that I prefer how Spider-Man 2 (PS2 etc) handled some side missions over Hulk: Ultimate Destruction in that you would encounter people needing help and could choose to do so or not while traveling, instead of going up to a marker, choosing yes and getting teleported to a separate area which is really the same as the hub area, then back after finishing the mission. And where the markers are also all visible from the get go so you don't even explore to find them. But in both of these I would've liked aspects of the side mission to be more incorporated into the main progression, and for that main progression to be a bit less linear than it is in those games.
Persistent, living worlds is something I'm interested in and which seems to still not be that common though I've probably missed some newer games that do it. In Star Control 2 (1992), the survival of some races as well as the whole galaxy depended on how you went through the game and certain decisions made as there are certain time limits for events in it. I need to play that similar russian game called Space Rangers HD and see how it's done there.
I dislike how WoW and the like do open world design, with really boring early missions and NPCs that might as well be billboards.
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What would people say is the first good OW game, and what is their favorite one?
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Post by dsparil on Apr 27, 2021 12:28:00 GMT -5
I really don't think it's a term that should be applied to RPGs in general since non-linearity in exploration has been around in some form from the genre's origins even though it was constrained by the technology of the time. Once you get to something like Ultima IV in 1985, you get a real credible element of exploration.
On the other hand, I do think that many problems mainly stem from so many still being GTA III clones of some variety sometimes fairly rigidly in structure if not setting e.g. Ubisoft "checklist" games. All the little extra challenges and collectibles are very much in line with collectathon platformers of the time and feels much less fresh twenty years later. Even something further away from the direct GTA influence like Starlink is full of so much pointless stuff that seems to only be there so the 100% time is a few multiples of the time to finish the main story.
BotW really did change things substantially and nothing has come close since. It's all about exploration to the detriment of every other series feature, but it does that one thing extremely well. It's really hard to go back to any similar game that doesn't give the same amount of freedom! It was also a smart move to put all the different categories of side challenges and collectibles under the single umbrella of Korok seeds since it firmly marked as being less significant than Shrines. There's no question about whether moving every out of place rock will give you a fancy bonus because the answer is no.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 28, 2021 11:08:40 GMT -5
Not necessarily a pro or con Yeah, I probably should have made a more open OP. Those were the thoughts I had at the time but really I wanted to create a topic for any discussion of open world games. I really shouldn't post before having my morning coffee. ______ omma mentioned a couple of things - first good OW game and favourite so I'll take a try answering those. With regard to early ones, unfortunately my experience is little and memory is faulty with the ones I did have. I also remember having a good time with Star Control 2, however I don't remember anything else about it. On a renewed look it doesn't look like an 'excelsior game' at all, so perhaps I had a more open mind as a child. I also remember playing Skool Daze on the Spectrum and enjoying it, but I don't remember anything specific about it. Apologies I don't have more to say. For favourites - yeah, my personal favourite is Breath of the Wild. I have more I can (and will at some point when I have time to spend on a longer post) say about the game, however I feel it's a boring answer so I'll say a little about some others that come close: Spider-Man (2018) - This is the one of Sony's cinematic experiences that really resonated with me. Of course, I feel a Spider-Man game has quite the leg up in terms of appeal toward a person who's username comes from the character's creator, but I do think the developers did a fantastic job of making play feel like Spider-Man and of course his abilities lend themselves well to traversal. Also, the game is not so overstuffed as others - You can get 100% in around 30 hours if you want to and it's the only open world game where I did just that. Batman Arkham Series (OK, just City and Origins really) - More superheroes, but of course they make so much sense in this environment. Gliding around the city just feels fantastic in Batman, and the environment feels so oppressive. Both teams did a great job of capturing the atmosphere - although Origins has a tad more of the feeling of the wonderful animated show. They do have a problem with too much needless content but I enjoyed different villains from Batman's rogues gallery having their own little side quests. There is one real problem I have with these games though, and it's that I think they followed the (imo of course) superior Arkham Asylum, which does lend argument toward some of the negative aspects of open world design I spoke of earlier. Xenoblade Chronicles X - I wanted to talk about a game that doesn't come up much here and I think Xenoblade Chronicles X makes nice use of it's open world with it making sense to the plot too. You are tasked with charting a planet in which you've crash landed and doing so feels very thematic. Monolithsoft did a great job of making the world feel alien as well as as ensuring there were plenty of points of interest to come back to. The game does have a very cool way to manoeuvre through the environment with it's flying, transforming mechs known as 'skells', however they can't be accessed until around the halfway point. They also do bring along with them some negative aspects (the skell combat for one is pretty lame) and in the latter part of the game I did lose interest a little, but certainly for the early portion the game is fantastic to explore. Generally though Monolithsoft are fantastic at map design and it isn't surprising that they aided in creation of the worlds for Breath of the Wild and Pokemon Sword and Shield.
