The Structure of Open-World Games is Weird
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- čas přidán 30. 05. 2022
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While open-world games aim to be ambitious in ways few games are, they often end up following a structure that doesn’t actually support their worlds. In this video I examine why I think games like Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn and Red Dead Redemption 2 fall short, and how they could take ideas from other titles in order to make their worlds matter more.
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#rdr2 #horizonzerodawn #ghostoftsushima - Hry
hope you're having a good day. :)
I am thanks
I have been, thanks. Hope you're having a good day too :)
It's always a good day when you release a video. Hope yours is good too Raz
No, I hope YOU are having a good day raz. Take care of yourself
(｡•̀ᴗ-)✧
Thanks, you too!
I personally like the fact that in rdr2, you're just part of the world and that's it, the world doesn't revolve around you, and it makes it feel much livelier and basically revives the era it portrays and for me that is what actually makes it an open world game
Exactly
The one thing i think that could have been improved would be to have a better integration between the camp and open world activities and the story missions. Instead of them being prerequisites for progressing the story, have the camp morale not only affect the odd dialogue choices, but combat ability of the gang, and maybe some alternative outcomes within the bigger heists (things that go wrong and stuff).
@@galumir that could work but rockstar made it the Dutch way it is making money how ever you can to help the camp "supposedly " and we make side missions to make more money to supposedly help the camp
All that "aiding the camp" is does unfortunately is rise your honor a bit and filling the various needs nets you a higher passive income via the gang (though that is in the 10s of dollars at most over a week, so hardly any use when you get much more via missions anyways).
@@galumir They should have seasons that slowly change to show actual changes and also use more realistic physics like a game called Phsyicus where you actually had to solve some scientific problems which you had access to knowledge if you didn't know how to do like learning the boiling point of water.
I always go into open world games super excited to explore, but I normally quickly realize that 90% of the map is absolutely empty and exploration was never really the devs priority in the first place...
Sounds like you are just bad at exploring or only played the worst games out there
If the game has a quest marker like most do, they don't care about exploration. Nothing kills exploration like being told exactly where to go all the time.
you need Elden Ring
Or botw
Try subnautica
I actually always try to NOT progress the main storyline in these games, and get frustrated when side quests themselves can’t be completed unless you progress the main story.
that sounds like a bethesda open world, which I mean as negatively as possible lol
@@wesleywyndam-pryce5305 Skyrim didn't have this though. You could spend hours wandering into caves and doing weird side-missions without needing to do the main mission. I get that's it's fashionable to hate on Bethesda now, but let's not lie.
@@torchlight1785right? I've played Skyrim for like, 100h on the last months and I don't remember when was the last time I did a single main story quest lol
@@wesleywyndam-pryce5305 Bethesda games are actually the only ones which allow you to do anything you want without even starting the main quest (besides tutorial). Still, they do put this sense of urgency which the video talks about... they really handled this well in Morrowind, where there was no urgency at start and you felt like a true nobody
sameee i always try to explore as much as possible and do all sidequest before the main one just because
my favorite part of these games IS the mindless running around, completing side quests and collecting random trinkets. so much so, that sometimes i put 100+ hours into a game without ever finishing it.
Same. I've technically never even finished Skyrims main story even though I have 1000's of hours into it. I've done all the other questlines, just never finished the main one, cause I love trying out new characters and builds, and then doing literally everything in the game before the main story.
@@TheOnlyGhxst I think I only completed the main quest once, just for the story. I roleplay all my characters, so no two are the same. I play the same way in most open world games
The problem is that most open worlds games don’t encourage playing like that. It’s still fun, obviously, but a lot of players aren’t going to interact much with it because they’re busy with the story.
Emphasis on the never finishing. I would be ashamed if people saw how much time I put into these games just for me to only make it halfway through the storyline
@@ronaldwingate2192 why would you be ashamed for enjoying a game?
My 2¢: The core idea of open world has always been "I want to see what's on the other side of that mountain over there" - but that's not a genre, it's a setting. You can use that setting as the basis of an exploration/"adventure" game (Outer Wilds), an RPG (Skyrim), a platformer (Super Mario Odyssey), or even a puzzle game (The Pathless), but "open world" is not the genre by itself. It may simply be the case that trying to judge all these disparate titles by the same standard is always going to leave us disappointed in one game or another, no matter how you slice it.
At the same time, you make a valid point: Why bother setting something in an open world if the average player is just going to ignore it? The choice of setting is still a fundamental part of the design process, and developers would do well to seriously consider how an open world could interact with their core gameplay loop(s), as well as whether it's really worth the substantial time and effort which it takes to create such a huge playable area.
yeah agreed. for me open world is mainly just a game that isn't bound by level walls and a set path. Sometimes playing a non open world game i wonder whats on the other side of that wall or what if i went down the other hallway instead, and an open world just has to be a normal game with the freedom to take a little walk just to scratch that itch.
though it does get bonus points for having interesting stuff, im not particularly expecting an immersive world where everything is interactable with our current level of technology.
this man is knowledge
@NYKevin100 Very good comment! Especially the first part, I couldn't have said better.
As for the second part, I'd say that chosing the open world, at least when it comes to triple A titles, has as much of a marketing value, than it has a game design value. And on the past console generation (PS4/One, the Switch being kind of its own thing) that tried to cut the ties with the PS360 era of corridor spectacle shooters, emphasizing the freedom of movement was a logical progression if we talk design trends.
As for: "Why bother setting something in an open world if the average player is just going to ignore it?", I'm not sure how much what most players are going to see is supposed to factor in the game design. Not to make a nitpicky argument, but most player don't play games to completion, and devs still put endings to the stories, final bosses etc. Lead devs should encourage thinking globally about how the open-world re-enforce the qualities and mechanics of the game, sure. But thinking ofgame design in terms of just making things you are sure most players will use is very limiting imho.
@@SebLeCaribou a lot of games aren't finished due to the wealth of side content players are playing, often out if a need to grind or fear it won't be there when they come back later, and not due to the core content going unfinished because there's too much of it. You can play through many 500 hour open world games in the time it takes you to finish a linear and fairly short game like Doom 2016 or Eternal if you focus down the main story, often the thing driving you to side content is grinding levels/gear. And I'm not talking experienced playthroughs, I mean first time playthroughs. This has to do with the fact that the core story of both games results in a similar length due to how the stories are written in most cases.
Linear non-open world games tend to have a far higher completion rate, unless they are RPGs with grinding mechanics and gear/level checks. There's actually something in game design circles called the 20 hour rule. Most people will finish a 20 hour game if it is linear. It's when you surpass that when it gets to low completion rates. However, that doesn't seem as appealing for marketing reasons and is a bit restrictive. Instead those first 20 hours are designed to be as fun as possible.
The question then becomes: is it worth having something over there very few people won't see if that development time can be better allotted to focusing on ensuring the quality of what most people see being higher. That's a very complex question, but the general wisdom is "if it's more important to the experience the game is trying to give, then focus on that over other aspects when it comes to the icing"
For me the question to open world or not becomes "if the act of physically traveling from point A to B, in a free and open way, adds something to the intended experience or not, or does it detract from the experience of this particular game, and is really there because it's a trend or a marketing thing?". I like to say, if an open world game loses nothing but scenery and "exploration" by adding fast travel, the open world is not being leveraged to the advantage of the game. Fast travel is an opt out mechanic. You are using it to opt out of the travel. If the majority of people are going to find opting out of an aspect of your game when they are aware of it desirable when they got time to interact with that aspect, then that thing likely isn't worth having in the game. A good use of open world is finding new ways to travel through the same area, of the experience of crossing the world on your chosen path being about the challenges you faced along the way before you ever reached a destination, regardless of how much exploration I did on the way.
I like to say Skyrim is two games at odds, and it illustrates a game that does and doesn't benefit from open world. The first is a game about fighting against the return of dragons and the imminent destruction of the world as the chosen one. The second is a game about going on am adventure, joining factions, acting as a mercenary for those with work, and completely quests.
The game about dragons doesn't benefit from the open world, instead it's detracted by it. It's a sequence of linear levels with a load screen you hold a walk button through, and if you were to go off and do something else, well we're apparently on a time crunch here, the Dragonborn leaving to complete 5 side faction quest lines, clear dozens of dungeons, build a house, start a family, collect a dozen or so ancient masks, and become the chosen of several daedric princes means that apocalyptic dragon threat seems pretty minor, as it takes the fangs out of that story about imminent destruction.
Meanwhile the game about being an adventurer, exploring, and doing all that side stuff does benefit from the open world. A main quest that suited such would be something about leaving home, arriving in a strange land, or just trying to make a name for yourself as you meet various characters and prove yourself to them. Something that's inherently more open ended, perhaps with a vague goal like "somewhere out there is the answer to the question of where did the dragons go and why are they back?" Without any chosen one nonsense or imminent disaster.
That second game is what Skyrim is famous for. That first one is... Well Skyrim main quest which people famously brag about not playing because it's so pointless. The main quest detracts from the game, and the game detracts from the main quest.
So when does a main quest and open world together serve the betterment of a game? Most Zelda games actually. Even before breath of the wild these games were often open world, just without as much side content in most cases. The open world created an area that made the world feel worth saving. You felt the evil of the big bad, not from his story influence but from the way he made the world more dangerous to travel through. You got to know, learn, and unlock ever faster ways to navigate the terrain. You'd dart around, sometimes seeing the same place dozens of times as you past it to different destinations. The world slowly advances, and while there's minimal side content to do, there's just enough it feels as if you can spare time to do it in passing. It fleshes out the world the main quest has you saving, as you're forced to travel through it. It makes it seem like a world. Having an open world makes the stakes tangible, and having a main quest makes it feel you have a significant part in that world.
Open world games a lot of work. They shouldn't be made unless that work is beneficial to the goals of that particular game. Not every world needs to be fully realized. Sometimes a story leaves no time for that, sometimes the story of how you ran through a linear series of events is the right call.
Just another example of how popular video game genre terms are a convoluted mess lol
Ghost of Tsushima: Save your uncle at the castle
Razbuten: Ok, I am here
Ghost of Tsushima: Ok, but you are facing overwhelming forces
Razbuten: That's the best odds I have in years!
Then its an even fight haha
Rdr2 works here because the missions are presented often without urgency, and its natural to let some days pass inbetween many of the missions. Also many of the sidequest have impact on the gameplay and change the outcome of specific scenes and ways thing happens for Arthur, and makes for interesting conversations, and i think thats somehthing that intrigues alot of players into exploring as much as possible. Partly also because they want to experience the world with Arthur, with all his comments and funny interactions around. Another point is that this is a realistic game, the world doesnt revolve around Arthur, he isnt the chosen one or anything like that. He's just a "normal" guy.
Also, the gang members will come looking for you if youre gone for too long. I thought that was a really nice touch
I agree with you for the early chapters particularly 2 & 3. But for me personally, once I got into chapter 4 and the stakes started raising dramatically, it felt wrong (credit to the engaging story) to go on a hunting trip, or help out some random guy get a bunch of moonshine when ***spoilers***
Jack was kidnapped or John in Prison, or Dutch was fuelling a needless war for his own personal gain etc. I didn’t really feel comfortable taking time to do Stranger missions and explore outside of the St Denis Church and debt collection missions until after completing the story 100%
Ghost of Tsushima did side quests right, even the smaller ones. Pretty much all side quests revolved around helping people displaced by war, which is the central theme of the game. And some of the core side quests take it a bit further by revealing how the enemy can sometimes be someone close to you.
The side quests in GoT are extremely boring and dragged out.
