Open-World Games

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Open-World Games

Postby synthetic » Thu Dec 05, 13 7:03 am

Big thing these days, and for some of us it has been a big thing for more than decade.

They are expensive to make, usually prone to extreme buggyness that ideally requires a QA phase well beyond the resources of any game development company both what regards time and amount of testers - all that translates to money as well.

And, they are very fun, when they don't hopelessly break.


I have nothing against this 'trend', and welcome the latest news of Star Wars game being developed in an open-world setting. Witcher 3 is likely the second game I've looked forward to with such anticipation (DX2 being the first).

In this thread we can perhaps think when some games got it 'right', and when they didn't.


My best memories are with Morrowind (TES3), but I have given Fallout:NV and Fallout 3 both two runs, separated by few years. Coming back to these games years later allows one to experience the world from a fresher perspective, and enjoy it once more.

Since FO3 is precisely the game I happen to be playing right now, it is interesting to compare it to :NV - which I played not long before - as far as open world mechanics go. I am several years past the 'main quest disappointment' phase that led to uninstalling the game, and somehow the grey concrete jungle does not bother as much either.

I can immediately notice something that :NV failed miserably at, at least in my opinion: it wasn't true open world or at least was not designed as such. In :NV they created a massive wall of Deathclaws and those giant hornet things that as a low level you couldn't easily penetrate, forcing you to go on a preset route around the map rather than across it. No, I did not let that bother me and actually broke through the hornet corridor at fairly low level, but all elements considered I realized that they expected me to progress towards east, in the direction of the highway.

This is something you don't do in open world game. Wall is a wall, whether live or a rock. Once I had gotten through that, there seemed to be a lack of.. continuity, perhaps? Sure, places to explore, but it seemed of much lesser importance as far as any quest or location content went. Hardly a reward for the efforts.

Another element in open world games is enemy distribution by strength (and type, but thats besides the point here). Bethesda games have preferred enemies that level (or are replaced) in correlation to your strength, and as much sense it may make it cripples the world immersion. It became a big joke in Oblivion already. I don't think :NV Deathclaw and Hornet placement was supposed to address this issue, rather than just forcing semi-linear gameplay on a tiny map.

Size of the maps - if you have open world game, you generally need a very large base map, or your game is just too tiny. I've touched into the matter of linear gameplay on supposedly open-world map, unimmersive enemy spawns, more challenging locations; map size is perhaps most important, and in turn will either fix or emphasise listed issues. With time the maps do tend to get larger, but as a mate of mine stated about FO3 (for example), there was location stuck in location and practically no wasteland as such. TES series in general were a bit better made in that regard, but only just.

Quests.. all the adventuring aside, your character should have some kind of purpose, should be able to leave some kind of impact in the game world. This does not immediately mean he needs to be a nth messiah, but pushing an epic main quest just to let it epically fail is not the right way to do it. Sure, Skyrim has established itself as a decent looking (for enough people) adventure world, and people don't mind its shitty MQ as much anymore. But lot of us are looking forward to a game that aims to do better in that regard. High hopes for W3.

Rant juice running out, contribute your 2 or 5 or preferred amount of cents on the topic of open world games past or present. Logically thinking, there is no reason why any game cannot succeed as an open world game (ie Deus Ex), it is just completely different matter how well developers can script and build it.
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Postby Psychotic » Thu Dec 05, 13 9:00 am

Open world's are a really iffy thing to manage.

Morrowind is a great example of an open-world game that does not limit where you can go except in sheer difficulty. Try to go to Red Mountain at level 1. You can do it, but the game doesn't want you to do it, and so it's extremely hard to do so. Morrowind even actively promotes training because of this.

Compare that to Oblivion where enemies just scale with your level so most enemies are easy enough to kill. All leveling did was affect loot drops, which was an important feature in and of itself.

Skyrim reverted itself back to a more Morrowind-esque nature, in that many areas are available to go to at level 1, but training is necessary for certain areas due to some creatures having minimum and maximum levels.

