An end to the Sandbox plague.

[Rangaman]

Sandbox and open world are not the same thing. A game can be open world without being a sandbox. The OP uses the Witcher 3 as an example, but I definitely wouldn't call it a sandbox. These types of games have very few limitations placed on the player, essentially giving them some play tools and saying "go nuts".

For example, Mount and Blade is a sandbox game. You can play the game however you want, and you have no real obligation to do much of anything.

No Man's Sky is a sandbox game (albeit while the sandbox is huge, you're given very few tools to actually use in it).

In the Witcher 3, you play as Geralt and your overarching focus is to do the main quest. Yes you can go and do a ton of great sidequests, but you're never not Geralt. Not saying this is bad by the way (it's one of my top 3 games), I'm just saying that despite having an open world, it's not a sandbox.

There's a pile of shitty survival games out now that like to tack sandbox onto their sales pitch, and while I suppose the term is accurate, most aren't using the genre to its potential.

A sandbox is a feature, not a genre in itself. Sandbox and open world are interchangeable terms.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Well, if your memories were more recent, you'd probably remeber that HL1 and HL2 do linearity in different ways and HL2 is not "as linear" as HL1. Because HL1 features quite a bit of exploration and backtracking, which was common to games of that time. HL2 got rid of all this and is just always forward. You're always on rails and never visit the same location twice. Which is a boring approach and it feels very tired nowadays.
HL1 has some retro appeal. HL2 is just an old modern game without much replay value.

Let me illustrate the truth of this statement by directing you to the first level and the Blast Pit level in Half-Life. The first level prior to the experiment has you go through a reception and recreation area and a few test areas before you get to the experiment. After the experiments turns into a disaster, you have to backtrack through the labs and reception area to reach the exit. Not only does it re-use areas, it is also some great environmental storytelling to see how much destruction the alien invasions causes.

In Blast Pit You have to activate a bunch of fuel lines so that you can burn away the monster sitting in the middle of the blast pit. To get to them you have to get into the blast pit and access tree separate areas before heading back to the top of the pit to activate the test engine. A brief time later you get to the On Rails section, in which you have to navigate a maze of train tracks to find the exit.

Half-Life was certainly linear, but it also subscribed to the late-90's school of level design, which emphasized backtracking, intricate, multi level maps and plenty of "side rooms" that offered pick ups, but also served to flesh out the environment. Half-Life 2 , in contrast, was one of the first games to use the mid-00's form of level design, which focused much more on linear maps and scripted events to drive the player forward. Half-Life 2 got away with it at the time because its' scripted scenes were groundbreaking, but it aged much more badly then its' predecessor due to it.

 

[Skatalite]

Remember Half-Life 2?

The problem is that a good portion of the fickle market would slam a game like Half Life 2 if it were released today for being "too linear".

It is. Most people that "remember Half Life 2" haven't played it in a long long while and forgot how linear and boring it is.

Right, I'm sure all those HL2 fans only forgot they agree with your opinion. Except I played it last year and enjoyed it just as much.
I'd take linear games like it over all those recent quantity over quality open world games any day.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Sandbox and open world are not the same thing. A game can be open world without being a sandbox. The OP uses the Witcher 3 as an example, but I definitely wouldn't call it a sandbox. These types of games have very few limitations placed on the player, essentially giving them some play tools and saying "go nuts".

For example, Mount and Blade is a sandbox game. You can play the game however you want, and you have no real obligation to do much of anything.

No Man's Sky is a sandbox game (albeit while the sandbox is huge, you're given very few tools to actually use in it).

In the Witcher 3, you play as Geralt and your overarching focus is to do the main quest. Yes you can go and do a ton of great sidequests, but you're never not Geralt. Not saying this is bad by the way (it's one of my top 3 games), I'm just saying that despite having an open world, it's not a sandbox.

There's a pile of shitty survival games out now that like to tack sandbox onto their sales pitch, and while I suppose the term is accurate, most aren't using the genre to its potential.