@@GodOfWarConnoisseuryou mean the entire Zelda game? It’s such boring trash of a game.
@@Jim-BagelWho said amything about zelda tsushima fanboy😂 ghost of tsushima has horrible repetitive side missions
@@Jim-Bagel Yeah both. But Zelda's world is interesting to explore regardless of side quests' quality, and GoT + all the other ubisoft format games have an inch deep mile wide world, while rarely adding interesting enough stories to offset that
@@k--musicthere is nothing to find tho, only shrines, when the players figures that out, the game is over
The messed up sense of urgency was the worst for me in Dying Light. The other characters are infected and URGENTLY need the antidote. At best they have maybe a day or two left to before people start dying. This stayed the same throughout most of the story, so I always felt like I didn't have any time to engage in side activities. I had to go from story quest to story quest because if I didn't it felt like time would run out and all my allies would die
Oblivion had the same issue. The emperor died, the fate of the entire world depends on you delivering this amulet to his only surviving heir. Oblivion gates are opening across the world and hey wait why are you joining the thieves guild and hunting deer? Skyrim, omg the fate of the world is in your hands. You MUST tell the people of Riverwood about the dragons! Then go over to the Jarl and alert him OMG the greybeards have called you, burial grounds are opening across the world the entire universe is about to be taken over!!!! No time to get drunk and marry that hagraven wtf get back to the blades headquarters and kill Anduin.
Meanwhile in Morrowind. Uhh hey, here's this letter. You should deliver it if you want. I mean its the least you can do for us freeing you from prison and all. Feel free to get distracted nothing is really going on yet. Oh hey adventurer, thanks for giving me this letter immediately now gtfo and go join some guilds and explore or something. I don't really have anything else for you to do yet you should get more experience.
This is unrelated, but where is your profile picture from?
@@Stiksta Morrowind really does have a charm that Oblivion and Skyrim didn't get right.
My exact problem with yakuza 0, it's not that bad because it's more that the story is so engaging rather than a artificial urgency like dying light, but I always felt bad for doing the awesome side quests because I knew that I had very important things that I should be doing instead
@@prcr364 generic one from Google images. I just looked up profile pictures and eventually found it
As a geologist the best open world I've played is death stranding, despite the rain heavily affecting the soil degradation , its the only game i've seen that the geologic formation actually makes sense and its not only there as a substitute to invisible walls (sorry english is not my first language)
As a gamer, Death Stranding isn't a game.
@@armyofninjas9055 Just cause you don't like the mechanics doesn't make it less of a game.
death stranding hooked me in so much. I loved the journey of it.
@@coldfrost3 I agree with the sentiment and everything but I think it was just a joke, they were just poking fun at the game.
"English is not my first language." Goes ahead and speaks impeccable English. Tf is wrong with you lol
I’m reminded of one of my first and favorite truly open world games, Morrowind. Technically you could go after the final boss straight off the boat, though you’d have a hard time without either leveling up or using exploits. There was no sense of urgency in the main quest, and you were actually encouraged to go out and adventure, so it felt natural to do so.
That was my first too. Really wish Skyrim had taken more from that structure. Caius actually sending you to the guilds to become an adventurer before leveraging your growing reputation is brilliant storytelling imo, and makes the side quest lines feel legitimately connected to the main plot. In Skyrim, it really feels like the guilds are nothing more than a distraction from the main quest of saving the world. Wouldn't it be nice if we were supposed to seek allies among one or more guilds and then those allies joined us against Alduin?
Caius straight up tells you "go do some side content and explore a bit" very early in the story. It's not even enforced, you can rush through if you want. He actually does this more than once. It's such a small thing that does so much helping to getting immersed in the world.
Played Morrowind for the first time a year ago and absolutely loved it. It's now one of my all time favourite games.
Morrowind is the best Elder scrolls game
I was a 10 year old kid with English as a second language when I first played Morrowind. I wouldn't learn SHIT about the story until like 10 years later after actually putting the time and effort in but I still had a lot of fun messing around back then, I should give it a new try. Morrowind's story is DEEP in TES lore, much unlike Skyrim's main quest. I still had my hundreds of hours with Skyrim, but Morrowind definitely dropped you off the boat without a clue as to what to do if you haven't been paying attention. In Skyrim it's simple, follow the quest markers and eventually kill the evil dragon.
This is why I love Sable! The whole objective is to just explore and find your place in the world. Every "side quest" is character growth and enforces the themes.
You have great taste
as you said "save Zelda" sounds like an immediate objective, that is how i played twilight princess for example, you dont know if saving zelda will take 10 hours or 100 hours, while "defeat Ganon" really sounds like "finish the game" which is obviously not something players will want to do immediately after the start of the game, unless they are speed runners
I'd argue save Zelda sounds like the exact same even if I get your point, sort of. That could easily mean finish the game. For all a player cares this could entail doing everything in the game and that could be the ending cutscene.
@@anecro not really, in many games you rescue zelda early, even if she is captured again later
@@anecro Saving someone always sounds more urgent than defeating an opponent.
Defeating an opponent can be a very long term goal, as even though they can commit horrible atrocities in the time you take to do it, you may not be as concerned as say, if someone you love needs rescuing. The stakes become a lot more personal at that point, and you tend to worry more about what could happen if you don't go soon. It's just an inherent part of our brains to worry about our loved ones I find xD.
I felt the biggest "load off" the sense of urgency in Breath of the Wild was not only the shift in objective, but the shift from an _active_ world to a _passive_ one. Usually, if you don't rescue Zelda immediately, that comes with something additional that you're trying to _prevent_ (be it greater harm to Zelda herself, or some apocalyptic event). In Breath of the Wild, that damage is already done. Narratively, the world won't get any worse if you _don't_ immediately stop Ganon, so you're implicitly encouraged to take your time to do things right this time.
You can even kind of see the difference within the same game with the cases of the Divine Beasts. If you go to Death Mountain, the Gorons face an active crisis with their Beast and worsening eruptions. Their homes and livelihood are under active threat, and once I entered the area, I didn't want to leave until that was resolved. When you leave Death Mountain again, the world is just... as it is, suffering passively, and it's easy to imagine the land getting no better or worse if you left it alone another hundred years.
Strangely this is why I quit playing the game. I felt no urgency or reward for playing it. I will pick it up every few months for a few hours but I’ve been playing it for years and probably only about 60% through it
I was literally thinking this same thing as I watched this vid! :) ---> main comment
Even a simple misspelling can ruin an interpretation. That's why even such a small error can have a great impact.
@Thélos Sensei Opinion on literary fiction versus genre fiction?
BotW is more of a "mild wild, inch deep" that Skyrim - but hey, its not the same old crap Zelda always does, so lets all cheer!!!!
I liked how Enderal handled this by giving you periods where other characters were taking over the Main Quest and told you to do other things in the meantime. Its a simple thing but it gives the player the feeling of "this urgent matter is being handled, but I can take a break from it". That approach would already help a lot with the classic "the world is ending like, tomorrow" kinda story.
I do think studios kinda force Open Worlds into their games just because it sells better, so many of them dont gain anything but empty hours of repetetive side quests from having an open world.
I think that's one of the best parts about Elden Ring. They integrated the main story and side stories so well with the overall open world, and nothing really feels out of place.
Some side quests can even change the ending of the game or give you gears that greatly boost your survival.
No they did not.
@@evacody1249 Yea what the hell? That was easily the worst part of the game, it was laughably bad. The (side) stories themselves were fine, but actually completing the stories without looking up a walkthrough is really unlikely for the average player as it requires the player to go back to previous locations without any clear indication when and where. The game excels in a lot of things, but the quest system and integration of the stories? That was terrible. I get that this is a design choice, but the casual player is going to miss most of the side content that way.
@@evacody1249 nuh uh!
@thijsf395 it's definitely not new player friendly, but I like the quest system because it's somewhat mysterious from not having clear goals. You often stumble upon the next step unexpectedly and it brought me excitement. There's often help from item descriptions, but its still not clear cut, and that was intentional. It's not meant to play like other games
I honestly get overwhelmed at "open world" games due to my completionist mindset. I feel like I have to do everything. If they would change the open world aspect I would have way more motivation to do side quests for story reasons. That would be so much more satisfying rather than feeling like I'm checking off another thing on a laundry list of side quests to do.
Yup. I've done one 100% playthrough of Dragon Age: Inquisition and never touched it again. Dragon Age Origins and 2 on the other hand I've played multiple times.
that is how you are supposed to feel. Collectathon is a dead genre, it got shoved into open world node stompers for the purpose of profit. Every game is a reskinned GTA, where you follow the minimap markers and set waypoints or even fast travel, sometimes to places you haven't even been yet. And doing the side quests is sometimes at a detriment to the game. For example, leveling up in The Witcher 3 means the final boss is just going to be significantly easier, thus less fun, and the game's level scaling does not fix that.
Sometimes I feel like we just have to get past the completionist mentality to enjoy these games. The one thing that made me give up on Pokemon games as a kid was the "gotta catch em all" mindset. I don't like drudgery and I don't like people telling me I'm a fake fan because I didn't check everything off a video game checklist. I play games until they stop being fun. Once I let go of being a completionist, games got more fun.
I love open world games because I like having free reign and doing what I feel like doing without feeling like I should be doing something else. I like creating a version of the main character in my head and only doing the things that I think my imagined character would do. When people play Skyrim, we don't try to do everything in one playthrough. We play multiple times and go down different paths. Some open world games try to straddle the middle, but I honestly think that they should just lean into saying "you're not _going_ to complete everything in one playthrough and you just have to deal with that."
@@2GoatsInATrenchCoat Sure. You can try to play it your way to have more fun with it but a mor eimportant thing to accept is that games like this are essentially cable TV. They are not the diamonds in the rough they want you to think they are. Some of them might feel like a special experience because of the writing or the message in the story, or the graphics are amazing and the animations seem very human, or the voice acting is top notch but really what happened was they pumped millions, tens of millions of dollars into this thing to make it feel like that, doesn't mean the gameplay is solid, and rarely will they stack up to a real game. I'm sure I may sound biased, but I just judge every game on the same metric, nothing gets a free pass, these games can't stand up to critique and we have to make excuses to like them.
The yakuza games are perfect because the open worlds are so small and densely packed with things to do
Morrowind fixed the urgency thing *so* easily. "Dude, you look like a wet paper bag, go do some freelance work and come back when you're useful."
It also means the main story isn't as interesting as a result since its relying on the side content to do the heavy lifting.
@@FraserSouris that's not accurate at all. The main story is amazing and focuses on the world around you and it's history as well as how you interact with it. Forcing you to do side quests and interact with other people means that it feels much more natural whenever those people decide to help or hurt you. I hate games, books, and movies where it's just hey this guy's the main character because he's the main character! The "Chosen One" who does nothing to deserve the accolades or ire they receive.
@@FraserSouris It's not about making the side content do heavy lifting, it's about working into the narrative breathing room where the player can reasonably exist and perform activities in the games world without a barely managed or forced sense of constant urgency disrupting the players experience of it.
@@FraserSouris Not really. The main storyline unfolds in pieces where the urgency is never "right now" with a quest marker of "right here," so it never suffers from the weirdness of the main character knowing exactly what they need to be doing and choosing to do other things instead.
Honestly, exploring or not, I generally just appreciate the freedom, makes the world feel more immersive to me.
Just like real life, a truly open world, you don’t have to leave the beaten path. A real open world doesn’t expect you to explore every corner of it, it just merely allows for it. In your life there’s thousands of places you’ve passed and not visited. I think you’re asking for something most people don’t actually want. The option to explore is great, the requirement only works for some players.