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Post by Snake on Apr 28, 2021 13:46:12 GMT -5
I haven't played too many "open world" games. I'm racking brain trying to come up with anything I've played that seems relevant.
Like dsparil, I would say Ultima comes to mind. I've only played Ultima III:Exodus and Ultima VIII:Pagan. And I really enjoyed the sense of wandering all over the place, and doing stupid stuff. Like killing a merchant on a whim, or attacking the king. I really enjoyed that sense of openness and freedom to experiment, even though it might lock you into never being able to complete the game.
Shadow of Colossus felt pretty open world. But I never put in the necessary time in that game, as I'd got lost looking for a damn colossus. I'd just turn the game off after fumbling around on a horse for 15 minutes, with nothing else to interact with.
Breath of the Wild on the other hand, it always felt that there were things you could fiddle with environmentally. You could climb trees, chop down trees, scale mountains. The game was designed to challenge you if you dared to explore beyond your physical endurance. There's a lot in the game that would make you think "what is behind here? Or what if I try this?" It's a brilliant, modern extension of the first Legend of Zelda, where I'd spend hours trying bomb walls, and candle down all the bushes for hidden treasure.
What's an open world game, if there's no place worth going to or worth discovering?
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Apr 28, 2021 13:53:58 GMT -5
Hey, thanks excelsior. Haven't played either of those yet so that's something to look forward to.
Instead, I'm playing good ol' Urban Chaos for the dreamcast hehe. This game is actually better than I thought it would be, with some real work put into the worldbuilding, but still mediocre overall and not a great port for the DC (unlike something like Soul Reaver). If they had taken upgrading it technically to that generation's standards seriously, fixing the bugs and making it run a bit better it might've been an actual contender back in the day. The most bewildering design decisions are not letting players save during missions when they can take like 30-40 mins+ to beat fully and you can die in 2 seconds from being stunlocked by machinegun fire, and not letting weapons carry over to the next one so you have to spend time regaining your arsenal every time. There's also no map feature or even a compass, though otoh there is an enemy/objective radar with arrows pointing you the right way and street names are shown in the HUD. This game barely qualifies as OW though since the mission structure is basically linear (at least so far) and it uses a hub map, though the areas are fairly big with several optional side missions, scripted events and various stat upgrade items to find during each mission.
