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"Open World" Games
10 years ago
I guess while we're in the throes of the Fallout 4 reveal, it's a good time to jot down all the thoughts I have about games trying to be "open world" ever since the fat success of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
I guess to start, I should tell you that Fallout 3 was the first game to capture my attention and keep me "addicted" for longer than was healthy. The only game to do that prior was Star Control 2, which had the mercy of being a game on a timer, preventing you from playing it indefinitely. F3 was the first game that put me on a giant grid full of things I could explore, turn over every rock, find bits of story, wonder what was over there, wonder what's behind that hill, wonder what that strange building was and what I would find there. It was a new experience, and subsequent worlds like that, from New Vegas to Skyrim, had the same feel to them: well designed landscapes dotted with features that didn't feel repetitive (except for the voice acting), and contributed a little slice of the universe's story when you explored it. This was combined with an appropriately atmospheric soundtrack to punctuate your explorative moments.
They were what games about exploration should be. They weren't good fighting games, but you could get by. The game engine made the characters feel "floaty" and janky. But while every other game could give you the action and the fighting, they all failed to give you the feeling of emerging from an enclosed dungeon, into an enormous, wild world, with the accompanying musical sting, with the need to know, "Hey, where does that river go?"
Other games claimed inspiration from these games. Dragon Age: Inquisition indicated they expanded their maps for this reason. It was a good game and I liked it, even if the ending was disappointing. I would have thought after creating Mass Effec 2 as the template for how to end a character-driven game in an emotionally satisfying way, we might have gotten more than "pick your team like always, fight a guy with a lot of hitpoints" as the final mission. Bioware's strength is character writing, and it propelled the game, but like everyone else who tried "open world", they just build larger maps to cover, without any thought to rewarding someone's desire to explore them. There were no grand moments of emerging on a mountain top and looking out over an intriguing landscape. There were no significant reveals outside of quests. There was just a lot of ground to cover. Ubisoft does similarly with their worlds, whether it's the Far Cry games or Assassin's Creed. They just seem to build larger maps and scatter collectibles around them. Not to mention repetitive tower climbing. It feels large, but none of it feels very interesting.
I'm not saying these are bad games. Far from it. I'm just saying their strengths aren't with their worlds and their maps.
I'm playing through Witcher 3 right now, in my spare time. It has a lot of the same issues. It's a great game, the fighting is great, the quests are neat, the little stories in it are pretty good to uncover (the graphics are fucking amazing - GTX980 running on max settings smooth as butter). I'm really enjoying myself. The maps feel large, but not intriguing. Each undiscovered location is marked with a question mark on your map, so you aren't really pleasantly surprised by seeing anything. Vision is obscured by foliage most of the time, so there aren't really any instances of seeing something in the distance you want to check out. The maps make me feel very uncurious, even as I enjoy everything else about the game.
I know there are people who don't get the enthusiasm for Fallout 4. I know there's the kind of person who likes "games" more than "this kind of game" in general. I'd love to see F4 adopt a better engine and work out a lot of the fighting and action issues that have dogged Bethesda's worlds right up to Skyrim. But to a person like me, these faults are easily overcome by a game in a world that I know I'm going to sink several hundred hours into, easily, just walking around, popping heads off monsters, exploring bunkers, wondering what's over that hill, and feeling like one small person in a large world I can tell the creator's really enjoyed building and writing stories into.
I guess to start, I should tell you that Fallout 3 was the first game to capture my attention and keep me "addicted" for longer than was healthy. The only game to do that prior was Star Control 2, which had the mercy of being a game on a timer, preventing you from playing it indefinitely. F3 was the first game that put me on a giant grid full of things I could explore, turn over every rock, find bits of story, wonder what was over there, wonder what's behind that hill, wonder what that strange building was and what I would find there. It was a new experience, and subsequent worlds like that, from New Vegas to Skyrim, had the same feel to them: well designed landscapes dotted with features that didn't feel repetitive (except for the voice acting), and contributed a little slice of the universe's story when you explored it. This was combined with an appropriately atmospheric soundtrack to punctuate your explorative moments.
