Good points but annoying how obviously desperate for views you are. The title alone is there to trigger folks when in reality you love open world games and only hate certain things about them but for the most part you're digging the shit out of them.
Because the title alone is there to trigger folks when in reality you love open world games and only hate certain things about them but for the most part you're digging the shit out of them.... You know. What I just said lol. Why ask a question that I already gave you the answer to? Maybe I should go into more detail since you're struggling here. Here's another way to answer that question. Not having a title that sounds more like this... "Open world games are kool and all BUT..." : ) But you don't have to ask me that question alone. Go ahead and respond to the tons of people in the comments who said something similar about you lololol. Here. Let me show you so you don't have to bother scrolling down lol. "This whole video can pretty much be summed up by "All open world games are bad except the ones that aren't" which means this video is largely pointless. Also Gothic 2 and FFXV really don't seem to be open world games based on what you are showing us. They both seem more like games with large interconnected closed off areas." "3:50 to skip the massive pointless monologue." "I personally disagree." "The problem with the video is he is positing his opinion as an objective standard, then implying that if you want what is best for video games, you'll agree with him." Many good points you didn't bother to respond to but thanks for responding to mine lol. But hey... I see that you're ebegging with patreon and what not so. Good luck to ya man. Maybe you can make a few thousand bucks a month from internet rantings about gaming lol. I personally think you kind of suck and make a big fuckin deal out of stuff that's not really a thing but whatever floats your boat boss : ) You do make some good points though even if your fake outrage is showing a bit much.
Opinionated titles might trigger some, but that isn't clickbait, its an effective tool to open a dialogue with your viewers. This guy obviously put a lot of thought and time into this video, and it's entirely understandable that he would want to begin a discussion in the comments with his title. I do understand your frustration, but I think you're being a little harsh with your judgement.
I disagree on the density point. I want a VAST open world and a fair amount of empty (though interesting) space. It breaks immersion for me if there is an encounter every minute. I want to feel like I am exploring an area. That said, the way the space is used is of paramount importance. I think GTA3 had one of the best maps ever in a game in terms of how the space was used. It was extremely small as these things go but it FELT much larger than it actually was because the space available was used so well.
DocFlamingo your playing a VIDEOGAME, their is no technical way to program every situation you'd encounter in a city, it be like programming a human brain.
But then again, if density = (content) / (map area) then it is an average value. In the end a game can be dense and rich while still leaving empty space where it makes sense.
Well, side stuff werent that boring since it had use in the game, but the map, long deserts without nothing and forest, but if theres something i liked it was going in a road trip and listening to rock.
BC in San Andreas you have 3 different cities, a countryside, and a desert. GTA V just clumps Los Santos and Blaine County together without any real effort. Sure it's bigger but driving from Los Santos to Las Venturas actually feels like a road trip, with small towns in the countryside, and a world that is natural instead of artificial.
@@Roadman1000 You also had : Casino, and owning one aswell, Gym, body management (being skinny, fat, muscular, or fat and muscular..) Dancing at the night club, girlfriends, different fighting styles, the 2nd most memorable OST (vice city still get the 1st place for me), cities had their own identities. The antagonists where actually dispicable from the begining (Tenpenny) The story was better aswell. A better yet still anecdotic properties management..
On the subject of what you're talking about at 24:53, Kingdom Come Deliverance has probably my favorite alchemy system to date. Early alchemy levels you have to manually brew potions. Meaning you have to boil the liquid, cook ingredients for specific times, add them at certain points. It's really incredible.
It's a shame, that most people are pretty much satisfied with any empty and repetitive game world, if it is vast enough. I often hear those "I hope new TES will be twice as big as Skyrim!" and immediatly realize that in that case the game would probably be even worse lol. I think people, who the open world games are sold to, are just easily fooled by an illusion of depth, that most of those games tend to create. When you play Skyrim for the first time, see the big map, talk to some npc, do some random activity like chopping wood (which turns out to be completely pointless, but you don't know that yet), it's only natural to think that the game must be thought out and designed very good, that it has every it's aspect perfectly polished and such, when in reality it's just a "normal world" game that has it content simplified and stretched.
Way to oversimplify Шломи Кагерман's statements. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the hell out of Skyrim. But Skyrim, and games like it, suffer in depth because it attemps to create a world numerically larger than the previous game(s). What I mean by depth is purpose, motive and intentions. Skyrim has a huge world with lots of stuff to do, but those things you do often come with little or no purpose. Npcs rarely show human intentions and motives. What do they eat? Why are these people here? Why do I have to kill bandit #135?
Henry Waters, I never said that you are wrong to like Skyrim. How is it even possible to wrongfully like something? It's not like it's your concious choice, it's just the way your taste works at the current time. All I said is that you are fooled by the illusion of depth (this is also just my theory btw, feel free to prove me wrong), because apart from simplified writing and broken game mechanics, illusion of depth is something TES games always tend to get working. And if you don't like the word "fooled", then may be you just have a good imagination and what Skyrim has to offer is enough for you to start playing a much bigger game only in your head. This is how I enjoyed Oblivion when I was a kid and considered it my "favrioute game" for a while, can't do it anymore though. Also, Skyrim sucks and no amount of words can explain how much I hate it :> doesn't mean you shouldn't like it or anything, just putting it out here, for the internet people. I do like color pink though, it's my favorite.
The video: barely mention Skyrim Top comment: illuzion of depz. Skyrim has became a punching bag for pretentious gamer who think that they are smart and smarter than other. I consider Skyrim a great game because it has a great balance between gameplay and muh stozy, the narrative is there in the background and you may or may not care about it while having a lot of fun running around.
the video: open worlds top comment: illusion of depth in open world games seems legit to me. and yeah, apparently skyrim is only played by easily impressed children like you and pretentious smarty pants like me and not a single normal person that is not defined by some stupid stereotype. but anyway, what I meant is that I expect an open world game to be interconnected. Open world in Skyrim only means giving the player choice to explore content in any order. There is no "I better do an easy quest to recieve a good weapon to do a dangerous quest after" or "This town is starving so this is a good time to make good money by selling food here" situations. I have a ton more issues with Skyrim, but this is the main one - this open world doesn't have a purpose.
Cool that you mentioned Gothic, there are not many people who know it in the english-speaking gaming community. I can draw a map from memory as well, it has grabbed me as well :D
Strat-Edgy Productions Oh yeah, that combat... Still better than Gothic I, but nonetheless painful. But I have accustomed myself to it, and it is definitely bearable for what it gives in return.
the combat was fine and better than at least 50% of trash that we get from other games you have a block attack chains which need more than just mindless button smashing you can dodge there is ranged combat with bows and crossbows (it sucks tho xD) and there is a great magic system (transforming into other creatures, cool magic effects with great varity both in visuals and usefullness) if you look at it from a bit further away you can see that it has quite a bit to offer it needs some skill, offers great varity and has good visible progression player power wise also that different wapons and elemental dmg is effective against different type of enemys is also very nice bows -> wolfes, bloodflys etc. *need to clear that cave with 5 skeletons which two hit you? -> just get some scrolls of "holy bolt" or "destroy undead" and they are fucked (not entirly sure how they are called in english I only played it in german) planescape torment that game had bad combat gothic was a bit clunky had some great stuff some bad stuff and was overall pretty good (in terms of combat) for 2004 (?) and it hold up
Gothic has a large fanbase in Poland. Many streamers still play it. There is also plenty of polish gothic machinima vids most of them are very funny. That game created very nice atmosphere. There were no good or evil indicators like in fable or mass effect but wrong choices often led to consequences and in the begginning exploring the world was captivating but dangerous. Im glad i was a kid when it came out so i could fully experience this story without thinking bad about it's graphics. Have a good day.
I realize that everyone's situation will vary, but I suspect that I am not the only person who may find open world games a bit frustrating because such games don't fit well with game/life balance , especially for someone who has a full-time career and a family. I am a gamer and not a casual one. I like my gaming experiences to be deep and complex. And, yes, I am willing to put some significant time into a game. But I also have quite a bit in my life outside of gaming which needs my attention and to which I honestly want to give my attention because these things are meaningful to me. So what I really want is a deep but *focused* gaming experience. A fantastic example of this is Alien: Isolation. I would definitely not call this a casual game. It has depth and requires some serious thought in how you approach various scenarios. It did not waste my time with trivialities or needlessly traversing large areas, yet I personally never felt like I was overly confined to a sort of "plot railroad". I could split up my play time into sessions which made sense for my life, but each session was worthwhile and engaging. I would really like to see more games with that kind of focus.
I agree completely. I also honestly miss games that had "levels or missions" that you had to go through. It seems most modern games try to create one continuous mission over the course of the entire game, like an rpg, instead. The mission structure created alot more focus for me, like the old Bond games where you complete a mission you immediately get to start the next one, skipping pointless travel time and even time in general between each mission. You could then go back to your favorite missions and complete just them while trying to get certain achievements, with a continuous mission structure you can't really get to a certain point in the game unless you have a specific save for it. I guess as we get older, we have less time to waste, especially on video games, so when we actually play them we want something immediate, while still offering depth and complexity to challange ourselves. I get alot more anxious when playing games these days, if I did something that had no purpose or enjoyment in a game, my anxiety seem to grow knowing that I should probably be doing something more productive at the moment, I din't get this feeling when I was younger.
They do demand a lot of your time, that much is undeniable. I mean it's possible to beat skyrim in between 5 to 8 hours if you decide to lower the difficulty or if you're running a really good build bit that's really not how the game was intended to be played. Also the main quest isn't the highlight of the game either.
If it's neccesarry to rush through a game you're almost certainly better off with a story driven, linear single player game. I think rogue likes promote work life balance pretty well because typically a run could last anywhere from five minutes to a bit over an hour.
Wait, so you "would rather have a smaller world with more engaging content than a beautiful, big empty world," and rather have "a smaller world with less to do than a huge world with meaningless content that's just there to keep me from getting bored"...and you think GTA San Andreas is a revolutionary game? Did we play the same San Andreas? I seem to remember inane trucking missions, pointless basketball and dancing mini-games, and driving around in circles to impress dates for no apparent reason than to fill up a romance-meter. The Bigfoot urban legend was started because 80% of the environment in that game was devoid of literally anything but shrubs and rocks. Wouldn't SA be the antithesis to the perfect open world you describe?
Yes, but you forget all the immersive sim parts to that game like holding gang territory, recruiting gang members, dating (which you mentioned), eating and not working out making you fat, the character progression like shooting more making you better at shooting, driving makes you better at it. It was revolutionary simply because it was the first open world of that size that also tried to do all those things. They weren't successful at all of it, but they tried. And yeah, it would be the anti-thesis of what I am talking about. Deus Ex Mankind Divided would be the Thesis, sort of, in terms of size, but not in terms of gameplay as it is not sim enough to fit the criteria.
But most "sim" mechanics in games are often there just as a gimmick. I would rather have a few unrealistic mechanics than a bunch of boring busywork. I don't care about dating a virtual woman, or playing basketball, or working out in game. I just want an immersive experience where all of my time is spent completing missions, interacting with interesting characters and just exploring the amazing game world in general. There is no need to inject real life into a video game.
Ricardo Santos yeah the dark brotherhood questine in oblivion was by far and away the best questine in the latest 3 games (haven't played draggerfall and the other one, so i can't say anything about those)
I have the solution for you. Do it right! Something that people seem to be totally lost on is that each and every sequel to each and every game is a totally new thing on a new engine. I have a revolutionary idea, what if we made one game on one engine, and each sequel was built upon the last... Think about it, how great would it have been if Oblivion was done really well, the open world was made with quality by one team, while another focused on a good plot line that setup the game world and introduced you to everything while still delivering something that the player wanted up front. The sequel, would take that already existing world, throw a huge dynamic of over arching plot line that can take you through a few more sequels, give you enough story to make this addition purposeful, then further enrich the open world space that much more. The majority of work that is done in these open world spaces, is creating the spaces, so what if we just made a space once, then developed it over and over to make it better and better.... DO IT RIGHT!
Shocked to see the Gothic in here, most people don't know of or ignore the series, but I point to Gothic 2 as a relatively early open world that most current titles can't live up to. I think before BOTW, I would have called it my favorite open world title. Not necessarily because it's the best game altogether, but because the world seems to exist for a purpose. The combat absolutely is trash though, and so is the English dub. Good thing I'm German.
Part of the reason we remember some games so well is because we HAVE TO. Morrowind, gothic, etc, all have tools to help us navigate, but require us to USE them. Skyrim, Oblivion, the Witcher, etc. all lead you by the nose with the floating arrow trick, removing any need to learn the map and remember notable locations. We don't build any connection to the world or have any reason to enjoy it because we're being taken on a tour instead. I agree with your notion of trying to simulate the randomness of life a bit more in OW games. My current Skyrim mod list kind of aims for that and I'm finding it refreshing. Chronicles of Elyria is planning to do precisely what you're describing, in that it's doing away with much of the abstract theme park elements and creating a world more dynamic and alive. A lot of their crafting/profession type features are being made minigames in their own right. It's far too much to describe what they're doing here, but go look them up. You won't be disappointed.
The funny thing about the "size" of open worlds is that it's not only relative (let's face it: I used to walk further to school every morning than the time it took to walk across skyrim) but here's the crucial phenomenon: any form of fast travel, including things that just increase your movement speed, effectively SHRINK your world. Think about it: how huge did Skyrim look when you first loaded it up? Massive. You felt the epic scope and overwhelming scale immediately...but the first time you warped from Solitude to Riften with the press of a button, that massive scale vanished, completely obsoleted by free teleportation to anywhere you wanted. Carriages were obsolete wastes of money once you'd been to the holds. All the boats in Skyrim were nothing more than props. The college of Winterhold would have been ripe for a teleportation service, but who would bother? We just point to a spot on the map and WHOOSH. Morrowind kept at least a semblance of scale even to the late game because you at least had to learn WHERE you could "teleport" TO and FROM. you still had to have at least a little respect for the layout and size of the place in order to jump to where you wanted. Finding A new mage's guild, imperial cult shrine or Almsivi temple was quite a blessing, as it expanded your travel network in hostile lands. Finding a ring which let you jump between Sotha Sil, Mournhold and Vivec was a true treasure. As for content, well, that's also relative. I always found my Morrowind hours quite full of things to do, both game-directed and self-invented. While Oblivion and Skyrim had DIFFERENT content, due to the changes in skills, physics, fast travel, NPC capabilities and that damn handholding compass arrow, I disagree that there was "less" to do in Morrowind.
Yeap I played the witcher with everything turned off except the health meter and it was much more immersive and fun, made me memorise the landscape, also never fast travelled at all (unless it was between areas of course which is unavoidable).
one word: money what you are talking about is such a niche market, devs and distributers would never recoup the investment. just check the progression of games... they may start off beautiful, thoughtful, require effort to gather achievement. later versions are bent towards appealing to the mass audience... dumbed down, less thought or work required, more quick action. mass appeal == more money. I want what you want, I've just resigned myself to appreciating what I can get. gonna check out Gothic 2, thanks for the referral !!
RD Simmers I would say this isn't true. Look at a game like Minecraft or LoL. They've got a larger audience than any given entire AAA franchise, yet the focus is on gameplay, whereas AAA publishers tend to focus on graphics. I think I've figured out why, too. It's not a larger audience they're going for, but a more gullible one. They want impulse buyers, not carefully thought-out purchase decisions. Why? Because with a sufficiently high-quality CGI trailer and no reviews pre-launch, you can guarantee that there will be a certain percentage of impulse buy preorders, and that some of the people who did that will become invested in defending their decision to buy a shitty game because they just couldn't have made the wrong decision. The strategy isn't seeking an audience that will happily pay enormous amounts, even though that would likely get them greater profits, because that takes greater effort and at least some minimum level of risk. They want the guaranteed fast cash of gullible sheep because it's low effort and the risk is nearly zero. I do, of course, expect this to backfire, hard, in the long run, but the executives won't care, because by the time that happens, their great-great-grandchildren will never have to work a day in their lives off the money already made.