Edit: My faves that I would consider OW or close to it: Baldur's Gate (PC, 1998) & Tales of the Sword Coast (PC, 1999)(Expansion) Fallout 2 (PC, 1998) Super Metroid (SNES, 1994) Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade (PC) X-COM: UFO Defense/UFO: Enemy Unknown (PC) VVVVVV (PC) - Was this one fully non-linear? I don't quite remember Pirates! (PC, 2004) Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (PC) & Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal (PC) Fallout (PC, 1997) Star Control II (PC Fan Remake, 20??) Hollow Knight (PC) Zillion (SMS, 1987) Pirates! Gold (MD) Spider-Man 2 (PS2) Incredible Hulk: Ultimte Destruction (GC) Dragon Quest III: Soshite Densetsu e... (SNES)(Remake) - After the early game IIRC Final Fantasy XII (PS2) - Mid to late-game side questing Phantom 2040 (SNES & MD) - You can do some missions in any order IIRC, some areas connect to each other and there are multiple endings Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood (PC) - This is OW in the sense that you can do each sub goal during a day/chapter in any order IIRC
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Apr 30, 2021 10:06:46 GMT -5
Open world games were such a wet dream as a kid in the 90’s, They pretty much would be the kind of games I'd fantasize as a kid, but I've also never really gotten into most of them. I think besides known problems like checklist-y feeling worlds and having lame missions instead of having the player do whatever they want, is that a lot of prominent open world games don't really have very interesting settings IMO. GTA and Spider-Man are just cities and Assassin's Creed games go for realistic settings as well. I'm sure there are tons of memorable locations to discover in those games as well, but a more fantastical world is just inherintly more interesting to explore for exploration's sake. Fallout and Elder Scrolls are games I'd like to try for that reason. The only one's I've ever played to any major extent are Breath of the Wild (surprise surprise) and Minecraft. I think Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece, like many others, and the exploration is pretty much the main reason why, though there's enough fun beyond that. Trying to reach your own goals often goes hand in hand very well with the exploration. Even when you get tired of running into the same Korok puzzles and repeated elements, the design of the world is fun enough that discovering each little area feels like its own reward. The world does feel legitimately large without feeling too huge to explore. Minecraft is also great I think, and I'm surprised it hasn't come up yet. Again the exploration is fantastic here. The world is pretty much infinite, and the random generation ensures there's always cool terrain features to stumble upon. As you play longer and stay in the same area longer (that's how most people play, at least), what was once a far-away area you would rarely travel to might now be something that feels closer, and you can go trek out into the world a bit and then return with the aid of a compass or coordinates. So the exploration is pretty different compared to BotW in that you kind of have a home base and the world expands infinitely around that. I think neither is the fully ideal open world game. As a kid I would dream about games that just have so much stuff in each area and would have so many cool different looking places without being padded. I don't know if we'll ever get to something like that. I think Bowser's Fury shows a lot of promise of what an action-filled open world game could be, and I always thought Supraland looked kinda neat, though I've never played it. A thing or two can be learned from Dark Souls' world design as well. As it stands, there seems to be more missed potential in the genre than anything. Here's hoping Breath of the Wild's sequel will be even better. That game is already fantastic, so now that they've got a foundation, maybe this one will have less repeated content to make exploring even more fresh.
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Post by Deleted on May 2, 2021 7:48:46 GMT -5
🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 - I think Minecraft had passed us by for most of us here is all. This forum is just the wrong age group for it.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on May 2, 2021 10:06:16 GMT -5
You're never too old to try Minecraft. It does help that I first saw people play it when I was in high school I guess.
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Post by retr0gamer on May 3, 2021 10:17:23 GMT -5
There's very few open world games I actually like. The ones I do like use the open world to enhance the gameplay. BotW and xenoblade X are all about exploration and it's open. World facilitates that. Spiderman might be a checklist game but it's so much fun just to move around it's world. And minecraft is just a virtually infinite sandbox of lego pieces with the only limitation being your imagination.
The ones I hate are basically tradition 8 hour action games stretched thin over the open world a d padded out with boring repetitive missions for 40+ hours. The open world adds absolutely nothing.
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Post by ZenithianHero on May 3, 2021 10:32:53 GMT -5
Want to see open world games with whimsical or mysterious places to find. Xenoblade Chronicles X is the perfect open world because Monolith went all in on creativity and the mech is a great vehicle for covering a long stretch of land and you can FLY! I don't have much experience in open world. I probably have some games in my backlog. BotW you still have a sense of being in a Zelda game. Horizon: Zero Dawn got plenty of ruined buildings as playgrounds.
Playing Horizon now, I wish I had BotW's glider or some way to rappel down cliffs anywhere. I find traveling on foot to not fun for that reason. Aside from elaborate cliffside hopping, your only way to climb properly is at the mercy of specific spots like in Uncharted.
Anyways, would be interested in playing open world games like the ones Nintendo make. I like Horizon in other ways and intend on finishing the game of course. That Pokemon game coming soon got me interested
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