You Don’t Actually Want Open World Games
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- čas přidán 10. 05. 2024
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Are you a fan of being told “No”? Do you like it when a person keeps you from doing what you want to do, do you enjoy when a game limits your options? Probably not. In fact if anything, being told no likely makes you want that thing even more. Today on Psych of Play, were going to take a look at Psychological Reactance and how it affects our time with a game. And more specifically, we’ll take a look at how it influences your time with open world games. Buckle up, this is gonna be a good one.
Amazing thumbnail art by Kloir! - kloirr/status/139...
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Manscaped: Do it for the boys (0:00)
A Trip Down Memory Lane (1:21)
What is Reactance? (3:25)
The Mistaken Allure of Open Worlds (7:15)
Internal vs External Reactance (9:38)
How Games Can Avoid Both (12:15)
When Reactance is Good! (15:16)
Whale (17:21)
Credits and Next Time ;) (18:25)
▶Games Shown
Elden Ring (2022) -FromSoftware
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) - Nintendo
Ghost of Tsushima (2020) - Sucker Punch Productions
Metroid Dread (2021) - Mercury Steam
Persona 5: Royal (2019) - Atlus, P Studio
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (2002) - Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006) - Nintendo
Hades (2020) - Supergiant Games
No Man’s Sky (2016) - Hello Games
Pokemon Legends: Arceus (2022) - Game Freak
Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) - Rockstar Games
Horizon Zero Dawn (2017) - Guerilla Games
Horizon Forbidden West (2021) - Guerrilla Games
Far Cry 5 (2018) - Ubisoft
Fallout 4 (2015) - Bethesda
Skyrim (2011) - Bethesda
BioShock (2007) - 2K Games
Genshin Impact (2020) - miHoYo
Pokemon Crystal (2000) - Game Freak
Pokémon X and Y (2013) - Game Freak
OMORI (2020) - OMOCAT, LLC
Zelda: Wind Waker (2002) - Nintendo
Super Mario Sunshine (2002) - Nintendo
Neon White (2022) - Ben Esposito
Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) - Square Enix
Ghostwire: Tokyo (2022) - Tango Gameworks
Metro Exodus (2019) - 4A Games
Phantasy Star Online 2 (2012) - Sega
Sunset Overdrive (2014) - Insomniac Games
Batman: Arkham Knight (2015) - Rocksteady Studios
Sonic Frontiers (2022) - Sonic Team
Forspoken (2023) - Luminous Productions
Far Cry 6 (2021) - Ubisoft
Pokemon Sword & Shield (2019) - Game Freak
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (2010) - Spike Chunsoft
Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) - CD Projekt RED
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) - CD Projekt RED
Grand Theft Auto V (2013) - Rockstar Games
The Walking Dead (2012) - Telltale Games
10 Minutes Till Dawn (2022) - Flanne
The Quarry (2022) - Supermassive Games
Sable (2021) - Shedworks
Starfield (2023) - Bethesda
Fallout: New Vegas (2010) - Obsidian Entertainment
Unpacking (2021) - Witch Beam
▶Media/Clips/Considerations:
• Reactance PoP
• Playlist
Icons from flaticon:
www.flaticon.com/free-icons/p...
www.flaticon.com/free-icons/c...
www.flaticon.com/free-icons/m...
▶Music Sources (in Order):
Saints Row IV OST - Hail to the Chief Remix
de Blob OST - Blissful
Skyrim OST - Far Horizons
Pokemon Colosseum OST - Semi Final Battle
Gran Turismo 5 OST - feels so good (KEMMEI ADACHI)
Breath of the Wild OST - Riding at night
Breath of the Wild OST - Field Battle
Breath of the Wild OST - Guardian
Metroid Prime OST - Phendrana Drifts (Depths)
stiig - Gently Pass (stiig.bandcamp.com/track/gent...)
Machinarium OST - The Bottom
- DLJ - Flowers
- Provided by Lofi Records
- Watch: • DLJ - Flowers
- Download/Stream: fanlink.to/AfterLifeAlbum
▶Research Articles Cited
docs.google.com/document/d/1C...
#PsychofPlay - Hry
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P.S. I know Wind Waker isn't an open world game, I just unabashedly like this thumbnail best lol. AND I use Wind Waker as a non-OWG example later in the video.
Yeah I want an open zone game not open world
This video didn't interest me but the title, you telling me what I want, is annoying enough to show up, leave a dislike and not waste any more time here.
I don't want too many radiant quests in my open world game.
When you talked about Zelda losing a sword or whatever, it reminded me of playing one of the old splinter cell games, where Sam Fisher loses all of his good equipment and it's up to him to like use shitty equipment and pretty much do everything old school, which made the challenging factor much more challenging but it was actually also more fun funny enough, but then you were rewarded with better gear based off of how you handle that mission and it's objectives.
I think this might have been double agent the original Xbox version not the 360 version, I played both versions and they're completely different from each other same story just slightly different.
oh good, the spam comment was deleted.
This brings to mind a quote from Yoko Taro given at GDC:
"To make people feel a sense of freedom, what's important is not volume. Freedom is felt the moment that the perceptions held by the human mind are expanded."
I love how he wrote different (albeit only a few sentence) endings in Nier Automata for every wrong action in crucial moments for the story and generally things that would break the plot such as eating a fish known to kill androids. My favorite one ties into the whole idea of being told no and decided to be rebellious about it. You're told not to self-destruct in the home-base space station of the game, but it doesn't stop you. However, you quickly find out the consequences when the game abruptly ends with the complete and utter destruction of the base. Basically, the game allows you to the opposite of what the game tells you by giving you closure for that action even if it doesn't truly change anything. We simply perceive that we have more choice than we do.
Damn man thats good
@@SoIstice And this is why I like Taro better than Nomura.
People make fun of open world games when they have sudden biome transitions, but they serve a purpose. When you think back on a road trip, you remember all the landmarks you saw, not the 500 miles spent driving through Wyoming looking at nothing. The game world is that road trip. It might be more realistic to reach the next area after a solid hour of walking, but it's not very fun. Stick to the highlights.
The real problem is the censorship of ideas and liberal culture wars not whether a game is open world or linear or platformers.
We see linear games with areas we really love and we're like "II'd love to go see what's over these boundaries, I wish it was an open world" but the thing is, open worlds aren't crafted with the same level of détail and care so it'll never be as good sadly.
I can't believe we lied to ourselves sometimes
@@habibakbar it's more like we wish open worlds where as handcrafted as small ones. There are small open worlds doing that pretty well tho
Depends on the open world game. Witcher 3 and Red Dead redemption 2 are both examples of meticulously crafted open worlds
I think Elden Ring is the only open world game that made me feel I was playing one with the same amount of care/quality shown in more linear games. Not even Breath came close even though it's a great game.
@@Awesomesauce1_8_6_4 Eh
One thing to keep in mind: sometimes, the punishment for doing something unintended (overly difficult environments, lack of proper tools, etc) are themselves desirable for players, not just in the sense of "we'd rather try and face consequences than not be able to try," but in the reactive sense of "I'm going to actively seek out the most impossible thing the game world allows, and try to do it out of spite." This is essentially the idea behind challenge runs. We seek out the reactance of specifically finding something that shouldn't be possible, but then leveraging that into discovering a workaround that makes it possible.
That's not much of reactance. Reactance is felt more when you don't have the choice to seek out that most impossible thing in the first place.
This is what made Portal so great. First you're kept on a tight leash with a disciplinarian guide, and then you get to indulge in reactance by breaking out of the levels and getting to travel through behind the scenes
I mean, the puzzles were next level too. I think it was the puzzle solving
The puzzel solving of course is a big part of the enjoyment, but I think there's something to what he's saying. The way they designed the puzzles were in such a way that you always feel like you created your own solution rather then finding "the" predetermined solution.
Honestly, still hold as one of the best game to ever exist
I imagine a lot of gamers have felt choice overload when looking at their game libraries. Spending so much time trying to decide which game to play and then either not making a choice, or playing something they already know and enjoy. When you get in from work and know you're going to play x game, it's so much easier and you just do it
This happened to me a lot with buying games and toys as a kid, and honestly it still happens
This is kinda of why I started seperating my library into "I gotta play this sometime" and "meh".
Makes deciding on which game to play a lot easier.
Heer, try This: grab a koin, stand in frunt uv The shelf, and just sorta, flip it on The shelf. Wichevur gaem The koin landed neerest, That’s The thing yur playin’.
If it’s a computer lybraree, just flik The kursor in The jenerul durekshun uv it. Klousest tu The pointur, That’s The 1.
Yoo kuud also try leeving The kursur in The lybraree and yoozing yor mouse wheel insted, lyk gaem roolet.
As someone with some ridiculous FOMO issues, this comment really hits home. I've tried organizing all my games into a spreadsheet and just using a random number generator to pick my way through them, I've tried grouping games in particular libaries into subsets that include games I *really* want to play first versus other ones, I've tried going alphabetically, going by oldest release date, picking a cluster of games consisting of one from each year and then choosing from them...and then I go back and 100% Wild Arms again. Day 1 releases are the only exception to this for me, because if I'm excited about something coming up at the time (Elden Ring, previous Pokemon games, etc.), I will just throw everything aside and dedicate myself to the game from the start. Outside of that, though -- yeah, it's usually choice paralysis that leads to just playing something I already know and love or maybe even nothing at all.
It's not just in video games, but in general humans have a bias towards less choices to pick from. It's one of the ways we can get manipulated in things like politics
I always will remember a main quest in NieR Automata (an open world game) in which you get an emergency call from a place and need to go there immediately. You can still do side missions on the way like in any other open world game but then it tells you everybody is dead and you actually lost the game. A phenomenal subversion on that stuff.
Also happens in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. You're Adam Jensen, Head of Security at Sarif Industries. A Sarif factory has been stormed by militant extremists and the workers taken hostage. You've just arrived at Sarif HQ and your boss tells you to GET TO DA CHOPPAH so you can get to the factory ASAP and resolve the incident.
This is the first proper mission after the opening tutorial sequence, the first part of the game where you get dropped off in an open area that isn't just a corridor to run through or a mob arena to fight/sneak through. You CAN mess around exploring the HQ (and to be fair there IS a lot to look at), but mess around too much and your boss calls again to say 'the hostages are dead cuz you took too long'.