Your mountain story reminded me a time I was adventuring through a frozen area in a latest Zelda with no torch, little to no food and no proper clothing looking for freaking tower. This was one of the best moments in my gaming experience.
The evolution of open worlds is for game devs to make linear games again. So many games are open world that shouldn't be, and it negatively impacts those that should be.
The new Legend of Zelda made me remember why I like open worlds. It's no life simulator, but an adventure simulator. Sometimes I just get distracted by a bunch of trees in the distance shaped and weird way and feel actually compelled to go and check it out. And even if nothing is their, SOMETHING usually happens that doesn't make it feel like a waste of time. I had to scale a cliff face, or fight a camp of monster, or I find a puzzle to solve. Finding koroks or mini bosses or shrines reward you for this kind of exploration if something is in those patch or oddly shaped trees. And while it's greatly beneficial to find and complete these encounters, it's not at all necessary. In fact, after getting out of the starting area, I went straight to the final boss in the game because Nintendo told me I could if I could manage it, and I wanted to call their bluff. And I fucking did it. I got one shot whenever a single enemy would breathe in my direction, but that was a highlight of my play through and it all reinforces the sense of freedom to explore. If you want to hunt koroks or shrines or special loot or hunt bosses, you can. If you want to do side quests, you can. If you want to cook, you have figure out a recipe, but you can. The game isn't perfect. But the open world is pretty damn close in my opinion. Great video by the way:)
Yeah, and I am willing to bet that there is a deliberateness to the design of the areas, though I haven't played it yet to find out. THings aren't just randomly placed on a randomly generated height map, and thrown together hastily. Though, I could be wrong as I haven't played it yet.
Strat-Edgy Productions My bad, I edited my comment after you relied because I didn't realize anyone respond. But yeah man, I listened to an interview Nintendo had where they set up a system in their beta to track players and the progress they made through the game world. And whenever an area wasn't getting any attention, either because it was out of the way or didn't look interesting, then they would go and add something in deliberately to encourage exploration. Great game overall. I'm having a lot of fun with it.
nintendo has plenty to learn with their new open world direction for zelda, but they did a pretty darn good job for their first open world (not counting xenoblade x) with how you go about exploring without tons of way points. i think if they had better side quests and more types of things to do aside from shrines and seeds, they would have the open world thing mastered.
@Misha, The original LOZ was the 1st open world sandbox game....so I think they had it "mastered" a long time ago, albeit constrained by the NES tech of the time, nothing else was like it......so they sort of went back to basics with BOTW (the creators stated as much, hell they even did a mock up of the engine AS an NES format before anything else to fine tune the game mechanics)....so it's kind of weird to say "they would have the open world thing mastered"....just saying.
While I understand and agree with your points, I do feel the need to talk about FFXV a bit. I followed the development of that game for a long ass time, and they talked about their approach to the world design on a few occasions. First off, it wasn't intended to be a true "open-world" game. The intent was for the player to follow the story laid out for them like past FFs, but to open up the areas and give them as much freedom as the story would allow. Too bad there wasn't much story in the first place, that's another discussion. Second, the open areas up to Altissia were supposed to be like a road trip. It was mainly about driving with the boys, listening to their banter, camping out, etc. The idea was that in a real road trip, you're not stopping and exploring every field you come across. You're driving/riding and watching the scenery go by, but you don't often interact with it. Whether that was actually according to their vision or an excuse to justify the pretty but mostly empty world, I suppose is up for debate. I'm not a fanboy trying to defend the game. It absolutely has many problems, and for a lot of people, this approach to world design may be one of them. It works for some people, and doesn't work for others. I just thought I'd point out some of the reasons why the world was designed that way. Also, a recent update added a modification to let the Regalia go freely off-road, and I feel that has greatly changed the dynamic of the world. That car is insane now. You can drive, and even jump, all over the damn place, and run over monsters to your heart's content. It's fun to get the car up on one of those giant stone arches and jump off. It's not "content" exactly, but it does inject some much needed fun into the game. This video is on the older side now, so I don't know if you'll even see this comment, but if you do, I'd like to know what you think about this.
I remember when I was young and Oblivion was new. A cousin who had it before me described how fun it was to be able to just run off in a direction and not be stopped by invisible walls, instead you found dungeons and shrines and caves and all manner of interesting things! I think it is unfair to criticise that game for not innovating when the open world concept was still big and interesting. We didn't see the limit of the system the same way we do now that it's been explored by so many games. I was sold on Skyrim almost wholly on the promise of an Even Bigger World with Climbable Mountains!!; essentially more of that fun exploration I enjoyed in Oblivion. And I'll say that it is something Skyrim really succeeded on doing. It's awesome to just run around exploring. As time has passed the weaknesses of the game has become clearer, but I can't bring myself to complain about the ambition of making the world big. Newer games don't have that excuse though. Mindlessly copying the open world of past games without good reason is bad practice.
There is a bit of an annoying grind with that game just to get enough stuff to make your car fully tricked out and to get all of max's gear. I especially HATED the land-mine diffusing missions. They were mind numbingly easy and the dog barking mechanic was glichy and rather annoying to listen to (who's idea was it to have the same fucking barking audio the whole time??). Once I got my car the way I liked it and got max's stuff fully upgraded (and completed the main story), it all started to feel a little empty.There's some cool side quests too though which I completed. I got a solid 20-30 hours out of it though and it is definitely one of the most underrated games of that year, if not ever).
I want real estate options in gta and other city theme open world games, I want to build a Brand or Empire. Something i can care about. I want to be able to have a different experience in the same world.
@@ivanjinxgg7008 dude I was exactly about to say that, how vice city how gangs that were on your side and how it had gangs that they would shoot you when they saw you. as far as I remember when you bought a business and it started generating money for you there gangs/guards that are on your side guarding it, it felt so immersive, like you could see your effect on the city and it was really cool.
I always thought about this concept of world scale vs. content density! Imagine if GTA V's world was only half of Los Santos yet you could enter every single building and missions and story arcs took place within a city block! You would be much more compelled to take a walk for the sake of discovering something interesting than just rob supercars and do a lap of the map while being chased by cops, die and repeat.
There was a meme about a German warehouse worker who, after returning home, plays Forklift Simulator. To me, games are a mean to experiance something I couldn't do IRL, so I doubt I would find a game like this interesting.
I remember playing games back in the early 1990s and it seemed like every other game was a side-scroller. It got so bad that I started to wonder what the point of having four directions on the control pad was, when you only ever used one, maybe two, of those directions on most games? Of course, now side-scrollers are a cool, nostalgic throwback to a simpler time, but back then a side-scrolling game was pretty much the hallmark of lazy and unispired game design. Obviously, there were still some great side-scrollers released in the 90s (Donkey Kong Country, Super Star Wars, Super Mario World, etc.), but for every one of those there seemed to be five generic side-scrollers. My point being that it's not the format that's flawed. It's what developers choose to do with that format that matters. Personally, I love the open world format. I'm not a fan of games that put you on rails or give the illusion of an open world, but then just drive you forward from one objective to the next. I prefer to have the freedom to just explore the game, admire the designers' craftsmanship, and tackle the game's objectives as quickly or as slowly as I see fit. I play games to relax and have fun, not to add more stress to my life.
witcher 3 has gone above all of these open world games, side quests are interesting, progression makes sense, world doesn't feel empty, there's always interesting stuff to do.
I disagree. Its not empty. Not any more than our real world is. Its full of beautiful flora and fauna, if not more interesting things. Witcher 3 has a stunning open world, but it is still fairly gamey and does some things wrong.
of course it feels gamey, it's a fantasy world! they're not aiming for realism and I'm glad they didn't because too much realism would be really boring
I think FO:NV hits this nail on the head. A tad smaller than FO3, there's tons of content packed in small spaces, so the world never feels empty. The road to New Vegas itself is frought with danger and locations and just STUFF. If you go the wrong way, you get massacured by deathclaws, but do a bunch of stuff with the Powder Gangers, and Primm, and the NCR, and maybe the legion, and if your lucky, maybe clear out a casiono of cash. All in a smaller world than Fallout 3, and within a couple of hours. Gotta love 2010 Obsidian Entertainment. *DID I MENTION THE FANTASTIC DLC OLD WORLD BLUES THAT'S THE EMBODYMENT OF THE PARAGRAGH ABOVE?*
if you took the level of exploration from saboteur , the world detail from morowind , oblivions side quests, thiefs stealth mechanics and GTAs freedom and just fucking mix em up togheter you get what I consider a true open world experience
idk I, along with probably everyone here, played the shit outta skyrim. I could draw a pretty decent map of that. Also I really like random encounters with npc's in newer openworld games, I like that not every quest ties into the main story somehow. Maybe that's just me
I liked skyrim sure enough, but i like most Bethesda games. Not for the games themselves so much, just for the ability to mod the shit out of them to fit my playstyle. My issue with skyrim is that I never "felt" like a dragonborn. You have figures like Tiber Septim who shaped the world at large, even Martin Septim managed to drive off Mehrunes friggin Dagon, but the player as a dragonborn? Yeah, going around killing bears and sabrecats that have somehow gotten into people's homes.... or doing fetch quests cause someone wants a sweet roll. Also despite your power you are constantly talked down to and ordered about by everyone in the game. I mean how much better would the game be if you could bitch slap Delphine or Ulfric until they couldn't walk straight, just to teach them a bit of respect? Or end the civil war by simply taking the throne of skyrim yourself after murdering every imperial and Aldmeri or Stormcloak that looked at you funny? Just saying it's annoying to give a player that kind of power and then don't acknowledge that they have this power until the plot says you do.
This video made me appreciate the fact the Bioshock Infinite, one of my favourite works of art, got cut down from an open world to semi-open. It really stream-lined the **beautiful** pacing of the story and gameplay but still allowed time for exploration and soaking in the _even more beautiful_ environment and atmosphere.
To this day my favourite open world is Red Dead Redemption, for all its bugs and awkward interactions with AI. There were a ton of genuine moments that were incredible. Especially because the story fueled it. The ride into Mexico is incredible. Oblivion had some similar moments for me where just simply existing in that world was awe-inspiring. My test for any open world game is to walk between key locations at least 5-6 times and just see if it evokes any sort of emotion from me.
21:08 _>Fable: The Lost Chapters/anniversary_ It had a pretty good enough open world with pretty good combat & progression systems with a decent enough story and character-build versatility. It had enough side-quests & whenever you complete them, it had fitting rewards like getting the very best fishing pole from the fishing contest very early in the game which btw is fantastic game design giving the player an upgraded tool early enough in the game for it to have it's impact instead of giving it at the end which would be pointless. - The silver key chests & Demon doors are enough of a nice incentive to revisit older, more lower-leveled areas considering their bountiful rewards. The world looks nice for it's era, it's NPC's are fleshed out enough to not make players grimace. It's morality system is simple yet it far out-paces the morality systems of other lazy modern games. - But more importantly, it's open world is a charm & no area in the entire game is just a boring, flat field. With various rewards for any exploring player. The entire game has _just_ the right balance.
I actually kind of like my world's a bit more empty, sounds wierd but hear me out. This is especially important in the post apocalyptic games, fallout 4 felt too cluttered and just fake, a group of people in an outpost would just ignore the huge battle one block over, mad Max was nice because the world felt like it had seen some shit, and when you come across people or a place of interest it felt all that more meaningful. Right know I am playing witcher 3, and though I do enjoy it it still feels a bit cluttered, like I just finished a contract where the monster was within bowshot of the castle, why would I have to find a monster that everyone should be able to see when it attacks each night? Rant over. Edit: also during a cut scene in w3 it states that it took the people 2 hours to get to a place that in the actual game world takes a minute or 2, I enjoy the journey, I like the world's to feel realistic a large, not some king's kingdom to be a few square kilometers.
Extremely big open worlds discourage exploration. They are either so empty that you can't find shit by randomly exploring (see FFXIV) or they are cluttered with bullshit that is the same shit over and over again.
I get your point, but at the same time, i see things in a different perspective. For me, a game, as a form of art/entertainment, needs to be poetic sometimes, if it's too literal, it becomes real life, and if it's too much like real life, there is no purpose on playing whatsoever. The example you showed about 2 hours becoming 2 minutes shows that the world of The Witcher 3, as an illustration of a book, with some poetic freedom, makes some choices prioritizing the overall experience. If you had to walk 2 hours to complete the task it would feel like eternity, thus breaking the game's both rhythm and narrative pace. And if the NPC's said 2 minutes it would feel like something extremely stupid, breaking the immersion once again. So you have to have this unbalance between time length, to make the narrative both realistic and playable.
Open worlds are not rubbish, DEVELOPERS are rubbish. You don't blame the cow for a shitty steak, you blame the COOK. Developers have become lazy, and focused on maximizing profits, which unfortunately means the focus has shifted from creating the best possible product, to spending the least amount of resources as possible, while still charging the same amount of money. Open World gaming is about freedom and variety. How much of that is up to the developer, and more often than not, these developers have chosen to cut and paste worlds that end up being repetitive and empty. Rockstar is the greatest when it comes to open world gaming, because they spend whatever it takes to develop a game that feels exciting and full of life. I still play GTAV on an almost daily basis, and Red Dead Redemption is one of the greatest games of all time. There are many shitty open world games, but that is due to developers who simply don't have the freedom, desire or resources to push boundaries. Most are met with difficult deadlines to meet, and don't have the freedom to do the things they want to do.
I don't think it's laziness, as you say, they are focusing on maximizing the profit. Sadly it's easier to market "big worlds" with "anything to do" and show as much "content" as possible than explain that "this world isn't so big, but it's very well designed and connected and filled with memorable places and characters." Why is that I don't know, maybe people really believe they can do anything in these games, or they fill the gaps with their imagination when playing and it's enough for them.
But after you complete GTA 5 you basically have nothing to do. They had a HUGE Budget, 250 Million. Meanwhile The Witcher 3 had a budget of around 15 Million and yet they set the standard of what an Open World RPG should be.
Milos Andric Ma gaming industrija je skroz u kurcu, niko se više ni ne trudi da pomera granice, stvarno šteta. Mislim da ti to što je najnovija igrica koju sam igrao Shadowrun Dragonfall koji je izašao pre par godina, toliko mi je stalo do "novih igrica". Sve je već viđeno, indie igrice su jedini spas.
The map in G2 was actually optional. The strength of the level design in that game was in that most of the time you didn't even need the map because the world was well enough designed that you navigated by the landmarks
Great video. Good points on Oblivion and FFXV. Small issue woudl be to make editing more in sync with what you say. For example, I've no idea how Far Cry's climbing looked and it would be helpful to show that. PS, You get extra points for Gothic 2. What did you think about Gothic 3 and Arcania?
Gothic 3 was alright for what it tried to do, but suffered from the same lack of concrete narrative and direction that many open worlds have, but for what it tried to do, holy shit... I mean, you could either support the orcs and do missions for them, or take over towns yourself and do missions for the rebels. For as big and as open as that game was, I am really surprised no one tried to do that since. It had to be a massive undertaking for them. If it weren't for the stunlocking issue it probably would be a classic to be honest. Man... I really need to go back and play that game. Seriously, we need more foreign game design companies...