Games should never be just like real life.
So your argument is wrong.
If we liked real life, we wouldn't be playing games.
So don't judgenthem by it.
@@lefterismplanas4977 I don’t disagree with your point but I disagree with your conclusion. I also play games to escape real life but I don’t want to be required to drudge across every inch of the universe.
there's no point allowing for extra exploration if the devs aren't going to put any effort into making sure that exploration is satisfying
@@ennayanne I agree and I also think satisfying and required are independent concepts. The exaggerated take away from this video was that the author needed to be forced to explore because he wanted to explore but just wouldn't if it wasn't required. My arguments are it being optional is part of what makes it satisfying instead of tedious.
@@Diamonddrake I didn't really get the idea that he wanted to be forced to explore everything, just that engaging with the world itself should be part of the core game experience rather than chasing quest markers
Although not an open-world game, yooka-laylee and the impossible lair does almost exactly what you recommended ghost of tsushima do, you can tackle the final level of yooka-laylee at any point, but it is so difficult that it is almost impossible to beat it without the extra lives you get from completing levels.
I have not played it, but it has been on my radar for a long while, and I am almost positive I will love it because of that structure.
I would consider many metroidvanias as open world games
Huge fan of Impossible Lair! Having so many necessary puzzles in the over world also helps break up the platforming and tie the levels together into a greater whole
@@FluffehTheSheep The main point of Metroidvanias is that they're NOT open worlds though? Ability-gated exploration is kind of the main feature of games like that?
Horrible game
Honestly the intrigue of open worlds is the world itself, the exploration is key to making it work, if the player has a reason to go over every hill and look under every rock because the world itself is Interesting and fun to explore, you've nailed it. Adversely, if you have a large area with very little to actually experience within the world you may as well be playing a standard linear map game with Interactive loading screens (walking from objective to objective)
This! The world itself should be welcoming for the players, to a point that they want to explore. Both extremes are bad that are 1. Shallow world with so called activity to just make the game an open world, 2. Too much focus on side activity to a point where it becomes necessary almost compulsory in order to finish the game.
I agree with this, my issue is it’s really hard to make an open world feel incredible more than one play through. I LOVED elden ring, I’ve played it twice, I’m about 1/3rd through my 3rd playthrough but I’m hit with this feeling of fatigue just going throughout the world this most recent time. This may sound like I’m
being hard on the game because it did give me two great play throughs but all of FromSoft’s other games I’ve played over and over again with no feeling of wanting to stop. DS3, Bloodborne, Demons Souls, DS1, they all feel reasonable to start a new file but something about Elden Ring, because it is open world, I feel the fatigue so much harder.
Yes yes yes! Prime examples:
Fallout: New Vegas
Fallout 4
FNV is a game that makes you WANT to go over to the giant green dino and actually gives you choices and in a vault somewhere there’s a really powerful gun just hiding in a corner, so you want to look in every corner because there may be a cool gun here.
Fallout 4 is railroady. You can’t have dynamic dialogue, you can go everywhere and every enemy scales down so that they’re easy as shit and like…that’s not fun. You can go anywhere sure but there’s no reason to do so, it’s all the same random enemies and the same scaled down objects and stuff in safes.
Yes and no. I am I would say driven by 30% challenge 70% immersion in games. Which means exactly a world itself is the biggest pull for me. Ironically I have really enjoyed very few open world games. The world for me nearly always falls apart. Because these games are designed with 5335 different play styles in mind I find myself drawn in by individual sections and then even more disappointed when the section doesn't interact with the rest of the game or worse makes the games world feel fake because it wants to make smth feel threatening but I over leveled on side missions and gameplay of a threatening story feels trivial.
I’d say the Witcher 3 has quite a good open world. There is a lot of stuff off the beaten track and even though the loot system is not a strong point, there is usually a neat little story behind most random encounters or interesting spots. And it’s quite normal to not being able to find everything even a few times through the story. I wouldn’t say it openly encourages exploration as much as it piques your curiosity enough that you go out anyway.
Maybe helped by some of the in-game lonely planet guides.
The DLC does the rewards a bit better, and really perfects storytelling.
Horizon, great as it may be, does feel a bit empty for me.
The Fallout Games have quite strong open worlds, so does Skyrim, even if it does suffer from its age.
You and I have totally different approaches to gameplay and that's why I LOVE your videos!! I love hearing about different methods, different motivations, different values. It's so interesting to me! Genuinely excellent content. 💚
I feel like urgency can be used as an effective game mechanic if the passage of time has actual consequences and the save system allows the player to rewind to important points.
For games like The Witcher and RDR2 I always create reasons in my head to explore the open world or do side quests. For example, I might think "oh I'll try and go to the top of that mountain to get a good vantage point of the area". Or maybe "I'll do that side quest so that I can make some extra money to feed my horse". Its an easy way to add immersion and give me a reason to explore even when under time pressure by the story.
yeah I remember doing the same in just cause 3
the world of this game was empty and boring , so I would always use my imagination to enjoy the game like imagining an action scene like car chases and ww3 battles etc.
of course that was all in the past ,if I did the same thing nowadays I'm sure I'll delete the game after 2 hours of playing
Well in real life you don't get to go single mindedly go do one important thing. The world exists with or without you. The witcher works fantastically because Geralt has his objective but the world is full of people who have their own problems and need his help.
@@acendiatstudios6517 buddy i thinks your in the wrong comment section
witcher 3 is freaking boring ngl
@@sparrow7551 that’s called playing in the sandbox.
Personally this has never been a problem because I'm naturally curious about the open world. In rdr2 for example it never bother me that the details don't contribute to the story because it made the world feel alive like it had nothing to do with me and I was just lucky enough to experience it. But yeah i do get the disconnect you would feel if this is not your approach.
Exactly, what I was thinking. I like the fact that in rdr2, you're just part of the world and that's it, the world doesn't revolve around you, and it makes it feel much more lively and basicaly revives the era it portrays
Agreed. It’s a feeling that the world doesn’t exist just because of your character.
Yeah these sorta videos are ridiculous. In gaming you just take these sort of stuff for granted and go with it.
Also, Assassin's Creed has been utter garbage for many years with shit game design and yet these YTers criticize 3 top games of the genre. It's just nitpicking. You can't simply make an open world game as detailed as RDR2 and include the story freedom that this dude wants
Absolutely agree! I felt like one tiny part of a larger world in RDR2 which is exactly how real life is. I loved that not everything had an effect or tied into the main story. To me, that's one of the biggest draws of that game.
Same. Events and such that had nothing to do with the main story felt like a real world to me.
i like when games have an explanation of who the different difficulty modes are intended for and when there's a featured difficulty level labeled with "intended experience" or something. it makes it a lot easier to accurately place myself and i've found i'm a lot more likely to play at a higher difficulty and have a better experience
I totally agree that side quests disconnect with the urgency of main missions. It annoys me because when I play a game the first couple times, I'm role playing. So I often think "there's no reason my character would go over there" or "my character isn't the kind of person who would accept this quest, so I won't" consequently I lose out on a lot of content unless it's a game I have a particular passion for and therefore play more than once or twice.
Yeah, I think that’s the thing with me too. The first time I play a game, I follow my characters logical moves. And the idea of them wasting time on a side quest that isn’t necessary just goes against my own internal logic. But there are also “what’s over there” people who can’t ignore a chance to stray off the direct path. So I think it really comes down to what kind of player are you and how who you are comes in conflict or balance with how the game works.
i`ve always loved how morrowind, as part of its main quest, has a character directly tell you to do a bunch of side quests before you continue with your mission
Sarcasm?
@@dragonhold4 no
AC valhalla does this too!
Well, most of the time the characters say something along the line of "we'll wait at destination until you are ready"
But one time (for as far as I've played yet) the PC was explicitly told to not immediately follow for the main quest line but to do some side stuff first.
I use this same technique in every DnD game I run-telling players to basically “go outside and play” leads to the best and silliest quests in the game.
@@dragonhold4 morrowind's main quest slowly builds up urgency, it doesn't just start with you're the chosen one who will do blah blah blah, now go do side quests instead of your main mission. you hear about a prophecy and aren't even sure (obviously it's a game so we know the character is but the actual in game character doesn't) and as you explore the world and do side quests along with the main quest you learn more and more about the prophecy. Morrowind doesn't have level scaling in the same ways the newer elder scrolls games did so you can't just only do the main quest and expect to be powerful enough to progress.
For once, I want the "fight the last boss at the beginning of the game" trope to have weight on the game. If you beat the boss at the beginning, the games story goes on, and maybe the boss survives it, but it changes how the antagonists view you and the entire course of the story as well as how aggressive they are. Could even function as a NG+ mechanic.
@@lucasjsnyder Shadows Die Twice
I want NPC's to have regret when they see me running from the bonfire towards them
zelda botw
@@madraszewskaPL bad example, nobody gives a shit in the game after you beat the boss. Kinda the only drawback from that game for me. I wanted the story to continue but it just stops there.
Shadow of war allows orcs to remember you which is amazing and they can seek revenge and turn against you if you get them to join ur army
My biggest problem with urgency is when they make so many of the main quests seem so urgent so I'll rush to go do them and basically finish the game and, being a completionist myself, skip all the side quests.
Dying light 2 does a good job splitting up missions into day and night, so unless you want to fast forward to day you can "force" yourself into not following them so closely
I think New Vegas has a brilliant open world.
Not only do they use thought-out landmarks (like Dinky the Dinosaur) to draw you to where they want you to go, but by following the suggested route of the main quest (which it uses those landmarks for too) you're basically served a tour guide of the setting. You learn who the big players are and what the conflict of the game's about, and by the time you enter the Strip, you are brought up to speed on what will happen going forward.
New Vegas is one of the best games of all time. From the good character development system, the World, the choices in the World, etc...
New Vegas is miles better then lets say Witcher.
weird how the whole industry "forgot" about New Vegas and how it exemplifies excellent open world design... even though the players never shut up about it
But are Cazadores, that force you to travel away from Vegas, *really* excellent open world design?
But, jk, I think I get what you mean - the part where it forces you to deal with "optional" content focused on the different belligerents of the local upcoming battle, right?
@@AusSP They did a good job of placing key points of interest along the path that most people will end up taking not get to New Vegas. Assuming you actually stop to check things out, you’ll know what’s up with all the major factions and even grab a couple of companions by the time you finally reach the city.
@@thedapperdolphin1590 and it levels you up for the city.
My only complaint about Vegas is travel speed, walking (i know it considers it running) takes forever and the next fastest option it fast traveling between previously visited locations. (Which on the 360 resulted in a lengthy loading screen, backwards compatibility from current gen eliminates this issue) Note that even in a game like RDR2 where you ride a horse, travel speed should be considered more in terms of time between destinations not litteral mph or m/s.
@@AusSP beyond that, i think the landmarks and stuff like that. I wanted to find the man who shot me real bad, but i just had to see wtf was that giant dinossaur, also kinda following the trail
the game just hasnt aged well
As much as I love big sprawling worlds in games (and I love them a *LOT* ), bigger doesn't always mean better. Sometimes it's better to have a smaller map that's chock full of shit than big plains of very little to nothing in between. Yes bigger can have some advantages but they aren't enough nowadays
That's not the point of the video, haha. ^^
That said, i don't entirely agree with you. Space too big and too empty is just as bad as space too stuffed with things. Sometimes, it's good to have empty space.
For instance, if a game has a desert area? Well... you'll want to be careful not to put too much there.
