Is the "Open World" approach killing RPGs? And will it ever stop?

[Danbo Jambo]

So I finally got around to getting a PS4 and sinking some hours into The Witcher 3 (have played previously, but only in fits & starts on a mates PS4). As a BIG fan of TW2, poss my fave game of all time, I can only say how utterly gutted I am that they've essentially taken TW2 and spread it out thinner than Donald Trump's hair across barren, boring, empty, souless filler landscapes which add absolutely nothing to the experience, but which do kill the pacing and add to the dullness.

I can live with most the other "issues", the player movement is off and annoying (the patch won't download for some reason) but I actually really enjoy the combat, especially on harder levels. But, after reading how "vibrant" and "exciting" the world of TW3 was I've been nothing but disapointed so far. The RPG aspect & quest-marker/MMO approach again just drags the game down, as I no longer feel as if there's any point in exploring or paying attantion to anything on-screen, I just look at the map instead. The actual character interactions feel a big step back from TW2 too.

Now this has come on the back of me playing the absolute butchery of the Dragon Age franchize in DA:I too. DA:I is, to me, quite simply one of the worst "RPGs" I've played in ages. Again miles and miles of absolute nothingness and pure dullness. Origins is a million times better in my opinion. Whereas TW3 has enough story and good elements to still be semi-enjoyable (at the mo I'd rate it 7.5/10 but it still early days), DA:I's mundane & chore-like approach doesn't, and for me it's a genuine 3 or 4/10 experience.

So, is there any way this "open world" or "sandbox" approach can be halted? I've been playing Dark Souls 2 alongside these games, and I'm far, far, far more invested in it because of the tight, together structure. I worry that there's bizare consensus amongst gamers that the open world/sandbox approach is better, and that future RPGs are all gonna fall into this trap.

Am I being to harsh and missing something? Or are we essentially getting a great 10 track album put on a 50 track mix tape with dross fillers killing the experience?

 

[CeeBod]

I worry that there's bizare consensus amongst gamers that the open world/sandbox approach is better, and that future RPGs are all gonna fall into this trap.

To me good roleplaying is the freedom to do what I want, when I want, and open-world games do that better. If I want a tightly scripted narrative I'll watch a movie or read a book, so for me the open world/sandbox approach IS better for RPGs. For other people, the character development or richness of the story or any of a million other things might be more important, so no there isn't a consensus, and there DEFINITELY isn't a "bizarre consensus", which sounds like just another way to say "Stop liking what I don't like!", but people favour different things, and the technology has caught up enough to do open worlds reasonably well just now - ergo they are currently over-represented after many years of non-representation.

 

[Zhukov]

It's been headed that way for a while, plus Skyrim and GTA cast some mighty long shadows. Whether or not the trend constitutes "killing" just depends on what you're into.

But yeah, personally I've been heartily sick of open worlds in general for quite some time now. They just add a fucking commute between the interesting bits and a whole lot of tedious busywork so they can say it has hundreds of hours of content.

Although TW3 was a bit more bearable than the average open world dross in that there were a few really fantastic bits scattered among the padding that almost made it worth the slog. Still wouldn't know pacing if it got stuck up its nose and died there though.

 

[Joccaren]

Honestly, the reason that Witcher 3 is so praised is that by and large it doesn't fall into the traps of open world games. If you want to just run through the story, you can and are more than welcome to, without doing any side content. It is actually quite possible, and the distances between things are well chosen for the pacing in the game. Honestly, its only slightly more open world, with a much larger world, than TW2 - which I'll remind you consisted of 3 open world maps separated out. If you wanted to explore and do side objectives, you could run into the same issues with it as you can with 3. The thing is, 3 just has more of everything. More side objectives, more map locations, more world, more quests... If you must 100% things, yeah, it gets tiring, however by and large the core game isn't changed at all. Its still a series of linear missions with the start points placed out inside an open world, with a some optional side content to do throughout that world. That describes both 1 and 2. Its not perfect, and in creating all that extra content there's now a big set of distractions for the player that can slow down someone who doesn't want to just rush the main story considerably, but at their core they are functionally quite similar in the 'open world' department.

