How 'big' should open world games be?

[Burnouts3s3]

Over the weekend, I bought one of my favorite games, Bully from Rockstar. I found myself enjoying the game with doing odd jobs like paper routes, attending classes to get perks and kissing any female students I could find.

Then, something dawned on me. Bully is one of the smaller Rockstar games and doesn't have as much exploration but adds a sort of intimacy to the game, as though I were familiar with every NPC and the setting was intimate to me. When I looked up the game's specs, I realized that Bully was a meager 5 gb of data.

So, I wanted to ask the question: How big should Open World games be, in terms of memory space? Obviously, modern games are starting to require larger and larger memory storage to compensate with more environments to detail, more voice work and animation to put in and more activities to include.

Take for example, the recent PC release of Final Fantasy XV, which requires 100 GB of data to simply play. This is not without reason, as the game requires high definition graphics, extensive voice work, patches to address bugs and additional DLC focusing on party members and their backstories. But, as I played through the game, I found myself rather bored and not as engaged.

Why is that?

What does Bully and other GTA games achieve with small amounts of storage that games like Final Fantasy 15 don't?

Now, I'll admit a bit of bias on my part and say I tend to prefer story focused games that emphasize the relationships and characters. But, even with a game like FF15 (which does show the friendship between the 4 main characters), I had the feeling of emptiness.

What do you think? How big do you think open world games should be to justify a 60 USD price tag?

 

[Captain Marvelous_v1legacy]

Just enough to do what it needs to do. I'm starting to think there's a Jimquisition for everything.


I've already beaten FFXV once on PS4 and I intend to get it again on PC, if only for the inevitable nude mods that Square almost begged for. GTA bored me, but FFXV kept me entertained a lot longer. I just didn't care for GTA V's side stuff, so I guess it also depends on what you want from your open world.

 

[Abomination]

It's not about the size of the world but of the amount of content and the variety plus quality of that content.

Open World Done Right is Witcher III, the quests are all unique in some way, some in considerable ways. The world is big but not too big. The locations varied enough so you feel you're in a different sort of location, windy fjords, damp swamps, heavy forest, old battlefields, fallen ruins, lush pastures or a frozen tundra.

While the side quests are not the main quest they feel like they COULD be a main quest all to themselves. The Bloody Baron's story is possibly one of the best side-quests ever designed.

Witcher III wasn't huge, but it was certainly deep.

 

[sXeth]

File size isn't a great standard really. That's almost entirely disconnected from most of what you posted as Bully's strong points. And not necessarily contributive even to a filled in world. All those 4k textures from random ground cover and animations for birds you barely see in the distance will bloat filesize, but not overly add much depth to the world. Even in just world size comparisons, the biggest super open world ever in No Mans SKy was only 8 gigs or whatever.

It comes down more to what you can fit into it. If you're a heavy story and dialogue game, its very easy for your open world to start feeling desolate or half-baked, since the writing and voice acting (in AAA anyways) only stretches so far on a realistic budget and time frame. Games with story focus that try and go bigger and bigger usually start to either have a lot of repeating assets, or a ton of unused dead space on the map.

Gameplay can go a couple different ways. Solid combat can obviously keep an open world feeling more engaged and exciting, because you can drop in enemy encounters scattered around to engage the player with minimal embellishment needed. Its essentially how Dragons Dogma and Horizon worked out their open worlds (though both severely needed a randomization factor to spawn placements).

Exploration and survival gameplay hooks are the other main too that can somewhat self-sustain themselves. Although for the former you do need a good chunk of unique assets, or you get Bethesda style fatigue where every place feels a bit samey once you've cycled through the 3 or 4 basic archetypes. On a similar vein, survival can involved a lot of detail work (unique plants, animal tracks, ore veins) and animations (drinking water, skinning a carcass, lighting a fire, chopping a tree) etc) to make it especially engaging, and is often chopped down to reused assets or "Special Vision mode that highlights things that are otherwise invisible even when they should be".

 

[Saelune]

I dunno, how much do Skyrim or Fallout 4 take up? Bethesda is the King of Open World since they know how to actually utilize that space, rather than just replacing loading times with long boring walks/rides/drives from set piece to set piece. (MGSV sucks)

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

The physical size of an 'effective' open world game relies upon 2 factors:
1) how much stuff there is to do in said world, not to mention the quality of the stuff.
2) the method of transport, or in other words, the speed of the character. Things may be off-set by means of fast travel.
*strong disclaimer here that the following text is strictly my opinion only.