God of War does this amazingly. It’s “open world” with a linear story, and the map is very small compared to most open world maps but there’s just so much to do in the map and every part of the map is so full of detail that even doing side dungeons feels like you’re on the main quest. Everything is close together but feels miles and miles apart
Good example of this is the Yakuza series in my opinion, smaller explorable world full of things to do.
Bigger is always worse
I wish I could agree with you but unfortunately Elden Ring proved you wrong. Apparently people value quantity > quality is enough nowadays, and the game simply being bigger than the previous games have already led to people rating it one of the best games they have ever played simply because it lasted over 100 hours. It's pretty sad
I love open worlds. Some of the best games I ever played were open world games. It's usually about how you do the open world because it sucks to have a huge world and nothing to do in it. So as long as they implement plenty of stuff you can do in the open world, it's a ton of fun.
I’d be curious of your take on Spider-Man, which has a strong linear story - but because it’s not built on some singular end goal, it had pauses built in that felt natural where the mainline locks up for a bit and you go exploring. It is, eh, “forcing” you to rather than building the story itself around it, but it was also a bit of a relief having a narrative which didn’t force a continual sense of urgency on you.
So, one minor issue with the notion of having everything in an open world contribute to the main story... a lot of open world fans don't really want that.
Much if the appeal is all the small, entirely self contained stories that are set in the same place, with similar themes.
Basically, a lot of folks are specifically looking for an anthology, not a novel.
Yeah, a good bit of his take in this video is based off the type of gamer that is more goal oriented. They need what they're doing to be connected to someform of forward progress. They don't want to explore just to kinda get lost in the world they need a good push to get get into the openess of the game. It's not a bad thing but, at least in my experience my favorite part in an open world game is when I'm free to ignore anything related to the main quest for the next 20 hours and just see what the world has to offer.
That's the really funny part... the norm is already more or less what he says he wants. Sidequests provide money, gear, xp, which is global progression and advances any other goal you have, but also have their own goals.
What he's actually complaining about is having multiple potential goals at once. He's attributing it to being goal/progression/etc oriented, but those are things that drive a lot of sidequesting.
Funny thing is, two of my favorite games are both technically open-world (in the older sense). LoZ: Majora's Mask and Shadow of the Colossus. They approach the open-world dilemma in opposite ways. SotC is the goal-oriented kind, where the only things you can actually do are a progression. MM is the opposite, where many of the things you can do have nothing to do with stopping Skull Kid but instead with helping the locals of Termina.
@@kreiskhaos8516 The thing with Majora is that it was writen and designed around temporal flexibility. The 3 cycle and manipulation of time are both plot devices and gameplay mechanics.
So unless you're planning on slapping time manipulation (beside smoking a blunt to pass time) onto every open-world, that isn't a good study case.
@@SonnyFRST The time factor doesn't matter in regards to what he said about MM...
Interesting thoughts as always, Raz, but I'm not sure how I feel about trying to push exploration into a more mandatory aspect of progression. It would make sense for some titles, certainly, but a big draw of exploring an open world for some folks is specifically because it is optional and can be picked up or put down at any time. It's nice if a game offers a reward for exploring but I think I'd also get irritated pretty quickly if I instead felt like a game was actively punishing its players for not wandering through enough random forests or some such. If not handled carefully, mandatory exploration could easily turn the joy of discovery into a slog of collect X number of doodads or sprint ten-thousand steps to unlock the next story beat. I doubt many would be satisfied with such a system. Still, there's potential for a better balance with some of the options you've brought up. On the other hand, there is definitely not a one-size-fits-all solution here, either. I suppose in the end it all boils down to case-by-case considerations and game devs putting some serious thought into exactly how they want to present the worlds of their games to their players.
I love exploring, but nothing is worse than feeling finally ready to take on the main story and the realizing you need to do some mandatory exploring first. it makes exploration feel like a grind.
I kinda got that feeling in botw (not trying to start discourse, just a personal example). I got sick of seeing shrines and koroks after a while because it felt like I was just grinding items.
We should explore because we want to, not because we need 500 more dollars in the camp ledger before we can progress any further
Fully agree
I wish some AAA studio could have the balls to make an open-world game and just fucking drop the player in head first with no direction, no map, no crutches.
I totally agree but I think that a careful balancing of the progression can help there.
I hate with all my being the "fetch these 5 things from the furthest corners of the map" missions, because they become not really about exploring but about checking a list, which is mandatory art certain pre-determined points in the story. Instead, the cool thing about the pokemon approach is that you don't need to do anything specific at any specific time, you just need to get to know the environment, in whatever fashion and art whatever pace you want.
If you don't want to break the pace of the story, you can also make the two a choice: if you explore more you get *whatever progression item* that lets you (if you so wish) skip certain quests that would require you to find them. That way exploring can provide rewards for whatever objective the player is working on without being mandatory at any point.
In a sense, BotW does that by littering the world with shrines both on the "critical path" - i.e. the main roads that lead to the cities and the markers on the map - and in the most remote places of the world, providing enough rewards to beat the game both for those who want to follow the story and those who would just rather climb anything that stands in front of them
@@johnnybensonitis7853 umm... Fromsoftware?
I actually think Ubisoft handles this pretty well. In the latest Ghost Recon games, the main task is destabilising the regime within the map, and all side missions, even collectibles, tie into this task. In the Assassin's Creed series, side missions are usually about killing Templars or liberating people, all of which are things that the player as an Assassin should feel the need to do even if it isnt part of their main overall goal.
Playing Witcher 3 for the first time. I feel like a major improvement would be to get rid of mission markers. The overall story of finding Ciri would be to actually have to explore the world to find her. As it is, you don't have to look - you just go marker to marker along the main quest. If you remove the markers, it's too big a world, with too many unrelated quests, so that alone might be too difficult and frustrating to play. One idea to resolve that would be some sort of quest tree structure where when you complete one, it references another one, with them all ending up funneling you where you need to ultimately end up. That is, for all of the existing quests, just have the final interaction say something like "there was a bunch of chatter about something happening in X town" or whatever. Maybe that would get old and repetitive too...
10 years ago, the Mass Effect trilogy has shown that you do not need vastly oversized areas to create a huge, interesting and exploreable world and to tell amazing storys.
And more recently the Yakuza/Judgement games. Small areas but tons of story
Arkham City had a small map too but it was amazing because the content was packed into that small map. It meant that every few building there was something interesting happening.
Not to mention Halo lol
I played the original Mass Effect like last year and I think it could've used some smaller, more detailed maps. :P
@@vibratoryuniverse308 xactly. New Mombasa is such a fantastic place and while I wish it was more dynamic it feels definitely like a place.
It is always perfectly okay for a game to design something to be "just for fun" rather than be tied to the plot or contribute to something necessary. Sometimes it's nice to have purpose to your actions, but not everything needs one for it to be enjoyable.
Honestly I prefer it not all being tied to the main plot. Often when playing games I will just finish defeating a boss or a big part in the main quest and I feel like I need a break. I need to just go do something else that doesn’t affect the main story at all.
True, but I think people have different definitions of what's enjoyable. Some like open worlds for the pure fantasy of being there, so frivolous activities build that feeling. But since people I think experience games like a book, so activities that don't matter are like wasted plot threads. Of course, not everyone is all one way or the other, which makes game design tricky.
I would argue that exploration feels better when you know it's not the goal but you are drawn into it without really knowing it. When your sense of curiosity becomes too strong for you to just ignore it, that's when it feels more rewarding. If exploration is the goal it wouldn't feel like you're making your own discovery if it's blatantly the encouraged.
But if in doing so you are neglecting an urgent main story, the two elements are working against each other. That is the criticism.
I feel like the Arkham games nailed the side missions because it makes sense with the story that has multiple different villains so it is fitting that Batman would go on side missions because he’s trying to solve multiple cases, because he’s Batman. It can have a linear story but the side missions can fit within that linear story and make sense.
I don't care about "beating" a game, aka following the main story until the end. I want to role play, period. And all the time I take for myself in the open world is what contributes to my personal idea of fun.
Oh, yeah, same! When I played Bully again after a decade, I just want to enjoy myself punching some bullies and getting chased by some prefects and also, for me, I love open-world because it doesn't shove to your face the story that much (maybe some open-world games do but the games that I've played under this genre, doesn't). And it feels like you control the world, you are living in real world in a way where you can control your pace, do something fun or ridiculous. And in Bully, i think managing your time was executed pretty well (you have a clock, and you have a choice if you want to go to class, or do a mission, or do some side quests, etc.) as well as the seasons or holidays, like winters, Christmas and Halloween. Hoping for a remake or remaster from Rockstar Games even though it's highly unlikely.
THIS, can't wait for Starfield
Well it's interesting that this is basically the complete opposite side of the issue, and also I feel that both you and the video are right, but also wrong, that open world RPGs are made for both of you, but also neither of you.
You want exploration, adventure, and no direction.
The video author wants direction and a sense of progression.
Trying to fit both into one game leaves you with some disagreeable qualities for both parties. You would have much more fun in a game like Subnautica or Outer Wilds. The other person would have much more fun in a game like Bioshock or XCOM 2. These games are just much better at their respective thing than a game that tries to do both.
I don't want a game to ever truly end
@@momothewitch I feel like games like skyrim are perfect for role players. The protagonist isnt voiced and you can choose dialogue. You dont have to care about the main storyline at all since your character isnt forcefully portrayed as though he does.
I get what you mean, but I guess I'm tailor-made for open world games, as I cannot WAIT to explore the entire world.
Single player open world are the only games I really get any enjoyment out of personally. I don't really understand the issue of needing every side quest to tie perfectly in with the main story line, as long as those things makes sense in the world that has been set up. Games are not movies or books to me. I find good, coherent stories important for immersion, but going on an adventure into the bushes to find something interesting or find out what a marker on my map is leading to is just as immersive to me and doesn't give me any sort of panic to finish the main story. I always have in the back of my head that this is just a game and I only feel a panic inducing urgency when I'm given an explicit timer. This doesn't break the immersion at all for me as long as what I'm doing on the side is interesting and rewarding.
I often get tired of exploring after a while and then it triggers my OCD along with FOMO and my anxiety.
So I feel like I have to see and do everything in order to get it all completed and not miss out any side quest that might be cool or missing on some nice reward, but at the same time I feel like a drag after a while and can't wait to finish? the chores and progressing the story!
I'm playing through Horizon Zero Dawn at the moment and just completed everything I''ve found to be completed on the first area, now after arriving on the second area the next main and side missions are on the other fucking side of the map! And I'm already feeling like "oh crap, here we go again! It will take me forever to arrive there as I'll have to stop along the way to fight the new robot dinosaurs, light camps and conquer bandit camps and the missions are so far away that I even if I just try to go there skipping everything it will take forever!" I've already clocked 27h in and I feel like there isn't much more the game can offemr gameplay wise other than different robots, slightly better weapons, so I just want to progress the story
@@andremalerba5281 i hear
you. Sometimes it can feel like busy work just to pad the play time with hours and filler.
@@asprywrites6327 exactly! For example the small AF pouches! I had the same bad experience playing Far Cry 3! The pouches were so small that I had to keep managing inventory all the time, so I decided to stop playing and grinding/farming resources to max all the crap out of those so I could just play the game without worrying about it.
That took me several hours of boring hunting just to prepare the game to be enjoyable for the next hours! Same thing about the skill trees, there's some skills in HZD that shouldn't be skills at all and shoud have been just default mechanics, like a skill for stealth takedowns from below, from above, a skill to recover your unused traps, another skill to rearrange your coils, another one that allows you to use your bow while walking over wires/rope...these are basic stuff that I expect to be already part of the moveset!
