Open World Games Discussion

[2021Murder]

I hate how developers don't know what to do with them even after 20+ years. The map sizes get bigger with less shit to do, you either get Ubisoft collectibles, useless junk except for one item in Bethesda games, or just nothing at all.

I played through the Yakuzza games last month and by the time they hit 0 and 6 they have gotten a much better system, hilariously small open world, but something to do almost everywhere with quests and minigames always in reach, with a good chunk of buildings accessible, the collectibles and achievements are easy enough to do if you desired.

Thinking back to The Outer Worlds, and imaging good ideas for sequels, i thought about scaling it down way more, focusing near entirely on one space ship but with way more stuff going on, plus by having more compact open worlds the time spent increasing map sizes could instead be spent making the games look good or having more meaningful or impactful quest lines.

I remember playing Unity and despite having all the problems of ubisoft games, actually going from place to place felt good, the population made the city feel alive and it didn't have the stink of "throw this crap in" like i felt with later ubisoft games.

I know this is a dumb post especially for its own thread, but after walking through the wasteland, finding locations and neither the enemies or the boxes carrying any shit i don't have 100 of already. i'm just tired of the fact that game develeopers felt that the alternative to an empty open world is to fill it with junk. The Outer Worlds is notorious for this.

Also Fallout Shelter was much better before they added crafting. its a waste of inventory space and you never get the shit you need.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

i think skyrim has doomed open world games. you see so many games copy all the bad aspects of it beacuse popularity means money.

 

[HeyYou]

I really can't think of any open world game in recent memory that hasn't had useless junk to pad it out. Even Witcher 3 had that shit, even if you got cool armors from it.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

For me the biggest problem with open world games is that they're often too static, with the player's choices having little impact. Ubisoft is notorious for this. Their games constantly have missions where you destroy or steal supplies from the enemy but no matter how often you do it your allies are never better equipped nor are the enemies ever worse off due to the missing supplies. Capturing an enemy base usually just gives you a new fast-travel point rather than affecting enemy spawn rates in the area or doing anything unique (e.g. capturing a garage area could make it so that allies use vehicles more often).

Incidentally, I think Bethesda was at one point on the right track with the civil war in Skyrim but they bitched out and cut like 90% of the content related to it. There's a mod that tried to get the civil war mechanics and content back to what they originally envisioned but from what I remember it was really buggy and unstable.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

For me the biggest problem with open world games is that they're often too static, with the player's choices having little impact.

I played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for the first time a year or two ago, and what astounded me was that the game would occasionally switch things up on the map depending on where you were in the story. For example, when you completed the Cuban/Jamaican subplot, the Jamaicans would attack you whenever you wander into their territory. III did that as well; the farther along you were in the game, the more people were pissed at you and would attack you when you got on their turf (though personally I found that more irritating since it accounted for the whole island and not a small section like VC).

It's a small thing, but it made me feel like my actions were affecting the overall world, and that I was asserting my presence in this virtual space.

Personally though, I think Postal 2's the best open-world game for precisely this reason. Paradise actively changes as you go through the week, with locations appearing and disappearing and the level of law enforcement and general anarchy increasing. Admittedly it doesn't have a lot to do with player choice, but Postal 2 feels a lot more alive than most open-world games.

 

[Guts Gets Some]

Small and dense is what open world should always be.

There is nothing more boring than a vast open world and literally nothing at all to do in it. It completely negates the purpose of the genre.


It's funny how reliant open worlds are on mini-maps and I didn't even realize how much I dislike them when they are packed to the brim (see the Assassin's Creed series), vs an open world with literally NO mini-map at all.

After playing Just Cause 3 and Agents of Mayhem, I realize how much more fun it is to just have markers and selectable locations vs microscopic mini-maps that draw my attention from the actual world I'm exploring. I hope this continues to become a thing and we become less reliant on them overall.