And here's the thing: that isn't game over. If you don't load up a previous save, you can go through the game as 'Adam Jensen, the Head of Security who let people die' and you WILL get called out for it. Having to deal with people's disappointment and scorn is infinitely more crushing than just getting a game over and having to try again.
I hope they signalled it well because that sounds really frustrating otherwise
Superskrub 420 It’s probably not meant to be signaled well. They could easily make it linear and force a player to complete it (or make it blatantly obvious that you will lose in x amount of time), but instead they tell you outright it needs to be done immediately, and let’s the player live with the consequences of their actions. Which is what made it interesting as the original comment says because it subverts expectations.
@@superskrub4209 the game has multiple endings that corelate with the alphabet, users catch on early when they die from eating fish 🤣🤣 the game isn't actually over it goes back to your last save but it counts as an ending
@@jaysanchez4407 Or get the "broken [W]ings" ending by dying at the beginning
Something that I’ve done that helps to get out of choice overload with open worlds is just picking a random direction. With breath of the wild I did this a LOT. I’d think “hmm, where should I go, what should I do next?” Then sit there for a minute before spinning around and picking the most interesting thing in view and going that way.
That's kinda similar to what I do lol I give myself a destination but along the way when I discover places, I force myself to explore them.
When it comes to the group that got 24 vs. 6 choices, if I'm given way too many choices, I'm going to seek out "do they have my favorite" of whatever it is and order that. I'm looking for the guaranteed payout in what would otherwise be a gamble.
Likewise, if a game gives me too many different ways to play, I'm going to default to my most comfortable strat (slow, methodical gameplay as a sniper/stealth archer/whatever keeps as much distance as possible between me and the enemy) and ignore the other choices because I know I'll be able to master the comfortable in the most efficient way rather than having to learn something new.
I think this is a great lesson not just for games but for life in general. I believe, as you said, “suggesting, encouraging and providing learning opportunities” to people in your life goes way further than saying “you shouldn’t do that.”
Yeah, I rarely say "don't do it", more often "if you do this, there will be such consequences: ...".
11:32 if you ever have a difficult life choice to make, take a coin and play head or tail. As soon as the coin is spinning in the air, you'll know what option you really want. Because you realise you don't want to lose it at a game of head or tail.
I've used this for years ever since I realized how it affected me psychologically. It's not the result of the coin toss that you choose, it's the result you wish for once you flip the coin. It makes me wonder how often I've gone against vs with the result because I never have kept track.
I do the same thing. It's been very enlightening, aside from the help with making a decision
@@BlueSparxLPs yeah it's a wonderful trick. There's something similar happening in Phoenix Wright 2. At the end, you have the big binary moral choice that defines your character growth and opinion on the theme. But when Phoenix is about to tell about the choice, Franziska storms in and évents happen to lead to the good ending. In many stories, the good ending is forced and diminish the thème / moral but I think it did it well because as Mia states : "in the end it didn't matter, but when you thought it was truly the end, you made that choice"
I use this trick as well, but with a small twist: I toss the coin, then see the result. If I am even slightly not satisfied with the result, I'll always take the other option. That one doesn't have to fully satisfy me either, mind you, but in that case I wouldn't be either way, so it has the advantage of forcing me to take action while still giving me a small correction margin if I need it.
I've tried this, it just makes me panic because I don't want one or the other, I want to not NOT choose the one I'd be leaving behind. I feel like no matter what the result of the toss is, I'm going to be disappointed - I get scared during the toss, not that it will produce a specific result, but that it will produce a result at all and therefore prevent the other option. It only worsens my indecision.
There's one moment in my first hollow knight run that I'd never forget, and this video kinda explained to me why.
In hollow knight, unless you are using speedrunning strats, the first few hours can be fairly linear. You pick up your first ability, unlock the forest zone, get your dash.
But after that, you visit the mantis village, and gain the ability to jump on walls.
This opens up your choices of paths that you can take tremendusly (you saw many places where that ability would be useful).
Before you go there tho, you get led by the game to follow another character (hornet) into the "city of tears".
Here's where the reactants kick in; "I bet this would progress the story, I'd rather go check other side areas first". So I did, got caught in a trap that dropped me to one of the toughest and intentionally scarriest areas of the game, Deepnest...
I got locked in an area with far tougher enemies, spiders clawling around, terrible sounds, and long stretches without a safe spot, or a way back to the area I was in before.
I practically had to push through the entire area just to reach to a way to go outside.
I had my freedom taken away from me by my hubris, right after I thought to myself that the story would take away my freedom. This moment would honestly be the memory i'll remember the most vividly from hollow knight for the rest of my life. Good shit
Same exact thing happened to me. Was amazing.
Y’all are lucky, deep nest was easy for me because I found it after getting most upgrades. I hope I experience something like that in Silksong
That game's been sitting on my shelf for too long and a deep fear of commitment always lingered within me.
Imma just start
That area was tough for you???
Greenpath*
This is kind of similar to a theory I've had for a while about improv acting and good openworld/freedom focused game design. Improv's rules have always been to say "yes, and-" to your partner, or "no, but-". You either see what your partner is building up and expand on that story, or contradict them in a meaningful way and redirect to give them something else related to play off of. You never just tell them "no" and run off and do your own completely unrelated thing.
It's frustrating for a game to tell a player flat out "no, you can't do that." But it can sometimes become an interesting challenge to get a "no, but-" in a world that is otherwise "yes, and-". Elden ring's teleportation chests are a "No, you don't get the treasure you expected, but you instead get trapped in a difficult but really interesting place you can fight your way out of and feel pride that you lived to tell the tale."
BoTW's open world design that puts obstacles in such a way that steers players towards a certain dungeon first is "No, you can't go these other directions right now because it would be extremely difficult, but here's an easier path to one of your objectives for you to discover"
I'm not sure how else to phrase it, but yes I totally agree with this video, letting players learn from the consequences of their decisions (No, but-) is better than just flat out not being able to take those actions, and gives some much needed direction to an otherwise freedom filled world that could get overwhelming.
Interesting notion! I'll be sure to file this away for future reference.
This reminds me of that one missile tank in Super Metroid that, initially, you just barely, ever so barely, aren’t able to get. It frustrates the heck out of the player, being told “No, you can’t get this missile tank just yet.” When the player gets the grapple beam, there is a good chance they will remember this annoying room and return to finally claim that missile tank for themselves, which conveniently, is placed just before the entrance to the next main area. Super Metroid truly is a masterpiece.
Super Metroid is fantastic about this.
There's that moment in Super Metroid when you fall down that giant pit into lower Brinstar with no way out until you get ice beam. You have all your freedom taken away from you with no prior warning.
The effect is compounded with lower Brinstar/Norfair's cramped, red, claustrophobic caverns. It causes your response to the reduced freedom to be not so much irritation but desperation. I remember the first thing I did when I found ice beam was go straight to the top of Criteria. It felt like at last coming up above water and finally being able to gasp for air after being forced to hold my breath for a long time.
This happens at least one more time with the drop into Maridia, and the same kind of desperation and then relief occurs. Super Metroid truly is a masterpiece.
I think this ties into my biggest two gripes about Skyrim: First that there's not enough racism (hear me out) and second that being able to be master of all three guilds at the same time gives the player too much "candy"
The racism thing is basically that you're told right up front that the Nords in Winterhold hate dark elves and treat them really badly. But if *you* are a dark elf, nobody blinks. Same with a Khajit, who aren't trusted and often not allowed in cities. But you can waltz right in. And of course if you play an Imperial, there's zero fuss if you walk into the headquarters of the people who hate the Imperials more than anything. I see why they do it, they want you to always feel like a Big Darn Hero no matter what. But it makes no sense, and a bit of reactance would provide a bit of much-needed spice.
Similarly, there's the whole idea of characters, or in this case players, getting too much "candy" and not enough "spinach", which largely drains tension out of the narrative and lowers the stakes. If you can effortlessly do all this stuff in the same playthrough, then it's no surprise you can defeat the Big Bad at the end, is it? After all, you're the very best, the best there ever was.
This is so true. But the sheer amount of consequences that the developers would need to implement is just impossible I think. Technically there is nothing that prevents you from becoming a member of every guild ( it would be stupid that the NPCS just tell you "no, you're already part of a guild, you can't join ours ). But imagine if there was a system, like, if you join the thieves or assassins and you fuck up and it's publicly known, you get expelled from the fighter's guild.
Or if you play as a Kahjiit you'd need to find ways to get into the city discreetely ( like the nosferatu in Bloodlines, using the sewers ), but they'd still need to make specific dialogues and situations to be able to talk to the Jarl, etc.
But that's not new, I was really disappointed to see that playing as a Dark Elf in Morrowind didn't change a thing, all the NPCs treat me like an outlander.
Freedom quickly becomes a handicap in game design.
#moreracismongames
@@Texelion3Dprints But the 'no your part of a guild, you can't join ours' isn't a stupid saying, it actually already has happened in the previous games, namely Morrowind, in the sake of: You cannot join more than one Great House. All of the Great Houses have interesting storylines and somewhat rememberable characters, but you cannot join one or the other due to a rivalry between the three of them, and the political-ness of being part of all three sides (barring that one glitch that allows you to join two great houses, thats noncanon though.)
@@Texelion3Dprints Nope, it's not any bigger than the actual game if devs plan for it before hand. The npcs react to you wearing different armor types for crying out loud. It's all in the design philosophy. And the philosophy this time is streamlining player empowerment.
One of the easy way is just not give you actual quest until you earn enough "trust" as an n'wah, outlander etc. The amount of trust you have to earn vary depend on your race. The game can generate tons of radiant quest on demand, it could easily follow this design philosophy.
I agree. I've spent at least a few hundred hours modding Skyrim, even patching the Aniversary Edition to the Special Edition file structure to maintain compatibility with my overly complex mod setup. However, everytime I finish the first dragon attack in the game and the perceived shackles of the devs telling you what to do are removed, I get filled with internal reactance becoming overwhelmed with the options of where to go. I also agree that Skyrim has too few if any real limitations on what the player can attain, acquire, and achieve. Limitations make a world feel believable and grounded. The Witcher video games do this very well by having convincing consequences for the player's choices and actions that don't feel like it's simply because the devs willed it. The way consequences in The Witcher 3 aren't immediately obvious makes them feel more lifelike. Skyrim has a few key choices, but they don't have meaningful consequences. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild gets away with having fewer limitations by using an ingenious network of invisible game design to help nudge new players along a path that the devs think they will enjoy. Once players have beat Breath of the Wild once, they typically feel more inclined to do things differently on subsequent playthroughs innately leading them on a diiferent path. This means that the game can provide support for new players without having to do anything different to give more experienced players the freedom they desire. This is a stark contrast to Skyrim. Skyrim holds the player's hand too much up until the dragon attack at the tower in Whiterun, then the game instantly stops providing any input of any kind to influence the player's decisions. Thus, Skyrim exhibits both extremes of reactance with no sweet spot inbetween.