Idk, the more I play these games the more I feel like if the devs were developing a Street Fighter game you wouldn't be able to do a Hadouken until you reach midgame you know? LOL
Same
I think a great marker for how well a game incorporates its open world is how often one fast travels. This is not always the case, as in something like BotW the map is crazy big and you need to move around a lot, but when I played Spider-Man the last achievement I got for platinum was the one for using the fast travel 5 times. Swinging around the city is just so fun that fast traveling seems like a waste
I’m gonna have to respectfully disagree with this video. It’s well put together, but it seems like he wants to have his cake and eat it too.
I think every game mentioned would be way worse if it was as he described. It seems he wants story missions to be inaccessible without a random amount of forced offscreen grinding, but also talks himself about how doing that takes away from story urgency. He wants certain side missions and quests to be mandatory for the story so they can be enjoyed, when they can simply be enjoyed anyway…in fact I would say that’s the primary motivation. Whether it’s the dinosaurs in horizon or something like the legends in Tsushima, people will play or not play them precisely if they enjoy them.
I think the main thing he’s over looking is the BENEFIT of an open world game like these.
If you’re a completionist, love exploring, or want to explore interesting side tangents you can!
If you only care about the story, don’t have time for all the little stuff, or aren’t a fan of grinding and repetitive quests you can choose to play more linear!
That’s the beauty in my opinion.
Personally I prefer both, I like to take breaks from the story to explore the world and characters, but being able to continue it at any time keeps me from getting burnt out on tedious uninteresting tasks.
I recently played ghosts of Tsushima and finding fox shrines, hot springs, and doing character storylines was a nice break, but I would’ve hated if the game made me find every damn shrine before I could take on the khan.
I guess what I’m saying is I feel like the video is missing the whole point! Open world games are great because you can make the narrative yourself! In Skyrim I didn’t even come close to beating the main story… I just became an overpowered husband/werewolf and fought the civil war. Because that’s what interested me!
Playing how you want to play is why the world is open!
Rant over.
I also think that side quests and exploring don't need to be tied to the progression of the main story line. however: they should have a purpose, wether that's leveling up/getting better gear, or just telling a nice short story in a side mission. I loved and platinumed both Horizon and the Witcher 3 and I felt the side quests had something to offer. Red Dead 2, while I also loved playing through it, made me lose interest in the side activities because a lot them didn't yield any results and often didn't even tell interesting stories or were super fun mechanics. Side quests and exploring shouldn't be tedious uninteresting tasks.
Skyrim also makes exploring fun and rewarding.
This is why I adore The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Every step of the main quest feels like the stakes are going up, but never with immediate urgency, and the themes and structure of the story make exploring the world a key part of it. Right from the start, you're told to go do some sidequests before the main quest can really start, since you have to blend in a bit and get to know the culture of the new land you're in. About half the steps are to go to a new part of the map and get to know the people there in order to get specific information out of them. One long section is to get 7 different factions to accept you as a political and military leader, so you have to go to each one individually and figure out how to convince them (e.g. doing quests and exploring that area to understand their culture so you can be convincing to them). The main quest is purposely built to show off the open world and make you spend time getting to understand it. At no point is there a moment where you have to do something immediately. Things in Morrowind are gradually getting worse, an evil god is gradually growing in strength, blight storms are slowly spreading. These things will destroy the country in a few years and must be taken care of soon, but not instantly. It leaves space to go out and mess around. Best open world out there, despite its age.
I was thinking the same thing. In Oblivion and Skyrim it feels weird to go off and explore when world ending attacks are happening with Daedra/Dragons.
couldn't have said it better myself.
Morrowind is my favorite of the Elder Scrolls series and very much a contender for best game of all time on my books.
Fast travel in Morrowind is the best in the series. Multiple ways to travel publicly, then you have the Mage's guild where you need to be a member. Some scrolls that only allow 1-way travel. Then Mark and Recall, the most versatile yet also the most restrictive.
@@RipleySawzen More that traversal is within the diagesis as opposed to being from without.
I play Open world game for the exploration. I can step into a whole other world and interact with the things within it. The main quest feels more like lore to me. It's there so the world doesn't feel meaningless, but I don't have to focus on it to have fun.
It's just living like you are someone else in another world/dimension.
That's why open world games like Elden Ring or Skyrim are so much fun!
Hope you have played outer wilds. Sounds like the perfect game for you !
I'd say Skyrim is ok, but has too many random encounters: "Not another bandit troop!"
That might explain why I've never been able to enjoy GTA or RDR despite them being some of the best selling open-world games ever made. Every time I play I outright avoid the story and wander around looking for fun stuff to do and useful items to collect, which works wonderfully in Elden Ring, Skyrim, and Breath of the Wild. But in Rockstar's games... it just makes the world feel empty. There's nothing to progress outside of missions and almost nothing to *do* outside of them, so it feels more like I'm walking around in a diorama than actually playing a game or "living in" their world.
@@cynthius6567 nothing to do outside of missions? Did you play either of those games?
Yes, the exploration is my favourite part, too. They should just forget the story, we can make our own! Also, much prefer games that allow you to create your own character, like Elden Ring and Elder Scrolls.
Just watched this video over on Nebula. This one fascinated me. I’ve been playing video games for decades and in theory, I love open world rpg games. Yet time after time when I play them I tend to get frustrated with the sheer wealth of options on what I can do. I absolutely am looking for guidance on what I should be doing to progress the story and the game. Your explanation of extrinsically motivated versus intrinsically motivated made perfect sense to me. I agree open world games should do more to encourage players like me to engage with the world. Great video!
The biggiest take away from open world is the fact that players love the games that are fill with things to do, hence 90+ hours of gameplay. Granted the side stories can be weak its there to fill in the void. There is too many titles like GTA 5 where you have massive open world with very little side quest to do.
One thing that BotW taught me is that making traversal itself satisfying can make exploring the world more interesting. People complain that Hyrule is too empty because it isn't stuffed to the gills with things like unique bosses, dungeons, weapons, treasure, etc. However, a lot of players don't get that feeling in this game because the simple act of traversing the world via climbing, gliding, shield surfing, etc. is just so fun and satisfying. I think this also helps replay value, as I still enjoy going to areas I've seen before.
I agree but the botw world is a bit too empty imo, it fits with the story but it feels too barren.
@@Victor-ks3sp you don't find treasure under every rock in the real world.
i'd not say it's emptyness in the sense of there has to be stuff to distract the player every 15 meters.
but it felt empty for me in a way of it was not lived in at all. the same 3 npc or enemy models kind of just walked or sat mindlessly around. the villages felt tiny small.
but maybe this was more due to technical limitations.
@@ARKAEOPTREX There's definitely a balance to be found between the freeform exploration and curated content in BotW. For me the game would have been perfect had some of the shrines been combined into longer, traditional zelda dungeons. The divine beasts were short for my taste. However there's no denying that making the traversal feel like a puzzle does make for incredibly engaging moments in the traversal.
@@DongKEKong That's probably why most people don't go out in to the real world to find treasure, and instead play video games to satisfy that urge. Who would've thought that 'realistic' doesn't equal 'better'?
That sense of urgency mismatch is the biggest thing for me. "Hey. My father had been murdered, the kingdom stolen, and I'm on the run trying to get revenge before the world ends... But hey, this cat needs some gourmet food first."
Ff15 is quite a ridiculous game, if you haven’t I recommend watching Maxors vid on it, makes very funny criticism while also giving it credit where it deserves
@@erniegang8127 If they made ff15 like the ff7 remake it would've likely been their most successful game considering the hype for the franchise and the strong technical aspects, but for marketing purposes they had to promise an open-world to get everyone on the trendy bandwagon.
see, I could imagine a game where this actually works IF it's acknowledged as a core theme: the idea that comraderie, compassion, that every being even a small cat's happiness matters. Imagine a game where to defeat the eldritch darkness, you have to make people happy, then helping a little girl find her doll might be as crucial as taking on an enemy fortress.
Your way of prioritizing the "end goal" story mission is pretty foreign to me, it almost seems like the fun of an open world is lost on you. That said, you do make some interesting points. Your restructuring of Ghosts of Tsushima actually sounds pretty great.
Good video! You mention the distinction between intrinsic and external motivation as what leads some to enjoy open worlds while others do not.
This certainly seems like a factor; however, to me, the ability to suspend disbelief seems like the main reason why some have no problem doing a bunch of side quests before tackling a seemingly “urgent” main quest.
It definitely makes no sense that Geralt would do a ton of side quests before trying to protect his daughter, but when I play I don’t think about it that deeply. I just suspend disbelief in the same way that we suspend disbelief when there are dragons or other unrealistic elements in our games.
Open world games went from my favorite genre to least favorite. Every major brand tries to replicate this somehow. This has caused major fatigue with a feeling of sameness. Larger does not translate to better. Linear games are so much more enjoyable to play now.
I don't know about that
But what about kingdom come? I think it's the second best open-world. It's so lively, small enough to travel even on foot but still large enough to get lost without a map.
@@KageToHikari_CG
Which one is the best?
try out the Stalker Call of Pripyat if you haven't, they are pretty brutal when you start and kind of force you to poke and prod everywhere until you manage to learn the incredibly interesting mechanics. it's linear with open world aspects that complement the storyline really well.
@@liamnehren1054
If you call that one linear, practically every open world game is linear, cause usually they have a main story to follow.
I don't think that's what the op meant.
I've always wanted a "curated mode" at the difficulty select screen which would just take you through the missions and side missions in the intended order.
Now that you mention it, that would totally work with rockstar games. Like what if they made a “campaign mode” where they get rid of the open world and just play the missions?
ooo that's neat
I would like that option so I'm not over leveled. Its hard to take anything serious, or even have fun doing early/ mid game stuff i missed with end game world destroying powers.
Isn't that just the main quest in most open world games?
@@FraserSouris i think he means take out the open in the world and make it a level based game
I mean, the same things apply in real life though. We have an entire world to explore but not many people really spend time just running around and trying to see everything. Instead we focus on what's important to us, and occasionally pause to take in the beauty or go check something out we never have before. open world games are the same - you can choose what to do and when, and there's nothing really wrong with any choice you can make.
I always found it so funny that in Ghost Of Tsushima I was supposed to rescue my uncle from a dire situation and I was running around doing haiku's and taking hot baths.
I imagine the uncle watching over with crying wojak face 😂
I spent this entire video thinking "Morrowind. You're looking for Morrowind." :)
It's honestly wild to me that it solved every problem people complain about regarding open worlds, and developers have spent the last 20 years ignoring it.
It has an involved main story, which you'll need to do to defeat the final boss (prophecy-severing aside). But while that will give the information you need to reach him and the tools to fight him, it absolutely does not give the skills, levels and gear required to *win* the fight.
For that, you need to do side content. Go dungeon-delving, do some quests for interesting loot, spend money on trainers to improve your levels. It's a lot like Breath of the Wild in that regard.
But where Breath of the Wild has no central plot to speak of after leaving the Great Plateau, Morrowind's is very in-depth. It's a solidly structured story about finding your place in this foreign land, making increasingly powerful allies and uncovering ever more layers of the complicated history. All so you ultimately have the context of why the villain's plan, and your fight against it, matters.
But crucially, said plan isn't coming to fruition anytime soon. It *will* happen if you don't do anything, but that won't be for months yet. There's no friend to be rescued, no villages being attacked. That gives you the peace of mind to do the main story at your own pace, and actually engage with the side content.
I was thinking of Morrowind as well! I've put in 50 hours into that game and have never progressed the main plot past talking to Caius Cosades. Everytime I make a new character, I just spend my time exploring the world and talking to everybody which leads me to finding quests that I've never found before.
