Current Events > Open world games ironically often make video game worlds seem kind of small

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's something that's a an inherent consequence of designing an open world game.

I'm playing through Final Fantasy VII Remake right now and the game is pretty damn linear. But yet the actual world of Midgar seems huge. Aerith talks about shortcuts between Districts she used to take as a kid and she shows Clouds the ways to get there. You can see train stations around the place and each area you travel to seems like a well lived in place. The plates of Midgar hang over the lower districts and rays of sunshine peak through. Midgar seems like a massive city.

Open world games by design are big and are just getting bigger. But yet inherently you can set a waypoint and easily sprint around to your next destination no problem. If the game has cars it's probably gonna take you less than 15 minutes to travel from one end to the other and that's with a big world. In real life that's considered a short drive in your local area. To make up for this games usually shorten days to 24-48 minutes so you don't have the impression of a character doing a shitload of missions in the one afternoon.

I think of something like Lord of the Rings. Where they have to make the decision of travelling over the mountain or going through the Mines to get where they need to go. Open world games just can't really provide that sort of dilemma because the scale would be too crazy in order for the game to still feel open.

I think it's why stuff like older JRPG's still provide things that current games can't really do. The overworld lets you fill in the blanks of a massive world but that wouldn't work in a modern video games because they are designed to fill in all of the blanks.

Just a random thought I had. It's not a complaint or anything. Just the reality of designing a video game I guess lol.

---

open world games were a mistake

---

cuh posted...

I feel like BOTW kinda presented these types of options, but obviously in a smaller scale

Yeah I actually do appreciate how that game and Death Stranding used open worlds as part of their design.

But yeah I think about how tough it is to actually tell an epic narrative in an open world. Dragon Age Origins as another example. You see the map gradually getting blotted out by the Darkspawn. Can't really show off something like that in an open world game.

---

Darmik posted...

Yeah I actually do appreciate how that game and Death Stranding used open worlds as part of their design.

But yeah I think about how tough it is to actually tell an epic narrative in an open world. Dragon Age Origins as another example. You see the map gradually getting blotted out by the Darkspawn. Can't really show off something like that in an open world game.

Oblivion kind of does this, but the problem is once it does it still can't railroad you into the story. So you go a few hours and then suddenly there are Oblivion gates everywhere and you actually get a sense of urgency and doom... for a moment before you go back to spending 60 hours on pointless side quests.

---

s0nicfan posted...

Oblivion kind of does this, but the problem is once it does it still can't railroad you into the story. So you go a few hours and then suddenly there are Oblivion gates everywhere and you actually get a sense of urgency and doom... for a moment before you go back to spending 60 hours on pointless side quests.

Yeah that's basically how they have to do it. Stuff happens in a mission and it stops outside of random encounters that last a few minutes.

---

BOTW and GTA San Andreas are probably my favorite open worlds ever

---

Lack of any sense of urgency is something that just really annoys me about open world games. Like oh no your best friend is kidnapped! You have to go here to do this mission to save him!

...or you can fuck around for days just playing cards or rescuing cats from trees or whatever and it doesn't really affect anything at all.

---

DarthAragorn posted...

Lack of any sense of urgency is something that just really annoys me about open world games. Like oh no your best friend is kidnapped! You have to go here to do this mission to save him!

...or you can fuck around for days just playing cards or rescuing cats from trees or whatever and it doesn't really affect anything at all.

Meh timed missions suck open world or otherwise

---

DarthAragorn posted...

Lack of any sense of urgency is something that just really annoys me about open world games. Like oh no your best friend is kidnapped! You have to go here to do this mission to save him!

...or you can fuck around for days just playing cards or rescuing cats from trees or whatever and it doesn't really affect anything at all.

I miss Dead Rising :(

But yeah the balance between immersion and player freedom is tough in general. Even something as simple as a steep hill in a forest in real life is pretty dangerous but can easily be bunny hopped down or up in a video game.

---