The reason Gothic 3 failed is because they tried to make an Oblivion-killer. Everything you said about Oblivion, FF15 and Gothic? It is EXACTLY what I think! It is really refreshing to see someone share my opinion.
If you enjoyed Gothic 2, and probably played the first one (if it has ever been translated), how about the first "Risen"? Compared to Gothic 2, it's like aspirin vs morphine, but - except for the ridiculously bad ending - quite enjoyable, I think.
As a college student who is studying to acquire a Computer Science degree for the express purpose of redefining the Open-World Formula with fascination and wonder, it is videos like this that I watch and heavily take notes on.
wonder why America is most uneducated and worst universities in the world and this fact by the university rating board and its because of left wing Nazi scum and people so stupid they call this uneducated video good and you take notes from a video made by a loser with no education in the field . sorry i dont believe you because if you were even starting in the industry you would know this was all BS of a basement gamer loser not a educated gamer in the field
ya make co op fucking loser stick to your fps stop wrecking every genre with your loser co op bs that no one ever plays and keep mp out of shit to its dead in a month in most games
critique and positives doesn't outweigh each other, wut? one mechanical flaw that is gamebreaking isn't outweighed by "oooooooh look at the pretty colors and smooth textures" that's some weird-ass logic ya got going there
"What is our motivation to ....?" That's where I am not longer with you. Because in this moment the role play aspect of "rpg" is coming in. There you also have the "problem" that in TES you have a non-specific character that you design yourself and therefor you have to find a motivation for your character yourself. Another thing I've noticed: you compare the looks of a 2006 game with the looks of a 2016 game. Obviously Oblivion can't compare. That's no surprise at all. Art style is preference question. I like the look and artstyle of Wildstar for example, many heavily dislike it. I also disagree that named Items or "special weapons" make a location good or worth exploring. That is loot-centered gameplay.. and I be honest, I don't get why anyone plays a singleplayer rpg loot-centered or "to beat the game". I might simply be a more old fashioned roleplayer in the end.
I'd argue that he's correct about TES (I can only speak for Morrowind onwards), given that they don't allow for great self-expression. You create a character's *stats* and increase them as you level up, but you don't create their... character. Which is understandable, since that should come directly from the player, but the mechanics don't allow for great self-expression. Choice usually boils down to "do the bad thing or do the good thing". People attack you for stealing an apple etc. Clearly these games focus more on the physical growth of your character. It's a Power Fantasy, not a... Fantasy fantasy. Unfortunately. This encourages "optimizing the fun out of the game", i.e. always making your character a thieving stealth archer in Skyrim, since stat development, and not character development is rewarded. I totally agree with your last 2 points though.
Agreed. personality development is not yet really a thing. And voice acting just makes that problem worse in the end. To be able to fully develop a personality dialogue options of a hell lot of development paths would be needed for a game to actually express some kind of freedom in that matter. Lets me come to the question whether the change would be significant enough to make the effort worth the result. And I fear that this might not be the case for most players or the publisher. Skyrim wasn't(/still kind of is) so successfull for it being a rpg, but as it appeals to much bigger audiance compared to Morrowind for example due to it being more into the action part.
Been playing GTA3 recently. I think it has one of the best open worlds. It's small enough for you to become familiar with everything, but big enough to feel like a city. There are plenty of things to discover, and loads of side activities that actually pay off. Now when I play I do all the vehicle missions first, get all the base upgrades, get all the hidden packages I can, then play the main missions. When I first got GTA3 I thought it sucked because I played Mafia 1 first, which is way more realistic, but now that I'm playing GTA3 again it's actually really good
I love your videoes, because you go in-depth as you do and I really hope you go far here on youtube. But I have a question, how do you find the time to play RPGs? I find it very hard to put in the time into 'em. I don't know if it's because I'm only a 17 year old danish boy, with a part-time job and school with exams or whether It's just me that have a small timespan and I get bored of it? Before I ask my final two questions, I wanted to say I have already put in almost 20 hours in Fallout New Vegas in just two weeks. But do you have any tricks to stay hooked on a rpg, even tho you don't have the time to play? Oh, can you also recommend me some rpgs that are hidden gems, so I could dwelve into them?
Hmm, I would say that in order to play an RPG with a busy lifestyle, what you need is a quiet space to get your mind right. I would even go so far as to say you should meditate before playing. The key is to focus in on the story and characters to the point that learning more about those two aspects drive you forward. Focus is key to playing an RPG. Leave about 20 minutes in between school work, and when you start playing to kind of clear the clutter from your mind. Rpgs are easier to enjoy when you can focus sharply on them. As far as hidden gems, I would say play Planescape: Torment. If the story doesn't pull you in, then I would recommend something like Vampire: The Masquerade.
There are several great open world games. Witcher 3, Zelda BoTW, Horizon Zero Dawn, GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption, Skyrim and Fallout 3. But I agree, open world is very difficult to nail down if you don't have a big budget and dedicated time to make the world full of things to do. Otherwise it's just going to be like every other Ubisoft game. There is nothing wrong with old fashion restricted levels if the level design is good. A good tight level design will always beat open world. Perfect example is Arkham Asylum vs other Arkham games.
Yeah...while Asylum is lacking in certain areas (the gameplay is too simplistic and the story/intrigue peters out real quick), it easily has the best open world of the series...it all had a purpose, and served both the narrative and gameplay. My hope is for an eventual Arkham game that has the focus of Asylum's world and narrative, but with all the bells and whistles of City and Knight, including a repurposed Batmobile. I would kill for a game like that.
It would be pretty cool if when you wanted to make a journey to somewhere in a game, instead of just riding your horse, driving your car or walking there, you had to manage resources, get the right equipment and plan the route. Imagine you want to go to the top of a mountain in a fantasy game cus you hear there's something cool at the top. You have to get food for the journey, maybe climbing equipment, a horse to ride there, weapons to defend yourself. You start the journey, you can't travel continuously, you have to stop and sleep at night, you have to use a campfire to keep warm, if you didn't bring enough food you have to hunt, you might get attacked by bandits at some point, you might meet another traveler to trade with. You get to a point where you have to leave your horse and start climbing alone, finally you make it and you're rewarded with maybe money, an item, an upgrade, a new spell. That entire journey could include so many types of gameplay; combat, hunting (and stealth?), survival, trading, resource management, platforming. Now that would be cool.
Ben Zombie all that can be modded into Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. Look up wiki.step-project.com/Pack:Survival for detailed examples. I use all that on top of SRLE: Extended + a bit of my own brew. Some people like me mod it to be as you describe, some mod it in other directions to their liking. I look at Bethesda games as basic framework from which serious PC nerd gamers can make their own game, and don't care too much if this selling point of Bethesda's is not general user friendly. I didn't know wtf I was getting into when I first started modding Morrowind in the days of original xbox. My versions of Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim are not general user friendly, but nearly any mission I embark on results in gameplay in the spirit of what you describe. If you have PC, I recommend you get Oblivion and follow this guide: ruclips.net/video/15wDKl9zDSA/видео.html and StratEdgy, check out some of his commentaries on open world games.
I'd say what makes open worlds good are the following basics: 1.How you get from place to place: Why is GTA fun? Because driving is fun, crashing into cars, finding jumps to ramp off of, ect... 2.Flow: This ties into getting from place to place... The journey needs to be fun... Even if it's an optional journey, so if you're flying what obstacles are in your way? Any barns to barnstorm through? Is there a shortcut? What risk is there to taking the shortcut? 3.Destinations: If there are optional destinations I'd say things like mingames, or shops with neat items to equip to your characters, or maybe the option of decorating our characters house with stuff that we've found... Upgrades and customization's for our vehicles.
I hate when people say a real life simulator would be boring! I mean c'mon it would be like being able to do ANYTHING in life! Everything you've ever imagined! A dream of a game where you could chose multiple routes, without any consequences. People that say it would be boring most likely live on a couch and have no imagination.
Personally I play games to escape reality. I think a real life simulator would be boring because you would not have the ability to do any fun and insane shit. Fallout New Vegas is a game where you can choose multiple routes without any consequences, and you get the bonus of using laser guns and battling mutated creatures and other things you can't do in real life.
A real life simulator would include you being in your pregnant mother's womb where all you sense are blobs of black and red with muffled sounds for 9 months of in-game time, being born with random good/bad traits (good luck being born with poor genetic traits), being able to do nothing but cry for 2 years of in-game time, having no freedom for a few more years, having to go to school for another ten years, having to save up money (or incur debt) for university, and a perma-death system that makes you restart everything when you die.
Gothic 1 and 2 was EPIC! SUCH a strong story and sense of reward when completing certain tasks or killing certain enemies, or to get accepted by a high level NPC group after you did work on your reputation
Dude this video eloquently pieced together something ive been feeling for years, but couldnt lay out. Open worlds often feel cheap and stretched out, with bland characters, rehashed enemies, landscapes, and dungeons and it all just gets repetitive and straight up boring just wandering aimlessly to do something that is already familiar with the game. Linear games woth set progressions and storylines immerse me harder, you get more diversity in level design and get to wondrous landscapes and you invest in the characters it plays out like a drama and youre just an observer interacting woth the narrative. My preference tbh
Your view of a perfect open world game is pretty much Dwarf Fortress in adventure mode. the problem is that game has no graphics besides ASCII text, and it 's very hard to get into because of its complexity I couldn't think of anything other than DF at your speech in the end of the video, that game's motto is "losing is fun!" there are those tragic stories on fortress mode, such as "Boatmurdered", and videos like VSauce's "El Fisto", of a hand-only fighter who was killed by a necromancer, ressurected, and then his uncontrollable corpse "exploded the necromancer's head into gore", oh that was awesome... I think once Dwarf Fortress reaches 1.0, and the industry is more developed, it should become the goal of any open world game to deliver as much freedom as that game does, it may sound lunatic now, a game *with graphics* delivering what an ASCII text game makes your CPU burn to do, and all that, but in 9 years or so years it may not.
I don't usually play open world games but as a concept i don't thin they are bad. it can be entertaining just wanting around looking for things. just simply enjoying the environments. i would say multiplayer focused games are bad.regardless if they do work well when there is a player base. since not only can community's ruin a experience but the very idea that you even need another living person to even experience a game is absurd.
Wow, great videos! I am wondering if you might do a video sharing your thoughts on Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Long Dark. The bit about making climbing and world traversal interesting got me thinking... Cheers
Try Skyrim with survival mods: Bonfires, Frostfall, Camping, Darker nights, brighter torches, Basic needs (eat, drink, sleep), Food that spoil, Hunting, Water temperature, clothing to protect from Cold/Rain, Better companion AI, better horses (these are just some features you can mod from the top of my head, not the name of the mods)
Considering the 'real life simulator', I played something like that at high school back in 1993. I don't know how it was called, it was an edutainment game where you had to cook, wash your clothes, lock your door if you go out, etc. etc. Also, there was a game Jones in the Fast Lane, also a bit like that.
Open worlds are starting to bore me, the only thing holding me back from buying games like Horizon Zero Dawn and Mass Effect Andromeda (Most likely my final Mass effect based on marketing) this month is whether the content in the world is good, like Witcher 3 (Granted, the game does suffer the open world tropes outside of quests, like bandit camps and towns overrun by monsters). I don't want to reach viewpoints or collect fucking collectibles anymore, Ubisoft made me sick of that shit, even Mafia 3 suffered this trope of you just doing the same shit over and over. GTA5 on the other hand at least had stranger missions, but the lack of stuff to actually do in the WORLD, made the game unbearable for me, where even I thought everything this game did, san andreas did better, and first. Open world games are mostly just padding, and its why I'm falling out of love with them, heck I'm falling out of love with Skyrim (One of my favorite games) because most of the quests are fetch quests, even mods can't fix that problem. Fallout New Vegas on the other hand had stellar quests and writing, but the worlds atmosphere wasn't that enticing because all you see are literally assets from Fallout 3 with a yellow tinted screen. Fallout 4...I won't speak of Fallout 4, everything that game did, was piss me off, 90% of the quests being radiant quests being one of them and the shitty writing. The open world genre has been done to death, but you either go open world or on the rails nowadays because it is an easier design philosophy for AAA games to abide by. This is why Dark Souls 1 was a nice hybrid of both, and its revolutionary to this day, it was open in a way, but linear too and the world felt connected, shame they didn't continue this design into DS3 where everything is linear af. More games should be looking back to DS1. Look at other games like Skyrim where you have horse shoe dungeons simply because its convenient rather than makes sense when it could go a whole other route of making them complex and feeling like actual dungeons, look at Daggerfall, their dungeons ooze atmosphere and are complex (Randomly generated sure, and has flaws) but thats more interesting than the fucking claw puzzles and linear dungeons in Skyrim and fighting the same draugr again and again. Edit: Kinda went on a ramble, but fuck it.
I might get some shit for this, but Watch Dogs 2 was actually a pretty good game in my opinion. Ubisoft actually decided that it was going to do away with towers, and just open up the world. All of the missions sort of blended together, not really relying on fetch quests, but instead giving you objectives that either further Dedsec, or give you items and vehicles. San Francisco wasn't really jam-packed with content, but it also wasn't a massive world, just a city. The characters are pretty polarizing, but they were better than anybody from the first game.
From how you described your ideal open world game as "a small slice of a world, chock full of carefully created content", the new Deus Ex would be right up your alley, I think (from what I've heard about it, anyway).
What Daniel Kedney said. I wish people would actually to what's being said in the video instead of not looking further than the title and seeing a statement they don't agree with.
Botw literally did what you wanted with the climbing and finding ingredients, it leaves much to be desired but damn was it fun. Just shows how executing some of these simple changes can make such an big impact on the open world concept.
Also a good thing that Morrowind does, that its sequels don't, is there are no map markers. The Quest-givers actually give you directions; which road to follow, which turn to take, what the door looks like. There is no fast travel, there are lore friendly alternatives like teleportation between mages guilds, ships between ports, and Silt Striders between the important cities. As I played, I subliminally learned the "bus routes", the roads, the landmarks, and I learned how to tell what area I'm in based on the environment. And so I did learn the map of Morrowind, not to the extent you seemed to have learned off Gothic's but I still think it's unfair to lump it in with the other games you listed.
Do you happen to watch Jim Sterling? He did a video in his series called the Jimquisition awhile back talking about this topic and, like you, brought up very good points. Also, open world is usually a selling point. That's pretty much it.
I've actually come to hate procedurally generated games, or games that are statically built but are far too big. It seems to me that the more space a developer gives you, the less you actually have. Instead, I've found myself thinking back to games which gave off the illusion of an open world, but is so compact with content that it makes up for what could be viewed as a smaller world. Games like this are Knights of the Old Republic, one and two. The worlds you could travel to were statically created by the developers, but exploration was more rewarding. I kind of wish that all of these procedurally generated games would just stop. A firm example is Minecraft. The game world is utterly massive, but at the same time, terribly empty. I even tried to play Minecraft a few days ago, but found the overall exploration to be redundant. I knew that caves had iron ore, etc, and maybe I would find a dungeon...but then what? What's the point? I think the issue is that the content needs to be greatly expanded. I think that's the issue with Minecraft, the game world is potentially infinite, but the overall content is extremely low in comparison.
you would love the new zelda, its not perfect but its leaps and bounds ahead on the adventure and progression aspects compared to most open world games today, id love to see you do a video on it
Great analysis, but the final idea is just dumb. An acurate life simulation would be boring as hell. Instead what we need is our actions being meaningful, like doing that quest where you return the necklage to the old lady and she always wear it afterwards. And that should apply to bigger events also.