You nailed it, it's always interesting and almost relieving when someone puts into words the problems/gripes there are toward something, (games in this case), when you've never been able to put your finger on it. As for the internal reactance, absolutely true. I have way too many games to play that I often spend an hour staring at the screen trying to choose, and ultimately choose to just do nothing. It doesn't help being an indecisive person too.
Great job!
Just go chronologically, my guy.
@@nintendo_pirate That's a good idea, I'll see if that works. It's just way too many series and one offs, got to pick one.
use a random number generator then, number the games
My big brain solution is while I'm at work, i tell someone "i can't wait to go home and play x" whatever game I'm thinking of in that moment. Saves me from that problem. Granted it's a good problem to have whatwith modern game passes.
“We wanna fuck around and find out” is the perfect sentence to embody why I play open world games. Breath of the Wild, and Elden Ring are perfect examples of games that take on that idea. Let me go where I want, experiment, get fucked up by an enemy or boss and figure shit out on my own. That’s what makes an open world interesting. The ability to create your own experiences based on your choices.
I felt that a lot of the examples you provided of people expressing frustration is not so much about "the denial of freedom" but a lot of "wasted time", in a way. Like all of the Pokemon examples looked a lot like "can I please play the game now". Even Arceus is like this, the introduction takes forever and the frustration is not about "not having freedom", it's more about "Yeah, I got it 10 minutes ago, can I please go now? How long until this game starts?". Because later on you still have all sorts of restrictions and busywork and whatnot and that's all fine
Same thing for the danganronpa complaint. I've been playing through the Ace Attorney series and there is some of that at times, in situations where the cases aren't super tight. Where you figure something out and you want to say it but you're like 2 or 3 steps ahead of the game so the frustration becomes about feeling like the game is "jank", like the enforced path is not working properly, You know where it leads but "this is not the way to say this in the game". It's the puzzle equivalent of feeling like you came back to this area after having double jump so you can just leap over the wall into the checkpoint but there's an invisible wall there. It's more a break in the flow.
That is denial of freedom though. You don't have the freedom to exit the tutorial and go play the game, you have no choice but to sit through it. You don't have the freedom to present the argument you want to in Ace Attorney, you have no choice but to follow the single intended path.
It's just two different ways of voicing the same complaint.
@@mjc0961 To me when we're talking about denial/lack of freedom, though, things that come to my mind are very different:
- How Bayonetta has a ton of invisible walls everywhere
- How in Dragon Age:Origins your character is forced to be very invested in the continuation of human rule and nobility
- How in Neverwinter Nights you single-handedly save everyone from a demon invasion and then have to b "Oh well, guess I'll just submit my girlfriend for execution, then. The king whom I just saved said I should"
- How in Ocarina of Time the hookshot just doesn't really take you anywhere interesting because it won't hold on to anything
I'll say that the unskippable tutorials/cutscenes are a MAYBE here. But to me it's more a thing about poorly designed structure. I feel like the designer team just dropped the ball. And in Ace Attorney to me it's a limitation of medium. Like a translation error, of sorts. It's a game about making deductions and presenting arguments but sometimes it fumbles the execution of this flow. This too, in a way, has to do with the more limited nature of the Visual Novel genre, which is where maybe this could tie into the theme of the video, as it inherently limits you more than openworld sandbox No. 47 which now has to keep up pretenses of some idealized freedom.
@@mjc0961 if the problem is that you aren't doing what you enjoy, then the problem is not one of freedom inherently. If you would be happy to be forced to do something that you instead enjoy, freedom isn't the problem, it's the action being done. Freedom itself is only the problem when people are upset at the actual act of the freedom being revoked regardless of what they are being forced to do
@@VileLasagna also he point those out as extreme examples saying this game doesn't give you freedom. Like the division, its open world and you can do what you, but your stuck in new york and cant leave. The point hes making these games gives the fulse sence of freedom. You do not want to wast your time, i dont blame you. But the fact you dont have a choice is what the video is about, and leads to the conclusion your wasting your time. You dont have the freedom to choose to do it or not.
@@dameach23 I understand how you could flatten those and make the argument that, in this way they are similar, sure. But to me the thing is that to the player it hits differently.
I remember for example that the frustration that, say, Pokemon Arceus takes like 2 hours to start is a very different type of frustration/disappointment than I got when I was playing Ocarina and slowly realised that, no, hookshot doesn't get you anywhere interesting, actually.
So whereas I feel that this second example works well in the denial of freedom / frustrated expectations sort of example that open-world games end up subject to due to how they tend to be be marketed and presented as, the first one not so much. Even though these are both frustrating experiences from 2 open-world games, I feel they're ultimately different types of frustration
Interestingly enough, that "consequence vs. restriction" bit parallels the way you should bring up your kids nicely.
Generally, you ought to let them face the consequences of their bad decisions, but certain situations require restrictions.
I think the important takeaway here is that in the study, the group that didn't expect to get a choice wasn't angry about not having it.
Open world games have these issues only because they promise things they can't provide, or have that expectation projected onto them because of how marketing in the genre has poisoned that well.
Guitar Hero doesn't feel like it's restricting your freedom. DOOM 2016 doesn't feel restrictive either. Even Time Crisis games, which are literally on rails, don't feel like they're restricting you, because they're clear and consistent about what options you do have.
I _mostly_ agree. Open world games run into this issue because players become _aware_ of the game not actually delivering on this promise, once they run through enough of the game to realize the lack of meaningful content/encounter too much repetition, or become too intimately aware of its mechanics, systems, and limitations, that they see behind the dialogue and graphics to realize how limited it is as, ultimately, a piece of pretty inflexible and unadaptable coding. Casual players and those who quit before becoming aware of these problems often _think_ the game delivered on the promise, and some will be be unconcerned with _knowing_ it is an illusion so long as they cannot personally _see_ it. It is stage magic and becomes very easy to see through with increased exposure, which therefore tends to work well for certain audiences and absolutely *not* for others, and different people draw the line at different places for where that ruins the experience, engagement, and/or goal.
Mind, for some players, it being an illusion in and of itself invalidates the entire premise for them (myself generally being among them), in which case, yeah, the promise being inherently undeliverable makes the game categorically a flaw for what they want. Some people also dislike being lied to, and consider that false promise to be an abuse of trust or betrayal.
@@nevisysbryd7450 Also it doesn't help that once you have seen through it, you realize that this giant empty map with no meaningful content in it is huge, and you spend so much time just traveling through it to get to the next game part of the game.
The only part of Red Dead Redemption 2 I've enjoyed so far is when you wash up on the island and just have no choice but to do a series of missions one after the other. I don't have to ride a horse with terrible controls for 10 minutes (or activate cinematic mode and let the game "play" itself for 10 minutes - I literally folded some laundry while cinematic mode did its thing earlier today!) to get to the next real part of the game. I just get to keep playing the game.
To heck with giant open worlds. Any developer bragging about how big their world is instantly puts me off their game. Give me a small, densely packed world (older open world games on older consoles that had to be small due to limitations, or Yakuza minus 7 and Lost Judgment because Yokohama is too big and sucks to travel around) or a completely linear game. These giant open world commuting simulators can piss off.
@@mjc0961 Personally, yeah. Whereas Dark Souls 1 is one of my favorite video games ever, among other reasons, I was _immediately_ wary about Elden Ring as soon as it being open world came up and held off on getting it. The sorts of players with similar tastes to myself confirmed most of the issues I was apprehensive about. While the stage magic clearly worked well enough for a very large playerbase, I (and an appreciable chunk of fans of the previous games) found it less so.
@@nevisysbryd7450 A humongous aspect of the "stage magic" is that the vast majority of "open-world" games simply aren't. If everything in the game world isn't persistent then it's not open world. No invisible walls or pocket dimensions can segment the game world, basically games like Project Zomboid. Elden Ring, BOTW etc are just empty and lack level design, or rather you have press your thumb up on the analog stick for several minutes at a time to reach any level design. I genuinely consider it false advertising.
@@nevisysbryd7450Sorry for necroposting, but I was just thinking about how Elden Ring felt unnecessarily open, yet ironically _not open enough._
I remember I went "off the rails" without even knowing it, going straight to Liurnia thinking that was the "right way", only to be met with the same enemies I faced in Limgrave, but with heavily inflated stats. I struggled a bit more than I was supposed to, but I managed to defeat Rennala and headed back south, only to steamroll the enemies I thought would've been just as strong as the ones I'd just faced.
Eventually, I reached the Altus Plateau through the shortcut I found thanks to an NPC's dialogue, and this time around, the enemies were straight up not worth my time with how resilient they were, so I turned back to do some more level-appropriate content.
If you paid attention to my wording, you'll have realized the game felt to me like a linear set of "levels" that lets me choose, to some extent, the order in which to play them, but doesn't give me the appropriate tools unless I beat them in the expected order, and if I manage to win nonetheless, I get rewarded with the trivialization of the levels I hadn't beaten yet.
So what do I get, if not a truly open game? A mostly linear experience similar to that of the old games, except with much less variety, much weaker level design, and _a lot_ of holding W.
Also, thank god the game doesn't hold my hand! Since my path was meant to be linear anyway, it would've been terrible to know where I was supposed to be going instead of wandering half-randomly, half-following the NPCs' dialogue into areas I where clearly wasn't supposed to be yet!
"You don't want an open world game, you want the freedom you think they provide" is the same as saying "you don't want just any open world game, you want a GOOD open world game."
exhibit A: BOTW
Yeah, pretty much.
Just look at Elder Ring, Spider-man 2018, Skyrim and Breath of the Wild. People WANT open world games, they just want good ones.
@@realbrobo nah. That game sucks
When you're driven by expectation nothing is good enough
Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction was a fantastic use of the open world. Blow up whatever you want, but be ready to deal with the consequences of your actions with the faction balance system.