They were what games about exploration should be. They weren't good fighting games, but you could get by. The game engine made the characters feel "floaty" and janky. But while every other game could give you the action and the fighting, they all failed to give you the feeling of emerging from an enclosed dungeon, into an enormous, wild world, with the accompanying musical sting, with the need to know, "Hey, where does that river go?"
Other games claimed inspiration from these games. Dragon Age: Inquisition indicated they expanded their maps for this reason. It was a good game and I liked it, even if the ending was disappointing. I would have thought after creating Mass Effec 2 as the template for how to end a character-driven game in an emotionally satisfying way, we might have gotten more than "pick your team like always, fight a guy with a lot of hitpoints" as the final mission. Bioware's strength is character writing, and it propelled the game, but like everyone else who tried "open world", they just build larger maps to cover, without any thought to rewarding someone's desire to explore them. There were no grand moments of emerging on a mountain top and looking out over an intriguing landscape. There were no significant reveals outside of quests. There was just a lot of ground to cover. Ubisoft does similarly with their worlds, whether it's the Far Cry games or Assassin's Creed. They just seem to build larger maps and scatter collectibles around them. Not to mention repetitive tower climbing. It feels large, but none of it feels very interesting.
I'm not saying these are bad games. Far from it. I'm just saying their strengths aren't with their worlds and their maps.
I'm playing through Witcher 3 right now, in my spare time. It has a lot of the same issues. It's a great game, the fighting is great, the quests are neat, the little stories in it are pretty good to uncover (the graphics are fucking amazing - GTX980 running on max settings smooth as butter). I'm really enjoying myself. The maps feel large, but not intriguing. Each undiscovered location is marked with a question mark on your map, so you aren't really pleasantly surprised by seeing anything. Vision is obscured by foliage most of the time, so there aren't really any instances of seeing something in the distance you want to check out. The maps make me feel very uncurious, even as I enjoy everything else about the game.
I know there are people who don't get the enthusiasm for Fallout 4. I know there's the kind of person who likes "games" more than "this kind of game" in general. I'd love to see F4 adopt a better engine and work out a lot of the fighting and action issues that have dogged Bethesda's worlds right up to Skyrim. But to a person like me, these faults are easily overcome by a game in a world that I know I'm going to sink several hundred hours into, easily, just walking around, popping heads off monsters, exploring bunkers, wondering what's over that hill, and feeling like one small person in a large world I can tell the creator's really enjoyed building and writing stories into.
I love games with a scenario like those who talked about : dragon age, mass effet, TES. That are some my favourites games because of the scenario behind the game !
I loved this journal, really gave you something to think about. I do hope F4 is as good as F3 was.
There needs to be some form of balance, yet, it's very difficult to bring such a balance- it's like they have to sacrifice one thing for another.
What I think MW did offer that we will never see the likes of again was a medieval pace. You were stepping into a world where people have different expectations from us modern folks, where spending an hour walking between two towns is considered "fast" and being harassed along the way by a giant crab and a couple bandits is -meh- the way rush hour traffic is to us. If you can get into it, it's like bathing in another world and its culture. But people willing to step into a whole other mode of thought like that are a minority, so games now rush from one satisfying scene to another, make the most of the player's time. It's the only way to have mass appeal.
I guess, before that turned into a Zelda rant, is that I agree with you. It's getting a bit overused because of the success of Skyrim. What the game developers should focus on is the theme of the game. What they want the player to FEEL. Amnesia the Dark Decent is a good example. Wht is the best way to make a player terrified of a monster? Not allow him to fight it. Add in the right atmosphere. Make him hallucinate things if he stays in the dark to long. Have the character talk to himself. These all turned Amnesia into a fantastic survival horror experience, and it's because the developers thought about how the game would effect the player.