Man, I love inconvenience in games. The best experience I had in Skyrim was playing with survival mods, and I got caught in a snowstorm in the middle of an otherwise boring quest. I was stuck in my tent, trying to keep a fire alive for days, hoping not to starve. Then a curious mudcrab got too close and became dinner. It was amazing. If you want a tagline, here it is; "Inconvenience is the cornerstone of immersion".
Nice to see Gothic 2 getting some love... it's one of my all-time favorites :) Did you know the original Gothic team are making a new game (using the gothic formula) called Elex? Definitely worth a look!
Thanks for the HU, going to have to keep an eye on that game as Gothic, /2 and Fallout, /2 are the games that'll always be in any top list of games for me.
I think Kingdom Come: Deliverance would be a great open world, it's small but full of content, quests with a variety of solutions to them and an engaging storyline. I really can't wait for it!
It really is a tricky thing to pull off with an open world. If there's too little to do in between the quest areas, then it can be pretty boring, though at the same time, making the world feel realistically large can be enjoyable to some people who enjoy things like hiking or just exploring without having to go outside. Breath of the Wild was a pretty mixed bag when it came to the design approach. On one hand, being able to climb everything really does open up new avenues for exploration, but at the same time it meant having to manage stamina gauges which could be understandably annoying for many if they wanted to climb up and over everything instead of finding a path to run along or ride through on horseback. Then of course there's a split amongst people with the world setup and how the shrines can be hit or miss for many who would have preferred a proper dungeon and/or cave to explore. Likewise, people are either in the camp that the world has enough to do in it and those who would prefer more mini-games and side-content that wasn't just collecting golden poop. One lesser known game that I feel did the sandbox world fairly well was Steambot Chronicles for the PS2. After the first 20 minutes or so (give it take), you were free to explore the game's first town and either progress the story by visiting a farm on its outskirts/fighting in arena matches to move up the ranks for money and prizes/shoot some pool in a bar/or dig up fossils to help restore the displays in a museum that got totaled during the story's beginning moments. From there, you could do things play the stock market, perform gigs with a band using various instruments, a fair number of side-quests with a few scant moral choices attached to them, and even spelunk in 3 randomly generated dungeons with multiple levels. While the world itself still railroaded you during the story, the stuff you could do in the downtime was pretty fulfilling, and even managed to make the game pretty fun to play even in the post-story mode whereas many other games kind of lose that charm once the story is said and done. As for whether open world games need to become "life simulators", I'm not too sure if that's quite right. First of all, it depends on what kind of feel the game is aiming for. BotW is an adventure as you grow in skill and power and manipulate the world to work in your favor to best the enemies and shrines while keeping yourself alive with bountiful supplies you can collect from an assortment of plants and animals. While many of the GTA games (and those styled like them) are about amassing a fortune to fund whatever endeavors you want to partake in while taking a break from the story bits. In the case of the latter, sadly, only a few manage to give you enough stuff to do between the story and off-mission stuff. While in the case of the former, and things similar to it, you really have to have a taste/preference for adventuring huge world that (depending on how you look at them) are either feel alive or sparse and empty. If anything, the world needs to always reflect what kind of adventure the player will be going on; a long and epic quest where they grow in power, or a journey of the underdog rising from their lowly beginnings.
This whole video can pretty much be summed up by "All open world games are bad except the ones that aren't" which means this video is largely pointless. Also Gothic 2 and FFXV really don't seem to be open world games based on what you are showing us. They both seem more like games with large interconnected closed off areas.
Chosen One 41 Exactly. This guy is projecting his purist standards and nostalgia onto everything. Look up No True Scotsman Fallacy. Exactly what this idiot does.
Now that is not true, Gothic 2 is an open world game split into 2 large maps. It is same as Skyrim + Dragonborn DLC, both Skyrim and Solstheim are large open world maps, but they cant be traversed without loading screen. And one more thing, every inch of Gothics map is there with a reason, almost every cave or old fort or whatever is there with a reason other then grinding. Gothic 2 is like Witcher 3 made a decade and a half ago with much smaller budget, but Piranha Bytes had idea how to make open world from previous and more successful open world titles more meaningful.
No there are zero closed off areas in Gothic 2 - you can climb every mountain (not just run up, actually climb) or swim out in the ocean, where you will eventually get eaten by a giant sea creature in a sweet cutscene. It may seem like an arcade-like game, but it's fucking huge. For sure large enough to be called open world, which is enhanced by your option to go places based on your actual skill at combat or gear to override low skill. Its like a hugee puzzle, which can be solved in a shitton of ways. If the combat system was a bit better, Gothic 2 would be the only perfect RPG made
The first half of the video seemed to be more in favor of smaller, more limited open worlds where the things you do are more meaningful and deep, but then you criticize GTAIV for stripping away the boring and superfluous fuller (in my opinion) of GTA: SA like eating and working out. It's totally unreasonable from a development standpoint to expect an open world game to let you do everything, and have everything be deep and engaging. Quantity and quality are always going to be inversely correlated - a game is either going to do a few things really well, or do a bunch of shit in a shallow way (e.g. almost every modern open world game). We shouldn't be encouraging game devs to one-up each other by creating open worlds with more "freedom". I'd prefer they go back to basics and focus on creating a solid gameplay foundation, and the world in which you play can follow from there.
Hey Mr. User, I mirror that sentiment. If you're interested in pushing this type of game to the next design philosophy, look up 2050-neo-gta on indiedb. I don't think R* is in the business of gratuitious gameplay anymore, it's all boring junk now.
I have the solution for you. Do it right! Something that people seem to be totally lost on is that each and every sequel to each and every game is a totally new thing on a new engine. I have a revolutionary idea, what if we made one game on one engine, and each sequel was built upon the last... Think about it, how great would it have been if Oblivion was done really well, the open world was made with quality by one team, while another focused on a good plot line that setup the game world and introduced you to everything while still delivering something that the player wanted up front. The sequel, would take that already existing world, throw a huge dynamic of over arching plot line that can take you through a few more sequels, give you enough story to make this addition purposeful, then further enrich the open world space that much more. The majority of work that is done in these open world spaces, is creating the spaces, so what if we just made a space once, then developed it over and over to make it better and better.... DO IT RIGHT!
not a lot to do in open worlds can sometimes not be a bad thing. I mean it gives you a break from the combat and hubub to do more planning and strategising. just look at minecraft, not a lot to the worlds, but a lot that can be made to do if you've got the initiative.
I'm a simple man, I see title saying how open worlds are crap, I hit like. I miss the days of linear-semi linear RPGs. There's no point having a huge open world with no content or boring content. I play a game for gameplay and story, not to look at the pretty fuckin' skyboxes :/ Unfortunately devs like EA can't monetize linear games as well with shitty microtransactions like they can big open sandboxes. R.I.P. the golden years of gaming, I shall forever miss the good games like kotor, DA:O, Jade Empire, Mass Effect (Especially Mass Effect, Andromeda was turned into an open world game for no fuckin' reason) etc...
This is why I had a bad feeling when they announced mirror's edge 2 was gonna be open world. Loved the race track design of the first game. Exploration game, it was not.
Wait until Warframe's Plains of Eidolon comes out: the way that the developers have come from a dungeon looter game gives them a way of thinking that gives players something to do wherever you are. Mining is not just go to a mine, kill all the enemies, find a vein and hold a button. Mining is available anywhere where you can find an ore vein which spawn randomly in any rock formation. Fishing is not just cast a rod and wait for the fish to bite. Instead you can go to any river and there are physical fish swimming in the waters that you can hunt with a throwing spear. Random events aren't just small skirmished like in FF or Pokemon, they are full missions where you will have to complete objectives like assassinating a key target, cutting supply chains, sabotaging machines and holding down areas to capture outposts. Mobility isn't a hard to control car, slow-movibg horse or just fast travel. Sure fast travel is available but you don't have preallocated locations but you put down beacons that you can use your archwings to fly to. Also rather than being confined to ground travel or limited aerial travel, the players are given archwings which aren't just a tacky replacement for fast travel, but full fledged aerial travel that aren't just mobility options but also a combat option as you can do things like bombard an area with rockets or nuke an area only from your archwings.
The climbing simulator you described reminded me of the Skate games, which are in my opinion, one of the best examples of a good open world game. Yeah, sure, the missions in those games are mundane and quite often not very fun. However, the exploration is in itself rewarding. It IS the gameplay in my opinion. Sometimes you'd find a neat little area, tucked away by the level designers, not a part of the locations you're "meant" to skate. Maybe it isn't even designed to be skateable. However with creativity and a manipulation of game mechanics, you could turn these areas into something great and fun to discover. Maybe you do a trick off an object you were never meant to be able to climb, maybe through dragging the movable objects around, you create a trick line and pull some Rodney Mullen shit. Skate is a fantastic open world series in my opinion due to the most fun part of the gameplay experience being your own creativity within the game world.
What if an open world, big enough but not ridiculous, started off fairly empty but as you did stuff and time went on, actually changed and filled up? You'd have the chance toward the end of it to actually MISS the emptiness it began with. Now how rare of an emotion would that be for a game to evoke?
I like your brain, the fact that that's your focus is great, because emotions and experiences as foundation are what make good games, I know it could be easy to say that I'm speaking subjectivity, but if you've done your research or some game design you KNOW this is fact
I'm gonna call it that this guy will have at least 200K subs after one year. If he does ill play baseball with a wii bat and a oyua. pin this for reference
On the real though, you know how long it takes to produce one video? Upwards of about 30 hours... So is it wrong to want more people to see the work that has basically become a second job for me on top of my full time one? I mean, I know you're trolling, but I am asking for real.
My best bud took me mountain hiking in Lapland before DS came out, but when its walking gameplay was being shat on by people with gaming prejudices. And up there on the second day I 100% understood what Kojima was going for without even having played the game.
from Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim, Bethesda has evolved their ability to populate vast empty maps with meaningful content. While that does mean that there is more areas that are not hand crafted. It also means there is more to explore (which is important to people who just want to explore) and more areas to have non-main quests in. Which is part of what make TES so open. The main quest is only there if you want to do it And of cause there is always mods. because most people don't want to worry about weather or not they have eaten.
So I have only played through the first one, but I own all of them. This may be a video for another time, but my feelings in a TL;DR way are: Unbalanced, messy, weird, and awesome.
I personally prefer enormous maps like Oblivion's. I wanted to explore all the caves I encountered in this game. I could have played 1 full year if I had not other games waiting. Also, I do not find FF15's vistas stylish at all, but artificial in a very un-immersive way. I much prefered Oblivion's natural-looking countriside. (my opinion)
I'd love for them to start making a game by starting out with just 1 town and make a lot of the gameplay and later on add extra content as they develop the story, so they can first get the mechanics really well. then start on evolving the world and making everything matter enough.
You're point about the motivations to explore the stuff in Oblivion is, in fact, why we love playing oblivion. EXPLORATION. The music, the leaves blowing in the trees, the random encounters, the gorgeous Ayleid ruins and distant towns. That's literally why games like that are so captivating, because everything was created so that you'll WANT to explore and figure out on your own volition. Unless you pick up a quest that tells you to go into that area theres only your imagination leading you to do certain things. Ultimate freedom.
Good points but annoying how obviously desperate for views you are. The title alone is there to trigger folks when in reality you love open world games and only hate certain things about them but for the most part you're digging the shit out of them.
What gave you that impression?
Because the title alone is there to trigger folks when in reality you love open world games and only hate certain things about them but for the most part you're digging the shit out of them.... You know. What I just said lol.
Why ask a question that I already gave you the answer to? Maybe I should go into more detail since you're struggling here.
Here's another way to answer that question.
Not having a title that sounds more like this...
"Open world games are kool and all BUT..."
: )
But you don't have to ask me that question alone. Go ahead and respond to the tons of people in the comments who said something similar about you lololol.
Here. Let me show you so you don't have to bother scrolling down lol.
"This whole video can pretty much be summed up by "All open world games are bad except the ones that aren't" which means this video is largely pointless. Also Gothic 2 and FFXV really don't seem to be open world games based on what you are showing us. They both seem more like games with large interconnected closed off areas."
"3:50 to skip the massive pointless monologue."
"I personally disagree."
"The problem with the video is he is positing his opinion as an objective standard, then implying that if you want what is best for video games, you'll agree with him."
Many good points you didn't bother to respond to but thanks for responding to mine lol. But hey... I see that you're ebegging with patreon and what not so. Good luck to ya man. Maybe you can make a few thousand bucks a month from internet rantings about gaming lol. I personally think you kind of suck and make a big fuckin deal out of stuff that's not really a thing but whatever floats your boat boss : )
You do make some good points though even if your fake outrage is showing a bit much.
Wow, the fact that you took the time to write this just proves how sad and bitter you are. Calm down, buddy.
Here for comments.
Opinionated titles might trigger some, but that isn't clickbait, its an effective tool to open a dialogue with your viewers. This guy obviously put a lot of thought and time into this video, and it's entirely understandable that he would want to begin a discussion in the comments with his title. I do understand your frustration, but I think you're being a little harsh with your judgement.
modern open world = maximise player game time while minimising required content creation....
Linear games are better.
Ubisoft and their goddamn question marks
@@civilwarfare101 Well they're certainly a lot easier for devs to get right.
@@ginge641
And they are better.
@@civilwarfare101 No, they're just easier to make better. COD is linear, but it's blatantly worse than the Witcher 3.
I disagree on the density point. I want a VAST open world and a fair amount of empty (though interesting) space. It breaks immersion for me if there is an encounter every minute. I want to feel like I am exploring an area. That said, the way the space is used is of paramount importance. I think GTA3 had one of the best maps ever in a game in terms of how the space was used. It was extremely small as these things go but it FELT much larger than it actually was because the space available was used so well.
DocFlamingo I'd agree completely if you said GTA San Andreas
Also an excellent map. I chose GTA3 for the example because, compared to San Andreas, it is tiny but feels quite big.
To be honest, you could say the same about the first three 3D games, III, VC and SA.
All perfect examples of open world gaming.
DocFlamingo your playing a VIDEOGAME, their is no technical way to program every situation you'd encounter in a city, it be like programming a human brain.
But then again, if density = (content) / (map area) then it is an average value. In the end a game can be dense and rich while still leaving empty space where it makes sense.
GTA: San Andreas used the space on the map better than any other GTA. There was so much variety and possibilities.
What? gta sa map was boring as fuck and side stuff were boring too.
Jose Gregorio Otero Rather it was boring or not is totally subjective.
Well, side stuff werent that boring since it had use in the game, but the map, long deserts without nothing and forest, but if theres something i liked it was going in a road trip and listening to rock.
But i respect your opinion.
BroImLeandre "Whether".
funny thing is how can gta5 be a lot bigger yet feels a lot smaller then gta san andreas
BC in San Andreas you have 3 different cities, a countryside, and a desert. GTA V just clumps Los Santos and Blaine County together without any real effort. Sure it's bigger but driving from Los Santos to Las Venturas actually feels like a road trip, with small towns in the countryside, and a world that is natural instead of artificial.
@@Roadman1000 exaxly
@@Roadman1000 You also had : Casino, and owning one aswell, Gym, body management (being skinny, fat, muscular, or fat and muscular..) Dancing at the night club, girlfriends, different fighting styles, the 2nd most memorable OST (vice city still get the 1st place for me), cities had their own identities. The antagonists where actually dispicable from the begining (Tenpenny) The story was better aswell. A better yet still anecdotic properties management..
@@Geekezf You hit the nail through the head and into the stomach good sir. GTA V is lifeless
On the subject of what you're talking about at 24:53, Kingdom Come Deliverance has probably my favorite alchemy system to date. Early alchemy levels you have to manually brew potions. Meaning you have to boil the liquid, cook ingredients for specific times, add them at certain points. It's really incredible.