Inquisition was a different beast. It designed itself near entirely around this 'open world MMO' concept, and fell a bit flat because of it. There was a score tied directly to how much open world stuff you'd done, that'd let you move on to other areas, and while it often didn't require much, it still made you do a bunch of MMO quests to get through. And that's what most quests were; MMO quests, incredibly simply collectathons and slayer quests that were boring to engage with and with the bare minimum of non-combat content. Witcher 3 did this much better, with almost every quest actually having a story to it, requiring a decision from the player, and often being a one off boss fight at the end, rather than a 'butcher 20 of this animal' pointlessness. This also isn't commenting on giving out missions early on that required you to be end-game level to beat just because fuck you. The different parts of Inquisition stood in stark contrast to each other; The Linear main missions felt tight and well handled, the 'grind' to unlock them felt just like that - grind. TW3 in contrast often didn't have differing feels throughout the majority of its content. Story or no, what happened was up to you in terms of choice. You could walk off and engage in open world if you wanted to, or you could keep pursuing the linear story. In either case, it was your choice, and they blended seemlessly into each other, only rarely getting locked one way or the other for a short period of time.

In terms of will they go away... Its not likely. A large part of RPGs is the ability for players to express themselves, and for that they need freedom in how they act. This means they need to be allowed to choose which quest is more important to them to pursue first, where they want to spend their time, and what they want to do. It also appeals more to explorer type players, allowing them to go around and find all the stuff in the world if they should so choose. In terms of downsides, if done correctly, there shouldn't really be many. Imagine DA:O, but instead of having a splotchy map loading screen, you had a minute of holding down W and watching pretty scenery go by - welcome to TW3 if you don't try to explore all the ?s and do all the side objectives. It is effectively cut up into 3 or 4 hub areas, similar to TW2, with a few small quests in each, and some main story quest to complete too [Intro, Crow's Perch, Novigrad, Skellige and a final one I'm not 100% on]. Its only if you go exploring and trying to do everything that you'll really run into problems of content fatigue and lack of pacing. Sadly, this is something that most players feel drawn to do because there's a game there and you're going to damn well play it.

If done well, it has few overall downsides though, and serves to improve the core appeal of a lot of RPGs, so it sure as hell ain't going to go away as a technique. There should still be more linear experiences coming out from time to time though, but less common than the open worlds which are the current vogue. Thankfully, open world use is improving, and devs are focusing more and more on the story part of the open world approach, and trying to create a great story, then build a world around it for you to explore, rather than the inverse. Likely except Bethesda, they'll always be "Build a big world then try to make a point for it all" sorts of devs I think. Sadly, its still got a ways to go before it actually becomes consistently competantly used, but hopefully one day we'll see it.

 

[Gamerpalooza]

Personally "Open World" is something I can associate WRPGS with. Though because it has been the "standard", especially as of late, it seems too forced causing some sort of laziness in design. Developers are getting to accustomed in creating the length over creating the world. Which is a pointless epeen contest.

I know that open world is nice but if they can't put the effort into having meaning then there is no point in tha open world. I guess these developers have forgotten what is important about an open world when their focus becomes bragging about the size of their maps.

 

[gsilver]

After last year, when every AAA game seemed like it went open world, I'm officially on open-world boycott. That sort of design lends itself to so much filler and backtracking, that I'm simply not going to bother.

As a working adult, games are already way too long. Huge amounts of artificial padding is the antithesis of what I want from gaming.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

To me good roleplaying is the freedom to do what I want, when I want, and open-world games do that better. If I want a tightly scripted narrative I'll watch a movie or read a book, so for me the open world/sandbox approach IS better for RPGs. For other people, the character development or richness of the story or any of a million other things might be more important, so no there isn't a consensus, and there DEFINITELY isn't a "bizarre consensus", which sounds like just another way to say "Stop liking what I don't like!", but people favour different things, and the technology has caught up enough to do open worlds reasonably well just now - ergo they are currently over-represented after many years of non-representation.

You can't deny there's been a trend to try and fit open world elements into RPG's though surely? TW3 + DA:I points in case. That comes from a concensus that such elements sell, and that comes from a concensus that said customer base thus wants those elements.

I don't mind if that's done well and these games retain their depth - like Morrowing - but just to try and cram loads of random, inconcequential elements of filler into a game when it doesn't really need it seems counter-productive to me?

It's been headed that way for a while, plus Skyrim and GTA cast some mighty long shadows. Whether or not the trend constitutes "killing" just depends on what you're into.

But yeah, personally I've been heartily sick of open worlds in general for quite some time now. They just add a fucking commute between the interesting bits and a whole lot of tedious busywork so they can say it has hundreds of hours of content.