I remember playing Final Fantasy 1 on the gba almost 20 years ago and thinking “wow this game is awesome”, it felt like a huge open world where you level up, get better gear and customize your characters and party however you like, and a Pokémon game where you go to this temple in the middle of a lake and while exploring the surrounding forest thinking to myself “wow, this forest is so awesome”, I would completely immerse myself in those games, like it was me in that world.
Fantastic stuff as per usual with the exception of some gross misinformation around the 12:39 mark. I resent the idea of being described as "better"!
Let’s go with “pretty damn remarkable” then haha, much appreciated Adam! Love your work
Yeah, both of your channels are amazing.
This is the crossover we wanted
Open world games are only good if that world is filled with fun meaningful content. Doing the same thing repeatedly in a mostly empty space is just a closed world where you have to walk though the loading screens rather than wait at a JPG and loading bar for 20 seconds. There is no point in having an open world if you are only going to spend real time in the main Hub areas and a few select grind spots/dungeons. and no i do not want to collect more way points to fill my map and help more settlements while i grind for levels and equips in a game that is already finished.
what about elden ring then , it's content is necessary cause there is a need to grind to get huge enough, do you think it's open world to be a meaningful edition to fromsoftware soul's formula?
@@MGrey-qb5xz I think Elden Ring is a technically broken game, and I'm not willing to spend time or money on it. Give me a stable framerate without frametime issues or GTFO.
@@mjc0961 that's not what i'm asking though, if it were stable on pc then would you actually consider playing it till the end? It still has the same ubisoft esque openworld formula so don't expect anything new
Grind is actually good and necessary for RPGs. The issue is with how the enemies are scaled for risk and rewards. This is where Elden Ring while I loved the first half of, suffered in my opinion. It made more sense to dodge a rolling ball for experience rather than struggle with normal enemies because you would be better rewarded xp wise. A good open world provides adequite but fair challenges while giving a fair reward for completion. This is why the best areas in Elden Ring were actually the mini dungeons where you had a clear goal and clear reward.
@@trollingisasport actually no grind for sake of grind is not good nor necessary for rpgs unless you are talking about mmos, xp in single player or coop rpgs should be in limited amount so every part of the game can be made important in order to grow stronger and interact more with the world like it was the case with games like dragon age origins. This mindset of mindlessly killing stuff over and over was only popularized when the general public started getting more interested in game length which has now lead to more then a decade long diluted game experience that is now expected every time you start an open world game. You expect exhaustion and the lack of respect for time before you kill the first enemy, i doubt playing like this is also healthy irl.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon does an interesting thing structurally with reactance, simillar to RDR2. There's often a mid-game and a late-game section where you go on a long linear journey of multiple dungeons and cannot return to the main city. Your options become limited but that not only creates reactance and a motivation to get back to the world, but also excitement and anxiety from going deeper than normally into a part of the world you couldn't reach normally.
The main reason I've always loved Open world game is because I Love taking my time and I love exploration. I love living in a world and I don't care about how much content they have. That's also why I live the systemic worlds of immersive sims and how much freedom you truly have on another level than most games.
Something I've always thought of, when given the prompt to create an open world, is not to create an open world in the traditional sense, but instead create one with multiple linear paths. The best example would, surprisingly, come from Freeman's Mind in HL2. In one of his latest uploads, he shows the dam section of HL2. And instead of doing the intended route of flinging the mudskipper over the dam, he instead created a whole new path where he opens a gate and climbs down the cliffside that leads to the exact same place, it just takes away the mudskipper.
THAT. That is what I want when I think of an open world game. A way for you to just say "mm, nah I'll take the longer route" and be rewarded for it. Its still a linear path, but that linear path can still offer so many interesting things to explore.
Yeah, it is really nice when games give you freedom and creativity. As much as I like Red Dead 2, the way the missions only accept one way of doing things is kinda annoying. “Oh, okay so I can’t go across here to catch my target; I have to follow them along this exact path.” The “mission failed” just because I tried something different can get even more annoying considering how open the world is outside of missions.
vampire masquerade also has this, it is "open world" but each area is small and full of content, every quest has multiple endings, and xp is gained trough completing them, not killing enemies, so combat is always avoidable, and almost always an option, and not spending points in combat stats is actually worth it
another example would be dragon age origins where just like re4 it's side content is limited recourses to gain exp and money hence making devs carefully plan out the player experience with memorable content that becomes it's very own character. As in something you interact with rather then complete which again would increase replayability.
Banger video as always Daryl! Also it is an absolute crime that you haven't played Outer Wilds. I played it earlier this year along with its DLC and OH MY GOD, it is so masterfully crafted and such a quality masterpiece. I can't recommend it enough, it has to be in my top 10 games of all times, it is genuinely just that good.
I'm gonna do everything in my power to play it this year tbh haha, appreciate it Kishan!
@@DarylTalksGames HOW DARE. You better make a video about it afterwards to make up for that, young man!
Jokes aside, make sure to enjoy it, it's been a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me and everyone that finally gave in to me spamming them about it. I hope it inspires you to make a video about it as well, I would love you to validate how right I am-- I mean, I would love to hear your thoughts about it.
@@DarylTalksGames Be warned, once you play it you'll never be able to make a video without mentioning it again.
@@filurenerik1643
And contradictory, you won't be able to talk about it either, you won't be able to say a single word otherwise it'll spoil the game for everyone.
@@julianemery718 you can say some things about it. That's the thing with outer wilds, even if you're spoiled on one surprise there's still a dozen other ones waiting for you.
Daryl bringing Razbuten and Adam Millard to the conversation feels like getting together with the boys and going wild on psychology
One thing I've learned from games like Xenoblade is that with engaging open worlds, it helps to have you constant collecting things. It's quintessential game mechanics and it's like getting many dopamine bumps between battlesand story beats.
We definitely need more polished, linear games.
The imaginative topics you come up with for your videos never cease to entertain me, keep up the great work brother!
I think that relatively small open worlds, or ones that use wide open space as an obstacle work the best. If the player is told to go anywhere and do anything, they are lost
I don't think I agree with the premise entirely but I definitely see where you're coming from. When I think of open world games my thoughts immediately go to the open world Zeldas. The only big issues I have with the one I have is not being able to pet the dogs and rain being incredibly annoying for traversal. That rain doesn't make the sunshine that much better or anything, it just makes me want to leave the game unpaused while I go do housework or something. I do agree that losing the sword in Windwaker and getting it back later is a powerful feeling. Eventide island was an experience I got really excited about when I discovered it by accident because of the novelty of it, but on repeat playthroughs I find the whole thing just kinda "meh". Especially with the knowledge you can smuggle weapons onto the island if you can fit them on the raft and not knock them into the water. I think the you were going for is "you dont JUST want an open world, you want the freedom expected of it, but that's not always feasible and restriction can also often be just as rewarding" but I might be misinterpreting (and that doesnt really make a great title). I do agree with that statement though. Although I DO wish Nintendo would let me pet the dogs. How could they not?
Open world games used to be a major draw for me like 10 years ago. Overtime I got burnt out on them. Now, the occasional well crafted open world game is cool, but I highly prefer a more linear game with finely tuned levels/areas. Open world games are often full of so much tedium that they harm the game, instead of enhancing it. Linear games feel far more rich, and the thing you do in them feel far more meaningful. At least to me, the majority of the time.
Yeah as a busy adult with ADHD I kinda hate open world games nowadays. Feels like a gamble with my extremely limited time (and focus) like will something interesting happen this play session? Perhaps but perhaps not lol. I'd rather play something more meticulously designed like dark souls or something than a true big open world
hmm sadly open world games are more popular then they have ever being meaning more diluting of content and lack of respect for the player's time who for some reason don't even respect themselves
Maybe it's just a lack of obstinacy on my part, but when I hit a "no" moment in a game I usually think "oh okay, there must be a good reason why not," and 9 times out of 10, there is.
You and I have The same upiniun.
I’d lyk tu bileev That meenz mor intelijins, and disurnment. Discernment. Trust mee, obstinansee iz The last thing That peepll need. I nou sum peepll That nnnnNNNNNNNEVUR lurn, eeven wen The engine Thei’r carrying iz sliping frum Thei’r fingurz.
“You can’t carry that hugo, just get a cart!”
“FC YOU-“
drops The engine-
“AAAAAA-“
and sou on an’ sou on.
@@ehhorve857 are u, a bot? with no link? what?
@@yosefsts7977 nah, I'm delibritlee mispelling wurds.
YOU SEE, deep in the boughs, a thought occurred in the midst of a cough, that rough spelling PERMEATES throughout english, and uv, the pronunciation/pproununseeaeshun uv, iz LITERULEE spelld 'of'. lyk off. O. f. OFF.
The problem is that some open world games don't really give you any freedom. They are just extensive maps. That's why games like Horizon Zero Dawn, despite being technically amazing, always deliver a mediocre experience.
@@lucasrinaldi9909 right? That's the ubisoft open world formula in a nutshell. Here's the world, but if you want to be able to do anything you really need to go here. Oh you want to go there? Good luck, here's an insurmountable enemy!
There's a mix between linear and open world games that I like to call "open area games". In these, we're given the basic freedoms that open world games provide (mostly when and how to achieve our goals) but they also have the containment of linear games to help keep our actions feel more meaningful.
Kinda like the old assassin's creed games
Max payne 2
The “consequences over restrictions” part made me think of the first time I played Ocarina of Time. I thought I could just mash B to beat an iron knuckle. After it then deleted half my hearts with a single axe swing, I figured out quick why rushing in swinging isn’t always the greatest plan. Still, I’m glad that happened and the game didn’t tell me beforehand what would happen when I started fucking around.
Definitely it’s freedom. It’s how the developer designs and uses their sandboxes to let us play. When people see two games, one with hallways and another with a huge open field, people assume the open field will give them more freedom, will be more fun. Some developers can do more with a linear level than others with kilometers of open environments.
Hmm. See. This example of two choices is WHOLLY inaccurate for me, because what I want out of open world games is to EXPLORE the hallways or rooms and so on that are in my surrounding environment
I've learned my lesson though, I already know the hallways will be more fun.
It's an interesting point, but I did actually feel overly restricted in Metroid Dread; while Dread did a perfect job of slowly opening the next zone with new abilities and unlocks, it had an uncomfortable habit of locking doors behind you. Contrast to Zero Mission, which would almost exclusively open doors; rarely block them. Even though both games can be extremely linear in their straight-line progression path, the ability in one to easily go into old zones "just because I wanted to" allowed one game to not trigger that frustration, while the other could not help but do so extensively.