It's a shame, that most people are pretty much satisfied with any empty and repetitive game world, if it is vast enough. I often hear those "I hope new TES will be twice as big as Skyrim!" and immediatly realize that in that case the game would probably be even worse lol.
I think people, who the open world games are sold to, are just easily fooled by an illusion of depth, that most of those games tend to create. When you play Skyrim for the first time, see the big map, talk to some npc, do some random activity like chopping wood (which turns out to be completely pointless, but you don't know that yet), it's only natural to think that the game must be thought out and designed very good, that it has every it's aspect perfectly polished and such, when in reality it's just a "normal world" game that has it content simplified and stretched.
Way to oversimplify Шломи Кагерман's statements. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the hell out of Skyrim. But Skyrim, and games like it, suffer in depth because it attemps to create a world numerically larger than the previous game(s). What I mean by depth is purpose, motive and intentions. Skyrim has a huge world with lots of stuff to do, but those things you do often come with little or no purpose. Npcs rarely show human intentions and motives. What do they eat? Why are these people here? Why do I have to kill bandit #135?
Henry Waters, I never said that you are wrong to like Skyrim. How is it even possible to wrongfully like something? It's not like it's your concious choice, it's just the way your taste works at the current time.
All I said is that you are fooled by the illusion of depth (this is also just my theory btw, feel free to prove me wrong), because apart from simplified writing and broken game mechanics, illusion of depth is something TES games always tend to get working.
And if you don't like the word "fooled", then may be you just have a good imagination and what Skyrim has to offer is enough for you to start playing a much bigger game only in your head. This is how I enjoyed Oblivion when I was a kid and considered it my "favrioute game" for a while, can't do it anymore though.
Also, Skyrim sucks and no amount of words can explain how much I hate it :> doesn't mean you shouldn't like it or anything, just putting it out here, for the internet people. I do like color pink though, it's my favorite.
The video: barely mention Skyrim
Top comment: illuzion of depz.
Skyrim has became a punching bag for pretentious gamer who think that they are smart and smarter than other.
I consider Skyrim a great game because it has a great balance between gameplay and muh stozy, the narrative is there in the background and you may or may not care about it while having a lot of fun running around.
the video: open worlds
top comment: illusion of depth in open world games
seems legit to me.
and yeah, apparently skyrim is only played by easily impressed children like you and pretentious smarty pants like me and not a single normal person that is not defined by some stupid stereotype.
but anyway, what I meant is that I expect an open world game to be interconnected. Open world in Skyrim only means giving the player choice to explore content in any order. There is no "I better do an easy quest to recieve a good weapon to do a dangerous quest after" or "This town is starving so this is a good time to make good money by selling food here" situations. I have a ton more issues with Skyrim, but this is the main one - this open world doesn't have a purpose.
Шломи Кагерман you need to play The legend of Zelda Breath of the wild
Cool that you mentioned Gothic, there are not many people who know it in the english-speaking gaming community. I can draw a map from memory as well, it has grabbed me as well :D
It's one of those gem games that, if you can look past the warts, is a really great game.
Strat-Edgy Productions Oh yeah, that combat... Still better than Gothic I, but nonetheless painful. But I have accustomed myself to it, and it is definitely bearable for what it gives in return.
dope
the combat was fine and better than at least 50% of trash that we get from other games
you have
a block
attack chains which need more than just mindless button smashing
you can dodge
there is ranged combat with bows and crossbows (it sucks tho xD)
and there is a great magic system (transforming into other creatures, cool magic effects with great varity both in visuals and usefullness)
if you look at it from a bit further away you can see that it has quite a bit to offer
it needs some skill, offers great varity and has good visible progression player power wise
also that different wapons and elemental dmg is effective against different type of enemys is also very nice
bows -> wolfes, bloodflys etc.
*need to clear that cave with 5 skeletons which two hit you?
-> just get some scrolls of "holy bolt" or "destroy undead" and they are fucked
(not entirly sure how they are called in english I only played it in german)
planescape torment that game had bad combat gothic was a bit clunky had some great stuff some bad stuff and was overall pretty good (in terms of combat) for 2004 (?) and it hold up
Gothic has a large fanbase in Poland. Many streamers still play it. There is also plenty of polish gothic machinima vids most of them are very funny. That game created very nice atmosphere. There were no good or evil indicators like in fable or mass effect but wrong choices
often led to consequences and in the begginning exploring the world was captivating but dangerous. Im glad i was a kid when it came out so i could fully experience this story without thinking bad about it's graphics. Have a good day.
I realize that everyone's situation will vary, but I suspect that I am not the only person who may find open world games a bit frustrating because such games don't fit well with game/life balance , especially for someone who has a full-time career and a family.
I am a gamer and not a casual one. I like my gaming experiences to be deep and complex. And, yes, I am willing to put some significant time into a game. But I also have quite a bit in my life outside of gaming which needs my attention and to which I honestly want to give my attention because these things are meaningful to me.
So what I really want is a deep but *focused* gaming experience.
A fantastic example of this is Alien: Isolation. I would definitely not call this a casual game. It has depth and requires some serious thought in how you approach various scenarios. It did not waste my time with trivialities or needlessly traversing large areas, yet I personally never felt like I was overly confined to a sort of "plot railroad". I could split up my play time into sessions which made sense for my life, but each session was worthwhile and engaging.
I would really like to see more games with that kind of focus.
I agree completely. I also honestly miss games that had "levels or missions" that you had to go through. It seems most modern games try to create one continuous mission over the course of the entire game, like an rpg, instead. The mission structure created alot more focus for me, like the old Bond games where you complete a mission you immediately get to start the next one, skipping pointless travel time and even time in general between each mission. You could then go back to your favorite missions and complete just them while trying to get certain achievements, with a continuous mission structure you can't really get to a certain point in the game unless you have a specific save for it.
I guess as we get older, we have less time to waste, especially on video games, so when we actually play them we want something immediate, while still offering depth and complexity to challange ourselves. I get alot more anxious when playing games these days, if I did something that had no purpose or enjoyment in a game, my anxiety seem to grow knowing that I should probably be doing something more productive at the moment, I din't get this feeling when I was younger.
They do demand a lot of your time, that much is undeniable. I mean it's possible to beat skyrim in between 5 to 8 hours if you decide to lower the difficulty or if you're running a really good build bit that's really not how the game was intended to be played. Also the main quest isn't the highlight of the game either.
If it's neccesarry to rush through a game you're almost certainly better off with a story driven, linear single player game. I think rogue likes promote work life balance pretty well because typically a run could last anywhere from five minutes to a bit over an hour.
Wait, so you "would rather have a smaller world with more engaging content than a beautiful, big empty world," and rather have "a smaller world with less to do than a huge world with meaningless content that's just there to keep me from getting bored"...and you think GTA San Andreas is a revolutionary game?
Did we play the same San Andreas? I seem to remember inane trucking missions, pointless basketball and dancing mini-games, and driving around in circles to impress dates for no apparent reason than to fill up a romance-meter. The Bigfoot urban legend was started because 80% of the environment in that game was devoid of literally anything but shrubs and rocks. Wouldn't SA be the antithesis to the perfect open world you describe?
Yes, but you forget all the immersive sim parts to that game like holding gang territory, recruiting gang members, dating (which you mentioned), eating and not working out making you fat, the character progression like shooting more making you better at shooting, driving makes you better at it.
It was revolutionary simply because it was the first open world of that size that also tried to do all those things. They weren't successful at all of it, but they tried.
And yeah, it would be the anti-thesis of what I am talking about. Deus Ex Mankind Divided would be the Thesis, sort of, in terms of size, but not in terms of gameplay as it is not sim enough to fit the criteria.
But most "sim" mechanics in games are often there just as a gimmick. I would rather have a few unrealistic mechanics than a bunch of boring busywork. I don't care about dating a virtual woman, or playing basketball, or working out in game. I just want an immersive experience where all of my time is spent completing missions, interacting with interesting characters and just exploring the amazing game world in general. There is no need to inject real life into a video game.
Ricardo Santos yeah the dark brotherhood questine in oblivion was by far and away the best questine in the latest 3 games (haven't played draggerfall and the other one, so i can't say anything about those)
@@StratEdgyProductions what they're trying to say is that you're full of shit mate
I have the solution for you. Do it right!
Something that people seem to be totally lost on is that each and every sequel to each and every game is a totally new thing on a new engine. I have a revolutionary idea, what if we made one game on one engine, and each sequel was built upon the last...
Think about it, how great would it have been if Oblivion was done really well, the open world was made with quality by one team, while another focused on a good plot line that setup the game world and introduced you to everything while still delivering something that the player wanted up front.
The sequel, would take that already existing world, throw a huge dynamic of over arching plot line that can take you through a few more sequels, give you enough story to make this addition purposeful, then further enrich the open world space that much more.
The majority of work that is done in these open world spaces, is creating the spaces, so what if we just made a space once, then developed it over and over to make it better and better.... DO IT RIGHT!
Shocked to see the Gothic in here, most people don't know of or ignore the series, but I point to Gothic 2 as a relatively early open world that most current titles can't live up to. I think before BOTW, I would have called it my favorite open world title. Not necessarily because it's the best game altogether, but because the world seems to exist for a purpose. The combat absolutely is trash though, and so is the English dub. Good thing I'm German.
3:50 to skip the massive pointless monologue.
More like 26:43 to skip the massive pointless monologue am i right ;D
Thanks
this should be comment #1
Thx
anyone who can't appreciate 00:01-3:49 has shit taste. This dude should be writing for film.
Part of the reason we remember some games so well is because we HAVE TO. Morrowind, gothic, etc, all have tools to help us navigate, but require us to USE them. Skyrim, Oblivion, the Witcher, etc. all lead you by the nose with the floating arrow trick, removing any need to learn the map and remember notable locations. We don't build any connection to the world or have any reason to enjoy it because we're being taken on a tour instead.
I agree with your notion of trying to simulate the randomness of life a bit more in OW games. My current Skyrim mod list kind of aims for that and I'm finding it refreshing. Chronicles of Elyria is planning to do precisely what you're describing, in that it's doing away with much of the abstract theme park elements and creating a world more dynamic and alive. A lot of their crafting/profession type features are being made minigames in their own right. It's far too much to describe what they're doing here, but go look them up. You won't be disappointed.
The funny thing about the "size" of open worlds is that it's not only relative (let's face it: I used to walk further to school every morning than the time it took to walk across skyrim) but here's the crucial phenomenon: any form of fast travel, including things that just increase your movement speed, effectively SHRINK your world.
Think about it: how huge did Skyrim look when you first loaded it up? Massive. You felt the epic scope and overwhelming scale immediately...but the first time you warped from Solitude to Riften with the press of a button, that massive scale vanished, completely obsoleted by free teleportation to anywhere you wanted. Carriages were obsolete wastes of money once you'd been to the holds. All the boats in Skyrim were nothing more than props. The college of Winterhold would have been ripe for a teleportation service, but who would bother? We just point to a spot on the map and WHOOSH.
Morrowind kept at least a semblance of scale even to the late game because you at least had to learn WHERE you could "teleport" TO and FROM. you still had to have at least a little respect for the layout and size of the place in order to jump to where you wanted. Finding A new mage's guild, imperial cult shrine or Almsivi temple was quite a blessing, as it expanded your travel network in hostile lands. Finding a ring which let you jump between Sotha Sil, Mournhold and Vivec was a true treasure. As for content, well, that's also relative. I always found my Morrowind hours quite full of things to do, both game-directed and self-invented. While Oblivion and Skyrim had DIFFERENT content, due to the changes in skills, physics, fast travel, NPC capabilities and that damn handholding compass arrow, I disagree that there was "less" to do in Morrowind.
therealbahamut I loved the witcher.... :(
therealbahamut except The legend of Zelda Breath of the wild
therealbahamut not to sound like a fanboy but you can turn off the map and quest markers in whitcher 3
Yeap I played the witcher with everything turned off except the health meter and it was much more immersive and fun, made me memorise the landscape, also never fast travelled at all (unless it was between areas of course which is unavoidable).
one word: money
what you are talking about is such a niche market, devs and distributers would never recoup the investment. just check the progression of games... they may start off beautiful, thoughtful, require effort to gather achievement. later versions are bent towards appealing to the mass audience... dumbed down, less thought or work required, more quick action. mass appeal == more money. I want what you want, I've just resigned myself to appreciating what I can get. gonna check out Gothic 2, thanks for the referral !!
Be aware. The combat is hot dog shit and the gameplay balance is all over the place, but it's rewarding if you can stick with it.
RD Simmers I would say this isn't true. Look at a game like Minecraft or LoL. They've got a larger audience than any given entire AAA franchise, yet the focus is on gameplay, whereas AAA publishers tend to focus on graphics. I think I've figured out why, too. It's not a larger audience they're going for, but a more gullible one. They want impulse buyers, not carefully thought-out purchase decisions. Why? Because with a sufficiently high-quality CGI trailer and no reviews pre-launch, you can guarantee that there will be a certain percentage of impulse buy preorders, and that some of the people who did that will become invested in defending their decision to buy a shitty game because they just couldn't have made the wrong decision.
The strategy isn't seeking an audience that will happily pay enormous amounts, even though that would likely get them greater profits, because that takes greater effort and at least some minimum level of risk. They want the guaranteed fast cash of gullible sheep because it's low effort and the risk is nearly zero.
I do, of course, expect this to backfire, hard, in the long run, but the executives won't care, because by the time that happens, their great-great-grandchildren will never have to work a day in their lives off the money already made.
Leauge is P2W for kids to think they're better than others by buying shit first (or gullible), so not the best comparison but yea it fits.
we need to start taring and feathering dev like this. They should be publicly shamed due to bad ethics in design.
Chad Goings most of the time its the publisher's fault not the developer
Your mountain story reminded me a time I was adventuring through a frozen area in a latest Zelda with no torch, little to no food and no proper clothing looking for freaking tower. This was one of the best moments in my gaming experience.
The evolution of open worlds is for game devs to make linear games again. So many games are open world that shouldn't be, and it negatively impacts those that should be.
This is why Sims 3 will always be the best video game ever made in the history of man kind.
you know what I hate most about open world games? that anytime that one releases people immediately bitch about it because it's not like GTA
Really people did that with Skyrim, Fallout and The Whitcher?
Ah, I remember when Oblivion first came out I had to call it a "medieval version of San Andreas" to convince my friends to play it.
True, but you can't blame Rockstar for raising the bar so high though. Other companies simply need to pay more attention and catch up
I don't know a single person with more than a brain cell who made that comparison.
1st time hearing about that complaint.
The new Legend of Zelda made me remember why I like open worlds. It's no life simulator, but an adventure simulator. Sometimes I just get distracted by a bunch of trees in the distance shaped and weird way and feel actually compelled to go and check it out. And even if nothing is their, SOMETHING usually happens that doesn't make it feel like a waste of time. I had to scale a cliff face, or fight a camp of monster, or I find a puzzle to solve. Finding koroks or mini bosses or shrines reward you for this kind of exploration if something is in those patch or oddly shaped trees. And while it's greatly beneficial to find and complete these encounters, it's not at all necessary. In fact, after getting out of the starting area, I went straight to the final boss in the game because Nintendo told me I could if I could manage it, and I wanted to call their bluff. And I fucking did it. I got one shot whenever a single enemy would breathe in my direction, but that was a highlight of my play through and it all reinforces the sense of freedom to explore. If you want to hunt koroks or shrines or special loot or hunt bosses, you can. If you want to do side quests, you can. If you want to cook, you have figure out a recipe, but you can.
The game isn't perfect. But the open world is pretty damn close in my opinion.