I was also thinking of Stardew Valley as well. I would consider it open world since you can do everything at your own pace and focus on what skills you want to improve on. The main quest is completing all Community Chests but you don't really need to do that to progress through the game.
Have't played morrowind or BOTW but what I think you're describing when you said, "while that will give the information you need to reach him and the tools to fight him, it absolutely does not give the skills, levels" and "For that, you need to do side content." is level cap for missions? Which is a thing in almost every open world RPG now.
@@ashikmohds yup i have the same thoughts as yours.
In BoTW case, you can literally go straight to the end game boss after the tutorial but you will definitely get your ass kicked because you are weak af without any sort of good gears and powerup that you would get if you did some exploration first.
The combat is shit and I think that turns a lot of people off, but it's an amazing game.
That also just sounds like Elden Ring to me.
Breath of the Wild, Outer Wilds, and Elden Ring are some obvious shining examples of how to do an open world really well, but I'd also like to shout out Westerado. Westerado is a classic flash game (with an expanded full steam release) where you are tasked with getting revenge against the person who murdered your mother and brother. Seems simple enough, but the problem is that you weren't there when it happened.
You have no idea what this person looks like, or where they are, so it becomes a pseudo-murder mystery game as when you complete a side quest, the NPC usually gives you a visual clue about them that narrows down who they might be. Also, at any point in the game, you can pull out your gun and shoot literally any NPC, no matter how important you might assume they are, and then you have to deal with the consequences of that. Which is hilarious. It's not as mechanically refined as a lot of other genre trailblazers, but I can't stop thinking about some of the radical things it does to make its open world more interesting than so many others.
The game doesn't even tell you if the bad guy is just some randomized NPC in the world or if finding them is some scripted event, and since I've never completed the game, and information about it online is scarce, I've never actually found out myself. I've heard different people tell stories that seem to imply both, meaning some people are definitely lying. It gives the feeling that it's a modern version of Mew Under the Truck or other playground myths.
Elden Ring and BOTW wild have lackluster stories. BOTW wild has some of the best environmental interaction and travsal its a fantastic open world. Elden Ring is above Adverage But the open world has allot of repeated bosses. NPCs are lifeless, Side quests are few and far between And there not much to other than kill enemies. Kingdom Come does a pretty good drop at telling a story and making the player find there own way. But games like Elden Ring you can just do the main quests and you can just farm one area without having to expore anywhere else certain areas give you more XP so its pointlesa farming other areas.
I wish Elden Ring had stuff to do other than kill things. It’s fun but combat is the only thing going for it, and after 60+ hours it starts getting tiring.
@@John-996 Wdym? There's a 4 side quests that unlock 4 different endings. There's secret areas upon secret areas. Maybe it's inaccurate to say side quest, but every NPC has a story that reaches a conclusion. I'd like to push back that if you think the stories are lackluster than you aren't paying attention to the world building. A lot of the story is told through the items you pick up along the way. Even if there are copy paste bosses, at least there's some narrative purpose to all the enemy placement. There are entire CZcams channels like Vaatividya and SmoughTown dedicated to deciphering the lore.
@@John-996 you can't criticize ER for having repeated bosses while praising BOTW that has only 16 different types of enemies including bosses
@@shakkoryu They didn't praise BOTW for it's enemy variety though. Breath of the Wild also isn't focused on just combat in its gameplay loop. A large majority of what you'll be doing in Elden Ring when you're not exploring is fighting in combat, so the game puts a greater emphasis on it. Breath of the Wild might have repetitive enemy types, but it's also focused on solving puzzles, and it gives you a lot more options to take down enemies (Elden Ring gives a lot, but most are locked out depending on your build. Regardless 95% of the time you'll still just dodge, attack, repeat). Elden Ring gets deathly boring after a while because of this, at least to me, while the other Souls games didn't.
It's highly dependent on the preference on the person playing the game, I feel. Personally, I have a completionist mindset. I like to explore and discover things, which is why I like how in some games you can remove mark markers to make things feel more explorative. I love as well when sidequests or tasks hint to something that deepens my understanding of the lore of the world, or could even hint or foreshadow something in the plot. The three games you mentioned I loved because I could fully get lost in the world. Most games main stories aren't that long, so if I was only interested in the main story and nothing else I'd be done far too quickly. So that can be a critique of linear story telling in itself. That being said, it did leave me feeling frustrated with titles like the more recent open world Assassins Creed games, where there are timed and repeating quests that don't seem to have an end. Again, because it's the completionist in me.
That being said, I believe it's very easy for an open world to feel less like exploration and more like a chore. For example, I love the dragon age games. I like a lot about each game, and there are things I don't like about each one. A big critique I have of Inquisition is that they focussed so much on making an open world type game (large maps that are accessed from a central hub, similiar to in Pokemon Arceus) but the quests they filled it with were very simple fetch quests that didn't seem to carry its own story and didn't feel like they added anything to the world.
I think that's why Elder Scrolls open worlds end up being the ones I spent the most time exploring. The Main quests are kinda shit and not urgent so while many can view that as a negative, in that type of open world environment it actually incnetivises exploration in a completely non artificial way which in turn adds to the immersion and sense that YOU are the character. I also think the first person perspective makes open worlds so much more appealing as you it's easier to get lost in the world and bring it to life. The Witcher is so much more technically impressive and I can admire the depth of its quests and mechanics, voice acting, depth of dialogue and content etc. but the world does NOT pull me in and immerse me like Elder Scrolls.
What do you mean they are not urgent? The only not urgent main quest is Morrowind's, all the others are pretty urgent
I’m just going to note: as someone with ADHD it’s weird to be described as ‘intrinsically motivated’. Open world games work for me because I get distracted for sure… but I don’t think it’s as related to strong intrinsic motivation. Unless you call hyperfocusing on a new shiny intrinsic motivation.
What else would you call that?
ADHD works in weird ways. Because our dopamine receptors are so fucked up, we become less motivated to do stuff. For me open world games are overwhelming, I keep getting distracted by everything until at some point the main storyline stops giving me any sort of dopamine rush and I just quit the game
@@VioPLayable This is exactly me. The only open world that seems to work for me is Forza Horizon since I can treat the map as a diverse race track.
There's a specific meaning to the phrase "intrinsic motivation." Intrinsic motivation just means that the motivation is coming from you yourself. Let's say you really enjoy a class and because of that you want to learn the material. That's one intrinsic motivation to study. This is as opposed to extrinsic motivations which come from some external source. An extrinsic motivation to study would be the fact that you have a test coming up that you will be graded on.
Yes. Motivations do no care about your 'disorder'. Your motivations are an emergent phenomena tied to your brain's wiring. If those drives are born of internal impulses, they are autotelic (intrinsic); else, they are exotelic (extrinsic).
This is why I adore the style of self contained areas often seen in the Zelda series. I much prefer having several "maps" that are well developed than empty fields.
this is what smt5 does so well, its an "open world" jrpg but in reality its mostly linear yet open areas that are a ton of fun to explore and feel kind of like you're running through massive dungeons
Cat in box open world
Most of botw and totk were just empty fields my dude
@@Ima_lil_Man He said the Zelda series. Zelda is not limited to BotW and TotK, I'll have you know.
@@Slaraffus2750What?!?!? You can't be telling me Zelda is more than 5 years old...
I definitely haven't seen this game series throughout most of my life.
I felt the opposite about the Witcher 3.
It gave you a compelling goal, but it made it pretty clear that it wasn’t urgent on the way this video describes.
You get scenes playing as her, so you know what’s going on, and Geralt is on a detective mission. It’s not, “oh god Cirri is about to die!”
It’s “what is this threat? What has Cirri been doing and how can I help?”
What’s more, many of the things you find and do connect back to the main story even if they’re missable, and multiple times the game pumps the brakes for you, giving you times where it makes sense that geralt would be doing his usual Witcher work.
I almost wish there were a little *more* urgency, because my ADHD has kept me from ever finishing the game, though I’ve started from the beginning and gotten at least halfway through four times now.
I'd love to hear your take on AC Odyssey for the same reason. I felt like it was really well done and... very unique in the blend of story and world building
the side quests were trivial though, which made them pointless. Like the assassination ones that trigger when you approach specific npcs, its just zoom to the target the map is pointing you to, kill, come back and get reward. literally no depth and no meaning. the dumbest thing in trying to engage with the open world i found were instances where ive cleared out a checkpost or fort that i randomly stumbled upon, only to later have it be part of a main quest. Like ive already cleared it out, doing it again just cos the main quest requires it felt so weird.
I loved the battles for conquest. I spent so much time just infiltrating forts and weakening their defenses one by one until it ended in these battles. I felt like all of my work actually did something but because it's a game, it doesn't actually do anything for the story.
I have always wanted a zombie game where I can clear out an entire city and restore humanity again.
Basically the zombies stay dead and the area remains safe, or unless you don't clear out more areas they can be in danger etc
Dead rising 5
Project zomboid with zombie spawning turned off
Cataclysm dark days ahead
@@Azure9577 god i love CDDA
@@Azure9577 That's cool thanks
while i love both zomboid and CDDA theyre really not a good option for what youre looking for is probably something in the "rebuild" series.
The issue i have with some openworlds is that the story itself seems to be focuses on exploring, like Horizon zero dawn. You can explore but the story itself already takes you around the map slowly, so exploring ahead of the story then going back to the story makes you go over the same ground you already explored.
it feels like game like this should use old open world design like locking off areas to difficulty. Because enemies or military will kill you (like gta SA) for trying to access an area to early. or an improvement on that technique
@@c.wubby.u861 They seem to have learnt their lesson in Forbidden West though.
Then don't explore...? Problem solved. Who is forcing you to explore ?
So don't explore in an open world, that's stupid, isn't exploring like half of the open world genre.
It would be sick if open world devs added enticing secrets, like hidden peices of lore or challenging secret bosses with powerful rewards, customizable elements like base camps, easter eggs, or even integrated a post game of sorts, whatever fun thing you could imagine into the world. You could sprint right to the end, but that would be such a small chunk of the actual game, you would feel like you're missing a lot, which could be adequately incorporated into the story structure, or better, small teaser like a hint or a progress bar. If you make the world inheritly super cool and fun to engage with, outside of side quests and fetch quests.
For me, my completionist instincts mean that I struggle to progress much through the main story in open world games. Instead, I'm interacting with everything I can along my way, until I get overwhelmed with side-quests that I have to try to finish before feeling like I can continue with the main quest. It's why I have hundreds of hours in Skyrim, but still haven't actually finished the main story.
This is why I Champion the Hitman world of assassination trilogy so much. Even though those missions are technically levels, the extremely dense Design and attention to detail structure make them feel like lived in environments. Because of that they feel more immersive and believable than most open-world games try to "achieve"
Yeah! They’re everything that is fun about an open world game, distilled into a compact level. Small things that would be massively spaced out in an open world game are bunched together, AND they usually supplement the main goal of the level.
The Hitman Series is the King of semi open world design
@@titlasagna2172 It is not "demi open world". It is just called open level design. It is not open world because the game has no wider world out there beyond the confines of the area immediately relevant to your current objective.
@JoDoFe lol thank you, I really dont see how someone could call hitman levels open world or even compare the two. Open worlds have like activities and side content and stuff. Hitman is all about doing the mission, and everything in the level is either elaborate or less than elaborate ways to do that. Theyre great open-ended levels, and certainly feel more realistic than most environments in games, but open world adjacent even it is most certainly not
The maps in Hitman are crazy, they feel absolutely huge, alive and maze like. I always find places I never knew about when I replay them.