To elaborate - I prefer discovering locations with a bit of a story to them, rather than just stuff to kill or collect. However, open roaming areas to find animals to hunt or certain enemies to fight is ok too, just not too much of it. Far Cry has an ok balance for this, especially since animals are usually pretty clear. Some are more rare than others, and that's fine too.

Cookie cutter dungeons such as in Dragon Age are a bit of a joke. Skyrim is great, because there's so much lore to be found, but some of the dungeons and places too explore are just too damn big. I'm glad that the puzzles aren't overly complicated, it's not the kind of game I want to spend hours because the exploration and side quests takes enough time as it is.

The Witcher 3 did it really well. The only problem I had with that is there's simply too much, and it does get boring. Especially looking for stuff in the ocean. But it is nice to find armor sets and whatnot, I just don't want to have to find EVERYTHING to get/craft the set I want. But there are guides for that, so whatever. Some things are a bit of a ***** to find, especially when underground. Might be satisfying for some when they finally get it, for me it was plain annoying in a non linear story.

On point 2, yea fast travel unlocking in places is nice. Fallout games do this well and that's really how they can get away with such a large area with only foot traversal. Still is a pain though in some cases, especially with the weight limits. The other side is of course transport, like Mad Max was an ideal size of open world, where you traverse by car, in an open setting. For games like GTA, I think they're a pretty good size where it's jammed with as much shit as you can be bothered finding, and there's enough roads, highways, and offroads, to do almost any kind of driving/flying you want. Nice coastal cruise, inner city traffic motorkhana, high speed chase, even mountain biking.

 

[PapaGreg096]

Don't ask how big but ask how much depth you put into it.

 

[Squilookle]

I reckon San Andreas is just about the perfect size if it's just a standard made open world game, but the context, story and gameplay can all influence it one way or another. As stated already, Bully and Yakuza maximise attention to detail and pack a ton of content into a much smaller total area, whereas something like Just Cause revels in the freedom of movement it gives you, and therefore portrays a vast country to explore.

I'm pretty sure they messed up the scale of Burnout in this pic but you still get the idea.

 

[Kyrian007]

It just needs to have enough room to remain lively. Yes, the freedom of movement was great in Just Cause 2... but there just isn't enough content to warrant the map size. Having a mission on one side of the map, stealing a JET and knowing you have a 5 minute commute with nothing happening... well its good if you need a bathroom break. Otherwise its just boring. Its like my main problem with Fallout NV as compared to Fallout 3. NV's map wasn't too big... it was too boring and empty. You couldn't walk for 60 seconds in any direction in 3 without finding something interesting. Something to search, a fight, a mission... there was something over every hill. In NV many times you would go over a hill to find... nothing but miles of empty desert between you and the next hill. You could play FO 3 or 4 without fast travel. I'd rather put my balls in a vise than try that on NV.

 

[Trunkage]

It's not about the size of the world but of the amount of content and the variety plus quality of that content.

Open World Done Right is Witcher III, the quests are all unique in some way, some in considerable ways. The world is big but not too big. The locations varied enough so you feel you're in a different sort of location, windy fjords, damp swamps, heavy forest, old battlefields, fallen ruins, lush pastures or a frozen tundra.

While the side quests are not the main quest they feel like they COULD be a main quest all to themselves. The Bloody Baron's story is possibly one of the best side-quests ever designed.

Witcher III wasn't huge, but it was certainly deep.

Look, some side quests in Witcher 3 were really awesome. Most on Skelliege were rehashes of the similar quests in the main area. Some were not great. The Botchling quest was great, the Crone was really stupid once you think about it.

Also, it felt like I was playing Far Cry. So many quest marks. Also, if you go off the rails in any shape or form, the Witcher punishes you. You cant explore (which is pointless because there is hardly anything to see) without having to repeat the same area because quests are locked away. Games like Skyrim entices you with landmarks, Witcher punishes you going to those landmarks without the appropriate quest. Not that Witcher 3 had many anyway.

Put Witcher quests into an actual well designed open well, please internet.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Whatever is needed to give the game "life".

I don't care whether a gameworld is big or small, as long as its size mirrors the game's purpose.

 

[Saelune]

I reckon San Andreas is just about the perfect size if it's just a standard made open world game, but the context, story and gameplay can all influence it one way or another. As stated already, Bully and Yakuza maximise attention to detail and pack a ton of content into a much smaller total area, whereas something like Just Cause revels in the freedom of movement it gives you, and therefore portrays a vast country to explore.

I'm pretty sure they messed up the scale of Burnout in this pic but you still get the idea.

Its also alot of -what- you put in those open spaces. I had been playing San Andreas like, a month ago. There is alot of useless space in that game. I love GTA, and think they are better at open world than most, but they could stand to have alot more filled out space.