Although TW3 was a bit more bearable than the average open world dross in that there were a few really fantastic bits scattered among the padding that almost made it worth the slog. Still wouldn't know pacing if it got stuck up its nose and died there though.

Couldn't agree more chap. I'm still kinda enjoying TW3, so I don't think it kills it totally, but it's not a patch on TW2 for me, as the open world feels just empty and bland like most have done since Morrowind.

Honestly, the reason that Witcher 3 is so praised is that by and large it doesn't fall into the traps of open world games. If you want to just run through the story, you can and are more than welcome to, without doing any side content. It is actually quite possible, and the distances between things are well chosen for the pacing in the game. Honestly, its only slightly more open world, with a much larger world, than TW2 - which I'll remind you consisted of 3 open world maps separated out. If you wanted to explore and do side objectives, you could run into the same issues with it as you can with 3. The thing is, 3 just has more of everything. More side objectives, more map locations, more world, more quests... If you must 100% things, yeah, it gets tiring, however by and large the core game isn't changed at all. Its still a series of linear missions with the start points placed out inside an open world, with a some optional side content to do throughout that world. That describes both 1 and 2. Its not perfect, and in creating all that extra content there's now a big set of distractions for the player that can slow down someone who doesn't want to just rush the main story considerably, but at their core they are functionally quite similar in the 'open world' department.

Inquisition was a different beast. It designed itself near entirely around this 'open world MMO' concept, and fell a bit flat because of it. There was a score tied directly to how much open world stuff you'd done, that'd let you move on to other areas, and while it often didn't require much, it still made you do a bunch of MMO quests to get through. And that's what most quests were; MMO quests, incredibly simply collectathons and slayer quests that were boring to engage with and with the bare minimum of non-combat content. Witcher 3 did this much better, with almost every quest actually having a story to it, requiring a decision from the player, and often being a one off boss fight at the end, rather than a 'butcher 20 of this animal' pointlessness. This also isn't commenting on giving out missions early on that required you to be end-game level to beat just because fuck you. The different parts of Inquisition stood in stark contrast to each other; The Linear main missions felt tight and well handled, the 'grind' to unlock them felt just like that - grind. TW3 in contrast often didn't have differing feels throughout the majority of its content. Story or no, what happened was up to you in terms of choice. You could walk off and engage in open world if you wanted to, or you could keep pursuing the linear story. In either case, it was your choice, and they blended seemlessly into each other, only rarely getting locked one way or the other for a short period of time.

In terms of will they go away... Its not likely. A large part of RPGs is the ability for players to express themselves, and for that they need freedom in how they act. This means they need to be allowed to choose which quest is more important to them to pursue first, where they want to spend their time, and what they want to do. It also appeals more to explorer type players, allowing them to go around and find all the stuff in the world if they should so choose. In terms of downsides, if done correctly, there shouldn't really be many. Imagine DA:O, but instead of having a splotchy map loading screen, you had a minute of holding down W and watching pretty scenery go by - welcome to TW3 if you don't try to explore all the ?s and do all the side objectives. It is effectively cut up into 3 or 4 hub areas, similar to TW2, with a few small quests in each, and some main story quest to complete too [Intro, Crow's Perch, Novigrad, Skellige and a final one I'm not 100% on]. Its only if you go exploring and trying to do everything that you'll really run into problems of content fatigue and lack of pacing. Sadly, this is something that most players feel drawn to do because there's a game there and you're going to damn well play it.

If done well, it has few overall downsides though, and serves to improve the core appeal of a lot of RPGs, so it sure as hell ain't going to go away as a technique. There should still be more linear experiences coming out from time to time though, but less common than the open worlds which are the current vogue. Thankfully, open world use is improving, and devs are focusing more and more on the story part of the open world approach, and trying to create a great story, then build a world around it for you to explore, rather than the inverse. Likely except Bethesda, they'll always be "Build a big world then try to make a point for it all" sorts of devs I think. Sadly, its still got a ways to go before it actually becomes consistently competantly used, but hopefully one day we'll see it.

The thing is, in TW2 when I explored I came across significant elements, thing which felt intersting. In TW3 stumbling across the umpteenth bandit camp is just tiresome. I try and ride a direct route to my next objective, oh what's this, I've stumbled over another group of randoms who want to attack me for no reason. Great, that's another 5 minutes and possible restart if I die which is delaying me getting to the real nitty gritty of the game. And if I win that fight? wooo, no significant impact on anything. Yawn lol. Don't get me wrong, there's a good game in there and I appriciate that TW3 is still OK/good, whereas these elements destroyed games such as KOAR & DA:I.