The best open world title for me was PS4 Spiderman, I never wanted to fast travel because web swinging was so much fun, and I felt like spidey when I was going in one direction and got strayed out of the path due to some minor crime. You really wanted to stray a little because you were the hero, but never too much because you needed to keep going on
Yes, all the movements of spidey are flawless. But it did not change the fact that the game world is as uninspired as some other titles.
The open world kinda sucked tho and the activities in the world were even worse.
I got bored, it was too repetitive. Suffers from the same issues as the rest.
I also liked the way the city changes as you progress through the story
@@chrismao8815 its a Spider-Man game. He’s not known for exploring. What would you find in New York City? The open world just compliments his traversal abilities.
I hate how people try to use “linear” like it’s a bad thing. Linear just means the path you are on can be highly detailed for the path you are on, many of the best games ever made are linear
I've never designed a game before so what do I know, but it seems like a fairly simple solution to me.
1. Avoid urgent storytelling beats. It surprises me that open world games still do this since pretty much everyone has recognized the obvious weakness of this approach for years.
2. Have some sort of currency, whether it's money or xp or upgrades or whatever best fits the game. Currency is gathered by exploring the open world. Progressing through the story requires some amount of this currency, but without hard requirements (purchasing better gear, unlocking abilities, etc.). You don't NEED that gear to progress, but it certainly helps. So a skilled player can beeline to the next story beat, while an unskilled player will need to spend more time exploring and gathering currency in order to progress. This has the added benefit of basically requiring exploration on your first playthrough while making it more optional on repeat playthroughs as your skill has increased.
You also wouldn't need difficulty sliders, since the amount of time a player spends on exploration and gathering currency functionally acts as your difficulty slider.
I think Metro Exodus hit a good balance of openness, with large open levels instead of a single open world. There was a lot to do in each level but it rarely overstayed its welcome. And each level was an entirely different environment, which made things never feel repetitive and made me want to explore more
That's a philosophy from at least The Witcher 1 and the first Assassin's Creed back in 2007. I think in terms of nailing it, The Witcher 2 might've been the peak for those limited open worlds. Exodus has an advantage by using whatever design it needs; so it has 2 open-world levels, 3 linear ones, a more open linear one, a prologue, 4 intermissions, and 2 mini-levels inside Volga and Caspian.
Yes I agree. And the metro exodus has what I feel is a must for such open levels. Its a genuine sense of discovery which so few games actually achieve. Elden ring is the best example of this
@@ThePolistiren NieR automata
@@mum-your another good limited open world.
@@incius8341 it’s not really that limited. The game world is rather large, and that’s considering areas you only go to a few times for the bonus content outside of the main story
I honestly prefer story games with big levels instead of the whole thing being 1 level with a bunch of missions. I think it makes it less of a chore to get through an area when every area is important to the story.
So like Genshin Impact?
@@glauberglousger6643 No. Pretty sure they mean games like Jedi Fallen Order, and Mario Odyssey. I also think these designs would work much better for games like RDR2. Of course, BOTW wouldn't work well with that. That game needs an open world. It all really depends on the game.
You should try immersive sims
Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us 2 did a great job of wide linear level design. I usually felt like the world was much bigger and that I could go in any direction, yet it always ended up being the right path.
The Witcher 1 & 2 were like this, every chapter of story was a different semi-open area that acted as a hub for most missions.
One of the most natural open world intros I've seen is Elden Ring's first boss. Marghit, the Fell Omen is ballshatteringly difficult for the first proper boss of the game. He shows up, talks smack, and absolutely kills your ass. You try again, because there's a site of grace literally right next to the arena. You die again, and again, and again.
You get fed up and go somewhere else. And you won't come back until you feel ready, not because you are prevented from fighting Marghit, but because you see something over the horizon; everything you do, you do so in service to the goal of becoming strong enough to beat Marghit, and Elden Ring does a good job of having you get distracted consistently enough that you can actually do most of Elden Ring before actually beating the very first boss of the game.
I think i want to make a game with multiple possible stories that can be told. I have some ideas like a score based around how much time you spend in certain places or interacting with certain characters to decide how your story progresses. Instead of going to missions the missions and story builds around you. The major drawback is that it's either going to take forever, or be a tiny map.
My mind is very simple 🤣 things like clearing “fog-of-war”, item/quest markers, 100%-ing areas (like when the map goes from green to red as you complete objectives in each area in Mad Max) are enough to motivate me. In fact, I find it hard to resist the urge to do everything BUT the main quest, just to make sure i don’t miss out on anything.
That said, it’s great to see things from another perspective, and the improvements you talked about that would make things better for those extrinsically motivated would make things even better for those of us that are intrinsically motivated as well.
Quality comment. My thoughts exactly
sounds like u started gaming in 2015 lol
@@MGrey-qb5xz I was born in the 90s and I'm the same...
What about that statement gives you the impression that only recent gamers from 2015+ could feel that way?
It's a weird statement to make...
@@PlaidSuitPinstripeWorld carry on then , no reason to strain our mind on something slightly complicated
@@MGrey-qb5xz I agree with this comment and I also started around that time so you are right?
What you described for Ghost of Tsushima reminds me a lot of Fallout: New Vegas. Once the player arrives in Vegas, the main story consists in picking one of the game's four main factions to side with and then travelling the open world to recruit minor factions to their chosen side. Those factions will then join the player in the game's final battle. And they have a big impact too, making your final assault much easier. The player is given a lot of freedom in which factions they recruit, how they recruit them, and whether they recruit any factions at all. For instance, for every minor faction in the game, exterminating them or ignoring them is always an option. Furthermore, completing minor side quests will often reward the player with reputation gain with a given faction, which can, in turn, make them easier to recruit or infiltrate. All of this comes together to make the world of New Vegas feel like a cohesive and interconnected place where everything you do is building up to a final climactic confrontation (even when that often isn't the case). I am not saying this is an exact comparison to what you were talking about- the player cannot initiate the final battle at any time and they are explicitly told of most of the factions they should try to recruit - but it is the closest existing example I could think of to what you were describing.
I feel like New Vegas also does well with the idea of "poorly placed pressure to complete the main story missions", as the main story in Fallout starts out as "find the guy who shot you and get answers", which is really presented almost as more of a loose prompt. New Vegas does a really good job, even in comparison to other Bethesda/Obsidian games, of making the main story work in synergy with the open-world & side content instead of working against each other like the video mentions.
New Vegas is such a good game, wish we got a Demon Souls-type remake for it or another Fallout game developed by Obsidian. I have high hopes for Avowed, I hope it's a little bit bigger in scope than Outer Worlds.
@@fozzythasalesman6125 fallout new vegas had a lot of developers of the first 2 games. With the original vision etc. Thats why its so different from 3 and 4.
That's why ER open world its the best design for me, no quest markers, no "main story", u go wherever u wanna go, whenever u want to and u are always progessing.
BOTW is the definition of "Wide as an ocean - Deep as a puddle." Huge empty map filled with repetitive shrines and chest filled with yet another breakable weapon, and korok seeds eveywhere.
A predictable open world, where you already know in advance what you will find under a rock (korok seed), or inside a chest (breakable weapon or useless item) is literally the worst of its kind. Exploration in BOTW as a result feels like a choire rather than exciting. Because exploration is supposed to feel rewarding, finding interesting and new items or things.
BOTW is the exact opposite of a great open world design.
A game I played called Enderal had a very simple approach that I quite liked. The game has a main questline, but after certain quests it will pause, giving the player time to move around and do whatever they want. These triggers usually make sense. For example, in one quest you find an important plot thing called the Beacon. Once you return, you're given free time, because they don't know what the Beacon is and need some time to figure out what the fuck a Beacon is. This happens several times, where the main quest will tell you to wait, and update when the main questline is ready to continue again. You can still delay the main questline as much as you want, but being given explicit free time to work means you don't feel pressured to keep saving the entire universe or something when some kid out there is still waiting for you to find his dog.
This approach is a very simple and obvious one, but it makes sense why it doesn't really get thought about that much. Before video games there were movies, before movies there were books, before books there was theater, and so on. What all these have in common, is limited content. You can't put on a show and have the main character spend a week waiting while the ancient scrolls get deciphered, because unless there's some explicit story purpose, that's really boring and impractical. So they cut to the good stuff and skip the wait time. You can't put an important side character in a coma, because that means the story can't continue until they wake up.
Video games don't have to be like that though. The story can leave you on hold for a few in-game days, but a good open world can let a player mess around with it and have fun while they wait. Since the game can make a week of in-game time take a couple hours, and since the player can fill in that time with whatever they want to do, why not give the player actual, real free time to explore the world? When you find a caravan to make it across the scary desert, why not tell the player that they'll need a few days to gather supplies, and let you go on your merry way to explore the city? When you find the forgotten scrolls that predict the end of the world, why not tell the player they'll need a week to decipher it, and let them take on some side quests while they wait? Games don't HAVE to be nonstop, heart pounding action, they can slow down at any time and the player can spend that time on having fun.
I love Enderal and I really agree that this approach worked for me. Enderal was also unique for me in that it made money feel more valuable than most other open-world games I've played. Since you need money to purchase books, a requirement to level up your character, I was constantly using my funds to progress my character. By the end of the game, I didn't have a pile of gold left over, because I had invested it in my character's progression, a house, and crafting items along the way. It made all the money I found from quests and exploration meaningful, which was a huge contrast to games like Skyrim where money just became a satisfying sound effect after awhile
@@one_secular_sparrow Yeah, skill books being used for skill progression was really a stroke of genius. One issue I've always ran into while playing Morrowind and Skyrim, is that I started to look at each fight as experience farming, and as such I would try to exploit the encounter, casting different spells to get more Conjuration, or Illusion, or whatever. Instead of trying to fight objectively and strategically, I looked at each fight as just a grind for more experience. If I ended up forced to use something I didn't want (eg. running out of Magicka so I need to use a sword), I would even feel like I "missed out" on getting that little bit more experience in something I actually wanted/
Using skill books fixed all of that, which allowed me to look at each fight and objectively decide on what would ACTUALLY be the best way to win the fight, instead of trying to theory craft what the best way to get more precious levels would be. Making money a valuable commodity at the same time is a bonus (that said, I used phasmalism, so I ended up spending enough money keeping my boi equipped).
Playing Fallout 4, I found myself totally engrossed in the base building mechanics and the main story line of finding Shaun fell to the wayside. Only after 3 weeks of scavenging, building up fortifications and making mods at work benches did I have the thought "isnt there someone I'm supposed to be looking for ?" 🤔
Total opposite for me. I felt like I couldn't engage in any side quest because they kept giving me such concrete answers about where to go next to look for my son. If they had made it a little less obvious where Shaun might be and how to get to him (something I thought they did way better in Fallout 3), then I probably would've been more encouraged to go out and explore the world.
it needed more blockades or major dangers sprinkled around that clues about Shaun led into. forcing the player to interact with that system to like raise an army but what can we say other then it was no new vegas.
@@viralium104 thats when you ignore the "go here next" dialog and go look for more weapons to play with.
getting trapped in the "gotta do the main quest mentality" ruins the game. especially since fallout games typically end after that. you have to explore they map and find new weapons there's more story in the side quests than the main ones.
this is why i hate speed runners. they dont care about the actual game they just want to set a stupid record.
@@darkshadowsx5949 That's what I was doing, and it totally shattered my immersion. Much as speedrunners like the challenge of completing a game as fast as possible, I like the experience of getting so absorbed in a game's world that I momentarily forget that I'm even playing a game in the first place.