Another good example, if not an old one, is Zelda: A Link to the Past. Throughout the entire game they give you VERY subtle hints at how far you've come, how much you've grown in he game, without taking away from the sense of urgency and need to upgrade your stuff so you can be the hero that Hyrule needs. (Yes, I know. Another Zelda title)
Personally, I think open world is a fantastic idea if presented in the correct fashion, which is what made Skyrim and F3 such fantastic games. These games aren't meant to be played in a hurry. These games are one seemingly normal person discovering who they are through their actions and through exploration. That would be a great game for an open world, ESPECIALLY if, like you said, they surprise the players with rewards. But it's not a feature that should be added to every game ever. That's not the point of gaming. The point of gaming is to immerse yourself in the experience, and if a game can't do that... Well, in my eyes, it has failed if it cant hold the attention of players.
Wow that turned into a long rant of my own. o.o Anyways, yeah, I hope you enjoy F4 when it comes out, and I look forward to more JNaylor arts.
Too awesome, cant wait. Time to upgrade the PC gfx card
It's called Outside.
(That said I do agree Skyrim has that perpetual blue-grey which does take away from the experience)
I'm finding myself enjoying games like Witcher 3 and Brutal Legend a lot more because of the variety and colour. Brutal Legend, as an example, had a forgettable campaign but such intelligent level design that it's difficult not to get lost in its openness. Fallout 4 is interesting me because of the amount of colour and civilisation shown in the teaser.
I'm curious though. Do you include games like Minecraft in the exploration genre? Or do you need a little more story to your game worlds? I know it's fun to explore in that game, but... there's not really any lore to discover, or not yet. Is that something you'd greatly miss if they took it out?
Since Bethesda ripped Fallout, Interplays baby right out of their crib, I've had a hatred for this company.
Tried to come to terms with it. Tried reason. They butchered the real Fallout 3 - Van Buren - to make their own, and it was ... Morrowind with guns. The Fallout forums became toxic with that hatred towards Bethesda and I took my leave.
That didn't really help me get to like the company and that game more, though. Just one persons opinion of course: The open world didn't make much sense, and it was an awkward collection of setpieces and rollercoaster rides. As if the designers had a meeting and everybody wrote two lines about what they personally want to see in it, no matter what. The story had me rolling my eyes ... I knew to some degree I just wanted to dislike it, but even if I had not ... the game made it too easy. I did give it a fair chance. It may be alright as an open world game. But I can never see it as a Fallout game. Wasteland 2 has been my Fallout 3 in a way. It's got the gameplay, it's got the story, and the theme.
A funny thought would be if some company bought the rights to The Elder Scrolls and published the next big game in the series ... as a Kart Racer. In a way, that's what they did for Fallout, under the guise of modernizing.
Probably a number of factors besides just the perspective play into that. Party management, micro management, and the perspective of the story told itself.
It's really a very different beast. I'm drawn to both of these. Ultima and Ultima Underworld in the distant past. Fallout and Gothic sometime later. Wasteland 2 and Witcher 3 today. I did get over the "genre switch", no doubt. And I have Pillars of Eternity to look forward to, when I've finished Witcher 3.
Hear, hear!
There are a few exceptions to that. My favorite game is probably Dark Souls because it does a complex open-world while keeping a good thematic story and challenging gameplay. I know it's not truly open-world in the way that something like Skyrim is, but the elements are still there. I've also heard that the KOTOR games are very good for that sort of thing, though I haven't played much of them. Have you looked into any of the space adventure games that are coming out? Elite: Dangerous, Star Citizen, No Man's Sky? Those are the big ones I'm looking forward to, because of that open-world exploration aspect. Admittedly they're multiplayer (or at least can be) and that lessens it a little bit for me since I don't like multiplayers that much, but the concept seems sound.
The game's art director, Grant Duncan, say that it's such a huge number that it's "entirely meaningless" on a purely abstract level. But thanks to procedural generation, it's happening.
In fact, the universe is so massive that the team had to make space probes to explore it for them, because it's now outside of their control. It is its own entity.
http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/3/814.....tillion-worlds
So I'm gonna go out on a limb and say your dream of being able to go through space for days at a time without seeing another soul might just become a reality!
Its the games of the Stalker series . Sure they had no singel big open map but it few maps where big and open .
Those games had a really good atmosphere i mean the entire scenery was feeling fitting .