I totally agree DA:I is far worse. TW3 is enjoyable at times. For me that's less times than TW2 (so far) but it's still a good game. DA:I is woeful. A truly, utterly woeful game with absolutely no sense of real involvement IMO. If someone asked whould they play TW3 I'd definitely say "try it", with "DA:I" I'd say "avoid like the plague!"

You make some great points about the way RPGs & OWGs are headed. I'm not against them in principle, I absolutely loved Morrowind, I just wish that they'd concentrate more on finding a balance between depth, story and freedom. To me it currently seems as if games are just cramming OW elements in to follow the trend & sell. Hopefully this will change

 

[Danbo Jambo]

Personally "Open World" is something I can associate WRPGS with. Though because it has been the "standard", especially as of late, it seems too forced causing some sort of laziness in design. Developers are getting to accustomed in creating the length over creating the world. Which is a pointless epeen contest.

I know that open world is nice but if they can't put the effort into having meaning then there is no point in tha open world. I guess these developers have forgotten what is important about an open world when their focus becomes bragging about the size of their maps.

Personally "Open World" is something I can associate WRPGS with. Though because it has been the "standard", especially as of late, it seems too forced causing some sort of laziness in design. Developers are getting to accustomed in creating the length over creating the world. Which is a pointless epeen contest.

I know that open world is nice but if they can't put the effort into having meaning then there is no point in tha open world. I guess these developers have forgotten what is important about an open world when their focus becomes bragging about the size of their maps.

After last year, when every AAA game seemed like it went open world, I'm officially on open-world boycott. That sort of design lends itself to so much filler and backtracking, that I'm simply not going to bother.

As a working adult, games are already way too long. Huge amounts of artificial padding is the antithesis of what I want from gaming.

Again, couldn't agree more chaps.

 

[kilenem]

Imfamous 1 and 2 are probably my two favorite PS3 exclusives makes me wonder why the hell isn't Sukcer Punch making the New Spider man game. Fingers cross they get the static shock License Those are pretty good open world games. If you have access to a PS3 and haven't played it check those games out. Maybe just 2 because the first one looked dated 3 years ago.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

So, is there any way this "open world" or "sandbox" approach can be halted? I've been playing Dark Souls 2 alongside these games, and I'm far, far, far more invested in it because of the tight, together structure. I worry that there's bizare consensus amongst gamers that the open world/sandbox approach is better, and that future RPGs are all gonna fall into this trap.

Am I being to harsh and missing something? Or are we essentially getting a great 10 track album put on a 50 track mix tape with dross fillers killing the experience?

You seem to think, and have accepted that open world games do not have/cannot have so-called "tight, together structure". Something in line of "The pond must be either wide and shallow, or small and deep."
but it can have both qualities. Yes, it is true that structured RPG may tell better interactive story because they have less ground(as in, possible player's actions) to cover, and vice versa for open world games.

But we are falling in to the fallacy. We are assuming that there is set amount of effort 'X' and it must be spread across the game.
Just put more effort in to it! Open world can be more than a giant map with 100 breadcrumbs. It has potential, for god's sake. More consequences... or story that stretches across multiple places and does effect SOMETHING in the world.

Open world games... did fail in this regard. At least popular and recent ones in the last decade. But that does not make every open world games worse for all eternity. There is still hope yet.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

Nope, there are plenty of good/bad open world RPGs just like there are plenty of good/bad linear RPGs.

 

[Kerg3927]

As someone who has been playing CRPG's for 30 years, it's an absolute disaster. I call it Skyrim Disease, and it's spreading and infecting the entire genre.

Like OP, in the past couple of years, I have played through DA:I, which was a terrible slog to get through. Then I recently finished Witcher 3. TW3 is much better than DAI, mainly because of Geralt's cool factor and the massive effort that CDPR put into fleshing out the quests and story, but it still fell into the same filler traps. 69 smuggler's cache's? Really? Hours and hours and hours of mind-numbingly tedious boat travel and siren killing for crap loot. And you don't know for sure that it's a smuggler's cache until you get there. My OCD won't let me skip it because I don't want to miss anything.

After TW3, I just got through playing Dark Souls 1 for the first time, and OMFG, the difference is amazing. TW3 is a solid game, the best modern slogfest out there, but it can't hold a candle to games like DS or Dragon Age Origins or Mass Effect 1-3 because those games are NOT an open world of boring nothingness. They provide nothing but quality content and that's all you get to play. They don't LET you become bored.