Great video by the way:)
Yeah, and I am willing to bet that there is a deliberateness to the design of the areas, though I haven't played it yet to find out. THings aren't just randomly placed on a randomly generated height map, and thrown together hastily. Though, I could be wrong as I haven't played it yet.
Strat-Edgy Productions My bad, I edited my comment after you relied because I didn't realize anyone respond.
But yeah man, I listened to an interview Nintendo had where they set up a system in their beta to track players and the progress they made through the game world. And whenever an area wasn't getting any attention, either because it was out of the way or didn't look interesting, then they would go and add something in deliberately to encourage exploration. Great game overall. I'm having a lot of fun with it.
Brady Benedict holy crap! I found a user talking about the legend of Zelda Breath of the wild
nintendo has plenty to learn with their new open world direction for zelda, but they did a pretty darn good job for their first open world (not counting xenoblade x) with how you go about exploring without tons of way points. i think if they had better side quests and more types of things to do aside from shrines and seeds, they would have the open world thing mastered.
@Misha, The original LOZ was the 1st open world sandbox game....so I think they had it "mastered" a long time ago, albeit constrained by the NES tech of the time, nothing else was like it......so they sort of went back to basics with BOTW (the creators stated as much, hell they even did a mock up of the engine AS an NES format before anything else to fine tune the game mechanics)....so it's kind of weird to say "they would have the open world thing mastered"....just saying.
It's interesting to watch this video after Death Stranding has been released.
I was literally about to say the same exact thing
I always used non levelled list mods for these games, so exploring becomes scary and you get genuine suprises/challenges.
While I understand and agree with your points, I do feel the need to talk about FFXV a bit. I followed the development of that game for a long ass time, and they talked about their approach to the world design on a few occasions. First off, it wasn't intended to be a true "open-world" game. The intent was for the player to follow the story laid out for them like past FFs, but to open up the areas and give them as much freedom as the story would allow. Too bad there wasn't much story in the first place, that's another discussion.
Second, the open areas up to Altissia were supposed to be like a road trip. It was mainly about driving with the boys, listening to their banter, camping out, etc. The idea was that in a real road trip, you're not stopping and exploring every field you come across. You're driving/riding and watching the scenery go by, but you don't often interact with it. Whether that was actually according to their vision or an excuse to justify the pretty but mostly empty world, I suppose is up for debate.
I'm not a fanboy trying to defend the game. It absolutely has many problems, and for a lot of people, this approach to world design may be one of them. It works for some people, and doesn't work for others. I just thought I'd point out some of the reasons why the world was designed that way.
Also, a recent update added a modification to let the Regalia go freely off-road, and I feel that has greatly changed the dynamic of the world. That car is insane now. You can drive, and even jump, all over the damn place, and run over monsters to your heart's content. It's fun to get the car up on one of those giant stone arches and jump off. It's not "content" exactly, but it does inject some much needed fun into the game.
This video is on the older side now, so I don't know if you'll even see this comment, but if you do, I'd like to know what you think about this.
I remember when I was young and Oblivion was new. A cousin who had it before me described how fun it was to be able to just run off in a direction and not be stopped by invisible walls, instead you found dungeons and shrines and caves and all manner of interesting things!
I think it is unfair to criticise that game for not innovating when the open world concept was still big and interesting. We didn't see the limit of the system the same way we do now that it's been explored by so many games.
I was sold on Skyrim almost wholly on the promise of an Even Bigger World with Climbable Mountains!!; essentially more of that fun exploration I enjoyed in Oblivion. And I'll say that it is something Skyrim really succeeded on doing. It's awesome to just run around exploring. As time has passed the weaknesses of the game has become clearer, but I can't bring myself to complain about the ambition of making the world big.
Newer games don't have that excuse though. Mindlessly copying the open world of past games without good reason is bad practice.
Madmax was not too shabby, needed more customization for sure and character devleopment/npc's. W3 is the model for sure.
Keep eyes on 2077 :)
Enronhitman good call on mad max. That map was huge, but there were a lot of things to find, encounters to meet, and reasons to check stuff out. 👍🏻👍🏻
Mad Max was criminally underated.
There is a bit of an annoying grind with that game just to get enough stuff to make your car fully tricked out and to get all of max's gear. I especially HATED the land-mine diffusing missions. They were mind numbingly easy and the dog barking mechanic was glichy and rather annoying to listen to (who's idea was it to have the same fucking barking audio the whole time??).
Once I got my car the way I liked it and got max's stuff fully upgraded (and completed the main story), it all started to feel a little empty.There's some cool side quests too though which I completed. I got a solid 20-30 hours out of it though and it is definitely one of the most underrated games of that year, if not ever).
Witcher 3 was modeled after Gothic 2
Welp... how did 2077 turn out
I want real estate options in gta and other city theme open world games, I want to build a Brand or Empire. Something i can care about. I want to be able to have a different experience in the same world.
Vice City Stories had something similar
@@ivanjinxgg7008 dude I was exactly about to say that, how vice city how gangs that were on your side and how it had gangs that they would shoot you when they saw you.
as far as I remember when you bought a business and it started generating money for you there gangs/guards that are on your side guarding it, it felt so immersive, like you could see your effect on the city and it was really cool.
I always thought about this concept of world scale vs. content density! Imagine if GTA V's world was only half of Los Santos yet you could enter every single building and missions and story arcs took place within a city block! You would be much more compelled to take a walk for the sake of discovering something interesting than just rob supercars and do a lap of the map while being chased by cops, die and repeat.
A true "life-simulator" sandbox sounds incredibly boring.
it was already developed anyway. It is called Planet Earth xD
There was a meme about a German warehouse worker who, after returning home, plays Forklift Simulator. To me, games are a mean to experiance something I couldn't do IRL, so I doubt I would find a game like this interesting.
Being able to do anything like real life with no consequences (death etc.) would be amazing.
Real life is only stressful because there is consequences. Being able to save and reload in real life would be fun as.
One of the most popular games right now is GTA5. The majority disagrees with you.
I remember playing games back in the early 1990s and it seemed like every other game was a side-scroller. It got so bad that I started to wonder what the point of having four directions on the control pad was, when you only ever used one, maybe two, of those directions on most games? Of course, now side-scrollers are a cool, nostalgic throwback to a simpler time, but back then a side-scrolling game was pretty much the hallmark of lazy and unispired game design. Obviously, there were still some great side-scrollers released in the 90s (Donkey Kong Country, Super Star Wars, Super Mario World, etc.), but for every one of those there seemed to be five generic side-scrollers. My point being that it's not the format that's flawed. It's what developers choose to do with that format that matters.
Personally, I love the open world format. I'm not a fan of games that put you on rails or give the illusion of an open world, but then just drive you forward from one objective to the next. I prefer to have the freedom to just explore the game, admire the designers' craftsmanship, and tackle the game's objectives as quickly or as slowly as I see fit. I play games to relax and have fun, not to add more stress to my life.
witcher 3 has gone above all of these open world games, side quests are interesting, progression makes sense, world doesn't feel empty, there's always interesting stuff to do.
I am looking forward to Kingdom Come Deliverance, the world looks lovely.
I feel the world is rather empty.
aye, me too! i hope it don't suck. Please don't screw up Kingdom Come
I disagree. Its not empty. Not any more than our real world is. Its full of beautiful flora and fauna, if not more interesting things.
Witcher 3 has a stunning open world, but it is still fairly gamey and does some things wrong.
of course it feels gamey, it's a fantasy world! they're not aiming for realism and I'm glad they didn't because too much realism would be really boring
I think FO:NV hits this nail on the head. A tad smaller than FO3, there's tons of content packed in small spaces, so the world never feels empty. The road to New Vegas itself is frought with danger and locations and just STUFF. If you go the wrong way, you get massacured by deathclaws, but do a bunch of stuff with the Powder Gangers, and Primm, and the NCR, and maybe the legion, and if your lucky, maybe clear out a casiono of cash. All in a smaller world than Fallout 3, and within a couple of hours. Gotta love 2010 Obsidian Entertainment.
*DID I MENTION THE FANTASTIC DLC OLD WORLD BLUES THAT'S THE EMBODYMENT OF THE PARAGRAGH ABOVE?*
HyperionRobit but I can't draw a map of new Vegas. That must mean it's bad
The "danger" aspect you touch upon is often overlooked. You really need an open world to push back in order to feel organic.
weirdo3116 Lol I could probably draw a map of New Vegas. Its pretty sad.
It's a LOBOTOMITE! Here! In the DOME!
Combat sucked in new vegas
if you took the level of exploration from saboteur , the world detail from morowind , oblivions side quests, thiefs stealth mechanics and GTAs freedom and just fucking mix em up togheter you get what I consider a true open world experience
idk I, along with probably everyone here, played the shit outta skyrim. I could draw a pretty decent map of that. Also I really like random encounters with npc's in newer openworld games, I like that not every quest ties into the main story somehow. Maybe that's just me
No, it's not just you.
Jacob Jiles he said NOT tied
I played skyrim for more than 700 hours.
I wouldn't be able to draw a map of it.
I liked skyrim sure enough, but i like most Bethesda games. Not for the games themselves so much, just for the ability to mod the shit out of them to fit my playstyle. My issue with skyrim is that I never "felt" like a dragonborn. You have figures like Tiber Septim who shaped the world at large, even Martin Septim managed to drive off Mehrunes friggin Dagon, but the player as a dragonborn? Yeah, going around killing bears and sabrecats that have somehow gotten into people's homes.... or doing fetch quests cause someone wants a sweet roll. Also despite your power you are constantly talked down to and ordered about by everyone in the game. I mean how much better would the game be if you could bitch slap Delphine or Ulfric until they couldn't walk straight, just to teach them a bit of respect? Or end the civil war by simply taking the throne of skyrim yourself after murdering every imperial and Aldmeri or Stormcloak that looked at you funny?
Just saying it's annoying to give a player that kind of power and then don't acknowledge that they have this power until the plot says you do.
I don't feel like a Dragonborn when a kid tells me my armor doesn't look cool. :'(
This video made me appreciate the fact the Bioshock Infinite, one of my favourite works of art, got cut down from an open world to semi-open. It really stream-lined the **beautiful** pacing of the story and gameplay but still allowed time for exploration and soaking in the _even more beautiful_ environment and atmosphere.
The Bioshock Infinite we got was closer to shit finger painting than a "Work of art"
@@jeremyallen492 Ah yes! Hyperbole! Such wisdom and insight from someone so clearly articulate!
No srsly find the nearest building and jump
That game was fucking trash bro
Infinite was downgraded in every way
Edgy: 'ive been playing a lot of oblivion lately*, proceeds to show Gothic 2 footage.
Me, internally: REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
To this day my favourite open world is Red Dead Redemption, for all its bugs and awkward interactions with AI. There were a ton of genuine moments that were incredible. Especially because the story fueled it. The ride into Mexico is incredible. Oblivion had some similar moments for me where just simply existing in that world was awe-inspiring. My test for any open world game is to walk between key locations at least 5-6 times and just see if it evokes any sort of emotion from me.
21:08 _>Fable: The Lost Chapters/anniversary_
It had a pretty good enough open world with pretty good combat & progression systems with a decent enough story and character-build versatility.
It had enough side-quests & whenever you complete them, it had fitting rewards like getting the very best fishing pole from the fishing contest very early in the game which btw is fantastic game design giving the player an upgraded tool early enough in the game for it to have it's impact instead of giving it at the end which would be pointless.
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The silver key chests & Demon doors are enough of a nice incentive to revisit older, more lower-leveled areas considering their bountiful rewards.
The world looks nice for it's era, it's NPC's are fleshed out enough to not make players grimace.
It's morality system is simple yet it far out-paces the morality systems of other lazy modern games.
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But more importantly, it's open world is a charm & no area in the entire game is just a boring, flat field. With various rewards for any exploring player.
The entire game has _just_ the right balance.
You're making great videos, all videos you've made about problems with RPG:s are really spot on. Keep on doing what you do!
I actually kind of like my world's a bit more empty, sounds wierd but hear me out. This is especially important in the post apocalyptic games, fallout 4 felt too cluttered and just fake, a group of people in an outpost would just ignore the huge battle one block over, mad Max was nice because the world felt like it had seen some shit, and when you come across people or a place of interest it felt all that more meaningful. Right know I am playing witcher 3, and though I do enjoy it it still feels a bit cluttered, like I just finished a contract where the monster was within bowshot of the castle, why would I have to find a monster that everyone should be able to see when it attacks each night? Rant over.
Edit: also during a cut scene in w3 it states that it took the people 2 hours to get to a place that in the actual game world takes a minute or 2, I enjoy the journey, I like the world's to feel realistic a large, not some king's kingdom to be a few square kilometers.
Extremely big open worlds discourage exploration. They are either so empty that you can't find shit by randomly exploring (see FFXIV) or they are cluttered with bullshit that is the same shit over and over again.
I get your point, but at the same time, i see things in a different perspective. For me, a game, as a form of art/entertainment, needs to be poetic sometimes, if it's too literal, it becomes real life, and if it's too much like real life, there is no purpose on playing whatsoever. The example you showed about 2 hours becoming 2 minutes shows that the world of The Witcher 3, as an illustration of a book, with some poetic freedom, makes some choices prioritizing the overall experience. If you had to walk 2 hours to complete the task it would feel like eternity, thus breaking the game's both rhythm and narrative pace. And if the NPC's said 2 minutes it would feel like something extremely stupid, breaking the immersion once again. So you have to have this unbalance between time length, to make the narrative both realistic and playable.
Open worlds are not rubbish, DEVELOPERS are rubbish.
You don't blame the cow for a shitty steak, you blame the COOK. Developers have become lazy, and focused on maximizing profits, which unfortunately means the focus has shifted from creating the best possible product, to spending the least amount of resources as possible, while still charging the same amount of money.
Open World gaming is about freedom and variety. How much of that is up to the developer, and more often than not, these developers have chosen to cut and paste worlds that end up being repetitive and empty.
Rockstar is the greatest when it comes to open world gaming, because they spend whatever it takes to develop a game that feels exciting and full of life. I still play GTAV on an almost daily basis, and Red Dead Redemption is one of the greatest games of all time.
There are many shitty open world games, but that is due to developers who simply don't have the freedom, desire or resources to push boundaries. Most are met with difficult deadlines to meet, and don't have the freedom to do the things they want to do.
I... I kinda did blame the developers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don't think it's laziness, as you say, they are focusing on maximizing the profit. Sadly it's easier to market "big worlds" with "anything to do" and show as much "content" as possible than explain that "this world isn't so big, but it's very well designed and connected and filled with memorable places and characters." Why is that I don't know, maybe people really believe they can do anything in these games, or they fill the gaps with their imagination when playing and it's enough for them.
DISCO-INFERNO-70 semantics
This cow is fucking *RAW*
But after you complete GTA 5 you basically have nothing to do. They had a HUGE Budget, 250 Million. Meanwhile The Witcher 3 had a budget of around 15 Million and yet they set the standard of what an Open World RPG should be.
You said it boss, i was trying to explain that to people for the past 10 years....
Milos Andric Ma gaming industrija je skroz u kurcu, niko se više ni ne trudi da pomera granice, stvarno šteta. Mislim da ti to što je najnovija igrica koju sam igrao Shadowrun Dragonfall koji je izašao pre par godina, toliko mi je stalo do "novih igrica". Sve je već viđeno, indie igrice su jedini spas.
The map in G2 was actually optional. The strength of the level design in that game was in that most of the time you didn't even need the map because the world was well enough designed that you navigated by the landmarks
Great video. Good points on Oblivion and FFXV. Small issue woudl be to make editing more in sync with what you say. For example, I've no idea how Far Cry's climbing looked and it would be helpful to show that. PS, You get extra points for Gothic 2. What did you think about Gothic 3 and Arcania?
