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

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

What a lot of developers have in their head is that bigger = better. Or that MORE gameplay = better gameplay. What makes people like us want to play games more/longer... is just the fact that they're good. How many times have we beaten the Half Life games? Portal? The Mario games? Uncharted? Etc etc etc. These games don't stick around because they have a 97 hour playtime with 890345 hidden areas and secrets. They stick around because they're fucking good games.

This is a good point, but there has been a lot of drama lately around game length and value recently. Remember the furore over The Order: 1886? The six to eight hour campaign length for $60 caused all kinds of angst about value for money and argument about how long a game should be. It was all pretty silly, though. The Order wasn't a bad game because it was short, it was a bad game because of its bland gameplay and dull characters/story; no amount of extra hours could have prevented it being a disappointment, as it's systemic design flaws undermined the entire experience, short or long. On the flip side, we also had a lot of gamers who really liked Mad Max because it had lots of content, even though that content was fairly run-of-the-mill, and it has higher Metacritic user scores than reviewer scores because paying customers clearly rate rate value pretty highly in their game buying criteria, whereas reviewers tend not to.

Personally, I think the situation is a little more complex. Based on my own observations of what people say on many forums, I think that for a game to be considered to offer "value" (where value means the person is satisfied with what they got for their money), it needs to either have many hours of content (open world games like Witcher 3, online multiplayer games like Rainbow Six Seige), or a small amount of exceptionally high quality content (story driven games like The Last of Us). The Order was a dud because it had neither quantity nor quality of content. Mad Max succeeded because it at least had quantity of content, even if the content was of middling quality.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

By the way OP: something to note is that No Man's Sky is procedurally-generated open world - for whatever it's worth, that's a different kind of open world, much as Minecraft is. Not that I have that much interest in No Man's Sky yet, yes you may have infinitely large sandbox to play it what you are setting out to actually DO in it still largely remains to be seen.

I've been getting quite over the whole open world thing for some time now, mainly due to limited game time overall. Last game I sunk 100 hours into was Witcher 3, and that managed to keep me pretty engaged in it, even if the other parts started to feel like a slog (managing inventory, fighting herds of lesser enemies). I put that down to good writing, and I'm glad I gave that game my allocation. But there's been others I played recently, which was Fallout: NV (to get hype for Fallout 4), Mad Max, and Arkham Knight.

I'm getting so put off by open world, that I'm afraid I'll start culling my list of supposedly must-plays even more heavily now. Ubisoft has been off for a long time thankfully, but that's more to their shitty business practices that I just refuse to give them money. I hope the trend eases a bit though, it's starting to seem like an easy way to make a game nowadays, rather than having a tight story, linear narrative or engaging writing to tie it altogether.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I wouldn't say that the games rely on them. For me, they allow the games to transcend from being merely good to, easily topping my favourite games list. It's not that the games rely on the mods, it's that these types of games seem to attract the best modding communities. Bethesda games have gotten a huge modding community simply by supporting them with each and every game they develop. While I do like their games without mods (I only started playing mods when I got a good laptop a couple years after Skyirm came out), having them as an option for extra content makes it so the games never really get old. Devs can make a good game, but ultimately, their team size is going to be minuscule compared to a good modding community.

For what it's worth, I think the Witcher 3 is better than all of the other games on that list, so it's not like modding is the be all end all for this genre. The Witcher 3 has some mods, but they're mostly small tweaks or cosmetic things. I haven't downloaded any.

Even if they did rely heavily on mods, I honestly wouldn't say that's a big deal. For me, half the reason of getting a good PC was to play modded versions of the games I love most. However, I could see how that would be unfair for others so I do hope that never happens.

Fair point, maybe i'm being a bit harsh.

I do think the "mod/patch will sort it" excuse though is needed far more than it should be. And that vanilla games need to be released when nearer "completion" more often too (TW3 being a good example).

Definitely agree. I'm sure there'll be an Unofficial Patch for Fallout 4 just like there has been for every other Bethesda game. Until the Witcher 3 came out, I actually believed that these kinds of games simply couldn't be that polished, that it would take too many man hours. While the Witcher 3 did have some bugs, it was still way more polished than any other open world game I've played (besides maybe Wind Waker). I'm hoping that other devs look to the success CDProjeckt has had and realize that putting in the work actually gets results.

