As I get older, I notice that the open world formula is tiring! I much prefer a linear game told well than the same game with add-ons.
I was looking forward to Days Gone. I haven’t had it spoiled for me, so I picked it up and when I realized it was open world, it killed my enthusiasm for it.
I just can’t go hours on end forever just because.
For me, open worlds are almost a Nay! I’ve heard great things about Days Gone, and I want to play it, but the amount of time it will take to go through the story, because it’s open world, I don’t know. I get tired just to think about it.
What about you? Do you enjoy open-world games? Do you seek them?
I love them if they’re done right. Bethesda and CDPR do it right every time. I do really enjoy Ubisoft’s open worlds back in the day, such as the old AC games (Rogue and before), Watch Dogs games, etc. Of course, RDR2 is also a masterpiece in this design. You mentioned Days Gone and I enjoy that one too, it’s designed in a way that doesn’t feel exhaustive.
Problem is, because of the scope of the games, it tends to take too much time. If the devs don’t make the exploration and side activities fun and worthwhile, it’s easy to lose steam and get burned out.
I do find some of them great for killing time, though. I’ll sometimes load up Watch Dogs 2 and free roam, do multiplayer activities, hunt down collectibles as I listen to cybersecurity podcasts. Same with RDR2 if I’m listening to podcasts about America or traditionalism.
It kinda depends…? personally I play genshin and find it fun, but sometimes exploring for too long get tiring
The first time to experience it, it’s amazing. Each time after that, it’s a disappointment.
Used to be my thing, but not really anymore.
Haven’t been super interested for a while. Occasionally I’ll find one that stands out, but I’m not out here looking for it anymore. I’ll take a tightly crafted linear game over that any time.
Usually, if I play open world games now, it’s a “point A to point B” situation. I don’t explore the entire world unless I’m really taken with it, and even then I’ll lose interest after a while. (And if there’s no fast travel or some equivalent in-game method to traverse across the map instantly, I very likely won’t bother.)
What I do enjoy, though, are kind of “open zone” games.
A lot of immersive sims fall into this category of “wide open levels, separated by narrative chapters”. Think Dishonored or Deus Ex.
I like that approach as opposed to “here’s everything, go anywhere”.
Is the openworld meant for exploring, like pre-Starfield Bethesda game? Yeah i love those.
Is the openworld crafted only for wasting player time, like Ubisoft game? Nah.
Is the openworld crafted as a backstage for the main story but also can be explored, like GTA franchise or dying light? Yeah, those are nice.
Is the openworld only used as a backstage for the main story that doesn’t encourage exploration because it conflict with player urgency, like Metro Exodus? I’d rather not.
In my mid-40s and this is more-or-less what I think as well.
I like the idea of open world games. In practice it depends entirely on the execution, and amount of free time I have. I enjoyed the hell out of Cyberpunk 2077, but have zero desire to play GTA6 or the latest Ubisoft snoozefest.
I tend to agree, open world is becoming just a box to tick off for AAA developers, which means it just gets put in as filler basically. Halo Infinite is the worst example I can think of. However I do think there are 2 ways open world can be justified: if the world is just packed so full of interesting stuff that the game just gets huge, or if the way of traversing that world is fun.
Category 1 would be games like Morrowind, Skyrim , Fallout 4, or even Mass Effect on a smaller scale. There’s just so much to do that it becomes an open world on its own. Category 2 would be games like the Arkham series , Assassins Creed, or Forza Horizon, where getting from point A to point B is fun on its own.
Open world is great when it’s done right, but since when has Ubisoft or EA made a good game in the past 10 years?
As long as it’s a bit of a sandbox: hell yeah. But there needs to be stuff happening, things to do. I love games like GTA, Cyberpunk, Just Cause, Stalker, because you can just go around the world and experience random stuff happening. Sometimes I don’t want a goal, but just a sandbox to create my own stories.
Yeah I find that open world games are only as good as their sandbox capabilities.
open world is great if the world is interesting to explore
it depends on the content. a linear story should absolutely not be open world.
A survival sandbox literally can’t be anything else.
The only “open world” game that’s been a linear story survival sandbox that I’ve seen do it well is Raft. And that only works because of the medium of it being an open sea where the players can wander, then move through the story at their leisure.
If an open world is just there for collectibles/unlocks or just feels otherwise unnecessary to the primary selling feature of the game (like story), then yeah its a hard pass.
Otherwise, if the open world is actually a core part of the game like in most MMO’s such as Old School Runescape, then it can be quite enjoyable.
Mostly nay. I am not against open-world in premise, but most open-world games do it poorly. I think that a lot of studios make their games open world because these types of games are popular, but don’t give a thought to what that means for their specific game. They want their worlds to seem expansive and think this is an easy solution but it isn’t.
If you make an open-world game, it needs at the very least two things: a compelling method of traversal (mechanics of interacting with that open world), and thoughtful, intentional design (not just large stretches of trees and rocks between towns). I think Breath of the Wild is a paragon of good open-world design.
Open world games don’t hold me, because ironically, they tend to feel too small. When you can walk from one side of the setting to the other in real time, it all feels small.
I love an open world game that is done well - Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. But so often it is just done because thats what they think is the hot thing, and it does not work
It’s a bit awkward, because I liked HZD, I completed it, DLC and all, but I don’t consider it a good open world. I learned after a few hours that exploring is almost never rewarded, and you’d way better follow the few very obvious threads the game is setting up for you.
Going into a hidden path before you’re sent there by a quest is just wasting time, you’re going to struggle a lot, you’ll get nothing at the end and you’ll often even have to go back the way you came. Going outright off-road, even a little, spams you with “turn back now or I reload your save” messages. Which is baffling, I’ve never seen a game trying such a bad way to keep you inside the playing area. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game border that’s such a mess to begin with.
Great story, great characters, fun battle mechanics. But as an open-world game, I don’t think it works.
Yeah, Horizon’s big issue is that it only rewarded exploration with materials. The only reason to actually explore was to gather more crafting materials. Which is fine in a game like Minecraft or Terraria, where the game is heavily focused on crafting… Materials unlock new things to craft. But HZD isn’t heavily focused on crafting; You simply need to find increasingly obscure parts to be able to make stronger end-game weapons, which largely do the exact same thing as your current weapons, but slightly better. And once you have the better weapon, there’s no reason to continue gathering those materials. Which means there’s no reason to continue exploring.
There were only a few quests which could actually be discovered through exploration… And even those were just short fetch quests, kill quests, or were close enough to the main story’s locations that you reasonably would have stumbled across them during normal gameplay anyways.
The issue with HZD is that virtually all of your exploration-related unlockables happen via the main story. It means you can unlock every single new shiny exploration aid without actually exploring.
It depends. I like Open World games that feel like there’s a purpose to them being Open World.
Like the Elder Scrolls. The point is for you to feel like you’re living in Tamriel. There’s a point to it being Open World.
Or Far Cry (which I admittedly haven’t played), where you’re supposed to be lost in some place, deep in a place that is hostile to you.
And I might get crucified for this, but I honestly feel like the first Breath of the Wild game had no real reason to be Open World. The second one? Yeah, they figured it out. But the first one feels like it was OW just to be OW.
Tl;Dr, the game has to have a reason to be OW. Otherwise they’re just aiming for quantity of content and poitnlessly hurting the quality.