As an example, though, Dread does perfectly support your thesis. It just falls more towards the "half right half wrong" category rather than the "they did it perfectly" category, for myself at least.
A lot of Dread's locks felt arbitrary at times. Having to wait for the endgame victory lap to really start exploring freely is frustrating.
Oh for sure, a lot of people weren’t a big fan and that’s totally fair. Especially since, to your point, the series for the most part leading up to that kind of didn’t do that. I haven’t actually finished any of the older metroids so that’s probably why I took to Dread so well.
While I understand that, a certain part with a lot of locked doors actually motivated me to find another way and getting a certain upgrade a little bit earlier than I was supposed to. And then I felt rewarded for being a bit rebellious and proceeded as normal. Nothing really changed, just a boss fight and upgrade switched around (that would have happened less than 10 minutes after eachother normally), but it felt pretty good still!
If you know golden sun, it had a similar problem. You can always go back. You don't need to, but if you missed one weapon, upgrade or lore, you can get it later. In the last game, they gave the game multiple points of no return. I hated it and never played it because of that.
Yeah, the biggest flaw of Dread is the heavy-handed funneling and I experienced a lot of reactance and trying to sequence break away whenever I got stuck in a funnel. It led to me getting grapple before Kraid.
This takes me to a more general phenomenon that I've been thinking about for a while. What we as humans really want isn't simply the "good"; what we want is the *contrast* of "good" with "bad". *Humans enjoy emotional contrast.* More specifically, contrast where the positive state comes *after* the negative state.
We don't want an open world to simply be open. We want to feel like we've fought the restrictions of that world and won. We want the *contrast* between not being able to have what we want and taking what we want anyway.
We want to overcome something, whether it's a simple challenge of difficulty, or a challenge to our agency. Taking a "no" and turning it into a "yes" by our own will and skill. Making a "bad" situation "good".
It's the reason we read books and watch movies. It's the reason that we enjoy the journey more than the destination; there's no contrast in the destination.
It's the entire reason that we play games.
We enjoy emotional contrast. And it's all the more delicious if we are creating that contrast by our own choices and efforts.
This. I love games that start linear and end open like Metroid Prime or Wind Waker because I feel like I beat the game and was rewarded the world. Give me an open world at the start and I'm like ' oh you're just giving these away.' make the world open at the end and I'm like ' I made this world mine.'
It's so satisfying when you brute force a game and the developers knew you would do it. It's such a great feeling exploring every little inch of the map, just knowing that SOMEWHERE around here, there's a secret item to reward players who obsessively explore every little inch of the map. From Soft does this a lot, it wants you to explore everything and learn things by being the kind of person to explore a lot.
Honestly, as someone who's still really reluctant about starting DM-ing. This vid is really giving me some concrete notes on how to approach the game I'd like my players to participate in. Great vid as always.
At first I thought you were hesitant to start direct messaging 💀
If you're new to DMing and not confident about it, modules are good to run. If you think you can handle more open stuff, start open and see what the reaction from the players is. Some embrace it, some feel lost. If that's a problem, nudge and narrow it down. The main role of the DM is making sure people have fun, not to run your stuff. But that includes you. Good luck!
It is the same basic desires and psychology at play. Ttrpgs have a categorical advantage (and additional challenges) relative to video games in the sheer amount of adaptability and meaningful content that they can have, though, since you can improvise, add, subtract, and adapt as DM/GM in a way that a relatively limited set of computer coding cannot. And ttrpgs often attract a more diverse range of player desires, tastes, and interests-sometimes in a single group-than video games tend to. It is important to keep in mind what your particular group wants!
Both from what I've heard other DMs say and my own experience:
If you're making your own adventure from scratch, don't overplan. Just make maybe three routes per session that your players can go down and give them sufficient hook-ins, but always, ALWAYS have contingencies. It's best to go width-first and sorta trace out the surrounding area and anything they might be drawn to (which will get easier to anticipate as you learn how your players think), but don't go crazy on detail. Elliptical narratives are your friend here: you only need to explain things in detail if the players look closely enough. Improv is your friend.
Something I often end up doing (and I'm sure some of my DMs have too) is just re-using stuff that the players missed somewhere else in the world, cutting and pasting it in a way that makes sense in context. Once you have a backlog of characters and plots saved up for a rainy day, you can just pull one out whenever you can't think of anything; from there it's just a matter of playing them out in a way that's believeable.
And finally: have fun. DMing can be an absolute blast. Hope it goes well for you. :)
This is the most misunderstood idea in DND: railroads are often necessary, even though they can be subtle at times. It can be very unsatisfying as a player to be shown a completely open ended world and have to decide what to do all by yourself. Having events, drama and exciting stuff happen to you is sometimes better than having the potential to do anything you want. As a DM it's all about managing how big the paths you give your players are, how they branch out, but also how they can potentially converge to gently guide your players towards the moments where the impactful and engaging choicemaking happens.
Think of the classic trick to choose a restaurant: your partner picks their 5 favorite spots, you choose two of them, and they choose which one they prefer. Same goes with DMing, it's all about gauging how many choices your players have so they never feel overwhelmed or limited.
Reactance is the reason titles like "Top 3 things they don't want you to know" or "I have been censored for telling this" are so effective.
The same can be said for "top x things you didn't know about (insert title here)" videos, or series like Camelworks' "Unique Uniques" and "Curating Curiosities".
Or "You Don't Actually Want Open World Games." I honestly almost removed this from my Recommended feed because of the clickbait.
@@one2many370 It's not clickbait though. The title accurately matches the content. You clowns have no idea what clickbait means anymore.
@@mjc0961 yeah, not clickbait
After hundreds of hours exploring the "freedom" of Elden Ring, I returned to the streets of Bloodborne and felt incredibly relieved. I'm one of those people who is terrified of a blank canvas, so having boundaries rules, and _this_ specific brush to paint _this_ specific thing is crucial to me.
Don't get me wrong, I adore Elden Ring, but it gets tiring looking for everything everywhere and having EVERY option available to me. I like the linear design of Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne because they feel like I'm making progress every step of the way.
This was actually an issue I had going through Xenoblade Chronicles. Every time I got to a new area, a new location/town, I had an uneasy feeling of dread because of all the sidequests and exploration I felt I would have to do. I did them all, but it felt like a chore most of the time.
Halos open world brings me genuine pain
You can literally get soft locked with no ammo in front of a whole enemy squad
With those special mini bosses and die over and over until you can run away
Or walk for half a hour to get to a mission To then miss a collectible and you can’t replay the missions
I'll be honest, I do _not_ get the "You can't tell me what to do!" attitude so many gamers (especially these days) seem to have. My opinion is obviously very skewed here- I gravitate toward story-driven and lore-heavy games, and most open world games (yes, including BotW and Elden Ring) just don't grab and maintain my interest very long, so I tend to prefer linearity, and obviously people with different tastes will act accordingly. But seriously, so many people I've talked to on this subject seem to treat literally *any* obstacles to doing things on their terms as some grave violation, and start ranting like they're trapped in a tiny room and pounding on the walls. It's honestly unnerving.
For me, context is what makes the experience and determines how much I enjoy it and if I want to come back, and by and large the linear games I've played have left considerably stronger impacts.
While I am personally generally much the same, I understand their end as well. People play games for different things. Some want to dive into another world and go on an adventure; some want to relax into a nigh-mindless grind with loot rewards after another stressful day at work for a few minutes. A lot of people seek in games what desires or modes of engagement they are not getting outside of them, or use specifically as a reprieve. As many people's lives have more restriction, obligation, and limitation than they like already, some look to games to get away from those things altogether.
And there is the gaming industry and culture bringing people up to be very poorly adapted to not getting there way, and people buying into the myth of open world games and thinking that games 'should' be that way and that people 'should' want those sorts of games. There are saner reasons to want that sort of complete lack of friction in games too, though.
Reluctance kind of seems like an entitlement problem
This. Thank you.
@@jek__ Edit: Spelling and punctuation.
There's a difference between being entitled and just wanting your own autonomy. While I don't appreciate entitled people (adult children) throwing the equivalent of a temper tantrum or doing vindictive things to get back at someone who has "wronged" them, I can still appreciate someone who is rightly upset about having their choices limited to such an extent that it feels like they have no options other than to just do what someone wants them to do.
Now, this is more complicated than either "The devs have their vision and everybody should just shut up and like it or just don't play the game." or "I want it and it's the devs responsibility to give me what I want because I deserve it and if I don't get it, I'm going to say all kinds of nasty, evil things about them and send them death threats." There is a grey area there and it's a more subtle and nuanced problem.
Obviously, the devs have their vision of what the player's experience should be (hopefully) and they have to make a lot of decisions, some of them can be very tough decisions, so that they can provide the experience the players want. Sometimes those choices are understood and accepted by most players or even celebrated because of how it enhances the experience. On the other hand, some of those choices are lamented and decried by the vast majority of the player-base.
It's all a matter of perspective. Also, you have to understand, like this video talks about, some deeper levels of human psychology to really understand if this is a good choice or not. Sometimes, devs makes mistakes. They're human after all. Sometimes we don't really understand what we want, as this video shows.
For example, most people want money. It ensures your survival and also, if you have more than you need to survive, it can provide you with some or many luxuries, things that most people may never experience. Yet, just having your wish of "I want to be a millionaire/billionaire!" granted won't truly provide you with happiness on it's own. You have to figure out what is it that you want to buy with that money, or to put it more accurately, *why* do you want the money? What feelings are the things you purchase with that money (goods or experiences) going to provide you with?
Is it safety, security, affection from someone else, adventure, fulfillment from helping others, etc? These and more are all things that can be experienced when one has more money than they need to pay the bills. If we were bartering (which still occurs at times, gasp!) then money wouldn't mean a damn thing. It's just a convenient unit of trade that most people nowadays agree with and use.
Going back to my earlier statement about entitlement and autonomy, there's a difference between a child's parents telling them they can't have a whole bag of M&M's before dinner and they can't stay up late playing on their Switch because they have school vs making every decision for their children and completely controlling their lives. One is just parents making the best decision for their kids and the other is exerting complete control over the kids.
If the kid is angry about the former and starts a temper tantrum, that's entitlement. If the kid is angry and resentful about the latter, that's just healthy, natural anger at having their autonomy taken away.
In short, player choice and dev vision can't just be accurately boiled down to a black and white matter of who's right or wrong. In this case, both arguments have merit. They just have to find a common middle-ground.
