This is something I've been thinking a lot about with regards to the popular games these days that aren't F2P and I often poke at open world stuff to see what makes them tick. Take away the large scale world and what do you have aside from that? An extremely basic third person controller, a bunch of weapons they probably spent five seconds doing and then a soft body physics simulation for vehicles and vehicle damage.
They seem to spend most of their time spamming art assets all over the places to make the game seem bigger than it really is but if you actually try to 'game' in it you quickly realise that there's fuck all to do and they've put tons of empty space between the game. Seems like people who enjoy these games are the types who are easily distracted by all the shiny stuff and don't really care much about the gameplay of which there is very little.
It's so bad now that when I look at any modern game I check for whether it's linear or not and make sure there's no designing mechanics in there. The reason being is chances are if it's linear the developer probably spent more time with the level design and making it fun than simply scattering assets about the place and overcompensating with procedural generation.
Yep but you know what can make the difference? Story and writing.
It's why Fallout New Vegas, Dark Souls and The Witcher 3 was so loved and no one gives a fuck about Starfield anymore.
Even GTAV kinda knows this which is why they make sure to include some new or returning npc to give a reason behind your actions. A lot of the open world games now focus so much on scale that they forget to populate it and just use the time to get from A to B to pad out game time.
Definitely a factor - for games that need one. Doom Eternal, in my opinion, is an example of where an expanded universe, lore and story actually detracted from the game. Some would argue that the increased mechanical complexity did as well, with many favouring the simpler Doom 2016.
I think, as a designer, you're ultimately crafting an experience. It needs to be cohesive and it needs to be compelling. Anything that doesn't add to that need not apply.
I'd argue the opposite for Doom Eternal in that I loved the fact they made the 'Doom Slayer' the original Doomguy and he's been fucking hell up with no lube for centuries that all the Demons screaming at you is them having PTSD seeing you!
The mechanics were hit and miss as some traversal puzzles were annoying while the combat was improved with the 'slaughtering enemies provides EVERYTHING you need' mechanic.
Trying to think of a bad example, I'd say probably Last of Us 2 as from appearance it played the same as the original that everyone enjoyed but the story threw everyone out of it that it ruined the experience. The 'no one wants to play as Abby' comes to mind.
Each to their own. I also liked the characterisation of the Doom Guy, but that's where my appreciation of the lore/story ended. The need to expand the universe and add gravity/grandiosity is ultimately what moved the game away from being what it was good at. As a result, it went from being a short and sharp corridor shooter to including a hub, replete with upgrades and other bullshit, and a bunch of uninspired and oversized "modern" levels to sell the premise.
Definitely agree on TLoU though. Tranny killed the beloved protagonist, and with it the franchise. Didn't help turning the second most liked character into a bulldyke who wouldn't tolerate bigot sandwiches in a world of starvation, either.
If the "open world" is just empty spaces between quest markers sure. If it has cool stuff happening between them then that is the point.
Mad Max did a good job of this between storms and random raider encounters.
The main thing is traveling has to be fun, which Mad Max did right. Compared to the retarded Rage 2, which REALLY should have stuck to its scripted FPS formula.
Rage 2 somehow managed the worst of both worlds. It had an enjoyable enough core loop, but insisted on not giving you a chance to use it. Instead, you got inundated with fetch quests and lengthy driving sequences to promote the open world design. A large, open world filled with locations and factions devoid of personality, and made with none of the artistry of the original.
A real pity; It reminded me of Borderlands 3 in that regard.
I played maybe half of the game and the best thing about it was the flying car, so I could just skip travel, skip the obnoxious roadblock battles, and go straight to the slightly more fun open world boss fights and occasional story missions.
Level design is dead in the AAA industry, so many of today's games are technically big but feel small whereas so many older games are technically small but feel big. Rather analogous to the difference between hi-fi graphics and good artistry.
Being a lifelong Zelda fan I'm especially disappointed to see this bug catch the Zelda franchise. And both BOTW and TOTK are miles above most post-Skyrim sandbox games, they're still excellent games in a lot of ways and the franchise had grown way too linear prior to BOTW. But while I could at least understand the mistakes they made with BOTW, the fact that they didn't correct those mistakes in TOTK (the "dungeons" in TOTK were a joke, among other things) makes me pessimistic for the future of the franchise.
I agree completely on your take on Zelda. I am also pessimistic for their future. I really hope they go back to the old formula, even if "modern audiences" bitch about it. BOTW and TOTK were great games, but they weren't Zelda games. I would take Ocarina or Windwaker over either of them.