Confinement - for lack of a better word - is GOOD. Confinement clarifies. It cuts out the unnecessary trash. No, you don't need to be able to climb over that hill or see what's on the other side of that wall, BECAUSE THERE'S NOTHING OVER THERE WORTH LOOKING AT!

Imagine if the movie industry one day decided to take this open world approach. We don't need a cutting room anymore! Just throw it all in, crap and all, and make movies as long as possible so we can brag in our advertisements about how long it is. 10, 20 hour movies filled with boring, empty nothing. Just people walking or driving to and from their locations without saying a word.

What if books took this approach? What if they made the Fellowship of the Ring 4,000 pages instead of 400? Filled with 3,600 pages describing the group walking, step by step, and looking at boring scenery.

It would be a freaking disaster. Just like it currently is in the gaming industry.

Confine us to manageable-sized game content that matters, and cut out all the rest of the trash. Make smaller, quality games, with all the slogging crap cut out. Then go make another smaller, quality game. Repeat. Move on and use your resources on the next game instead of pausing to fill the current one with tedious crap content.

Stop the madness!

 

[09philj]

What if books took this approach? What if they made the Fellowship of the Ring 4,000 pages instead of 400? Filled with 3,600 pages describing the group walking, step by step, and looking at boring scenery.

It would be The Two Towers.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

...Weird, I liked DA:I's approach to the open-world thing, since each of the areas were pretty self-contained and all the important bits were fairly obvious. Plus all the main story missions are in linear areas anyway, it's just if you wanted to fuck around with side quests and maximum upgrades that it got all open-worldy on you.

But anyway. I think a big problem with open world RPGs is... well, it's a big fuck-off level you still have to design, essentially. You can't just slap an open world in without fine-tuning that shit, and a lot of the time it feels really sloppy. The recent Far Cry's, Dragons Dogma and even Skyrim all had that problem where there just wasn't any rhythm to the layout. They had bad flow, where I'd just stumble across random locations that were either too high or too low leveled, or I'd get given a quest 500 miles across the land that only rewarded a Steel Sword or some shit. It was too much, and I just stopped caring enough to really explore.

DA:I and The Witcher 3, at least (yes, I like both, it is possible) are far better laid out in regards to area structure - DA:I treats each area as it's own little quest-zone essentially, with a bunch of quests and hints of where to go at the base camps so you can get the story, while also having a bunch of things spread out if you feel like exploring outside those guidelines. The Witcher averts the Skyrim problem by having shit far better balanced and more 'local' (I'm still early into it, but so far I haven't been given any quests which are like 'Yeah just head to the opposite end of the map past level 50 enemies for a level 3 quest'), and the story lines have a much tighter focus.

Both games still have problems with getting places quickly (why can games never make riding horses fun? Or fast? Shit just give me an ability that boosts my sprint speed or something, it works in World of Warcraft. I even resorted to the Fade-Step spell in DA:I anyway! Just make it universal!) and if you've done a lot of stuff in an area then it gets super boring to slog through on the way to more exciting things, but still, they're the ones that feel... well, thoughtfully done. Like the Open-world wasn't just slapped in because everyone is doing it/it's expected, but because they wanted to do it and worked around the difficulties accordingly.

So... yeah. I don't think it'll ever stop - AAA industry doesn't quit until every penny has been thoroughly milked - but I don't think it's killing the RPGs either. I just think Devs need to think before they put it in and realize that Radiant Quests and respawning enemies doesn't make for a very entertaining world.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I think what kills any game is them mindlessly aping what is apparently popular and then attempting to copy it for better or worse. I feel the worse open world ones feel like they do it in stages so that they design the world then try and put a game in there.Then they usually realise damn there isnt much way to interact with this world what do we do I know loads of fetch quests some timed quests this part will have a linear scripted event etc.

I just feel most dont put enough thought into why they are making it open world and its to much `but the chart says`.Speaking personally I am not a fan of open worlds in general as I feel they offer way to much bland and not enough quality content and many just feel like they are the same game in another skin.

Note I have not played the Witcher 3 so enough to know how I specifically feel about it in that game.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I don't find open world as horrible as some. Sure, certain games can do without it because they're just not taking advantage of it.