Lore heavy as elder scrolls??
I think a great example of teaching the player via example instead of lecture is in how Subnautica deals with its world border. There is no stopping point. The world simply drops off into an ocean void filled with ghost leviathans that try to destroy your submarine and kill you. The player goes to the end of the world and instead of being told to turn around he is shown why he should never go there again.
This is so relevant to what I've been noticing is the biggest problem with game design: Design that centers on story or gimmicks or anything but player agency. Unlike watching a movie or reading a book, playing a game is about the what you choose to do and how the game responds to your choices. The main goal of a game designer, in my opinion, is to make players feel like each action and decision they make matters in some way by: 1. Acknowledging what the player just tried to do as much as possible, and 2. Giving each choice a lasting consequence, no matter how small.
Yeah new vegas has a difficulty range depending on the area, all enemies essentially have a set damage and health (not considering difficuly) so you can still technically get to new vegas in three ways, but if it's your first time, you kinda have to go the longest route.
Few thoughts:
Glad you mentioned Morgana from P5 because I think that's one of the *big* things that made me drop the game. Compared to the earlier Persona games, it felt like 90% of your evenings were cut short by that damn cat saying 'nope gotta go sleep'.
I've also never heard anyone pronounce FLUDD as "Flood" before; legit had to do a double-take to make sure my sleep-deprived ass wasn't mishearing.
Great video all-around, though! Saw you mentioning feeling like shit in the Patreon post, so get well soon and deffo looking forward to the Psych of Anime episode!
A retired Navi is playing Persona 5 out there somewhere crying tears of joy every time Morgana makes you go to bed and saying "he just like me fr!"
But yeah, regarding FLUDD, I've heard it both ways lmao
The difference between P5 and the other games is that they actually personified the generic text box that is normally a sort of narrator for your actions. In P3 and P4 you have just as many, if not more, limitations when going out at night but because it wasn’t an actual in-universe character telling you “No you need to stay inside and go to sleep.” Nobody thought twice about it.
@@morksisnthererightnow8738 I always thought that the text boxes were your Persona talking to you
@@bandigustin1038 That's a cool concept, I never thought of it like that!
"Flued" is new to me
I do believe that different kinds of players seek out different levels of freedom.
I, for instance, am overjoyed over a game so expansive I get lost in the choices from the get go.
But I've also heard from people who much prefer a straightforward path.
I think it's a generational thing. As a teacher, I've taught various age groups and I notice the younger a student is, the more they want to try and figure it out themselves, even if it means a way less efficient way of learning while the older students are more humbled to taking guidance and direction from peers. I think this is true with gamers too. I tend to not want a game to waste my time the older I get and would rather a game be more linear, less cryptic and more direct and deliberate in its design.
Reactance seems to be at its worst not when a game tells us no but instead gives us the illusion of having being given a choice and then saying no. When a game is open about what it is restricting it can be frustrating but feel fair. When a game says, "want to do this? Well, you actually can't," it can feel like a betrayal to the player.
I personally feel reactance in games whenever I'm told a particular weapon or character is "bad" or "low tier" and that I'm better off playing something or someone else. I get that feeling of "I'll play however I please thank you very much" and no amount of me losing will over-power my reactance as I try to get as good as I can with that low-tier weapon or character.
tl;dr I'm stubborn.
So you're the guy that tries to fight the final boss with a spoon!
That's how I managed to finish Swordflight Chapter One as a halfling fighter. However, my current de facto build is strength-based human monk/fighter/champion.
I don't really care about what's meta. I play games the way I like them. I mostly learned that way back when I was playing Diablo 2. Sometimes I played the meta builds. Sometimes I made my own characters with their own quirks. Games are supposed to be fun, not played the way someone else tells you to.
It is really irritating when a piece of gear more to your taste is an objectively inferior to other options by the game's metrics. At worst, it can basically come off as, if not outright be, the game telling you that your taste is wrong.
@@nevisysbryd7450 I prefer it like the game is telling me I'm so good at the game I don't need the best stuff.
Fantastic video! I love it when you find something I've never heard of but is immediately relevant to how we think, feel, and process information.
Glad I watched this after going through the new pokemon game cause it helped me understand why I liked Violet more than, well, any other open world game I have ever played. It had that perfect little balance between telling the player to do something, without saying how, when or in what order to do something DIRECTLY, but it did drop just enough information and used levels to guide the player around the map to each of the story beats. The freedom locks behind each badge is just enough to push you to wanting to do them for the reward of more freedom too, and the end game is just "Hey, you know the one place you werent allowed to go in (other than the big steep cliff you can't climb) that the game explicitly told you you can't go in? Yeah just go there." Very clever design.
The phenomenon of internal reactance, being so overwhelmed with choice that you end up choosing none of them and dipping for a time, has actually happened to me multiple times over in many games. One notable example being the post-game to one of my all-time favorite JRPGs, Dragon Quest 11.
I first bought the game for the Switch back in 2019 and I had a wonderful time playing through it. When I finally got to the post-game after going through the incredible story, suddenly, I was presented with so much freedom: dozens of side-quests, powerful weapons, super bosses and story tidbits were opened up to me, and unlike the main story, I could do these in any order I wished and at my leisure. But I think I did a maximum of, like, three things before stopping entirely. Not because I no longer liked the game, but because I couldn't decide amongst the many options provided which I wanted to do most, so I chose none.
Not realizing at the time that internal reactance was what caused me to abandon the game initially, I ended up going through the exact same cycle when I bought Dragon Quest 11 S again on PC a year later in late 2020. Again, I enjoyed the main story and again, faced choice paralysis in the post-game and gave up. It was only a few months ago that I finally picked the game up again. And while initially it was a hassle, I still felt internal reactance to making a choice is so I made progress at first by brute forcing my way through quests at random, I eventually ended up enjoying that post-game experience so much that I actually 100%-ed it.
All's that to say, it's an interesting phenomenon to consider. Even if a game is fun all the way through, if suddenly I go from having a few limited options to a massive number of them, it's that very freedom that paralyzes my ability to make progress in something I otherwise really enjoy. Thanks very much for the video Darryl! Very good food for thought.
Bioware games always do this to me. There is always some point where a super obvious option just isn't there, and it becomes painfully clear that I am not playing a character of my own creation. I'm only playing a very linear choose your own adventure book with strictly defined paths.
It's frustrating, but because I was already familiar with this aspect of their games, I never thought Mass Effect 3 had a bad ending. It was exactly what every prior Bioware game had led me to believe was coming, so I really enjoyed ME3's ending. (Yes, I am talking about the original, vanilla, no content update ending.)
I remeber my parents would tell me to brush my teeth every night. I wasn't a rebelious child, but because I never had a cavity or any other negative dental hygine consequnce, I would forget nearly every night and just plop into bed, as I didn't see it as a good use of my time. Months later, I got gingivittus. The general psycology here kind of reminded my of that. Somtimes somome else telling you theres a fire isn't enough, you have to get burned first.
Great video! So much rings true. I am really realizing though just how much being intrinsically motivated vs extrinsic is huge for each of us. I never want to be told I have to do something in a game which is why open world games are my favorite. I think it’s why both my wife and I(both intrinsics) loved Eventide in BOTW but hated chapter 5 in RDR2. You don’t have to do Eventide but you can’t skip chapter 5. Being a intrinsically motivated person I don’t need help in slowing my pacing down or exploring more. I systemically pace myself because I know my experience will be better. Yep, I’m total weirdo but it really works for me.
I feel this so hard in crpgs, when you have to decide how to build your character. As soon as I'm putting everything into INT, melee combat becomes super interesting. I also hate having to decide between all these options before I even know where the game is going mechanically and story-wise. It's a lot of freedom, but it's overwhelming and uninformed freedom. In metroidvanias, the mechanics build gradually, so I feel more free even though I don't chose the upgrades, only what to do with them.
Also, when a certain build I chose is mechanically unviable because it is underpowered, reactance goes through the roof for me. Most RPGs don't let you freely chose your build, you have to follow guides.
Yeah, that's why I don't get complaints about Skyrim not having a class system. You can then choose how you want your character to be while playing
@@partyinpiplup7883 Yeah, but that gives me serious decision paralysis. I'd much rather take, say, a D&D class and choose between three options - a manageable number - than stare at 100 options, half of which are desirable, and feel my head start spinning with how overwhelmingly hard it's gonna be to decide which ONE I really want. All the while, gnawing at the back of my mind, is the knowledge that I'll never have the time to try them ALL. . .
I remember when Nintendo first announced that you would be able to go straight to fight Ganon from the starting area if you wanted to, and how hype people were about that. How hype they still were that for the most part (barring the tutorial area) they really could.
I can remember as a kid (in the late 90s early 00s) having so much fun in almost any open world. I would invent narratives in my head like I would playing with toys. As an adult not having the same playful imagination I don’t get as much out of them as I used to.
Very cool vid. Sounds like the sweet spot you’re describing is something I’ve coin as openworld linearity. Two of the best examples are MGS3 and Death Stranding. Games that give you freedom to play around with a myriad of mechanics and explore, but in confined areas that still seemlessly nudge you forward plotwise.
Yeah, with me I find that whenever I am given too much freedom to do whatever I want I just end up getting bored or stuck, unable to decide what to do. This extends to games where the primary thing is creation, like Minecraft and Super Mario Maker. I get overwhelmed by options, and always end up just pottering around making a few things, hating them, then giving up (kinda like the 30 opitons study you brought up). I need guidance or structure in what to do in these situations; a game where the main draw is "make your own fun" just isn't super engaging more often than not cus its jusy "AHHHH too many things :(".
This extends to stuff like character creators as well; just gimme basic customisation options or none at all, i do not want to spend half an hour making some monstrocity that I will be spending 50 plus hours with and WILL hate the look of. I just feel theres not a ton of guidance in things where customisation is the main draw, but its a double edged sword I think.
I'd even argue that there isn't less Reactance in open world games often it's even more content that's designed to trigger reactance. It's just that open world games allow you to work around the cause of the reactance more than other games
Finding an area with way too strong enemies is your dad telling you no M&Ms stealthing past the enemies, gitting gud or finding a cheese strat to get past thos enemies is you sneeking past him to get in the pantry. Open world games still tell you NO all the time but they give you the option (freedom) to ignore that NO and turn it into a YES!. so it's not just about the freedom we think open world give us, but the freedom they actually do give us (even though dose are different).