Gothic 3 was alright for what it tried to do, but suffered from the same lack of concrete narrative and direction that many open worlds have, but for what it tried to do, holy shit... I mean, you could either support the orcs and do missions for them, or take over towns yourself and do missions for the rebels. For as big and as open as that game was, I am really surprised no one tried to do that since. It had to be a massive undertaking for them. If it weren't for the stunlocking issue it probably would be a classic to be honest.
Man... I really need to go back and play that game. Seriously, we need more foreign game design companies...
The reason Gothic 3 failed is because they tried to make an Oblivion-killer. Everything you said about Oblivion, FF15 and Gothic? It is EXACTLY what I think! It is really refreshing to see someone share my opinion.
If you enjoyed Gothic 2, and probably played the first one (if it has ever been translated), how about the first "Risen"? Compared to Gothic 2, it's like aspirin vs morphine, but - except for the ridiculously bad ending - quite enjoyable, I think.
As a college student who is studying to acquire a Computer Science degree for the express purpose of redefining the Open-World Formula with fascination and wonder, it is videos like this that I watch and heavily take notes on.
Marcello Emiliani you're drunk again.
please make your game with a coop option for LAN, online and couch coop.
wonder why America is most uneducated and worst universities in the world and this fact by the university rating board and its because of left wing Nazi scum and people so stupid they call this uneducated video good and you take notes from a video made by a loser with no education in the field . sorry i dont believe you because if you were even starting in the industry you would know this was all BS of a basement gamer loser not a educated gamer in the field
ya make co op fucking loser stick to your fps stop wrecking every genre with your loser co op bs that no one ever plays and keep mp out of shit to its dead in a month in most games
I don't even............what is Marcello talking bout ? xd
This video should be retitled to "Why i love Gothic 2 better than other open world games"
Not really. While he praises Gothic 2 for how it handled Open World, he shits on it for the putrid gameplay.
DuckieMcduck yea but w all the positives that he lays on it counteracts the small bit of criticism
critique and positives doesn't outweigh each other, wut? one mechanical flaw that is gamebreaking isn't outweighed by "oooooooh look at the pretty colors and smooth textures" that's some weird-ass logic ya got going there
"What is our motivation to ....?"
That's where I am not longer with you. Because in this moment the role play aspect of "rpg" is coming in. There you also have the "problem" that in TES you have a non-specific character that you design yourself and therefor you have to find a motivation for your character yourself.
Another thing I've noticed: you compare the looks of a 2006 game with the looks of a 2016 game. Obviously Oblivion can't compare. That's no surprise at all. Art style is preference question. I like the look and artstyle of Wildstar for example, many heavily dislike it.
I also disagree that named Items or "special weapons" make a location good or worth exploring. That is loot-centered gameplay.. and I be honest, I don't get why anyone plays a singleplayer rpg loot-centered or "to beat the game". I might simply be a more old fashioned roleplayer in the end.
I'd argue that he's correct about TES (I can only speak for Morrowind onwards), given that they don't allow for great self-expression. You create a character's *stats* and increase them as you level up, but you don't create their... character.
Which is understandable, since that should come directly from the player, but the mechanics don't allow for great self-expression. Choice usually boils down to "do the bad thing or do the good thing". People attack you for stealing an apple etc. Clearly these games focus more on the physical growth of your character. It's a Power Fantasy, not a... Fantasy fantasy. Unfortunately.
This encourages "optimizing the fun out of the game", i.e. always making your character a thieving stealth archer in Skyrim, since stat development, and not character development is rewarded.
I totally agree with your last 2 points though.
Agreed. personality development is not yet really a thing. And voice acting just makes that problem worse in the end. To be able to fully develop a personality dialogue options of a hell lot of development paths would be needed for a game to actually express some kind of freedom in that matter.
Lets me come to the question whether the change would be significant enough to make the effort worth the result. And I fear that this might not be the case for most players or the publisher. Skyrim wasn't(/still kind of is) so successfull for it being a rpg, but as it appeals to much bigger audiance compared to Morrowind for example due to it being more into the action part.
Been playing GTA3 recently. I think it has one of the best open worlds. It's small enough for you to become familiar with everything, but big enough to feel like a city. There are plenty of things to discover, and loads of side activities that actually pay off. Now when I play I do all the vehicle missions first, get all the base upgrades, get all the hidden packages I can, then play the main missions.
When I first got GTA3 I thought it sucked because I played Mafia 1 first, which is way more realistic, but now that I'm playing GTA3 again it's actually really good
I love your videoes, because you go in-depth as you do and I really hope you go far here on youtube.
But I have a question, how do you find the time to play RPGs? I find it very hard to put in the time into 'em. I don't know if it's because I'm only a 17 year old danish boy, with a part-time job and school with exams or whether It's just me that have a small timespan and I get bored of it? Before I ask my final two questions, I wanted to say I have already put in almost 20 hours in Fallout New Vegas in just two weeks. But do you have any tricks to stay hooked on a rpg, even tho you don't have the time to play? Oh, can you also recommend me some rpgs that are hidden gems, so I could dwelve into them?
Oh I also love how you put in a personel story in your Fallout video.
Hmm, I would say that in order to play an RPG with a busy lifestyle, what you need is a quiet space to get your mind right. I would even go so far as to say you should meditate before playing. The key is to focus in on the story and characters to the point that learning more about those two aspects drive you forward.
Focus is key to playing an RPG. Leave about 20 minutes in between school work, and when you start playing to kind of clear the clutter from your mind. Rpgs are easier to enjoy when you can focus sharply on them.
As far as hidden gems, I would say play Planescape: Torment. If the story doesn't pull you in, then I would recommend something like Vampire: The Masquerade.
Oh okay, thanks for the tips and recommendations!
There are several great open world games. Witcher 3, Zelda BoTW, Horizon Zero Dawn, GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption, Skyrim and Fallout 3. But I agree, open world is very difficult to nail down if you don't have a big budget and dedicated time to make the world full of things to do. Otherwise it's just going to be like every other Ubisoft game.
There is nothing wrong with old fashion restricted levels if the level design is good. A good tight level design will always beat open world. Perfect example is Arkham Asylum vs other Arkham games.
Yeah...while Asylum is lacking in certain areas (the gameplay is too simplistic and the story/intrigue peters out real quick), it easily has the best open world of the series...it all had a purpose, and served both the narrative and gameplay.
My hope is for an eventual Arkham game that has the focus of Asylum's world and narrative, but with all the bells and whistles of City and Knight, including a repurposed Batmobile. I would kill for a game like that.
Oh i could draw you a map of oblivion, no problem ;)
Andre Lay
I could drop a map of Oblivion, Morrowind, and Skyrim.
Or you could shut your damn mouth ;)
you just told sheogorath to shut up that is not wise
Andre Lay D U M B A S S WHY tf are YOU 😡
bitch i could draw you a map of tamriel
It would be pretty cool if when you wanted to make a journey to somewhere in a game, instead of just riding your horse, driving your car or walking there, you had to manage resources, get the right equipment and plan the route. Imagine you want to go to the top of a mountain in a fantasy game cus you hear there's something cool at the top. You have to get food for the journey, maybe climbing equipment, a horse to ride there, weapons to defend yourself. You start the journey, you can't travel continuously, you have to stop and sleep at night, you have to use a campfire to keep warm, if you didn't bring enough food you have to hunt, you might get attacked by bandits at some point, you might meet another traveler to trade with. You get to a point where you have to leave your horse and start climbing alone, finally you make it and you're rewarded with maybe money, an item, an upgrade, a new spell. That entire journey could include so many types of gameplay; combat, hunting (and stealth?), survival, trading, resource management, platforming. Now that would be cool.
Yep. I agree wholeheartedly.
Ben Zombie
all that can be modded into Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. Look up wiki.step-project.com/Pack:Survival for detailed examples. I use all that on top of SRLE: Extended + a bit of my own brew. Some people like me mod it to be as you describe, some mod it in other directions to their liking. I look at Bethesda games as basic framework from which serious PC nerd gamers can make their own game, and don't care too much if this selling point of Bethesda's is not general user friendly. I didn't know wtf I was getting into when I first started modding Morrowind in the days of original xbox. My versions of Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim are not general user friendly, but nearly any mission I embark on results in gameplay in the spirit of what you describe. If you have PC, I recommend you get Oblivion and follow this guide: ruclips.net/video/15wDKl9zDSA/видео.html and StratEdgy, check out some of his commentaries on open world games.
Just play don't starve.
Breath of the Wild has quite a lot of that.
I'd say what makes open worlds good are the following basics:
1.How you get from place to place: Why is GTA fun? Because driving is fun, crashing into cars, finding jumps to ramp off of, ect...
2.Flow: This ties into getting from place to place... The journey needs to be fun... Even if it's an optional journey, so if you're flying what obstacles are in your way? Any barns to barnstorm through? Is there a shortcut? What risk is there to taking the shortcut?
3.Destinations: If there are optional destinations I'd say things like mingames, or shops with neat items to equip to your characters, or maybe the option of decorating our characters house with stuff that we've found... Upgrades and customization's for our vehicles.
I hate when people say a real life simulator would be boring! I mean c'mon it would be like being able to do ANYTHING in life! Everything you've ever imagined! A dream of a game where you could chose multiple routes, without any consequences.
People that say it would be boring most likely live on a couch and have no imagination.
Personally I play games to escape reality. I think a real life simulator would be boring because you would not have the ability to do any fun and insane shit. Fallout New Vegas is a game where you can choose multiple routes without any consequences, and you get the bonus of using laser guns and battling mutated creatures and other things you can't do in real life.
A real life simulator would include you being in your pregnant mother's womb where all you sense are blobs of black and red with muffled sounds for 9 months of in-game time, being born with random good/bad traits (good luck being born with poor genetic traits), being able to do nothing but cry for 2 years of in-game time, having no freedom for a few more years, having to go to school for another ten years, having to save up money (or incur debt) for university, and a perma-death system that makes you restart everything when you die.
I see this was made before Kingdom Come Deliverance
Gothic 1 and 2 was EPIC! SUCH a strong story and sense of reward when completing certain tasks or killing certain enemies, or to get accepted by a high level NPC group after you did work on your reputation
Dude this video eloquently pieced together something ive been feeling for years, but couldnt lay out. Open worlds often feel cheap and stretched out, with bland characters, rehashed enemies, landscapes, and dungeons and it all just gets repetitive and straight up boring just wandering aimlessly to do something that is already familiar with the game. Linear games woth set progressions and storylines immerse me harder, you get more diversity in level design and get to wondrous landscapes and you invest in the characters it plays out like a drama and youre just an observer interacting woth the narrative. My preference tbh
Your view of a perfect open world game is pretty much Dwarf Fortress in adventure mode. the problem is that game has no graphics besides ASCII text, and it 's very hard to get into because of its complexity
I couldn't think of anything other than DF at your speech in the end of the video, that game's motto is "losing is fun!"
there are those tragic stories on fortress mode, such as "Boatmurdered", and videos like VSauce's "El Fisto", of a hand-only fighter who was killed by a necromancer, ressurected, and then his uncontrollable corpse "exploded the necromancer's head into gore", oh that was awesome...
I think once Dwarf Fortress reaches 1.0, and the industry is more developed, it should become the goal of any open world game to deliver as much freedom as that game does, it may sound lunatic now, a game *with graphics* delivering what an ASCII text game makes your CPU burn to do, and all that, but in 9 years or so years it may not.
I don't usually play open world games but as a concept i don't thin they are bad. it can be entertaining just wanting around looking for things. just simply enjoying the environments.
i would say multiplayer focused games are bad.regardless if they do work well when there is a player base.
since not only can community's ruin a experience but the very idea that you even need another living person to even experience a game is absurd.
Wow, great videos!
I am wondering if you might do a video sharing your thoughts on Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Long Dark. The bit about making climbing and world traversal interesting got me thinking...
Cheers
Try Skyrim with survival mods: Bonfires, Frostfall, Camping, Darker nights, brighter torches, Basic needs (eat, drink, sleep), Food that spoil, Hunting, Water temperature, clothing to protect from Cold/Rain, Better companion AI, better horses (these are just some features you can mod from the top of my head, not the name of the mods)
Considering the 'real life simulator', I played something like that at high school back in 1993. I don't know how it was called, it was an edutainment game where you had to cook, wash your clothes, lock your door if you go out, etc. etc.
Also, there was a game Jones in the Fast Lane, also a bit like that.
Open worlds are starting to bore me, the only thing holding me back from buying games like Horizon Zero Dawn and Mass Effect Andromeda (Most likely my final Mass effect based on marketing) this month is whether the content in the world is good, like Witcher 3 (Granted, the game does suffer the open world tropes outside of quests, like bandit camps and towns overrun by monsters). I don't want to reach viewpoints or collect fucking collectibles anymore, Ubisoft made me sick of that shit, even Mafia 3 suffered this trope of you just doing the same shit over and over. GTA5 on the other hand at least had stranger missions, but the lack of stuff to actually do in the WORLD, made the game unbearable for me, where even I thought everything this game did, san andreas did better, and first. Open world games are mostly just padding, and its why I'm falling out of love with them, heck I'm falling out of love with Skyrim (One of my favorite games) because most of the quests are fetch quests, even mods can't fix that problem. Fallout New Vegas on the other hand had stellar quests and writing, but the worlds atmosphere wasn't that enticing because all you see are literally assets from Fallout 3 with a yellow tinted screen. Fallout 4...I won't speak of Fallout 4, everything that game did, was piss me off, 90% of the quests being radiant quests being one of them and the shitty writing.
The open world genre has been done to death, but you either go open world or on the rails nowadays because it is an easier design philosophy for AAA games to abide by. This is why Dark Souls 1 was a nice hybrid of both, and its revolutionary to this day, it was open in a way, but linear too and the world felt connected, shame they didn't continue this design into DS3 where everything is linear af. More games should be looking back to DS1. Look at other games like Skyrim where you have horse shoe dungeons simply because its convenient rather than makes sense when it could go a whole other route of making them complex and feeling like actual dungeons, look at Daggerfall, their dungeons ooze atmosphere and are complex (Randomly generated sure, and has flaws) but thats more interesting than the fucking claw puzzles and linear dungeons in Skyrim and fighting the same draugr again and again.
Edit: Kinda went on a ramble, but fuck it.
Fallout 4 drugged me and touched me in my sleep. Mafia 3 enticed me into an alleyway with the promise of sex, and then stole my wallet.
The Nazi That Achieved CHIM Did you ever try BotW?
I might get some shit for this, but Watch Dogs 2 was actually a pretty good game in my opinion. Ubisoft actually decided that it was going to do away with towers, and just open up the world. All of the missions sort of blended together, not really relying on fetch quests, but instead giving you objectives that either further Dedsec, or give you items and vehicles. San Francisco wasn't really jam-packed with content, but it also wasn't a massive world, just a city. The characters are pretty polarizing, but they were better than anybody from the first game.
I completely agree with you
GTA V > any other open world game
From how you described your ideal open world game as "a small slice of a world, chock full of carefully created content", the new Deus Ex would be right up your alley, I think (from what I've heard about it, anyway).
It's pretty great. Though I stopped playing it when I started making videos more often.
I love open world games. They're the best. ❤️
I love open world games too! So much potential!
Robzilla_92 we all do the point is variation in the open world
*walks around for 50 minutes in empty open space*
MASTAHPIECE!
What Daniel Kedney said.
I wish people would actually to what's being said in the video instead of not looking further than the title and seeing a statement they don't agree with.