 

[Skatalite]

It all reminds me of something Ben Croshaw said in a review for Spore: it seems like the developers spent so much time and effort on making the world very big that they forgot to add much in the way of furniture. You can only stare at a field or a mountain for so long before boredom sets in, especially when invisible barriers or other limitations prevent you from thoroughly investigating it at close range, or there's nothing really living there in the first place.

For me it's exactly the opposite. I feel like open world games are often filled with pointless stuff, copy & paste quests and generic NPCs, but the worlds themselves still seem lifeless. Of all the open world games I've played over the years, there's only a couple I'd put among my favorites (Shadow of the Colossus, Dark Souls and Red Dead Redemption), mainly because they're doing something different from all those ''more is better'' games. I haven't played The Witcher 3 yet though, which from what I keep hearing has both the quantity and the quality.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

For me it's exactly the opposite. I feel like open world games are often filled with pointless stuff, copy & paste quests and generic NPCs, but the worlds themselves still seem lifeless. Of all the open world games I've played over the years, there's only a couple I'd put among my favorites (Shadow of the Colossus, Dark Souls and Red Dead Redemption), mainly because they're doing something different from all those ''more is better'' games. I haven't played The Witcher 3 yet though, which from what I keep hearing has both the quantity and the quality.

Read Dead was my previous favourite open world by far, and Witcher 3 is the only one I've played since that matched it for balancing main story, side quests, random exploration and activities, and making a world that feels alive, dynamic, and lived in. I can't exactly put my finger on what it is about the way they use their open world that is different, but it just works better in these games than elsewhere. Usually I get bored of just roaming around fairly quickly, but these games kept me engaged when most open worlds can't. Maybe it's having a horse to just ride across the landscape? Both games have that in common.

 

[Tilly]

I think part of the problem is that you're describing it as a genre.
I don't think it was ever supposed to be one!
Minecraft and Xenoblade X are definitely not the same genre.

 

[PartyUpLive]

I actually plan on getting into into open world games more as I haven't played many in the past because I didn't really have the time. But some of them I really want to check out. Especially on the Xbox 360 and PS3.

 

[FakeSympathy]

I don't like the way open worlds are designed. Commuting isn't fun for me. Not in real life and not in a game.

However, no matter how much the game advertises to have "bigger landscape than the previous game that was known to have big landscape", it will always have that invisible boundaries. For a game genre known for exploring freely, theses boundaries really break the immersion. I know a game must have some sort of limit, but the term "open-world" is ultimately a false statement, as we are bond to hit those walls.

I'd set my open world in a dense, elaborate fantasy city surrounded by high walls. You would feel trapped, but it would (hopefully) be a believable boundary. An almost maze-like city with verticality and a hostile, depressing atmosphere. Every place would be distinct, even at the expense of size. It wouldn't be a collect-a-thon of items and quests. The whole world would just be a means to an end. Replayability would come from random enemy patrols, disordered objectives and environmental interaction.

The setting sounds great, but I'd make my game centered around the singular goal of escaping this place. You could use anything (or anyone if so chosen) to help achieve this, and the whole city would be at your disposal for observing, learning, acquiring resources, and applying these things however you like. You could build relationships/allies with npc's if desired to get out together, or use them if you want to be a dick.

It would be very dynamic, and yeah it kinda sounds like Half-Life; perhaps basically what HL3 would hopefully be. I think perspective would work with 1st or 3rd though, and it could also work in either a futuristic setting or even a medieval one.

 

[TheJebus]

The problem isn't open world games.

The problem is doing open world games wrong.

Developers are constantly making them in a way that just turns them into singleplayer MMOs without even the remote semblance of player intelligence that comes as given being an MMO that makes it interesting.

A good Open World game is a game that has a life of it's own, rather than simply a setting for which to shoot instant illogically foreverenemies.

I want to say STALKER did it right, or at least, WAS GOING to do it right, if they didn't have to rush it. Still a good example, though.