Right. I agree with you, and I think that's the point he's making. The strength of open world games that are designed well and understand player psychology is that they can use reactance to give players the initiative to solve problems while also providing a variety of methods to choose from. The open world games that he's "criticizing" are those that don't offer any way to solve/get around a problem or do not adequately justify the existance of such a restriction. The reactance players feel as a result leads to disappointment/displeasure with the game because there is no outlet for the reactance, and the game feels increasingly unreasonable, unintuitive, and restrictive.
i want a GOOD open world game like Elden Ring or BOTW. it's just that devs put in the bare minimum when making open worlds. "living, breathing world" means there's a collectible sidequest with a weapon reskin at the end
We FINALLY got you to do a tier list. About time!
And yes, I'm watching this one early / not 3 months later. This topic really caught my eye ;)
I went through most of this video not really understanding the point it was going for, and I think that's mostly because the whole "I want to fuck around and find out" mentality is generally lost on me.
I am perfectly fine with being instructed/guided not to do something as long as it's made clear *why* that is. I also usually won't try to "brute force" things in games unless there is a clear benefit or advantage I'll gain out of doing so, or perhaps if it's a game I already played through before so now I want a different or more challenging experience. Also I have never encountered a game that has overwhelmed me with the number of things I can do, ever. (Ask me what I'd like to be IRL when I grow up, on the other hand...)
I think the closest I've come to experiencing what this video is talking about is when I'm railroaded by the plot into doing something stupid, like merrily handing over the Power Jewel to the Very Obvious Villain solely because my idiot character doesn't seem to realize that's a bad idea. The thing is, most of the games I can recall that have me doing stuff like this aren't even open world games. xD
I actually have a story about how a lack of reactance ruined a game for me. That game for me is BOTW. I played it, i got all 120 shrines but I never really liked it.. and it's because I have a tenancy to do all sidequests and optional content until I am forced to do the main story... which means I missed a WHOLE BUNCH of useful things in BOTW and it was way harder and more frustrating than it needed to be. I saw that I needed to talk to Impa in Kakariko and avoided her for like 30-40 hours before I talked to her or did a divine beast. I /never/ found out about the upgraded runes and was constantly running into mobs I felt too underpowered to fight (which was the devs pushing me to do stuff I realize). But it kind of made me hate the game for a long while - only after I did a few divine beasts and had collected a bunch of specialty arrows and food and armor did I enjoy the game. By leaving it too open I accidentally missed important early game things I was supposed to have learned. I have seen other people play through it and get now why so many people love the game. But this experience made me dislike open world games a bit more and appreciate games that are more restrictive even though reactance can be so frustrating to deal with.
why do you have the tendency to do all the sidequests and optional content until you're forced to do the main story?
@@ifeelverygood I'm not who you asked, but for me I do often have the worry of being locked out of content by plot events. Whether or not that can actually happen in a game is definitely variable, but there's DEFINITELY some where it happens, not always with warning.
Eh there might be other issues with your gameplay style. Not trying to saying "git gud" but with BOTW I felt I got OP way too quickly. I knew, almost immediately, where to find the decent loot and the game really did nothing to hamper my exploitation. The only shrine I felt hampered was the only one where they take all your items away. (This was day 1 launch) Now contrast that with Elden Ring where if you are a casual soul's player (like myself and most people) the end game zones WILL punish you for attempting to breach them in order to get the fat later game items. Or they just won't let you in unless you cheat. Yeah you can ride around on your horse to collect stuff but unless you cheat and know for a fact what items are where, for the build you want to play, you're risking alot of playtime just dying to the environment because you're hp is just too low.
In BOTW right out of the starter zone you can break straight into the castle and get some of the most gnarliest items in the game with relative safety.
@@ifeelverygood just the feeling of satisfaction from completing everything that you can do. Its like a mini version of being a completionist, much easier to do
@@ifeelverygood if you play jrpgs, thats something that you will do quite often.
"I've never played, but apparently Fallout New Vegas does something similar."
Actually, that was something that I reacted very poorly to in New Vegas. I started out thinking it would be like Fallout 3, so I did what I always do in Bethesda games and tried to walk in a random direction until I found something interesting. Almost immediately I got killed by a bunch of high level radscorpions. I go another direction and run into an area full of deathclaws. I go a third direction and climb up a cliff - which was very difficult - and this is where I discovered the _invisible walls._ That was honestly shocking because it was directly antithetical to the type of game I thought I was playing.
At this point I realized that I was being blatantly railroaded: The game was trying to force me to go in a specific direction and it wasn't being subtle about it. I mean, the invisible walls proved that the devs anticipated that I might try very hard to go somewhere else and decided to actively prevent me from doing that. It really sorta soured the experience for me.
I think reactance is the main driving force behind modern rogue-likes. When you die you often lose a lot of power and lose the chance to make choices that you knew lay ahead. I think there's an interesting interplay between that frustration/drive and searching for synergies. It sorta prompts you to think about what you could have done, both when you die and when you make a choice. I think the thing I like the least in rogue-likes is when synergies are obvious, so you're just hoping for good rng.
I have and always will be a firm believer that the structure of open world is flawed from its base, the feel that it wants the player to have is never matched by it's results
And most of the time it struggles to keep hold of player's attention with its overwhelming vastness and the annoying markers which forces your character to complete a certain mission, going against every grain what "open world" stands for
I feel like one of the few games that did this part right was BotW. The feel the open world gave was like 75% of the game's appeal.
@@Sanquinity Oh yes ofcourse, there are games who utilise the open-endedness in their advantage
Letting the player explore with an incentive that is advantageous to their progression and keep it fun while doing that
It is more that the longer one spends with it and the more of it one is exposed to, the more one sees through its inherent inability to account for everything that players might think of or want to do, and the lack of adaptability in (especially meaningful) content that it is so prone to. For casual audiences or those who complete/quit the game relatively early, the appearance of delivering on its promises for long enough can be adequate, so it is not entirely correct to say that it 'cannot work'. While they are fundamentally incapable of being truly dynamic and responsive to the player (all content must be coded in and players can, for the most part, only engage with the game in ways programmed in), it can work well enough for those who are not hardcore about it.
You can see that pretty clearly in reactions to BotW. Completionists and hardcores, among others, tended to take a lot more issue with lack of meaningful diversity of content, content repetition, and so on, or that npcs in _all_ video games ultimately boil down to a collection of very predictable canned responses.
This is why I get so heavily into role-playing when I play open world titles. That way it's not me making decisions, it's my character.
I think I'd be interested in watching a video editing video by you. The highlights, the translucence, it's all so good dude.
I think what we could really use in some more linear games is some loose options for completing a mission, like instead of walking through the front door, you can also find an open window, or you can get into the basement, and each option has its consequences and benefits for choosing it.
This is a brilliant video, Daryl. That part about too many things to do being overwhelming helped me finally understand why I fell out of playing Minecraft after thinking about it for months. The updates cause more choices of stuff to do, and I find it overwhelming. Do I focus on building a house? Do I speedrun progression to get the best gear? Do I go to The Nether or work on enchanting first? Do I fish or try Redstone? The ever-increasing number of choices causing me to feel overwhelmed is why I don't play it anymore. Thank you for helping me realise that. Once again, great video! Looking forward to more Psych of Plays in the future!
You do realize Minecraft gives you the freedom to do what you want were you want when you want right?, If you don't want to do any of those things then don't, Minecraft is fundamentally different from other open world games
Great video! I'm currently playing Metal Gear Solid V. Nearly all of the gameplay is a vast improvement over the previous versions; I love being able to approach a mission from multiple angles, having different weapon loadouts, exploring the map at my own pace, etc. I have a degree in Geography, so exploring terrain, looking at map data, working logistics, etc. really appeal to me. However, the only truly annoying aspect was the addition of a couple of barricades that cut the player off from reaching certain parts of the map. When you look at the topographic map in the menu, it shows a river that cuts through a section of mountain and connects two outposts; it makes sense for it to be a shortcut that serves as a reward for players who do some exploring. However, there's a point where there's a bottleneck, and there are some fallen tree branches and rocks blocking the way. It's supposed to look like a natural part of the terrain, but you _can't climb over it despite it being barely taller than you._ Even if you climb on top of a vehicle and try to jump over, it still won't let you. In any other part of the game, you'd be able to get over it easily. But for whatever reason, the game designers wanted to force you to go around the long way or get dropped off by a helicopter. It makes no sense and detracts from an otherwise excellent experience.
Great video, I kind of already have seen this concept in my actual life of suggestion and nudges versus being told and forgot about it. So this was a good reminder of the concept. Thanks for making this video
"You don't want jam on toast, you just want the jam that is on the toast" my mind blown fr
Excellent video as always!
In my own experience, I think what I always imagined open world games are supposed to give me is the feeling of the game's world being full and complete, that it doesn't just revolve around the one location we're stuck in, but that there's potentially more beyond. In real life, we are tied down by our obligations to the place we're living in, and games can often be a form of escapism from that, which is why I think a big appeal of open world games is the ability to say "f*** the main quest, imma go explore what's on that faraway hill over there for three hours" without any repercussions. However, it's most often unfeasible to predict where wach player might want to go, what they might want to do, what choice would they make if they had complete freedom, and it's impossible to make equal amounts of interesting content for it.
Which is why I think D&D (or other games like it) is, in this case, vastly superior in giving the players a sense of complete freedom and the feeling of the world being full and alive: because it's a game that is based on improvisation and creating the world around the players and adapting it to their whims, without the need to actually *create* the content in physical form.
Another game which in my opinion is incredibly good at letting the players dictate their own path and truly decide for themselves how they wanna play is (rather obviously) Minecraft. I know it counts more as a sandbox than open world, but it's still an excellent example of a game that gives you infinite possibilities while not overwhelming you with choices and not pushing you to follow a certain path. You don't have to do anything the game "wants" you to do unless *you* want to do them, and you can do them however you wish, and create your own story alongside it. And I think that's truly special.
Yeah, ttrpgs are unrivaled in their capacity on this front-indeed, it is the only game that can truly deliver on it. While sandboxes and procedurally-generated content, such as Minecraft, can produce effectively infinite content, that content is always going to be absent some dimensions of meaning, and by virtue of still being a video game built entirely on the parameters of its coding, is still inflexible in some ways. You can only interact with it in ways accounted for in the code. That said, I agree about Minecraft, and consider it to be _the_ sandbox, and the best video game baseline for creating other games in to-date.
