What are the general thoughts here about open world games? Are they the ultimate realization of escapism in video games, or are they just a means of creating the illusion of more “content” by making players walk through a world to find stages and minigames?
This question is brought on by the fact that I wasn’t exactly there when these games first started being released. I had a weak PC and preferred my GameCube over everything else. I’ve since played a handful of open world games on PS3 and PS4, and now I’m trudging through Breath of the Wild. I don’t loathe the game, but I can’t say I love it. (It’s still Zelda, which I’ll always love; but it’s also more obtuse than Infamous and Spider-Man, which are games I appreciate for putting more markers on the map for me.) It’s obviously a popular genre(? format? presentation?) of games, so I thought it would be interesting to hear everyone’s thoughts on it here.
That’s a good question, and I think that you see both patterns.
Games with really good open worlds (Fallout 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Skyrim) will have entire substories that could be small-form games in their own right and that you can discover and choose to pursue at your leisure. Or you can skip over them without any hindrance to the main story. And these games will have deep lore that rewards you for exploring with story details, worldbuilding and even jokes in every nook and cranny.
Games with poor open worlds (recent Far Cry games, a lot of GTA knockoffs) give you things to do, but the rewards only make your character stronger or get you closer to 100% completion (a meaningless achievement), and the actual tasks are just the same thing over and over again, to the point where exploration becomes just a means to an end.
I have a love/hate thing with open world games. They’re often beautiful and it’s great to explore them fully, but at the same time, if I don’t stay at least somewhat focused on the story I get bored. This happened with Assassin’s Creed and the first Red Dead Redemption. I loved them both, but got lost in the details.
You mentioned Legend of Zelda, and I just played through Ocarina of Time and Master Quest. Even a few years after its release, I remember people both praising and complaining that Hyrule Field was so open. The praise generally came from people who liked the horseback riding/archery while the complaints were of a lack of things to do over such a large area. That game also expanded upon the flute from A Link to the Past by creating shortcuts between areas, giving you multiple ways to avoid using the hub to travel. Unless you’re trying to travel to Gerudo Valley/Gerudo Fortress, if you don’t think you’ve got a reason to visit Hyrule Field, you eventually don’t have to go through it. This time through, I didn’t bother with the Big Poe sidequest (there’s no difference between original and Master Quest there), and I saved all the grottoes for after Link could traverse it rapidly and unimpeded. I got more entertainment out of the puzzles in the dungeons. But, I also remember where nearly every secret is in that field. If the field were large enough, eventually, I wouldn’t be able to remember where everything was. That said, I haven’t gone back to hunt for sunken chests in Wind Waker.
Spider-Man 2 was probably the first game where I thought traveling through a large area was an integral part of the experience. “Funiculì, Funiculà” will be in my head for a very long time thanks to the pizza deliveries. Ultimate Spider-Man was much the same, but it wasn’t fun to try to web swing through the suburbs (I approved of Spider-Man: Homecoming’s portrayal of that). I wouldn’t rely on that knowledge to navigate actual New York City, but it really started to feel like a place and for better and for worse you could feel like Spider-Man. I also think the mission-based nature of those games helped me to complete them. The Elder Scrolls is too much of a sandbox for me to complete. I found in Morrowind I spent all of my time reading the books, trying to absorb the lore. Contrast this to Mass Effect where the lore is still massive but unlocked and centralized, I’ve completed the trilogy numerous times, and I have opinions about where the lore didn’t match the game development needs. I won’t be joining them, but I appreciate the people who are able to make their own goals and narratives in Skyrim and stick to them.
These types of games are unfortunately the main ones I’ve played. Depending on the difficulty of the final boss, it may become mandatory to bulk up before going in, though. That makes the game more tiresome and less of one I’ll ever want to revisit.
It’s difficult for a game to strike that balance. Making an open-world game necessitates having things to do, but they’re not all going to advance the story. Some sound like they found a way (see above), but otherwise they’re just trying to give your player more moments of being a badass. So many players are looking for that power fantasy.