A sandbox is a feature, not a genre in itself. Sandbox and open world are interchangeable terms.

Upon further investigation, you're right. I always thought they were different since both are tags for Steam games and not all games that use one use the other. Maybe it started as something different and companies just used it as the new hot word to throw on the box, so it lost any individual meaning.

 

[Kerg3927]

OP, I agree however it's the trend in gaming right now just like how FPSs were the thing back in the 90s/2000s. It's really WOWs fault for the current direction most games have gone.

That's my theory, too. WoW indoctrinated an entire generation of casual gamers who think that the pinnacle of gaming is to log on and wander around aimlessly doing random fetch quests and dailies for hours, with no focused story and no challenge. Busy work. A time waster. Skyrim tapped into that market with great success. And now everyone is copying it.

It's obviously a selling point, because people are buying it. The only way to stop it is to vote with your pocketbook.

I'm absolutely dreading the release of Mass Effect Andromeda. As a HUGE fan of the first Mass Effect trilogy - I have an N7 bumper sticker on my car! - I think it's going to be DAI in space, a totally unnecessarily massive open world epic disaster. It's going to ruin the franchise for those who loved the focused, hard-edged story of the prior games. Just like it ruined the Dragon Age series.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Yeah, while they are pretty to look at, once you strip back the window dressing, Assassin's Creeds and Far Cries are little more than empty spaces filled with collectibles.

Hey! I don't know about AssCreed, but Far Cry is usually filled to the brim with very useful unstabbed backs!

Yeah, but WHY were you stabbing those backs?

Don?t get me wrong, I enjoy Far Cries? cathartic illusion of freedom when I just want to relax and shoot some shit, but on the whole, I can?t really say it?s a great overall franchise because a lot of the effort of development goes into fleshing out largely inconsequential busy space! I would love if instead of making me upgrade my weapons and skills by doing the same looting actions over and over again to find materials, they had put in some friendly NPCs to send me on meaningful quests or something more substantive than trekking through the forest to hunt down 8 more ?badger dicks? to craft bulletproof ass-less chaps. Or let me earn upgrades after battling my way through unique enemy strongholds with unique mini-bosses instead of the copy-paste affairs they always do. It?s always the same: climb the tower to reveal copy-pasted locations on the map, then go to those places and do the same shit you just did a half-dozen times already again.

 

[Zombie Proof]

I don't get the OP's point. Neither do I get these kind of "we need less X and more Y" threads. I was under the impression that there has never been more variety in gaming than what exists today. You might be under the impression that there's an overabundance of bland open world sandbox titles and less linear quality ones if you're basing what's available off of the deluge of AAA marketing. A modicum of critical thought and a little research would reveal that it simply isn't the case.

There is no sandbox plague. The controlling idea of this thread is false.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Right, I'm sure all those HL2 fans only forgot they agree with your opinion.

Yeah, but WHY were you stabbing those backs?

Ooh! Ooh! I can explain!
First you crouch. Then you leap. And then you stab and there's this little fountain of blood and you feel fun. And then you drag it into the bushes so that no one can see the corpse. And then you eat it to become stronger! Oops, wrong game.
But wait, there's more! You then stab more, and more, and more yet, and after a while you realize, that all this time the game hath stayed obediently silent and did not try to educate you on some bullshit you don't care about. And then it becomes really fun. Because you're free to do whatever following your most favorite head-canon, and no one prevents you from doing so. And no one calls you every 15 seconds like a clingy girlfriend to tell you that you should pick up the wrench and hit those stones when there's nothing else to pick up but that wrench and there's nothing to do but smash those stones. And that feeling is amazing. Being off the leash. Thinking for yourself. Ignoring all of the useless shit and just stabbing backs because it feels fun.
That's why I stab those backs. Because no one tells me to. And because I like doing it.

A very cogent argument... or at least I'm sure you thought so.

 

[RaikuFA]

This reminds me of the "stop making JRPGs" topic back when MMS were at the height of their popularity.