I think I am getting a bit tired of open world games....

[Fappy]

-Snip-

It was Skyrim for sure. It all started when Bioware announced that they were tweaking DA3 early in development due to how well Skyrim performed.

As for Diablo... I don't know, there are plenty of Diablo clones out there. Most of them are shitty Steam games though. If I had to guess, most of the devs that would have made Diablo clones ended up making MOBAs instead.

-Snip-

Trust me, I love choosing my own path too, but you don't need to make an open world game to offer that kind of experience. Early examples of this can be found in Mega Man, where it was the players choice to determine how best to tackle the gauntlet of levels. Should you get the water powerup first and then fight the fire guy or get the fire powerup first and fight the ice guy?

Open world games are obviously an easy way to offer "freedom", but they're hardly the only way and not always the best way.

 

[Mister K]

Maybe it's slightly of topic, but I preffer how older games dealt with open world: you do have a big map that you can explore, but there is only a set number of locations where anything of importance can be. It allowed games like Fallout and Arcanum to feel huge without spreading all the content.

 

[happyninja42]

-Snip-

Trust me, I love choosing my own path too, but you don't need to make an open world game to offer that kind of experience. Early examples of this can be found in Mega Man, where it was the players choice to determine how best to tackle the gauntlet of levels. Should you get the water powerup first and then fight the fire guy or get the fire powerup first and fight the ice guy?

Open world games are obviously an easy way to offer "freedom", but they're hardly the only way and not always the best way.

Yeah but what if you don't want to fight the fire or ice guy at all, and instead want to run around doing your own thing entirely? That's the kind of freedom I'm referring to. I had tons of fun in Skyrim, and I hardly ever bothered with the main plot stuff. I did my own little personal plotlines, and played them out how I wanted. That kind of "open world" experience is only possible in a sandbox type game. Sure games can give the freedom of options, like your above Mega Man, option, but those are still a limited list of options on how to play the game, namely just "which one do you want to do first?". And that's fine, but I don't think it's the same category as the open world discussion. Sure open world isn't the only type of game to offer someone freedom, but it is the only type that gives you total agency in whether or not you even bother to do what the game wants you to do at all.

 

[Zhukov]

It'll get over-saturated and die off, like these things always do. The real question is...why isn't everyone copying Diablo 3? Look at those sales! That's crazy!

Weeeelll... I have been seeing a lot of randomized loot drops with variable-but-level-appropriate stats in recent games.

"Hey look, you got a sword that does 109 damage whereas your current sword only does 104! Thrilling!"

 

[Fappy]

-Snip-

Trust me, I love choosing my own path too, but you don't need to make an open world game to offer that kind of experience. Early examples of this can be found in Mega Man, where it was the players choice to determine how best to tackle the gauntlet of levels. Should you get the water powerup first and then fight the fire guy or get the fire powerup first and fight the ice guy?

Open world games are obviously an easy way to offer "freedom", but they're hardly the only way and not always the best way.

Yeah but what if you don't want to fight the fire or ice guy at all, and instead want to run around doing your own thing entirely? That's the kind of freedom I'm referring to. I had tons of fun in Skyrim, and I hardly ever bothered with the main plot stuff. I did my own little personal plotlines, and played them out how I wanted. That kind of "open world" experience is only possible in a sandbox type game. Sure games can give the freedom of options, like your above Mega Man, option, but those are still a limited list of options on how to play the game, namely just "which one do you want to do first?". And that's fine, but I don't think it's the same category as the open world discussion. Sure open world isn't the only type of game to offer someone freedom, but it is the only type that gives you total agency in whether or not you even bother to do what the game wants you to do at all.

I think the issue is that you're talking about the actual good open world games XD

I am a huge TES fan and love the games for similar reasons you do. There aren't many other games out there that offer that kind of freedom in how you play the game, experience the world and craft your own story.

The reality is that these other publishers look at what Skyrim did and only see the scope of the world. They don't get what actually made those game worlds interesting to explore. Just making a huge world with objective points, side quests and collectibles does not capture the magic of truly fun and engaging open world games. Unfortunately, most publishers don't understand this.

 

[Lightspeaker]

I think the issue is that you're talking about the actual good open world games XD

I am a huge TES fan and love the games for similar reasons you do. There aren't many other games out there that offer that kind of freedom in how you play the game, experience the world and craft your own story.

The reality is that these other publishers look at what Skyrim did and only see the scope of the world. They don't get what actually made those game worlds interesting to explore. Just making a huge world with objective points, side quests and collectibles does not capture the magic of truly fun and engaging open world games. Unfortunately, most publishers don't understand this.

This.

The problem is that developers and publishers have taken the absolute wrong messages from Skyrim. Skyrim was a huge open world...but people didn't play it JUST because it was a huge open world. People played it because it was a huge open world which was full of interesting stuff to see and do outside of collectibles. Lots of stuff to experience for the sake of experiencing it, not for the sake of making progress on a sidequest.