Link to the Past is still the gold standard.
Twilight Princess too?
Twilight Princess was just meh.
BOTW did not grab my interest at all despite how much praise it got precisely for the reasons you describe. There were also a good number of complaints about it's durability system and I'm not going to play a game that I know will frustrate and annoy me with that kind of gameplay.
I haven't been able force myself to finish BOTW. It's pointlessly big.
What? You thought "look in correct direction to figure out where you need to go on the map that's pretty clearly marked, then go there, then flip a switch" was weak? You weren't excited by opening a chest and finding ... some arrows or Zonai parts?
I just played through Majora's Mask again and am nearly done with Minish Cap and they both just make me sad at the state of video games today. Don't get me wrong, both BotW and TotK did some things extremely well and are impressive technical achievements, but they didn't even bother to try to do any of the things that I care about in a Zelda game.
You've put your finger on it and named the vague sense of something being off I've been experiencing for years.
There's been so much shift for generations now towards procedural generation and that mindset has almost certainly leaked over into even the handcrafted level design space. Good level design is hard and with the flood of inferior game designers ballooning the industry...well I suppose it was inevitable in retrospect.
I didnt play totk but did watch a bunch. The "level design" innovation was in the movement between the sky world, the normal land, and the underworld.
Not enough games build vertically, I’d prefer smaller and denser worlds like Banjo-Kazooie or Bioshock.
Once you strip away the gunplay, Doom 2016 is just a series of hallways.
At least there 2 directions to walk in an open world.
This is why metroidvania design, when done properly, is god-tier. Best of both worlds.
God Hand, one of my favorite games of all time, is pretty much the same thing. Just hallways and fights with the occasional side path or minigame and it kicks ass.
Actually replaying it at the moment. It had everything going against it - zero budget, rushed production, tank controls in a 3d brawler and IGN being well, IGN.
Turns out an excellent core gameplay loop and an unapologetic commitment to fun is all it takes to make a cult hit that's still relevant today.
I certainly understand disliking open world games. Some are open world just for the sake of it, and serve only to force you spend time traveling as a substitute for gameplay.
San Andreas might be one of the best open worlds. Enough scenery to give you lots of variety from ghetto to farm to Vegas. And the neighborhood gangland mechanic also gives the open world a purpose. IMO
They are lazy and retarded. More people are noticing this and now gravitating to traditionally structured content that they refer to as "set pieces."
They all follow the same pizza-style format where you have a few towns peppered throughout an arbitrary plane of land with smaller areas of interest interspersed throughout. It is boring and beaten to death.
The only exception is the DLC of cyberpunk where they gave players access to a tiny town called Dogtown. It was small and packed to the brim with enemies and shit to do that it was more fun and made more sense to walk everywhere in that small town. You would have a firefight in front of a major building and as that clears up, a payload drops and initiates a turf war between factions while you jump into another clusterfuck of patrolling enemies.
The DLC was certainly a better 'cyberpunk' experience and more in line with what was promised. However I still feel completely cheated by the overall game especially when it came to the lifepaths bullshit that they're still trying to advertise as if they matter. Realistically you could cut all of that out, have Vee do a default start and then that would make more sense if it was a bit more of a linear style story.
I would fix the story by properly killing off Vee because I didn't find him particularly likeable as an MC anyway it it's blatantly implied in all scenarios that he dies. It would give CD Projekt Red more opportunities to explore the lore of the game and fix the crap they pulled while still being able to re-use assets.
They won't do that though, they've got this weird Vee obsession, second DLC in which you know they're going to do it's probably going to be another tacked on mess because normie sales have given them the leeway to do it.
If travelling is fun then I will like it. If it's incredibly boring and tedious then I won't like it. I think a lot of people also have that viewpoint.
Mechanical complexity doesn't necessarily equate to gameplay depth; Nor does gameplay depth to enjoyment. Some of the most enjoyable games have a really simple gameplay loop - just done well. Great game feel, nice setting, whatever. Take it from someone who's initial forays into game design involved the kitchen sink.
Too many/complex mechanics become cumbersome and usually land up being half baked or poorly integrated. The sweet spot, IMO, is in a relatively small set of polished mechanics that can interact with each other in interesting ways to produce a lot of player options. Options that have gameplay significance, and are fun to use.
Platinum Games are good at this. Metal Gear Rising, Vanquish and Bayonetta are all superficially simple and quick to learn; But there're always layers of complexity to the mechanics which provides plenty of room for mastery - and some of the highest skill ceilings I've seen.