I played through Ocarina of Time again a few years ago. The field felt so empty, but it was forgivable because it was so small. Even back when it came out it didn’t feel particularly large. I think the race you can have out there helps that feeling if smallness, at least in my opinion.
But, you know, I never really thought about the fact that the ocarina was an early form of fast travel. Or the flute in games prior to it. That’s pretty cool.
These games are often absolutely massive, to the point where it can take tens of hours to get a sense of what their worlds have to offer. It really helps to know what you’re getting into in terms of both gameplay and story in advance, so my rule of thumb is to wait six months after a game is released and, if people are still talking about it incessantly, I give it a try.
I just bought The Yakuza Collection (Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami, Yakuza Kiwami 2, Yakuza 3 Remastered, Yakuza 4 Remastered, Yakuza 5 Remastered and Yakuza 6: The Song of Lifefrom all that for 35€) from Steam also got Yakuza: Like a Dragon.
Now I just need to find time during my vacation to play at least few of them…
I haven’t been keeping up with Blaze Entertainment, the makers of the Evercade retro emulator consoles which officially licenses older ROMs and indie games and bundles them on cartridges. I like the idea, but it looks like things have been wild. They launched a newer handheld unit, the Evercade EXP, with extra buttons for TATE mode (a bit like a WonderSwan) and got Capcom to commit to additional games built-in (still no cartridge). Before delivery to a warehouse, they had a truck/lorry of its limited edition stolen in December. Their blog shows they were still reporting eBay sales of those in March. In June, they announced new cartridges with Duke Nukem and the generated art wasn’t caught until after the announcement.
Now, they’ve started a new line of Evercade cartridge compatible handhelds under HyperMegaTech, but I guess they couldn’t/wouldn’t get Capcom and Taito (currently a subsidiary of Square Enix) to share their games on the same hardware. The Super Pocket will have two versions with games by those companies exclusively pre-installed. The Verge claims the Super Pocket still has a headphone jack, but I haven’t spotted it on the specs or in the photos. The Capcom-branded (kinda? it’s their colors but without a logo) Super Pocket also has 6 fewer games built-in compared to the Evercade EXP; it misses Breath of Fire, Commando, Legendary Wings, Mega Man 2, Mega Man X, and Vulgus. Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting will be on there, but I don’t know how comfortable the rear buttons will be. The Evercade firmware still seems to be beta testing per-game button mapping since firmware 3.0.7 (3.0.9 actually disables it in a few cases, like virtual keyboards), so I would prefer to see how that progresses.
ETA: I missed that the Capcom and Taito trademarks are below the screen on their respective version of the Super Pocket. It also seems there was a statement from Blaze that Gaming Age republished.
One big feature of the Super Pocket UI is the ability to activate “Easy Mode”. A new feature that lowers the difficulty of games so that you can get past hard to master levels with ease, or so that a younger person can play without a challenging difficulty spike in the games.
I had been wondering who these were for. Like any hobby, if you don’t bring in new blood it will die out. Trying to be more appealing to a younger and more general audience would line up with the lower price point and removing features like HDMI output. That statement (and the reveal video) seems to focus on arcade games. I’m guessing Easy Mode will mean enabling infinite credits/lives. They also wrote that there will be a limited edition of each with a translucent shell, which brings to mind a number of Game Boy models and the funtastic N64.
My assumption is that the form factor of joycons makes them more dart-like when thrown at the TV in frustration, unlike their more oddly-shaped peers in the controller field. Not sure if this is better or worse for impact damage.
Well you can certainly increase the impact damage by attaching them to the controller grip even if it doesn’t quite add the same weight as the more traditional controllers.
I am poking around in waayyy too many open world games at the moment. Saint’s Row IV, Tears of the Kingdom, Ishin. And it’s not all that long until Starfield. eeesh.
I cannot believe that I am over 280 hours into Tears of the Kingdom and still will discover multiple new named locations every session and often a tracked quest or two out in the middle of nowhere!
I know this is a computer rather than tabletop thread but I feel sure you will indulge me in spreading the news that the 2023 Spiel des Jahres winner is (drum roll) Dorfromantik!
This is probably a first for a video game redone as a board game.