A good Open World game makes you feel like you're just another cog in the machine, and only through your own tenacity did you rise above the rest of the others inhabiting the world, which Stalker does rather well.

Another decent open world game I suppose would be Dwarf Fortress if you like that sort of thing, though I personally couldn't stomach adventure mode for very long, there's a lot of potential to it.

There's the X series space games. Despite you pretty much needing mods for it to be true open world experience (the economy without mods is fake as fuck, as well in rebirth). That series is probably the best example I can come up with.

These games do open world right.

Skyrim, fallout 3, even new vegas despite how good it was of an RPG, etc. Not really true open world games. The world isn't open to you as much as you are just a superhero who goes around everywhere killing everything, or sneaking every inch of the way.

 

[Skatalite]

^Right, Stalker, that's another good example.

Read Dead was my previous favourite open world by far, and Witcher 3 is the only one I've played since that matched it for balancing main story, side quests, random exploration and activities, and making a world that feels alive, dynamic, and lived in. I can't exactly put my finger on what it is about the way they use their open world that is different, but it just works better in these games than elsewhere. Usually I get bored of just roaming around fairly quickly, but these games kept me engaged when most open worlds can't. Maybe it's having a horse to just ride across the landscape? Both games have that in common.

I did love horse riding in RDR and I've barely even used fast travel, but I don't think that's it. You can ride horses in Assassin's Creed as well and it didn't help much. Like you said, it's hard to say what exactly makes the world stand out, but it definitely feels alive, the art direction is beautiful, and the fact that you're controlling a great character like John Marston doesn't hurt either (another thing The Witcher 3 has in common).

 

[TerranV]

Yeah I'm tired of them for the time being. The Witcher 3 killed it for me. The world is large and beautiful to look at, but once I figured out it was mostly populated by chest sitting out in the open guarded by groups of monsters, I immediately decided to finish the main story and be done with it. Still enjoyed the game, but felt that it would have been better as a more linear game.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

I did love horse riding in RDR and I've barely even used fast travel, but I don't think that's it. You can ride horses in Assassin's Creed as well and it didn't help much. Like you said, it's hard to say what exactly makes the world stand out, but it definitely feels alive, the art direction is beautiful, and the fact that you're controlling a great character like John Marston doesn't hurt either (another thing The Witcher 3 has in common).

I know one thing that makes a huge difference (for me at least) is dynamic weather and a day-night cycle. Witcher 3 world felt so much more alive than Dragon Age Inquisition's which just felt really static and unchanging after a while. DAI's weather effects looked nice, but the fact that it was always a rainy night in the Fallow Mire, and always a sunny afternoon in the Hinterlands started to really bug me after a while. Not to mention all the background characters in DAI who are literally just static models that don't even have idle animations! At least all the background characters in Witcher are doing things. DAI just lacked so many little details that make a world feel believable, things that games like RDR and Witcher 3 nailed. Maybe that's what makes these games different? I think it's the little background details that make the world feel alive, so perhaps some part of your brain is subconsciously bothered when they are absent?

 

[Sharia]

They have always been tiresome to me. The way I get around them is to just plow forward with the main story only. Due to them always having clear markers, I find sticking to the main story quite simple and despite son of the annoying travel, you can usually avoid most of the tedium.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

They have always been tiresome to me. The way I get around them is to just plow forward with the main story only. Due to them always having clear markers, I find sticking to the main story quite simple and despite son of the annoying travel, you can usually avoid most of the tedium.

Unfortunately, they often gate the main story by level or other requirements to force you to do a certain amount of side content just to progress the plot, and if they don't actively prevent you from progressing without doing side content, they still tend to make it hard to progress the story because you end up being under levelled for the boss encounters.

 

[Saelune]

I love love love open world games, but when they work. MGSV is an example of a game that should not be open world, since its not -really- open world, just wants you to spend forever getting from small actual place to place. But TES, Fallout, Far Cry, even games like Minecraft and Terraria. I love exploring, I love the lack of urgency these games usually have.

The problem is fads. A lot of games tack on open world, just as multiplayer gets tacked on (or single player in some cases). Personally, I hate the new fad replacing open-world; MOBAs, and other games fringing on MOBA aspects. Sadly for me its just begun...