One of my favourite things to do in Skyrim was to just decide to go to a city and then start walking there. Either by road or by cutting through areas. And there was ALWAYS new stuff to just stumble upon. They ranged from quests I'd not known about to simply pretty views to see. Waterfalls, forests to forge through, whatever. With a range of environments to see and lots going on. It had its problems but fundamentally there was tons of stuff to see and do that didn't feel like merely busywork.

Compare and contrast with a lot of other open world games. Ubisoft is probably the worst for this. They provide gigantic settings but which lack unique things to see and do. I enjoy Far Cry 3 and 4 but neither of them had any particular locations I can recall as having anything unique about them. They had tons of 'content' but all of it was box ticking and collectibles. They provided a huge open world but did nothing interesting with the world itself.

 

[Erttheking]

I cant believe how this franchise recieve 10/10 but i guess money talks.

The claim that people who like games you don't were bribed. A claim that is as proven as it is original. That is to say, not at all.

OT: Am I the only one not really seeing this flood of open world games? I mean Far Cry, Bethesda games, Shadow of Mordor, GTA, and I suppose a few others. Not exactly a shortage of them but doesn't even compare to the FPS flood we had a couple of years ago.

 

[Fappy]

I cant believe how this franchise recieve 10/10 but i guess money talks.

The claim that people who like games you don't were bribed. A claim that is as proven as it is original. That is to say, not at all.

OT: Am I the only one not really seeing this flood of open world games? I mean Far Cry, Bethesda games, Shadow of Mordor, GTA, and I suppose a few others. Not exactly a shortage of them but doesn't even compare to the FPS flood we had a couple of years ago.

A lot of it comes from Ubisoft. Assassin's Creed and Watchdogs (or whatever it was called) are big and frequent sellers which qualify as open world. Bioware is also in the arena now with DA3 and presumably ME: Andromeda.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm really glad I am not the only one bitching about the prevalence of open worlds. I brought it up to a friend like six months ago and he didn't get where I was coming from at all.

I just don't get why every AAA game outside of hard genre games have to be open world these days. Most the time it just pads out the experience with boring fluff.

I think it's exactly that fluff that attracts a lot of people. It's bang for their buck.

Ubisoft really seemed to have popularized this with Assassin's Creed 2 and Far Cry 3; Make a big open-world map and dot it with tons of little busy work markers. It's similar to loot games.

Anyway, like I said in the previous 'open-world' thread, it's not the genre I'm tired of, it's the Ubisoft formula. I like games like Infamous and Infamous 2, and The Witcher 3. Batman: Arkham City has a fun world to superhero through, too. Games like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and whatever other open-world games Ubisoft has in the works can jog on.

 

[Zhukov]

OT: Am I the only one not really seeing this flood of open world games? I mean Far Cry, Bethesda games, Shadow of Mordor, GTA, and I suppose a few others. Not exactly a shortage of them but doesn't even compare to the FPS flood we had a couple of years ago.

Skyrim (cursed be thy insanely profitable name)
Mad Max
Arkham City (kinda)
Arkham Knight
Rage
Kingdoms of Amalur
Just Cause 3
Saints Row The Third
Saints Row 4
Dying Light
MGSV: Phantom Pain
Fallout 4
Shadow of Mordor
Watch Dogs
GTA5
Farcry 3
Farcry 4
Farcry Primal (don't give me that look, it's coming out in like a week, I'm counting it)
The Witcher 3
Assassin's Creed Revelations
Assassin's Creed 3
Assassin's Creed Black Flag
Assassin's Creed Unity
Assassin's Creed Spinoff Something Something
Assassin's Creed Syndicate

(Thanks Ubisoft, that annual udder abuse is making my list look real good.)

That's just off the top off my head and restricting myself to the last five years or so.

I call that a fucking flood.

(Oh hey, and almost all of those were either mediocre or kinda shit. I'm shocked.)

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Hm. Fair enough. I suppose I was just thinking of the last year or two, I didn't go THAT far back. But fair enough.

 

[Fappy]

OT: Am I the only one not really seeing this flood of open world games? I mean Far Cry, Bethesda games, Shadow of Mordor, GTA, and I suppose a few others. Not exactly a shortage of them but doesn't even compare to the FPS flood we had a couple of years ago.

Skyrim (cursed be thy insanely profitable name)
Mad Max
Arkham City (kinda)
Arkham Knight
Rage
Kingdoms of Amalur
Just Cause 3
Saints Row The Third
Saints Row 4
Dying Light
MGSV: Phantom Pain
Fallout 4
Shadow of Mordor
GTA5
Farcry 3
Farcry 4
Farcry Primal (don't give me that look, it's coming out in like a week, I'm counting it)
Assassin's Creed Revelations
Assassin's Creed 3
Assassin's Creed Black Flag
Assassin's Creed Unity
Assassin's Creed Spinoff Something Something
Assassin's Creed Syndicate

(Thanks Ubisoft, that annual udder abuse is making my list look real good.)