 

[2021Murder]

another good part about the Yakuza series is that the open world is just 9 blocks and after playing 10 hours in the same general place through 4 decades of story, you get really good at finding shit without pulling up the minimmap, they just tell you a street and you go there. And you get to see how shit has changed over time, a lot of the substories have sequels in the other games and all sorts of cool shit. plus because they limited the area to just 9 blocks when they were making this shit for the playstation 2, now that they're on ps4 pro levels of computing everything looks so much better.

 

[Rice Is Ready]

Cataclysm is the most open world/open ended game I've played and that's why it's my favorite. Especially with mods.

 

[Back me up!]

The only problem for open world games is that people can't stop themselves from goes ball deep into the whole " I have to collect everything".

You don't. Just stop.

The Mad Max video game is my favorite open world game that I've every played. Between the combat (I never got into the Batman: Arkham games so I wasn't burned out on that combat style), to the driving, the world design, the areas actually telling a narrative story, everything was just top notch. It also had a shit ton of points on the map but each area had upgrades that could instantly tell you whether a little camp was worth doing or not. I told my self to only do camps that had a historical relic on them (basically a little item that gave a look into the world collapse with Max narrating) and ignored the rest unless I wanted to take a camp just for the hell of it. It worked out extremely well and I still highly recommend to any one that loved the Mad Max Fury Road movie to play to give it a change

Steam Link here.

 

[Shield Breaker]

Incidentally, I think Bethesda was at one point on the right track with the civil war in Skyrim but they bitched out and cut like 90% of the content related to it. There's a mod that tried to get the civil war mechanics and content back to what they originally envisioned but from what I remember it was really buggy and unstable.

There used to be an amazing mod which added a lot of it back in, but the author of it suffered a major TDS breakdown and deleted all of his mods because Trump won.

 

[Sir Wesley Tailpipe]

There used to be an amazing mod which added a lot of it back in, but the author of it suffered a major TDS breakdown and deleted all of his mods because Trump won.

Shit like that really makes me hope all the idiots out there with TDS just off themselves when Trump gets re-elcted.

 

[The Curmudgeon]

Are there any good open world games you guys could recommend? I'm not too particular about the genre, but I am leaning towards either adventure or simulation.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

There used to be an amazing mod which added a lot of it back in, but the author of it suffered a major TDS breakdown and deleted all of his mods because Trump won.

I wasn't even aware that happened; I guess I haven't bothered with Skyrim in so long. For anyone wondering, originally the author of the mod just hid it from the public, with the message on the Nexus page reading:

All of my mods are hidden until November 9.

In a time where hatred screams loud from the dark recesses of the internet and my country, I will use my soapbox for something. For more information on what you can do to help, I suggest you visit Amnesty International.

#BlackLivesMatter
#LGBTRights.
#TransIsBeautiful
#RefugeesWelcome
#OccupyWallStreet
#YesAllWomen

and...

#ImWithHer

But now the author's mods are completely gone from the Nexus. I guess November 9th didn't go the way he hoped.

 

[Shield Breaker]

I wasn't even aware that happened; I guess I haven't bothered with Skyrim in so long. For anyone wondering, originally the author of the mod just hid it from the public, with the message on the Nexus page reading:


But now the author's mods are completely gone from the Nexus. I guess November 9th didn't go the way he hoped.

Yeah, apparently he threw a fit on twitter and the message boards. I tried to find it when I was going to reply Skyrim a couple of years ago, and discovered it, lol.

 

[Sir Wesley Tailpipe]

Are there any good open world games you guys could recommend? I'm not too particular about the genre, but I am leaning towards either adventure or simulation.