@Bastille in games like aco you can just select the location on the map and click "travel" and you don't have to ride all the way by hose.
Botw literally did what you wanted with the climbing and finding ingredients, it leaves much to be desired but damn was it fun. Just shows how executing some of these simple changes can make such an big impact on the open world concept.
Also a good thing that Morrowind does, that its sequels don't, is there are no map markers. The Quest-givers actually give you directions; which road to follow, which turn to take, what the door looks like.
There is no fast travel, there are lore friendly alternatives like teleportation between mages guilds, ships between ports, and Silt Striders between the important cities.
As I played, I subliminally learned the "bus routes", the roads, the landmarks, and I learned how to tell what area I'm in based on the environment.
And so I did learn the map of Morrowind, not to the extent you seemed to have learned off Gothic's but I still think it's unfair to lump it in with the other games you listed.
Do you happen to watch Jim Sterling? He did a video in his series called the Jimquisition awhile back talking about this topic and, like you, brought up very good points. Also, open world is usually a selling point. That's pretty much it.
I watch Jimquisition. What was the name of that episode? I'd be interested in checking it out.
Strat-Edgy Productions The title is "Big empty sandbox". Hopefully that helped.
I've actually come to hate procedurally generated games, or games that are statically built but are far too big. It seems to me that the more space a developer gives you, the less you actually have. Instead, I've found myself thinking back to games which gave off the illusion of an open world, but is so compact with content that it makes up for what could be viewed as a smaller world. Games like this are Knights of the Old Republic, one and two. The worlds you could travel to were statically created by the developers, but exploration was more rewarding. I kind of wish that all of these procedurally generated games would just stop. A firm example is Minecraft. The game world is utterly massive, but at the same time, terribly empty. I even tried to play Minecraft a few days ago, but found the overall exploration to be redundant. I knew that caves had iron ore, etc, and maybe I would find a dungeon...but then what? What's the point? I think the issue is that the content needs to be greatly expanded. I think that's the issue with Minecraft, the game world is potentially infinite, but the overall content is extremely low in comparison.
Fucking no man's sky its a good example yeah it has millions of planets but its the same 5 fucking planets millions of times.
Final fantasy 12 feels like an open world but it's not and I wouldn't have it any other way
I've got Morrowind totally memorized now....
Which House Hlaalu Councilor lives in St. Olms? No cheating!
you would love the new zelda, its not perfect but its leaps and bounds ahead on the adventure and progression aspects compared to most open world games today, id love to see you do a video on it
Great analysis, but the final idea is just dumb. An acurate life simulation would be boring as hell. Instead what we need is our actions being meaningful, like doing that quest where you return the necklage to the old lady and she always wear it afterwards. And that should apply to bigger events also.
Gothic sounds amazing but too bad me and many people around me have never heard of this game
You've never heard of gothic? The game is fucking amazing.
Rewatched this video in Apr 2020, wondering what Strat's thought on Death Stranding would be.
Video starts at 3:00
This comment never gets old, not even after the 100th recital.
@@StratEdgyProductions don't worry bro I got u.. video starts at 3:00
Man, I love inconvenience in games. The best experience I had in Skyrim was playing with survival mods, and I got caught in a snowstorm in the middle of an otherwise boring quest. I was stuck in my tent, trying to keep a fire alive for days, hoping not to starve. Then a curious mudcrab got too close and became dinner. It was amazing. If you want a tagline, here it is; "Inconvenience is the cornerstone of immersion".
My mans predicted death stranding.
The most open open-world I played has been Dwarf Fortress. Of course there is a lot of abstraction but honestly what can you expect?
Nice to see Gothic 2 getting some love... it's one of my all-time favorites :)
Did you know the original Gothic team are making a new game (using the gothic formula) called Elex? Definitely worth a look!
Thanks for the HU, going to have to keep an eye on that game as Gothic, /2 and Fallout, /2 are the games that'll always be in any top list of games for me.
"I got an idea: the open world life simulator" We already have that, it's called the sims 3
I think you mean torture simulator
I think Kingdom Come: Deliverance would be a great open world, it's small but full of content, quests with a variety of solutions to them and an engaging storyline. I really can't wait for it!
It really is a tricky thing to pull off with an open world. If there's too little to do in between the quest areas, then it can be pretty boring, though at the same time, making the world feel realistically large can be enjoyable to some people who enjoy things like hiking or just exploring without having to go outside. Breath of the Wild was a pretty mixed bag when it came to the design approach. On one hand, being able to climb everything really does open up new avenues for exploration, but at the same time it meant having to manage stamina gauges which could be understandably annoying for many if they wanted to climb up and over everything instead of finding a path to run along or ride through on horseback. Then of course there's a split amongst people with the world setup and how the shrines can be hit or miss for many who would have preferred a proper dungeon and/or cave to explore. Likewise, people are either in the camp that the world has enough to do in it and those who would prefer more mini-games and side-content that wasn't just collecting golden poop.
One lesser known game that I feel did the sandbox world fairly well was Steambot Chronicles for the PS2. After the first 20 minutes or so (give it take), you were free to explore the game's first town and either progress the story by visiting a farm on its outskirts/fighting in arena matches to move up the ranks for money and prizes/shoot some pool in a bar/or dig up fossils to help restore the displays in a museum that got totaled during the story's beginning moments. From there, you could do things play the stock market, perform gigs with a band using various instruments, a fair number of side-quests with a few scant moral choices attached to them, and even spelunk in 3 randomly generated dungeons with multiple levels. While the world itself still railroaded you during the story, the stuff you could do in the downtime was pretty fulfilling, and even managed to make the game pretty fun to play even in the post-story mode whereas many other games kind of lose that charm once the story is said and done.
As for whether open world games need to become "life simulators", I'm not too sure if that's quite right. First of all, it depends on what kind of feel the game is aiming for. BotW is an adventure as you grow in skill and power and manipulate the world to work in your favor to best the enemies and shrines while keeping yourself alive with bountiful supplies you can collect from an assortment of plants and animals. While many of the GTA games (and those styled like them) are about amassing a fortune to fund whatever endeavors you want to partake in while taking a break from the story bits. In the case of the latter, sadly, only a few manage to give you enough stuff to do between the story and off-mission stuff. While in the case of the former, and things similar to it, you really have to have a taste/preference for adventuring huge world that (depending on how you look at them) are either feel alive or sparse and empty. If anything, the world needs to always reflect what kind of adventure the player will be going on; a long and epic quest where they grow in power, or a journey of the underdog rising from their lowly beginnings.
This whole video can pretty much be summed up by "All open world games are bad except the ones that aren't" which means this video is largely pointless. Also Gothic 2 and FFXV really don't seem to be open world games based on what you are showing us. They both seem more like games with large interconnected closed off areas.
Yeah he just sounds whiney and bored of gaming.
Chosen One 41 Exactly. This guy is projecting his purist standards and nostalgia onto everything.
Look up No True Scotsman Fallacy. Exactly what this idiot does.
Chosen One 41 FFXV is open, dont know about Gothic though.
Now that is not true, Gothic 2 is an open world game split into 2 large maps. It is same as Skyrim + Dragonborn DLC, both Skyrim and Solstheim are large open world maps, but they cant be traversed without loading screen. And one more thing, every inch of Gothics map is there with a reason, almost every cave or old fort or whatever is there with a reason other then grinding. Gothic 2 is like Witcher 3 made a decade and a half ago with much smaller budget, but Piranha Bytes had idea how to make open world from previous and more successful open world titles more meaningful.
No there are zero closed off areas in Gothic 2 - you can climb every mountain (not just run up, actually climb) or swim out in the ocean, where you will eventually get eaten by a giant sea creature in a sweet cutscene. It may seem like an arcade-like game, but it's fucking huge. For sure large enough to be called open world, which is enhanced by your option to go places based on your actual skill at combat or gear to override low skill. Its like a hugee puzzle, which can be solved in a shitton of ways. If the combat system was a bit better, Gothic 2 would be the only perfect RPG made
The first half of the video seemed to be more in favor of smaller, more limited open worlds where the things you do are more meaningful and deep, but then you criticize GTAIV for stripping away the boring and superfluous fuller (in my opinion) of GTA: SA like eating and working out.
It's totally unreasonable from a development standpoint to expect an open world game to let you do everything, and have everything be deep and engaging. Quantity and quality are always going to be inversely correlated - a game is either going to do a few things really well, or do a bunch of shit in a shallow way (e.g. almost every modern open world game).
We shouldn't be encouraging game devs to one-up each other by creating open worlds with more "freedom". I'd prefer they go back to basics and focus on creating a solid gameplay foundation, and the world in which you play can follow from there.
Yet GTA 5 stripped away even more from GTA 4s world.
Hey Mr. User, I mirror that sentiment. If you're interested in pushing this type of game to the next design philosophy, look up 2050-neo-gta on indiedb. I don't think R* is in the business of gratuitious gameplay anymore, it's all boring junk now.
I have the solution for you. Do it right!
Something that people seem to be totally lost on is that each and every sequel to each and every game is a totally new thing on a new engine. I have a revolutionary idea, what if we made one game on one engine, and each sequel was built upon the last...
Think about it, how great would it have been if Oblivion was done really well, the open world was made with quality by one team, while another focused on a good plot line that setup the game world and introduced you to everything while still delivering something that the player wanted up front.
The sequel, would take that already existing world, throw a huge dynamic of over arching plot line that can take you through a few more sequels, give you enough story to make this addition purposeful, then further enrich the open world space that much more.
The majority of work that is done in these open world spaces, is creating the spaces, so what if we just made a space once, then developed it over and over to make it better and better.... DO IT RIGHT!
not a lot to do in open worlds can sometimes not be a bad thing. I mean it gives you a break from the combat and hubub to do more planning and strategising. just look at minecraft, not a lot to the worlds, but a lot that can be made to do if you've got the initiative.
One year later and this bell rings louder and louder.
Your videos are so spot on, on the current state of game design, please keep up the good work.
I'm a simple man, I see title saying how open worlds are crap, I hit like.
I miss the days of linear-semi linear RPGs. There's no point having a huge open world with no content or boring content. I play a game for gameplay and story, not to look at the pretty fuckin' skyboxes :/
Unfortunately devs like EA can't monetize linear games as well with shitty microtransactions like they can big open sandboxes. R.I.P. the golden years of gaming, I shall forever miss the good games like kotor, DA:O, Jade Empire, Mass Effect (Especially Mass Effect, Andromeda was turned into an open world game for no fuckin' reason) etc...
eddyspeddy KOTOR FUG YEAH!!
we need a new kotor
Exactly!
Content, execution. Easy enough. I shorted your video by a lot.
This is why I had a bad feeling when they announced mirror's edge 2 was gonna be open world.
Loved the race track design of the first game. Exploration game, it was not.
Wait until Warframe's Plains of Eidolon comes out: the way that the developers have come from a dungeon looter game gives them a way of thinking that gives players something to do wherever you are. Mining is not just go to a mine, kill all the enemies, find a vein and hold a button. Mining is available anywhere where you can find an ore vein which spawn randomly in any rock formation. Fishing is not just cast a rod and wait for the fish to bite. Instead you can go to any river and there are physical fish swimming in the waters that you can hunt with a throwing spear. Random events aren't just small skirmished like in FF or Pokemon, they are full missions where you will have to complete objectives like assassinating a key target, cutting supply chains, sabotaging machines and holding down areas to capture outposts. Mobility isn't a hard to control car, slow-movibg horse or just fast travel. Sure fast travel is available but you don't have preallocated locations but you put down beacons that you can use your archwings to fly to. Also rather than being confined to ground travel or limited aerial travel, the players are given archwings which aren't just a tacky replacement for fast travel, but full fledged aerial travel that aren't just mobility options but also a combat option as you can do things like bombard an area with rockets or nuke an area only from your archwings.
The climbing simulator you described reminded me of the Skate games, which are in my opinion, one of the best examples of a good open world game. Yeah, sure, the missions in those games are mundane and quite often not very fun. However, the exploration is in itself rewarding. It IS the gameplay in my opinion. Sometimes you'd find a neat little area, tucked away by the level designers, not a part of the locations you're "meant" to skate. Maybe it isn't even designed to be skateable. However with creativity and a manipulation of game mechanics, you could turn these areas into something great and fun to discover. Maybe you do a trick off an object you were never meant to be able to climb, maybe through dragging the movable objects around, you create a trick line and pull some Rodney Mullen shit. Skate is a fantastic open world series in my opinion due to the most fun part of the gameplay experience being your own creativity within the game world.
Explaining open worlds with Hegelian Dialectics. Love it.
What if an open world, big enough but not ridiculous, started off fairly empty but as you did stuff and time went on, actually changed and filled up? You'd have the chance toward the end of it to actually MISS the emptiness it began with. Now how rare of an emotion would that be for a game to evoke?
I like your brain, the fact that that's your focus is great, because emotions and experiences as foundation are what make good games, I know it could be easy to say that I'm speaking subjectivity, but if you've done your research or some game design you KNOW this is fact
I'm gonna call it that this guy will have at least 200K subs after one year. If he does ill play baseball with a wii bat and a oyua. pin this for reference
Pinned :P
ho boi i think the hardest part is going to be finding an oyua XD
i subbed just cause of this comment so i can be one of the first 1000
Fucking huge. Like the size of the goddamn moon. This earth can barely contain that which is the enormity of my ego. Thanks for watching.
On the real though, you know how long it takes to produce one video? Upwards of about 30 hours... So is it wrong to want more people to see the work that has basically become a second job for me on top of my full time one? I mean, I know you're trolling, but I am asking for real.
23:00 Man, Kojima must have been thinking the same when he came up with Death Stranding. I enjoyed the traversal in that a lot.
My best bud took me mountain hiking in Lapland before DS came out, but when its walking gameplay was being shat on by people with gaming prejudices.
And up there on the second day I 100% understood what Kojima was going for without even having played the game.
from Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim, Bethesda has evolved their ability to populate vast empty maps with meaningful content.
While that does mean that there is more areas that are not hand crafted. It also means there is more to explore (which is important to people who just want to explore) and more areas to have non-main quests in. Which is part of what make TES so open. The main quest is only there if you want to do it
And of cause there is always mods. because most people don't want to worry about weather or not they have eaten.
May I ask, what are your thoughts on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games? I love them, personally, but I'd really like to hear your opinions.
So I have only played through the first one, but I own all of them. This may be a video for another time, but my feelings in a TL;DR way are:
Unbalanced, messy, weird, and awesome.
Strat-Edgy Productions Agreed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a mess, but there's nothing like it.
Bren7080 CHEEEEEKI BREEEEEEEEKI
I play for immersion sometimes
boom
next video
You're so smart. You got the central message of the video.
I personally prefer enormous maps like Oblivion's. I wanted to explore all the caves I encountered in this game. I could have played 1 full year if I had not other games waiting.
Also, I do not find FF15's vistas stylish at all, but artificial in a very un-immersive way. I much prefered Oblivion's natural-looking countriside. (my opinion)
I'd love for them to start making a game by starting out with just 1 town and make a lot of the gameplay and later on add extra content as they develop the story, so they can first get the mechanics really well. then start on evolving the world and making everything matter enough.
You're point about the motivations to explore the stuff in Oblivion is, in fact, why we love playing oblivion. EXPLORATION.
The music, the leaves blowing in the trees, the random encounters, the gorgeous Ayleid ruins and distant towns.
That's literally why games like that are so captivating, because everything was created so that you'll WANT to explore and figure out on your own volition. Unless you pick up a quest that tells you to go into that area theres only your imagination leading you to do certain things.
Ultimate freedom.