That's just off the top off my head and restricting myself to the last five years or so.

I call that a fucking flood.

(Oh hey, and almost all of those were either mediocre or kinda shit. I'm shocked.)

As much as I agree with everything you posted above, this list (thankfully) pails in comparison to similar genre fad/floods we've seen in the past. I don't even want to see the list of grey/brown modern military shooters from the past console generation, or the WWII games before that (which is probably a bigger list).

Then there's the era of 16-bit platformers... oh God... that data is unholy.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

Half of games zhukov posted are made by ubisoft and all are just lazy copy paste design where you climb tower and mark enemies.

 

[MHR]

I don't know how you can say Skyrim isn't open enough. I've played that game for 575 hours and still haven't completed the main campaign or 100% any of the content. There's a point where the question has to be asked, what more did you want from that game? You want it to go on forever? It's understandable to get "bored" when you run out of something finite, but that should hardly come as a surprise.

Don't worry, countless Bethesda sequels are bound to happen. They're already brewing a whole new Fallout 4 zone for DLC as we speak.

 

[Zhukov]

Snip

Hm. Fair enough. I suppose I was just thinking of the last year or two, I didn't go THAT far back. But fair enough.

I chose to go back five years because that's when Skyrim went nuclear. Which I blame, possibly incorrectly, for the ensuing flood.

As much as I agree with everything you posted above, this list (thankfully) pails in comparison to similar genre fad/floods we've seen in the past. I don't even want to see the list of grey/brown modern military shooters from the past console generation, or the WWII games before that (which is probably a bigger list).

Then there's the era of 16-bit platformers... oh God... that data is unholy.

Ehhhh, y'know, I think open world commutes might actually be rivaling the brown military shooters at this point, what with Ubisoft's offerings outnumbering Call of Duty.

Of course, I may well have forgotten a great many of those shooters. Which is for the best, please let me keep it that way.

You're dead right about platformers though. I've previously made the comparison myself.

I wonder what it will be ten years from now.

"Fucking hell, why are there so many stealth games? Just because Thief Origins sold a billion copies every publisher tries to cash in!"

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I'm not against open-world. I love it when its well done enough for me to enjoy exploring the limits of the world. I hate filler-based open-world games though.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

I've been over open world games for a long time. The only two open world games I can say I enjoyed are Red Dead Redemption and Witcher 3, and in both cases it was more due to the quality of the writing in the main story and characters than the open world experience itself.

The vast majority of open worlds are stuffed full of meaningless filler to pad out the duration and cover for pitiful narrative design and simplistic gameplay systems. They are the very essence of "quantity over quality" and completely fail to respect the player's time by gating off meaningful content behind hours of trivia. Personally, I can't wait for the industry's obsession with them to wane so they they stop trying to shoehorn open worlds into franchises that don't benefit from having them (I'm looking at you, Dragon Age).

I've reached the point where I'm just not bothering with them. Unless an open world game game gets universal praise like Witcher 3, I'm ignoring it, because frankly I don't have two hundred hours to waste on a single game.

 

[WeepingAngels]

-Snip-

Trust me, I love choosing my own path too, but you don't need to make an open world game to offer that kind of experience. Early examples of this can be found in Mega Man, where it was the players choice to determine how best to tackle the gauntlet of levels. Should you get the water powerup first and then fight the fire guy or get the fire powerup first and fight the ice guy?

Open world games are obviously an easy way to offer "freedom", but they're hardly the only way and not always the best way.

Yeah but what if you don't want to fight the fire or ice guy at all, and instead want to run around doing your own thing entirely? That's the kind of freedom I'm referring to. I had tons of fun in Skyrim, and I hardly ever bothered with the main plot stuff. I did my own little personal plotlines, and played them out how I wanted. That kind of "open world" experience is only possible in a sandbox type game. Sure games can give the freedom of options, like your above Mega Man, option, but those are still a limited list of options on how to play the game, namely just "which one do you want to do first?". And that's fine, but I don't think it's the same category as the open world discussion. Sure open world isn't the only type of game to offer someone freedom, but it is the only type that gives you total agency in whether or not you even bother to do what the game wants you to do at all.

I had loads of fun in Morrowind. Building a base, filling it with shit and running around doing whatever. I had even more fun with Oblivion doing the same thing but after a few hundred hours, the same thing gets boring and then it always falls back on the main quest. By the time Skyrim came out, I didn't care to build another base and fill it with shit. I found the main quest boring and I was annoyed by how poorly it ran on the PS3.

If you want to see an example of gamers hand waving quality, Skyrim is it. It ran like shit but to most gamers (and journalists) that didn't matter because it had....dragons. Fuckin' ridiculous.

As for GTA, it's just the same game over and over again too. How are people still buying them?