Just Cause 2
Saints Row 2 and 3
Sleeping Dogs
The Simpsons: Hit and Run
Dragon Quest Heroes II (More of an open-field action RPG/brawler, but shitloads of fun)
Infamous 2 and Second Son

 

[Guts Gets Some]

The Mad Max video game is my favorite open world game that I've every played. Between the combat (I never got into the Batman: Arkham games so I wasn't burned out on that combat style), to the driving, the world design, the areas actually telling a narrative story, everything was just top notch. It also had a shit ton of points on the map but each area had upgrades that could instantly tell you whether a little camp was worth doing or not. I told my self to only do camps that had a historical relic on them (basically a little item that gave a look into the world collapse with Max narrating) and ignored the rest unless I wanted to take a camp just for the hell of it. It worked out extremely well and I still highly recommend to any one that loved the Mad Max Fury Road movie to play to give it a change

I absolutely hated Fury Road, and even I still loved that game. I mean, it doesn't hold much replay-ability for me (I've 100%'d it about 3 times and can't say I really want to ever play it again now).
I thought it got Max more correct than the movie did. The movie felt like a bad video game and the game was like every single thing from Mad Max lore all rolled into one. It was the kind of open world game I generally like the most.

Just Cause 2
Saints Row 2 and 3
Sleeping Dogs
The Simpsons: Hit and Run
Dragon Quest Heroes II (More of an open-field action RPG/brawler, but shitloads of fun)
Infamous 2 and Second Son

I'd recommend Just Cause 3 too. I had a lot of fun with that game too; equally as 2, but maybe even more-so at times.

Avoid 4 though.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

Are there any good open world games you guys could recommend? I'm not too particular about the genre, but I am leaning towards either adventure or simulation.

Fallout new vegas and dragons dogma

 

[Bread Fetishist]

I wasn't even aware that happened; I guess I haven't bothered with Skyrim in so long. For anyone wondering, originally the author of the mod just hid it from the public, with the message on the Nexus page reading:


But now the author's mods are completely gone from the Nexus. I guess November 9th didn't go the way he hoped.

What a cuck, lmao.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Are there any good open world games you guys could recommend? I'm not too particular about the genre, but I am leaning towards either adventure or simulation.

Dragon Quest 11
Nier Automata
Nier
Shadow of the Colossus
Witcher 3
Horizon Zero Dawn
God of War 2018
Xenoblade 2
Xenoblade X
Xenoblade Remastered Edition
Gravity Rush
Gravity Rush 2
Atelier Ryza
Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana
Divinity Original Sin 2




if you want to player some of the first iterations of open world games both Myst and Riven are very good and Cyanworlds put out Obduction which is also good.

 

[ZMOT]

For me the biggest problem with open world games is that they're often too static, with the player's choices having little impact. Ubisoft is notorious for this. Their games constantly have missions where you destroy or steal supplies from the enemy but no matter how often you do it your allies are never better equipped nor are the enemies ever worse off due to the missing supplies. Capturing an enemy base usually just gives you a new fast-travel point rather than affecting enemy spawn rates in the area or doing anything unique (e.g. capturing a garage area could make it so that allies use vehicles more often).

in ubisoft's defense it depends on the game and they do tweak the formula in some forms. for all the shit smeared over it I still enjoy breakpoint somewhat since exploration mode tickles the right spot for me. no more checking off points on a map when you have to find them first, but then I understand not everybody wants to play a sneaky hiking simulator.

as for map progression, reminds me of a discussion I saw recently. for one in coop-stuff like nuGR and division the map has to reflect several different states at ones, depending on your personal progression, and if you take wildlands for example there isn't much that can really change. you're just 4 dudes in a whole country, mainly targeting the cartel, even blowing up shit left and right can only have so much of an impact, and then it's questionable if you'd see that impact to begin with (unless it's constantly shoved in your face). it's also reflected somewhat during progression and the story since you have to work your way up, so your action do have consequences - even if they're told in a cutscene.

I'm personally much more annoyed about that big-ass map and never utilizing it. divison is the king in that it's absolutely static and nothing ever happens, you're literally just hitting the same few spots over and over between running from or to. part of it is that for some reason they think telling the whole story and then leaving you with a "completed" map is a good idea, not even freelancer felt that dead after the campaign was over.
at least breakpoint has the story faction missions (or used to, since they either can't or won't fix the battlepass, I'm afraid they gonna turn it into some fortnite shit like division) that there's still reason to go out there and do stuff.

edit: correction