The Witcher 3 will likely be a mix of all of these concepts, which are found in Fallout 3 and NV as well. Both have the walls, real or proverbial, and as annoying as they are I find them necessary since being able to explore where you want, when you want, doesn't tend to have as much reward.

Consider games like Just Cause in which the entire map is available to you from the start, if you're willing to make your way to it, but other than a new terrain there isn't much of a reason to go there, since "open world" in games like JC2 or GTA4 are mostly about killing everything and blowing shit up.

A balance between being able to do what you want and having a cost/reward for it is necessary. I'm not too convinced any game has made much progress on this but I still prefer TES method to other games. Asssassin's Creed is fun for example, but a lack of restriction can lead to a lack of goal-making, outside of story-based elements.

In terms of story, story isn't always necessary. I was having a discussion with myself on this a few days ago, on how CDPR have mocked Skyrim for it's lack of a coherent, epic feeling storyline yet ignored the entire purpose of The Elder Scrolls in the process.

Skyrim had a lot of potential in the story market but failed numerous times. The side quests were nowhere near as epic as Oblivion's and TES has not had a good main story since Morrowind, at least in my opinion. But where it has succeeded is in making a large, immersive world.

CD Projekt mocked Skyrim for having few memorable characters, but it doesn't need them. All the TES games have a few memorable characters here and there but most are named nobodies you forget about quickly, because they don't matter. The Elder Scrolls has never been about the other characters, it's been about your character, and it's been about the world. TES has a huge amount of lore and the world is incredibly encompassing, and this matters more to the series than an individual plot which has no true relevance of the world except what's said about it in in-game books in the new games.

The Witcher is a much different beast. It is story-based, and so fans expect a decent story. Ever since The Elder Scrolls was relased nobody necessarily expected much, and a story was not promised, but an epic world was, but when you're making a game based on a saga that had six books then you damn well better have a good plot.

The Witcher 3 needs to have more of a story than The Elder Scrolls because as much as it has a world and lore in that world it also has memorable characters and plots driven between these characters. Skyrim does not have any one consistent character outside myths, legends and godlike beings. The Witcher, however, is based around the very existence of it's characters.

The way I see it, Skyrim is a world-building exercise. It excels in creating a world with a history, a timeline and lore. Individual stories are numerous but unimportant. Tell any story you want in Skyrim, it doesn't matter so long as the world is constant, and it has been.

The Witcher however is story-based. The world exists as a story-telling medium, not the actual purpose. Remove Geralt, Triss or Dandelion and it's not much of a Witcher story anymore, it's something completely different (noting that Dandelion needed far more coverage in the books and we still have no knowledge of Ciri or Yennefer, two main characters in the books).

Both have upsides and downsides, both can exist in open worlds. I look forward to seeing how The Witcher 3 will solve certain issues Skrim has, most notably the poor storyline, but I don't think Skyrim failed because of it's storyline, I simply think it's a different beast that requires a different trap.
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Postby synthetic » Thu Dec 05, 13 9:48 am

By walls within open world game I referred to forced linear progression (at least for a good amount of levels), an ideal open world game would still have *parts* of the game world that are either naturally barred or inhabited by significantly stronger opponents that you just have to come back to at a later date (and feel that your efforts have been rewarded). Open world that is designed as a restricted maze is not an open world experience, even if technically it may want to come across as one. Ultimately, when we play a game, we want an experience and not technical details about how it was made.

It would be equally bad if entire map lacked any kind of restrictions altogether, while in real world or the world we can imagine would still have harder to bypass or cover areas, or outright impossible points that one just has to go around or use some kind of massive advantage for.
Last edited by synthetic on Thu Dec 05, 13 9:51 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Postby Mr357 » Sat Dec 07, 13 6:52 am

Star Citizen, nuff said. It's looking to be the most detailed and massive world ever created by a video game.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/
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