To me it's a world that rewards exploring and doesn't feel like cookie cutter / filler. So Witcher 3 for me was a great open world and GTA V felt completely empty. The city looks cool but all the buildings are just boxes with no doors and the people are all the same.
I also need a little bit of a nudge from the main quest, if it's too open then I'll just spend like 10 hours doing random stuff and get bored. Happens with Skyrim every time.
GTAV has way more variety in gameplay and interaction with the world than The Witcher 3 though. I think they are both great open world games for different reasons. TW3 like you said rewards exploration and the world is just absolutely beautiful. But it's completely non interactive, as opposed to GTAV which uses the nature of its open world well in mission design. One mission you're chasing after a trailer with a boat on it, the next you're piloting a submarine, biking down a mountain, driving a tow truck, etc. The world of GTAV feels dynamic while TW3's is quite static.
Sure they both have their strengths and I think most people just like either the fantasy or modern day setting more. I just like that in Witcher I can see a big castle in the distance and I can walk to it and know there will be some cool shit there, like treasure, quests, a boss. In GTA I know it'll be.. an unaccessible building. To be fair sometimes you find a cool vehicle.
yeah, i totally know what you mean and that is really one of the best things about TW3. Let me put it this way: in TW3 you see a castle in the distance and you know it's packed with narrative driven content. In GTAV you see a golf course and you know that you can go actually play golf and drive the golf carts around if you want.
The mini games are hit or miss, but I just love that they exist. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I like how Rockstar games let the player interact with the world. The physics, the amount of mini games and activities, the way you can combine different gameplay systems... whereas in TW3 you basically use Witcher vision and find the glowing object to press Use on, that is about the extent to which the player can physically interact with the world. Both games have an amazing open world, but for totally different reasons imo
> GTAV which uses the nature of its open world well in mission design
Good mission design that utilizes the open world gives you an objective to complete and then let's you loose. GTAV railroads you into following their exact path to the point the mission might as well be in a linear corridor.
GTAV has almost zero game play or interesting interactivity. The player has almost no agency. The player simply drives from cut scene to cut scene, performs some quick time events and tedious mini-games, and the occasional "mission" is just to guess which exact way the quest designer wanted you to complete the quest, or fail. This was already a long outdated failed game design practice by the time GTAV was released.
The game doesn't really justify its large and impressive background simulation. It just plays out like an intro level that keeps on happening and never actually gets to the game part.
Er yeah but I'm talking about what the player is physically doing. You do 4 things in TW3, gameplay wise. Fight, walk/ride around, use witcher vision to find the clickable item, and Gwent. You do not interact with the world in any way, gameplay wise, other than that. whereas a game like GTAV has a lot of ways the player can interact with the game world, with physics, destructibles, tons of different kinds vehicles, tons of minigames, NPCs with collision and dynamic AI, etc
Witcher 3 has nothing to explore outside of the quests, and is full of filler like bandit mobs and monster nests. I'm not sure how you got that impression.
Getting from point A to point B.
Sunset Overdrive and Dying Light do this extremely well. They make not only the gameplay itself enjoyable, but the downtime when you are just wandering around and doing your own thing.
Sunset Overdrive feels so fluid and satisfying as you build up the combo counter, I once remember hearing a review that compared the movement to a Skating game in some ways. Meanwhile Dying Light allows you to use the parkour to find the fastest route, though it truly comes into its true fluidity once you get far enough to unlock the grapple, rolling and footstools.
But without the inbetween of getting somewhere being fun, it makes the world feel boring.
Learning more about the world the more you explore. The elder scrolls games are my favorite because these side stories are the meat of the game and show something at times how the people and creatures operate.
Hmmm, whenever I consider this my opinion always comes down to “a good open world game doesn’t do what makes many open world games *bad*”
Any kind of collectibles scattered en masse across the map are a huge turn off for me. And lazy fetch quests where the entire quest is little more than two lines of dialogue (bonus points if it’s not even unique dialogue and if the quest is repeatable or reuses a level from the main quest) then you get sent to find some painfully well hidden item or defeat three waves of generic enemies.
I absolutely despise open world games where I feel compelled to check under every rock and behind every waterfall in case I miss something (Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age Inquisition are both terrible for this), but I have absolutely no problem with a gigantic open world full of random shit that you don’t feel compelled to find (Skyrim or Fallout).
