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I pretty much always prefer open world, or at least something interconnected like a Metroidvania. Linear makes me feel like my back is against the wall.
You missed a collectable 4 missions ago? I guess I’ll see you in New Game+
Thursday
Elden Ring did it very well.
I would definitely say Gothic 1 and 2. Cannot imagine the games being better without it.
Star Wars Galaxy’s was a great open world game.
I play Fallout 4 like Sims with guns.
Also, mods.
Open world =/= giant map
Take resident evil games, Control, Batman. Some larger maps than others, but the key is open. Most of the map or level is available to you to explore how you like, with a linear story guiding you through as well, and then progression opens smaller locked areas and new levels.
Had to explain this to a friend when I called the original Deus Ex titles “open world” games. (It’s technically semi-open world but, meh, nuances)
Not much. Open-world is often a design for a looooot of space without intention. It used to be a technical prowess, but now it’s mostly for bland chores simulators. Generic open-worlds and mobile games have hurt game design a lot, especially in the 2010’s, but IMHO, Fromsoft has saved us from that by creating a semi-open, interconnected world design that felt vast and intentional. Elden Ring was their first modern open-world and they nailed it with all that Souls experience.
Yes. Many. Stop playing Ubisoft checklist simulators.
AAA needs a bit of a reset and it looks like that’s what’s happening now.
Generally, good open world games have a lot more emergent content - situations that emerge from the interaction of agents and simple mechanics (in the style of how simple rules create complex outcomes in the “Game of Life”) - whilst good linear games have highly curated set-pieces scenarios which were created by level designers directly.
For an example of the former, imagine you’re running around the Game World looking for a special kind of plant to create a potion that you need. You come across a battle between bears and a bandit group. When they die their drops are free for the taking and both groups are too high level for you to take on your own. None of this was setup to happen when you crossed some trigger line, it literally just happened because those the entities in those groups are part of enemy “factions” and the patrol route of one group (a route which might itself be procedural rather than fixed) passed near enough the position of the encampment of the other.
This kind of thing randomly happen is just not something you get in linear games which are generally just set-pieces and even the ability to pull on group of high level enemies to another group has to be designed in (mainly by making the restricted game area big enough for it in that section and placing the groups in the right places).
This is also why in a linear game if you die and restart you get the same fights in the same places you had before up to the place were you died unless that section of the game was designed with enough alternate paths of mechanics (say, hide mechanics) that you can go around and avoid certain fights.
Emergent content is also why Multiplayer can be a lot of fun, though in this case the “agent” whose interactions can give rise to all sorts of situations are other players.
Oh hell yes.
I’m playing Horizon Zero Dawn Complete (it includes the DLC) and as soon as I got to Daytower, I ran into a guy named Ohtur who mentioned The Cut… I pivoted and headed up there and by sneaking around everything with higher stats than I had, (which was almost everything) I managed to find resources that got me a wickedly powerful weapon. Game changer. Literally.
Getting to any part of the map and find it’s hidden goodies is amazing.
Being able to fuck around can be fun. A linear Elder Scrolls (morrowind, oblivion, skyrim) would be boring
GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas. Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 (yes), New Vegas. Elden Ring. Subnautica.
Try making San Andreas linear and you would instantly destroy one of the best games ever made.
On the other hand later GTAs didn’t embrace the open worlds for which the series is known. Once you start a mission the games turn extremely linear without giving the player options.
Very true! I remember in GTA3, some missions could be done in different ways, if you already knew what would happen.
The benefit is the experience. The difference in experiences comes down to the level design. Are you in a maze or in a field?
The best game designs masks this in both scenarios.
The well designed linear game doesn’t always feel like a maze, and has sections that feel like fields between mazes.
The well designed open world game contains mazes that you discover in a field that feels roped off into clearly defined sections that differ from each other and contain large landmarks to orient and draw you in.
Both feel bad if they don’t include (at least the illusion of) the other. A linear game is boring without any choice. An open world game is boring without linear moments.
I mean like, compare a … hub and spokes style immersive sim game, to any given open world game.
With an ImSim, you often get planted into an area, with a single or multiple main quests, and a whole bunch of essentially discoverable sidequests… and, when done well, those optional sidequests significantly affect how the main quests play out, and may give you different options for how to approach or conclude those main quests.
Then, onto the next hub/spoke section.
ImSims are not typically associated with literal huge open spaces… but the spaces they do have tend to be well interwoven.
There are often entirely optional, missable ‘sidequests and submazes’, basically, even in a typically smaller amount of literal space.
But also, they’re not strictly linear in the way of like … an FPS campaign/single player mode usually is. Sure you can have the literal levels be maze like, but typically/traditionally, theres usually only one entrance and exit, and the specifics of what you did in any given maze don’t really impact the next maze beyond your weapon and ammo count and health maybe carrying over.