Ttrpgs, by virtue of being generated by a human able to adapt the world, npcs, mechanics, and so on, is able to enable players to engage with the game in ways that were not initially accounted for, which video games are, for the most part, categorically incapable of, and that newly adapted/generated content can be made meaningful (such along plot terms) in a way that sandboxes cannot.
I just finished Unpacking and that is such a brilliant moment. Such a perfect example of environmental storytelling, story through mechanics - all the cool things a game can do
Something that leads me to feeling lost in open world games is that they can be often built as open world first and games second: you get basically every Ubisoft game where you have a checklist when you hit the map button, and it just feels like you're playing a game where you clear the map little by little, when real life doesn't tell you "oh, you need to go to the neighbourhood market to unlock the downtown supermarket" or "the supermarket is at this exact location across this big fucking map", because in one you get arbitrary restrictions and in the other you're just going from A to B in a padded game. I think one of the main things open world games can lack that drives the player forward is giving them purpose: you want that drive to do things, you want them to feel meaningful and you want your actions to spark the desire for more actions.
Playing an Ubisoft game is more often than not an overwhelming tour guide of the game, where the moment you pass the tutorial the game starts going "by the way you can do this that that this this that holy shit you'll have so much freedom trust me bro", where freedom without purpose is pointless; it's like the game's telling me I can eat old bread or the best pizza of my life and patting itself on the back for not making me eat pizza as the only option, bragging about how important that stale bread is as the game's "content".
Dragon's Dogma is fun: the game also limits the player with "oh, the story didn't give you the key item" sometimes, but the simple act of traveling in that game is generally fun: nights are dark as fuck and you have motivation to reach your destination or a camp before nightfall, and sometimes you might miss a camp and keep going at night, in a place that feels massive due to how little you can see of it. My first time fighting the griffin, I reached a canyon and went to the right instead of the left because of the quest marker, and so I missed a camp that could advance the time to the morning; as a result, I fought a bunch of bandits in a pretty small canyon that felt massive because I didn't see any of it, and the game didn't force me to do it at night just to get that experience. The whole game is pretty organic about these moments and makes both normal and fast traveling inconvenient to discourage the player to keep walking or teleporting around just to get to a camp and make the game bright again. Fighting is clunky, enemies can get spongy if you don't know their weaknesses or aren't well-geared and the game piles on these inconveniences and still rarely lets them go overboard - you just kinda deal with the game trying to stall your progress.
In BotW, I think rain and how it makes you slip, as well as weapon breaking are good examples. Rain is a prime example of the game telling you "no" on exploration (sadly, without a good reason, other than in that linear Zora section) whereas weapon breaking (while also generally disliked) ensures you'll always have something useful to find (and some neat throwing combos).
I'm currently playing Dragon Quest Monsters Caravan Heart, a GBA game that combines Dragon Quest's world map and dungeon exploration with a very harsh version of a mystery dungeon hunger system. It's extremely limiting at the start, constantly making you spend money on food and returning to camp often. But the best feeling is when you slowly build your caravan up so it can make a steady income and food supply a thing. It's a great example of taking that feeling of rebellion and creating a situation where the player gets to triumph over the limiter. It feels great to play because of it and the fact I still have to manage food once I have a steady flow keeps it interesting.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. A channel THIS good hasn't played or talked about Outer Wilds yet?!?! I am shoooketh.
Maybe my favorite game of all time, and I'm an old fogie that's played games since the late 80's.
I've bought it 3 different times so far, once for me, and twice for friends so they could play it.
You want I should get it for you too? 😅
Agreed, he needs to try it as soon as possible (I would love a video about it). It's on gamepass too!
*Daryl:* "you don't want open world games."
*Me:* "You're god damn right!"
Since you put Wind Waker in the thumbnail I was naturally thinking about Wind Waker the whole video. There's a couple sections in the early game where, if you sail in a certain direction, the King of Red Lions will say "nope it's not time to go there yet" and actually turn around and speed you towards his intended destination. I hated that so much!! Having the joy of discovery & control over your own vessel taken away from you sucked! What was much more fun was the experience of going to a new island, figuring out you couldn't do anything there yet, and leaving. That was actually a great motivator to progress the plot and get abilities - I definitely remember moments where I was like "hmm, to get this item, I need something that melts ice... well I've gotta be on the lookout for some sort of fire-related ability then!"
Total respect for including your sponsor at the beginning and adding timestamps, wish we had more CZcamsrs like that
"you don't want open world games, you want good open world games"
i just saved you 20 minutes
The section on reactance makes me think of how, for some people, there's no harsher insult they can hurl at a game than "the illusion of choice." I've seen people get genuinely angry weeks after finishing a Telltale Game when they found out that their choices did not have as big of an impact as they thought they had. Absolutely nothing about their actual play time changed, the story they experienced was still the same, but now they've decided the game sucked because they felt like they'd been retroactively cheated out of their choices.
I disagree that their gameplay did not change. That revelation informs them that the premise under which they engaged with the game was built on a false understanding, and that they were not actually making the choices that they thought they were. Besides taking away the meaning and investment that it had to them, some will also consider that a breach of terms between the game and player, if not an outright betrayal of trust.
To use a much more extreme parallel, it is equivalent to finding out that your spouse never actually loved you and had been cheating on you. It retroactively recontextualizes what you thought you knew and the choices that you made related to it. While some people prioritize the experience itself for the game, for others, that undermines the very reason they wanted from the game.
I've never understood that complaint about Telltale games. Of course your choices make a difference with the outcome of the game. Maybe certain things will happen regardless, but the path you took there will absolutely be different, and the consequences for that path will still remain. It's not about the destination, it's about the journey.
@@Amins88 The point is, with some choices being dramatically different, it *should* have a bigger impact on the ending. Like Bioshock 1 compared to Bioshock Infinite. At first glance, Infinite seems like a nice sequel experience of being in such a foreign city with these super powers and going after the obviously evil bad guy. But when you finally reach the end, the game reveals your actions are meaningless in the end. The impact you leave on this world is nothing. Who wants to be told that after investing time into this and being given multiple opportunities to overcome great adversity? Bioshock shows you what kind of person you are for sparing or harvesting the little sisters, even if that’s small compared to a divergent story path like a typical Visual Novel, or something like Fire Emblem 3 Houses. Acknowledging the player’s actions dramatically increases engagement. Look no further than Undertale for proof.
@@johnbuscher I'm not sure what you're point is. Bioshock wasn't made by Telltale Games. The Walking Dead series absolutely has multiple endings and branching paths. Even if results may be similar and the same people who are meant to die do so, the methods are different and your experiences with them shape multiple points of the story.
@@Amins88 The problem isn't that the paths are literally exactly the same, the problem is that there's a perception that they claim the paths diverge but they really don't, they run within 5 feet of each other the entire game to the point where the scenery looks identical regardless of which one you're standing on. Are those journeys meaningfully different then?
I definitely feel that internal reactance when trying to figure out which of my thousands of games to play and usually either deciding on none, or playing the same few games over and over. And that "too open" issue is why I haven't gotten far in Elden Ring.
Great video on a interesting topic
I guess there is one more reason I enjoy finding skips in games. It's not just a mix of puzzle and skill, it's enabling reactance lol
Amazing video!! I have been 'turned off' from open world games for about 2 years now. It just gets very overwhelming and becomes a list of tasks to complete for me. So, I have happily given up some of my 'freedom' and enjoy shorter, more linear 'visual novel' kind of games these days. When I do play those open world, its only for the traversal mechanics (think AC Unity parkour). I have specialized in game research during my Masters in Biomedical sciences, and holy fuck I love your videos, would love to talk to you further about this stuff man. I literally completed my thesis on gaming interventions for mental healthcare, and your videos are the closest thing on youtube that come close to that topic.
Pretty good vid with some issues. These studies look at average people not people who like open worlds. There is also nothing to say these two groups of normal people are the same. Basically the people in the first study who were mad about having their choice taken away could have been the outliers who liked having 36 options in the second test.
For example you talked about how people would be discouraged when given lots of options to do but I can think of two groups who wouldn’t care. Collectathon types see that there are 1000 feathers in a game and jump up and down with joy. And there are types like me who just don’t give a shit we see 1000 quests in Skyrim and don’t care about doing them all. The thought I could do ten runs and then all have different quests is awesome.
Different people want different experiences and the average of a study will not pick up well on that. Guiding a player like in new vegas by using high level enemies is totally fine but liner worlds just are boring to me
Really a fantastic to the point breakdown, i think this is a reason why i enjoy Metroidvania/search action type games so much even though they are not considered "open world" its a designed world with passages while having the sense of exploring a world. Maps in these sorts of games is also a really intertwining part with exploration, charting ones way forward especially when its a map thats more abstract making the player fill in the blanks is something i really enjoy.
Awesome video. I've experienced a lot of internal reactance with open world games and was never able to put a word to what I was feeling. I've always thought that there's something satisfying and calming about a great linear game. You know that you're getting the "true" experience, the experience that the developers intended you to have.
The three non-sandbox games that are the most anti-reactance that I've seen are The Stanley Parable, The Henry Stickmin Collection and Reventure. They're all comedies that relish in letting the player take weird or incorrect choices. They're also quite liberal in letting the player go back and try something different.
It feels really free while it is being experienced for the first time. But all the possible paths are "intended", which makes them feel like ticking a bucket list once one is more or less halfway there of discovering all paths.
I feel like this discussion can be boiled down to how much freedom is too much. Personally i think limiting the option early on is good for new player but for someone who's on second playthrough (or a veteran to the series trying newer games) early level tutorial might seems like unneeded and unnecesary boring section before the fun part.
Exactly. The first time my friend and I played through far cry 5, we had a blast doing all the main missions and going through the story. However, on our second playthrough, where we just wanted to do outposts and mess around with the sandbox, all the scripted sequences became really annoying and inconvenient
A revolutionary solution to this problem of reactance can be found in a game called Kenshi. Its main premise is that your individual character you make at the beginning has potential to be an inconsequential skidmark on your actual longplay. It gives you every option imaginable in theory, but it limits your starting skills and resources to such a degree that only a few options turn out to be practically viable strats, which you discover through frequent injury and death. However, once you either become strong or figure out a hack to beef up one or more of your characters' preferred skill trees, your options grow larger and larger. However, you're pretty much never really safe no matter how strong your characters are unless you've cheated, which is definitely very possible with the mod tool. I've never found a game that did a better job of giving full agency to the player.