Who wasn´t scared as cutting the night away with a flashlight while somewhere in the background came the howl of mutated dog .
Or when your sneaking though and old underground laboratory and suddenly an old bucket simply lifts up into the air and slams into you head. XD
You know proably the open shooter way of games like masseffect , borderland or Stalker .
Not exacly open like a true open game , but which games are truely open ?
As far as i remeber was the gta series open but still pretty lined storywise .
Maybe one day, the Fallout Franchise will be owned by a better gaming company, who can bring back the core-spirit and fun into this game! The way, I see/experience it...It's living it's darkest hours, as originality goes. A shame, that an original game was reduced to be a clone of another game. Bethesda milking the original settings, while only adding their TES-like game play. Also a shame, that it's boring as Hell.
At least the graphics are good...I suspect, that the game play will be still the same! No innovation there at all!
I CAN'T LIVE THE LIE !! I do prefer the personal detachment of an isometric RPG, where my connection to the world is through the god's eye view of an inch high sprite. I'm sorry I spent all those hours pretending to be fascinated by exploring an actual landscape, when inside I was crushing my own soul, just so I could maintain the facade of enjoying myself, for no real certain reason other than to lie to you, myself, and the world. :(
You've helped me break through. Thank you.
For me, graphics aren't everything...in fact, for me it's really not so important at all! I have played with games like Tetris and Super Mario Land for the NGB! Graphics-low, sound-8bit, fun factor...unique, fantastic and timeless!
I judge a game, by measuring, how much fun I can have with it. Fallout 3 was a bore...for me. Gaming experience may differ, they say...they do!
I'm actually playing through AC4 right now after having been disappointed by AC3, and the concept of being out in the open sea is extremely enticing, and it's...-kinda- nifty to stop by the little islandettes and explore them, it just became one, long, mindless park-the-ship-and-jump-off-the-side-to-get-the-shiny-thing-adventure. Basically a massive chore.
And the real pisser is that Ubisoft had the nerve to offer a "time saver" add-on that got all of the collectibles for you...honestly? I've heard of similar shady microtransactions in Unity, and it's just bringing the series down for me overall :/ Slow, steady decline, game after game.
I'm curious on your opinion of the series and Unity, if you've played it yet?
Go ahead and take a look on Youtube, and try not to let the dawn creep up on you.
But fallouts, elder scrolls do it well. Can play how you want, completely ignoring anything the devs threw in
GTA, Saint's Row, Dragon Age, etc do it okayish But in the end you're still kinda railroaded down the paths they want.
Right now I'm playing 7 days to die, untruned, minecraft, etc . Sandboxes and open world go well together, hopefully we'll see more of the crafting/survival aspects of the setting (like in new vegas)
FO4, $60.
FO4 DLC, $60.
Modfees to bugfix Bethesda's fuckups/make FO4 playable, $600.
PRICELESS
I guess what I'm getting at is that it's awesome when a series can instill an instinctive distrust of a certain type of area into you. Anytime I see that big vault door, my first thought is, "what sort of things are in there and is it worth the danger to scavenge it?" :p
i feel exactly the same way. fallout does open world verry well and for that reason is my favorite game serise of all time. i would love to get into more detal abought this but im on the verge of passing out
I for one am impressed by what they've done with Boston. Seeing the many monuments and sites like the Bunker Hill Memorial, the USS Constitution, Fenway Park, the statue of Paul Revere, and the Massachusetts State Capitol all in the world was exciting. I'm also quite shocked to see the amount of buildings, it sure looked like Boston was hit directly with nukes. And as usual the Brotherhood of Steel's armor looks cool as hell!
One thing I have to wonder Jay, the trailer showing the day the bombs hit, you think that might be the opening level cause that'd be interesting? I also hope the story has a more personal feel, The Lone Wanderer and his father had me more invested then the Courier. I hope it's possible to have a family cause that'd be really cool! And not what Skyrim had defined as "Marriage" but actually finding a girl to marry and having a child. Not just adopting but an actual kid, that'd bring a fun and emotional grip to the story.