ImSims open up the conceptual field of a given linear sequence of levels, by allowing totally different play styles to yield signifcantly different experiences, and often the additional mechanics they do this with are more than just combat… social and exploratory play can be rewarded or punished by altering the narrative itself.
I think elden ring probably couldn’t be told in a smaller scale level design.
You hear about massive spanning battlefields, wars with gods, etc. Could not be correctly portrayed with a more compact level design. And the vistas are gorgeous.
Open worlds benefit the game when exploration is the point.
Elden ring is really more linear than it is open world, so much content being locked behind certain progress milestones (and difficulty curve unless you’re very good). You have no lasting impact on the game world, and the gameplay loop is heavily centered around dying and respawning at checkpoints. It has more in common with a Mario game than with, say, skyrim. Linking the “levels” together I guess has some aesthetic benefits, but honestly if you entered each area directly from the roundtable hold would the experience have been materially different?
so much content being locked behind certain progress milestones
Ehh, sort of? The main story is pretty linear but progress is very open ended, which you can say for almost every open world game, even minecraft.
You have no lasting impact on the game world.
Events you put into motion literally change geography(IE, killing radahn turns an entire area into a smoking crater.) Individual quest lines have varying levels of effect on the world ranging from affecting enemy spawns to changing the leadership of an entire region.
but honestly if you entered each area directly from the roundtable hold would the experience have been materially different?
Yes, because something that happens in elden ring is that you start with the world map being really small, and then you keep uncovering new areas, making the map bigger, but you have no idea until you actually explore and are hit with how expansive an area that’s just hiding behind a bridge is.
In the DLC that feeling is compounded with the pure verticality of the world, a small non-descript cave that you can easily miss without a guide leads you about a quarter of the DLC areas.
The exploration, and the feeling when you uncover a new area, wouldn’t exist if you could just warp there from a hub.
Killing redahn unlocks a new level and his entire army continues to stand in the same places and respond to you exactly as they did before. That’s exactly what I’m talking about with linearity. “can be easily missed without a guide” also exactly what I’m talking about, there’s generally one way of getting everywhere and when it’s hard to find that it’s very tempting to look it up or ask a friend, exploring is mostly frustrating.
To be clear I’m a fan of the game, but I have spent probably <10% of my playtime on unstructured exploration or side quests (if you can call 5 bits of loosely related dialog in fixed locations a side quest). Not everything has to be open world, and I probably would have had as much fun with ER if wasn’t. The most sandboxy bit I would say is the multiplayer, which I wish they had made a bit more flexible, but I do find very funny.
The problem is not “open world” but “the ubisoft game”. New region, find watchtower, reveal map, do 1 quest, attack enemy camp, liberate area, new area, find watchtower, …
Most open worlds are also just way to big. GTA San Andreas felt huge but is tiny compared to V. And it was better for it. Modern open worlds never have a hub. A place that you actually build a relationship with and see change over the course of the game. Its always: area completed, next!
I love a good hub, especially when it actually changes and grows
Yeah San Andreas was the open world game I was thinking of too, with the expanding of your crime syndicate. It’s pretty much the only game I’ve played that implements an open world properly and I’ve been chasing that since then. Fallout 4 maybe, but building settlements or forts didn’t have real impact. Diablo IV is way too driven to rush through and get to the endgame.
I think you really need to design it to be more of a simulation game that reacts to player actions and with a story inserted, not as a “feature” to check off. And a distinct goal or win condition for playing the open world.
If every place/area only serves one purpose then the game should be linear. Some of my favourite games are the old Gothic and Gothic 2 RPGs. They are open world, but tiny compared to modern RPGs. They dont have “areas” with a set difficulty that you can complete and then move on, instead the map is like a skeleton of fairly save roads and settlements and the further you go away from the roads the harder it gets. So you see the whole map in the first chapter but have explored very little of it. You always return to the same areas and they feel like home. And every chapter of the story adds new enemies, quests and events to all areas of the game. All of it is hand picked. No “radient quests” to trick you into going to an completed dungeon again, no random encounters on the roads to make travel through the world feel less empty…
IMO, they have the best open worlds I have ever seen. The studios follow up open world games (Gothic 3, elex 1&2) fell flat because they tried to be huge as well and felt empty as a result.
Working with constraints does actually produce gems. Fallout, farcry, GTA, skyrim just throw billions of dollars at a project to make it huge. But everything there is is just a set piece to be looked at once and be discarded …
Gothic does sound awesome especially with the Gothic 1 Remake.
When progression is properly controlled such as in fallout: new vegas or hollow knight, then a larger map can do wonders
I wouldn’t put Metroidvanias (with large maps, back tracking, ability gating and flexibility in which area to go to next) alongside other open world adventure games (like GTA, Witcher, Breath of the Wild, etc). I love Metroidvanias and linear games, but I wouldn’t touch open world adventure RPGs with a 10 foot pole.
That’s what I’m saying. The only open world games that truly utilise their worlds are ones that first close it off