However your example of Witcher 3 is subjective. I found that while yes, you're exploring a vast but slightly barren at times world, the landscapes feel natural. I love the way it looks, it feels like I'm actually exploring a world that has a bit of distance. Not everything needs to have content, sometimes the content to me is just the atmosphere and what bothers me about some open world games is that there are areas that feel less genuinely lifelike because they cut distance and add hard content instead of soft content.
Hard content to me is things like essential NPCs and interactive things that are necessary for the game's progression whereas soft content is the extraneous clutter and scenery that adds life to the overall game world. A game with less soft content in say a major city with a high population ends up feeling like you're not in a truly open world. Like squishing a major city into less real estate than it should have. Granted this is probably done due to design limitations, and I prefer the way some games do this by "gating" off the non-essential parts (like Arkham City showing you're in part of Gotham but cannot interact with the actual city).
Witcher 3 has (for what I've played of it) a feel of being in a real place. The content doesn't necessarily need to be essential hard content, it lives by its soft content as well. The paths in forests and hills feel naturally made by usage, the lands look somewhat realistic. It genuinely feels like a world that might actually exist somewhere outside a game. It also gates off parts of the open world because they're just not part of the game, which is nice of them to do instead of putting you on a large island (looking at you GTA).

 

[Saelune]

I love open world. I love freedom. I want more freedom and I think the most open and free RPG series has been stifling that since Oblivion. Not that Skyrim isn't super open and free, but less so than Morrowind.

I don't think there isn't a place for more focused RPGs, and not everyone is good at open world, but I want more freedom not less. Its why tabletop RPGs (DnD) will always be best cause it offers essentially infinite freedom. We need another Neverwinter Nights (not the lame MMO), toolset and all...

 

[MysticSlayer]

I guess, for me, open world games (even beyond RPGs) often fall into a trap of incompletion. To date, I haven't bothered to finish Skyrim or Oblivion (despite putting many hours in both), and I don't see myself ever finishing Fallout 4. I've never completed a GTA game, and I have only beaten the first two Assassin's Creed games, and that was very begrudgingly so. And as much as I imagine myself wanting to complete Inquisition, I'd imagine all the messing about will make me lose interest in the long run. Saints Row is really the major exception of games I complete consistently.

But it's not like the lack of completion makes me dislike open world games (in fact, I love them), it's just that I don't see them as games where I lose myself in the story the developers have made. I play Skyrim to create my own story, and I play GTA to mess around. Once a character's story is complete for me or the messing around ceases to amuse me, I move on, often without finishing the story. For a story-driven game, the open world seems to actively hinder completion of the main game. I get almost everything I want out of it by all the distractions, and by the time it comes to push the story forward, I'm bored with the gameplay and world.

Personally, though, I don't see that as a necessity. Saints Row works because all the messing isn't bloated, has a clear end goal, and often helps drive the plot forward. Zelda utilizes an open world in most of its games, but it still puts the focus on finding what you need (not loading you down with what you don't need) and putting the emphasis on going from dungeon to dungeon. Even Mass Effect or the first two Dragon Age games give you plenty of freedom to move around the world, but they limit you to meaningful areas, so that even side quests don't make the whole experience a slog.

I guess the big problem with open world is that, for me, they become so bloated with extra stuff that I eventually just lose focus, and it is very rare that I complete them. And it's not like I'm going to ignore 90% of a game that I paid for. So I probably wouldn't say that open world is the enemy of story-driven RPGs, but the current open world design definitely creates some issues.

However, I don't see that stopping any time soon. These are the games selling right now, and many of them also are winning plenty of awards. We're also at the point where budgets can afford to make them. With all of that coming together, I'd imagine this trend will continue for a while until enough complaints are raised or until more focused games can contest games like Skyrim, GTAV, Inquisition, and Witcher 3 in terms of sales and awards.

 

[sXeth]

The key thing I think is you can have open world without simply just having miles of landscapes dotted with the occasional exclamation point on the HUD. There is a definite trend to both incorporating MMO mechanics, and going for scale over substance, though. ON a design scale, its certainly possible to put priority on content density over "We have 80,000 square miles and look at our hi-def tree modelling".

Open-worlds nothing new in RPGs. Might ^ Magic, Ultima, even Baldurs Gate have all used the concept. Dark Souls is open-world, for more recent cases, and avoids the general scale problems. Really, the developedr just have to focus on mking points of interest and unique features, with a minimum of filler space. Following from that, they could start to eliminate waypoints and other mechanics for more organic guidance.