And Daggerfall is also alot of nothing. You literally cannot realistically not use fast travel in that game, and most dungeons are randomly generated but the same...and too big that its usually better to cheat out than find your way out legitimately.

Morrowind was good at making exploring fun, and I loved how less formulaic dungeons were. The Bethesda Fallout games are actually pretty great too in filling out the world, and its 'dungeons' feel less formulaic than Skyrim's are. Probably cause they have to be more creative in turning things like office buildings into explorable dungeons.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Whatever is needed to give the game "life".

I don't care whether a gameworld is big or small, as long as its size mirrors the game's purpose.

Pretty much this. There has to be a legit reason for the open world, which is that the open world has to support the core of the game. In Horizon, not only does the game require the open world to basically "house" the game's large machine enemies, it also fits with Aloy's journey to basically discover the world she doesn't know, and there isn't some immediate end of the world situation lurking in the background while Aloy does pointless sidequests. The most common misuse of open worlds is having linear quests/missions. Most of the point of the open world is to give the player several options to tackle the objectives like luring blood dragons with cyberhearts to kill enemies at outposts in Farcry Blood Dragon or the wonderfully amazing Mercenaries. While when you look at a Rockstar game, the open world contradicts the linear missions.

 

[Burnouts3s3]

Some good answers here so far. Fast travel needs to be well implemented if there are large gaps between points of interest, especially if the world was built with authenticity in mind as with Kingdom Come: Deliverance [https://www.pcgamesn.com/kingdom-come-deliverance/kingdom-come-deliverance-historical-accuracy]. Even then Warhorse knew concessions were in order for the sake of playability.

To rebuild their own Střibrna Skalice, Warhorse started with satellite maps of the area, digitally reconstructed the buildings of the era, and massaged the geography just slightly to make for a more enjoyable space for the player, an ?adjusted realistic map? as Stolz-Zwilling puts it that ?moves the villages and cities a bit closer to each other to make it more densely populated and [makes] the forests a bit smaller.? It avoids the majority of your quests involving a necessary 10km trek across historically accurate and utterly barren grassland. However, the resulting game map is accurate enough that Warhorse could find their way around when they visited the real locations for field trips.


On the flip side, Horizon: Zero Dawn feels just right in terms of size and allowing diverse ecosystems to feel like they have room to breath. Regarding a sense of scale I?m more perplexed by how quick and easy it is to scale a snow capped mountain after being in a jungle not even a minute prior than traversing the map itself. In that sense it makes the world feel a bit too small perhaps.

 

[Kotaro]

Just enough to do what it needs to do. I'm starting to think there's a Jimquisition for everything.

Jim pretty much hit the nail on the head with this one. The important part isn't the actual size as much as how much there is to do in it. If you have the budget and manpower to make a huge map crammed with fun stuff to do, then go for it, but if you can't fill a huge world, shrink it down to a size you can manage.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

It couldn't be that FFXV is just plain old bland, and in typical FF fashion, attempts to disguise their narrative (and various other) shortcomings with flashy visuals, pretty anime dolls hosting someone's fashion design ambitions and pretentious, utterly shallow dialogue, as if the entire writing team is composed of solely artists with nothing else to provide other than "hey, this is totes gonna look sooooooo cool and hot" could it?
Because that's the type of emptiness I feel when trying to play them, alongside disappointment, irritation-agitation, despair, depression, desperation, destitution, emotional abandonment and some other minor debuffs

 

[Vanilla ISIS]

I rather have details that size.
I wouldn't mind GTA like game taking place in a small town with a population of 50k if you could go into every building.
Most buildings in most open world games are just obstacles.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

As big as it needs to be I guess. How are you going to get around, what kind of stuff can you do in the world, etc.

 

[Dalisclock]

Like others have said. A huge world doesn't mean anything if there's nothing to do in it, or it's filled with....filler. I'm playing MGSV right now and while the open world is done decently well and the maps are nice and big, It's already kinda obvious that there's not much in between bases and you'll end up seeing the same bases over and over again for main missions and side ops. The world itself looks good but damn if it feels empty. At least you have that helicopter to help you get closer to where you need to go.

It's least it's better then Just Cause 2, which had the same problem but far worse because the map was even bigger.

 

[Callate]

Big enough that you won't see it all in an hour, and that it won't become the punch-line of a thirty-second speedrun.

Small enough that you will never come to the conclusion that quests were generated in the form of " "$Name" wants you to collect "%RandomNumber" of "$Items" within the next "%RandomNumber2" minutes."