When GTA3 came out, it sparked a massive change in the way many 3rd person action games could work. It started a revolutionary trend of giving players an easy to make sandbox environment where you could freely walk around in and accept jobs at your own pace. ...or not do jobs. Before you were most likely at the mercy of the level design. Go through this hallway, kill these enemies, survive, and that's how you progress. With GTA3 it became a matter of explore this massive city, and when you want to go ahead and join an assignment for some kind of challenging experience. You basically had the entire game put in front of you, and told you're the king who can do whatever as long as you can follow a couple basics. Amazing! So why then do quite a few people still cling to and prefer linear games? Those have got to be outdated by now, right? Actually its quite the opposite. GTA3 barely has a mention anymore, where as a game like say the original Half-life can still impress very well to this day, and there's quite a few good reasons for that.
Here you go, read this post from quite a long time back if you want my whole reasoning in disliking open world games. Image is broken, sorry. If you want the quick summary, here's a good quick little quote that does the job well.
It goes like this... follow quest, drive from A to B to get something done, go to next quest, do what it says and get some good exposition. After that you sadly need to do something you really hate... like trailing someone, or escape the cops even though you do that ALL the time when you're not in a mission. next quest and... well this is familiar, this was the same objective as the first mission. Put it on loop and you have the normal open world formula IF you go straight at the core. If you do not, well there are side missions.... like taking territory by killing specific people. Or racing. Or a side quest that is exactly like one of the repeating mission sequences. And there are like 10 of each type of those side quests. Then you have a sandbox open world to play in. Out of that the latter sounds like the only real fun one.
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| A whole world full of repetition |
Yeah they're repetitive as hell. While a linear game tells you stories, retains its balance, and can cost effectively accomplish whatever the artist envisions at this point, an open world game running like GTA3 is just... ugh. Its repetitive, gets annoying, has too much filler, and doesn't give room for people to flesh out the campaign or even more important aspects in meaningful ways. It spreads itself too thin. Its mostly fun while its a new concept to let a player drive freely in a whole city, but terrifyingly artificial to the more experienced gamers. The funny thing to is there was already sort of an open world format that didn't fall into the level repetition: 90's collect-o-thons. Play from a huge list of levels whenever you want, explore these somewhat big (for PSX at least) levels, and goof around with all sorts of jumps and whatnot. Having grown up around those, There are still plenty of differences, but I honestly found it to be a more reliable format for getting both freedom and hand crafted well done campaigns. Unfortunately open world games only took the repetitive element of collectibles from them, turning them into collect-o-thons in the insulting way. So are open world games really at a loss? No, this is not at all how open world need to be. I'm playing The Witcher 3 and literally all day (or at least the day I started this post) I've done nothing but side-quests and I've been getting a deep and constantly moving story from multiple supporting characters, imputting unique actions as Geralt, and having a blast with the balance of the mechanics while not quite knowing what to completely expect next. Its a well crafted unpredictable adventure, and not the slightest bit like what I've come to expect from open world games.
Now admittedly this isn't too new. Skryim has done the same, Dragon's Dogma, MMOs, etc. Don't get me wrong they certainly fall into a trap of repetition, but not on quite the same level as the GTA formula. In most RPGs you've got an inherently better sense of adventure. The writing is more unique, the world full of monsters, and the side quests sometimes take advantage of that. Still in dragon's dogma, skyrim, MMOs, and dragon age inquisition you've still got those dumb chore-like missions where developers just run out of ideas. How many uninspired caves did you have to go through in skyrim? How about those great sidequests in dragon's dogma like collecting 40 skulls? You get the idea. You're still finding those weird times where the game just tosses you out there in an easy job that occupies your time. Oh and of course because these are RPGs, you'll literally be grinding... so there's that. Sure its not as obvious as watch dogs convoy mission #14, but you're still finding those moments where the RPG structure is also held to its own restrictions of a thinly spread, grindy, and repetitive open world. Its just more hushed about its looping activities.
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| He'll consume your soul through over-using cave lairs |
Oh and even the collectibles, aside from power places, don't exactly repeat. You see a mysterious area with something and its just a question mark. You get there and maybe at best its marked with "guarded treasure", and then its some seemingly random RPG loot. You don't know its stats, its worth, or even if its junk at your current level, but you know its treasure of some sort that was placed there for value, and that mystery drives you ever closer to exploring the whole darn world. Meanwhile in FC4, no matter how awesome the mystery of those maskes were I just ended up getting sick of it around the last 10 or so. It was just a bunch of dumb masks and I just decided to heck with it, and took a hiatus from the game rather than uncovering everything like I planned. Giving me 4 different massively numerous collectibles to run around a massive land for just gets old when you know those same 4 items, lose the suspense to finding them, and don't feel well rewarded for it. The mystery of just general treasure on the other hand... that's a bit harder to get old, and just having one single repeating reward like the place of power ain't so bad.
Between Witcher 3, Shadows of Mordor's nemesis system, and maybe Far Cry 4 (sidequests had good context at least), there are new standards set for open world games and I look forward to seeing that followed across this generation if AAA really is spending their expensive budgets right. They should be able to now pull off the time and staff to create fully realized worlds for exploration, and giving tasks meaning, or at least re-inventing the repetition into something more organic. Less of this watch dogs or saints row nonsense where you walk up to one of a few repeating activity formulas and play some silly mini-game that ends without character or personality. Get good writers, get a good idea of the world, and build that world rather than building a 40 hour grind of distractions. That is what a true open world is, and Witcher 3 is a prime example of that. Now then, I'm going back to explore some more, because that game is amazing.
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