What happened to Open World games?

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

If you think it's bad in Far Cry 4, never play Far Cry 2. The enemies spawn just as often but none of the outposts can be captured. What this means is that from beginning to end, you'll be harassed by enemies everywhere with no option of clearing the map and making it safer for yourself. There's no friendly NPC's except for the safe zone towns which make the world very bleak. The enemies also regularly rubberband up to you in MG trucks so you can't even outrun them in a car.

STALKER was even worse in that regard. The whole fucking camp would respawn while looting their corpses/chests/lockers. Again and again.

 

[Marissa Moira]

I've never really cared for the main quests for open world games, their strengths always lie in the side content.

If the side content is absolute shit or full of buseywork, then it's bad open world design.

 

[I am Jack's dead arm]

What makes it even worse in FC2 is that most of the missions force you to backtrack to the mission spawn point... so you can make a phone call.

 

[Anachronistic]

I honestly never understood why so many hold Far Cry 2 in such high regard. I guess if you're bored of the Far Cry 3 formula then FC2 acts as something different which could be refreshing, but I wouldn't say it makes the gameplay good. It really feels more like people are just tired of the FC3 way of things and consider FC2 to be excellent not because it's actually good, but because it's so different.

Like, I suppose Africa is a pretty good map in the game and the story is somewhat intriguing (though somewhat ruined by everyone speaking like they're the Micro Machines guy) but gameplay wise, FC2 is basically the same as FC3 except with more back-tracking, endless enemies and the malaria/gun jamming bullshit.

 

[Grand_Ole_Ostritch]

Ubisoft happened. They stumbled upon a formula with Assassins Creed 2 and began pumping out copy-pasted open world games till people got sick of them. Though I think Elden Ring may signal the beginning of the end for that type of open world game design. People are tired of mundane fetch quests and hand holdy story missions. They want games like Elden Ring and BotW that actually give the player freedom and don't flood your map with a bunch of markers and shit to collect.

 

[Agarathium1066]

I honestly never understood why so many hold Far Cry 2 in such high regard. I guess if you're bored of the Far Cry 3 formula then FC2 acts as something different which could be refreshing, but I wouldn't say it makes the gameplay good. It really feels more like people are just tired of the FC3 way of things and consider FC2 to be excellent not because it's actually good, but because it's so different.

Like, I suppose Africa is a pretty good map in the game and the story is somewhat intriguing (though somewhat ruined by everyone speaking like they're the Micro Machines guy) but gameplay wise, FC2 is basically the same as FC3 except with more back-tracking, endless enemies and the malaria/gun jamming bullshit.

The game at the time had exceptional graphics, excellent reactivity like how a single spark can start a massive fire, how enemies reacted to your presence. The story was largely padding between Micro Machines rants from various talking heads like 'The Jackal' but it had a few interesting beats on a subject that wasn't widely covered.

The weapons also felt damn good to use since you could cause such chaos and the enemies would react and try to fight you decently. Unless they were in a jeep then they just tried to run your ass over or immediately pause to spray the mounted machine gun. The inability to have allies or actually change the map for keeps was a serious weakness which makes it lose steam after time though.

 

[Judge Dredd]

They want games like Elden Ring and BotW that actually give the player freedom and don't flood your map with a bunch of markers and shit to collect.

I wouldn't get your hopes up. Establishment AAA hacks hated Elden Ring with a passion for not obeying the Ubisoft "ux" formula of objective markers and button prompts. As we're seeing with wokeshit, games as a service, and bad translations, these people would prefer to go down with the ship than admit they were wrong. If they do eventually change, they'll make some excuse about Elden Ring had nothing to do with it and it was something they figured out internally.

I honestly never understood why so many hold Far Cry 2 in such high regard.

I think it's Crowbcat and similar YouTubers. Far Cry 2 had a bunch of little details that are interesting in isolation (like spreading fire) that don't add to the overall gameplay. It's easy to put together a bunch of cherry picked clips of bullet holes in vehicles in FC2 and compare it to FC5 which doesn't have them, while omitting things like respawning enemies or enemies able to see three miles through dense jungle.

Far Cry 2 is not a good open world game. Like other games mentioned here, all it has are collectable diamonds and a lot of traveling between objective markers. Even things like taking out convoys have to accepted as a side quest instead of spawning in the world.