That's the sign of a successful videogame. Nothing is worse than just doing what a game tells you to do, with the developers assuming you care about their writing.
Only when narrative/worldbuilding has gameplay connections or ramifications is a bit of story sufficient "reward" for completing an activity. Horizon Zero Dawn is so good at this, despite what is in this video. In general I disagree with everything in this video haha
Outer wilds has one of the most incredible stories I've ever played through, and it's entirely open-world (more accurately, open-solar system). It is very possible to have an open world and an incredible story, which botw, for all its merits, fell shamefully short with
Red Dead 2's open world to me was perfection. Threw you out and you were available to wander wherever you wanted. Rockstar made a huge balance of incredible vast open world with numerous random encounters you could happen along, paired with interesting places and areas with great lore to learn about. On the flipside, the story was very intriguing and kept me wanting more. I struggled with wanting to explore more, while wanting to know what happens next in the story.
Elden Ring is another great example of balance between story and exploration. You walk out and see this humongous open world with many different places you could go to from the get go, while offering a story as huge as the lands between. In a lot of ways, discovering bosses and learning the lore behind them IS the story for FromSoftware games. In Bloodborne, which has an incredible story AND setting to explore, one of my favorite things about that game was exploring and fi ding out you're in a place that you're not supposed to be in yet, but the game let's you be there and you then have to find your way out so that you can come back later. But even then, you wonder what that place is, what resides in it, so you level yourself up and play through the story a bit so that you can go back when you're ready.
I'm a huge fan of challenging myself, so a lot of times I will play on the hardest difficulty so I can become a better gamer overall. One game that i think has a really incredible difficulty mechanic however, is Resident Evil 4. From what you see at first, there is no difficulty level, but alas! Au contraire, there is and it is adaptive to the skill of the person playing. If you're playing really well, the Ganados get more aggresive and do more damage, but if youre struggling, then theyre not as agressive and dont do as much damage. I think this is a super cool and would enjoy if more games played around with this mechanic.
Great video by the way :)
Actually RE4 has 3 difficulties
@Playa The Saints actually it has 2, but on your first playthrough you can't choose so default is normal mode, where the adaptive difficulty shines, but once you beat it you unlock professional mode which is harder, so you're partially right, but mostly wrong
I actually think Red Dead 2 handles the story vs. exploration / urgency problem pretty excellently. There are a few moments where you feel a sense of urgency to run to the next story mission, but most of the time a mission just kind of ends (you complete the robbery or whatever) and there's no indication of what you're supposed to do next. Then the next mission starts when you randomly run into one of your gangmates in town or what have you. Most of the story also has the gang just trying to survive rather than working towards some urgent goal, so you don't feel like there's something you should be doing other than hunting, fishing and making money for yourself or the gang.
On top of that, most of the story missions start in camp, and there are more than a few parts in the story where it makes total sense that Arthur might not want to go to camp for a while (because Dutch is being a bitch, usually). So taking some time away from the story missions to explore, camp on your own, hunt, gather bounties etc...actually feels like you're still roleplaying as Arthur. It's what he would be doing at that time.
It does have the problem of the things you do in the open world not effecting the story. It doesn't matter how many legendary fur coats you make or how often you slaughter the KKK, it's not going to change Arthurs final fate one bit, or make it any easier for John to kill he games true villain. So there isn't "incentive" to do any of those things, but the way I think: if riding around the wild west doing cowboy stuff doesn't sound like its own reward to you, why buy a cowboy game in the first place? It's not like you get anything for completing the game anyway. It just ends. So really there isn't any incentive to do the story missions either if you think about it that way.
I completely agree with you, adding map conquering mechanics like Far Cry 5 would kill the game and its pacing.
RD2R is a slow burn to its core and it's ok to not like the simulation aspect, but having it any other way would make it generic, especially with that suggestion.
Exactly what I came to say here. 👏👏👏👏
It effects you emotionally what you did as Arthur. By the end, it matters and hits you, hard. That’s more than enough reason and consequence.
And for the legendary coats, that fits fine. Sure, Arthur might have enjoyed, but how does that really change his redemption? It doesn’t actually matter nearly as much as giving money to an orphanage. He does things that ultimately weren’t important, and that’s real life.
Exactly, the world doesn't revolve around Arthur, that's kind of the whole point of the story. And the main story doesn't really just stop between main missions, Arthur is still hacking like crazy and you can still see the effects of your actions (like becoming wanted, or having certain enemy factions come after you).
For me, I played Ghost of Tsushima on Lethal difficulty from the outset. It did mean that at the beginning I died countless times to what is now easy encounters for me, but it made exploring, practicing combat in bases and battling duels (in the mythic tales) all the more worth it because I needed better armour or skills to live longer. Going back to Azamo Bay with Gosaku’s armour or Uchitsune’s long bow and destroying the Mongols felt amazing. It worked well for me and made the act-ending missions felt all the more satisfying as I knew exploration and hard-work came together to beat the challenge, cementing Ghost of Tsushima as one of my favourite games of all time.
This problem has a really simple fix, if you hide what the "main" objective is, the player will explore until they get an idea of what they want to try.
As long as game mechanics aren't locked behind main missions, sure
Exploring TW3's open world indisputably complements the core gameplay loop. The fact that you're a monster hunter for hire is perfect in this case to sell the loop of "I want gold to survive, get potions and better gear, so I kill monsters for that gold". And though the side quests usually have nothing to do with your main quest to find Ciri, at the very least, one still finds themselves motivated finish the side quests because of the RPG aspect/immersion, if nothing else.
Plus it has some of the best side quests in gaming and the side quests of an area tie into each other and the story so well that most of them feel like the main story
The side quests are Geralt's memories as he travels on the main adventure. "Hey, I remember this place -- I killed a grave hag here once..."
I think this is why New Vegas was so greatly acclaimed when it came to an open world rpg game that had a solid foundation of a story, basically everything you do had an effect on the final battle towards the dam. I don't get why most developers aren't trying to replicate the formula of what Obsidian did with their Fallout.
RDR2 Arthur at the beginning of the game only cares for his gang so he won't ever abandon them.
Ghost of Tsushima Jin wants to save his uncle to lead to the liberation of their land so he cannot abandon them.
In Horizon: Zero Dawn Aloy wants answers about her past on why she was an outcast and why she was targeted by the Killers. The first half of her motivation is all she has cared about since she learned there was a way to get answers so she will not give until she gets what she wants.
The difference being most of these stories cannot be avoided. In New Vegas what is your character's motivation? Whatever you want it to be. Hell looking at the world of New Vegas it would actually be better from a survival stand point to avoid the man who just tried to kill you. I honestly don't have much of a problem with the way these games are structured. I've enjoyed every game I've listed. I'm currently still playing Horizon and finished unlocking all I could in the open world and I am now tackling the main story. I know a lot of people cannot do this but it works for me. Now saying that I do need to put down open world games for a few months before hopping into another one.
@@GreenWolf2k well technically the player in new vegas has a question: why murder someone for a poker chip? which pulls them into the whole mystery that leads to mr house and the dam.
@@liamnehren1054 Yeah but think about from a survival stand point. You just got lucky that the bullet didn't kill you or mess you up to the point where you cannot function. Why the hell would you go after the man who just attempted to kill you. Now if you want revenge ok that makes sense but if you don't care for revenge then there is no point other than being really dangerously curious.
@@GreenWolf2k well most of the paths you can take actually do end in revenge against benny so I guess you can say that is what the courier is after.
@@GreenWolf2k I think the main draw of an open world game is that "What you want it to be" motivation though. And honestly I wish more games have that kind of story, where your character doesn't exist before you create it, doesn't have any outside motivation or purpose, is just a full blank slate for the player to construct however they want.
Rdr2 does the open world thing beautifully imo.
Throughout the whole game you're so focused on the main mission dotting the map, that your main random encounters are only on the way to the next mission
But in chapter 6 when Arthur gets diagnosed, alot of the missions are less pressing besides John's imprisonment, but other than that every other mission has a stopping point for you and Arthur to go explore and enjoy what little time Arthur has alive.
The only things I wish were present were camp funds being required for progression, and a recipe system paired with a hard-core difficulty that adds in food being more necessary. Which encourages hunting and exploring more than just chapter 6
Agree 100% with you. RDR2 really needs a hard-core survival mode for the entire game.
@@zensoredparagonbytes3985 New game plus would be nice too with added difficulty because you have all your equipment available to you (kinda like elden ring or from software games)
I only felt rushed in rdr2 after Arthur fell ill
The way that Baldur’s Gate 3 handles this dilemma is fantastic. There’s a general main plot which can play out in countless ways, and just about all the optional side quests tie into it. Your actions in one may have an unexpected effect on another, or may ripple into the main story in unexpected ways down the line. And then, similar to your Ghost of Tsushima idea, succeeding at many of these side quests will grant you some kind of ally that you can summon at will during the final assault-and their different abilities can honestly make the difference between life and death. It’s an incredible game.
As a neurodivergent, I have to disagree with several of your main points. I've never gotten bored of the exploration and rushed the story mode. Nor have several of my also neurodivergent family members. For the ADD/ADHD community, open world games are far more than their linear siblings. No, it isn't for everyone, but not everything has to be appealing to neurotypical interests at the cost of providing diverse options for other people. Open worlds are hugely important for me because I can't get through a game by doing 20hrs of railroading down the single plot given. I need to be able to go look for collectibles, hunt a new kind of monster, upgrade my gear, meet a little old lady and help with her groceries, then I can go back to saving the world for a quest or two before doing it all over again.
TL;DR: Open world means options. Options that don't appeal to you specifically are still valuable.
I hate false urgency as much as I hate MMOs where you are 'the chosen one'. Wait, who are all those others guys? Are they all the chosen one too?
The chosen 103746 lmao.
final fantasy: Yes
NPC: Quick! The village is under attack get there as fast as you can.
Me: *goes to the dlc area for 10 hours*
NPC: You got here just in time
It works better when it's framed as a chosen class of people. You are one of the chosen few hundred/thousand/whatev with special powers. It just doesn't seem like you're the minority because there are so few NPCs on a given server compared to players for performance reasons.
But I agree individual chosen one narratives don't work.
The chosen cashcows.
I get the more freeing design of BotW, and this could just be me but the threat of Ganon felt so far away and so inconsequential I lost motivation to stop him. I explored a lot of the world but I felt I'd played enough without ever playing to the end.
This describes my playthrough pretty much. I upgraded all the armor I could get back then, but never fought Ganon
Yeah very true, and when I killed him I absolutely steamrolled him and was confused that the game ended and I had to reload my save. I was kinda mad that that’s what it had all been building up to
Ganon is easier to beat the more the Guardians(?) you have on your side, the more you play, the stronger you are and the weaker Ganon become. So, technically the Ganon BOSS fight started right from the beginning, everything you do around the world is part of fighting him.
@@Jakovdred that’s just a roundabout way of saying the final boss sucks
@@andresespinosa4531 100% agree. The boss fights in that game were sad. I died over 50 times in my first two hours of playing. 130 shrines later, I accidently beat Ganon without even getting hit once.
I actually find it interesting that there are people out there who don't want to explore, or who prioritize the main story over the open world. I'm the type of player that will explore every nook and cranny of even the most linear games, searching for secret loot, weapons or just game glitches. I almost never finish the main story until I have completely wrung out every ounce of content within a game, and then I'm like, "Ok, let's see if I can actually beat the main boss now."
A lot of this is because I am impossibly slow at actual combat, I prefer range weapons and sniping from a distance and not many boss battles go for that, so I tend to avoid boss fights till the very last.