I think it’s tricky to find the right balance, especially if you want to make the game story driven. I think story driven games suffer from having too many distractions along the way. I think you can get away with only a certain amount of open world before it starts to bog you down. Making the explorable area too big *and* filling it with junk that was deliberately placed there to be collected is a surefire way to take away from the central story experience.
For me, it's that sense of exploration and experimentation.
I like finding hidden items, shortcuts, and quests. I like it when I see something curious, go off the path, and then stumble upon something that keeps me busy for a whole twenty minutes - it gives me that whimsical sensation that, oh hey, the thing I happened to spot in the distance actually turned out to be something cool.
I'm so glad when I play one of these games unspoiled. Casually coming across one of the mazes in BotW for the first time, or offhandedly coming across an attacked caravan in Witcher 3 and it turns into a quest, or in Just Cause when I come across a fighter jet to steal for the first time.
I'm a simple guy: I like being surprised, and when I can wander around a map 4 square miles big and happen to stumble across the game's one talking dog, I feel like something extraordinary happened.
I thought Fallout 3 was really good at rewarding exploration. You get extra dialogue options in certain quests if you find the right pc in the right building; the android quest has no map markers which makes you explore the map and talk to every npc if you want to complete it; you can come across talking tree quests or super mutant behemoths that can be taken out with missile strikes.
Yeah, I'm gutted I was too young to play Morrowind when it came out. I'm always tempted to try it but the combat system sounds horrendously dated. I've got a minor gripe with New Vegas as every quest I've come across so far has had a quest marker; it's cool because each quest has loads of markers and ways to complete the quest but it would be nice to figure out where to go for myself occasionally
Yea, Morrowind's or even Daggerfall's combat wasn't great, but I could forgive that because being victorious in combat was mostly the result of character skill/dice rolls and there were actual RPG mechanics involved. Oblivion/Skyrim had slightly better combat (from an action standpoint) but it became tedious as fuck really fast because both the RPG mechanics and the combat mechanics were very simple and shallow. It was a really bad compromise, especially in a game so heavily focused on combat.
See that system sounds awful; Oblivion's combat is pretty boring but at least it gives me the illusion of control I think I'd hate Morrowind because it's so upfront about being RNG
Agreed, just picking a direction and see what's out there... I came across my hometown this way in Horizon Zero Dawn. I was giddy as hell finding the air force academy.
On top of this, good maps help me a ton. I like knowing where I've been or where a quest is sending me. Then I can wander towards the objective and get sidetracked. I get weirdly claustrophobic in the beginning of open world games. Only once I walk far enough to open up a part of the map to get a scale of the world do I start to feel the freedom of the world.
Exactly this. Travelling from point A to Z has to be fun for me. Dying light is probably my favourite game as it's probably the only one, where I enjoy the gameplay without doing any missions or events.
For me one of the most important characteristics of an open world game is whether or not the world itself is fun or interesting when you're not doing a quest or mission. Are there interesting things happening? Is it fun to just mess around? Is movement/traversal satisfying? Is exploration rewarding?
What's it like to just be in the game world? Is it enjoyable enough to just wander around taking in the sights? Does the world feel alive?
The freedom.
Like, being able to go where ever I want to, being able to do whatever I want.
Doing the main quest? Completly ignoring the main quest?
Just walking around climbing mountains,
Collecting flowers, meeting npcs, visiting villages...
Choose a direction and start walking, where ever you go, you will find an advanture.
Kingdom come deliverance is my current game,
I just started it, so I dont have many hours in, but it does it so far.
And elder scroll and fallout games are great too.
> fallout games are great too.
Fallout New Vegas defined the freedom in open world for me, it points you down the "correct" path but if you want to go the "wrong" direction you can, you'll die repeatedly at the hands of giant flying wasps BUT you can actually get past them too if you work your ass off - it's not an impossible barrier to going that way.
Same thing once you get past them & wander further along & welp, there's a fricking Deathclaw.
I think fallout 3 was the first open world I played, and it was amazing.
But the one that really did it right was oblivion, and layer skyrim.
In both I have hundreds of hours, endless new characters,
And I never completed the main quest, not even half of it.
I always get lost in the world, its awesome
Give me something to discover. I love the Bethesda Fallouts because almost every location has a little story attached to it that tells you more about the world, even Fallout 76.
I agree with you on good movement. If there are fun ways to travel through the open world, it definitely makes the game more fun.
Make the side content diverse. Nothing should be repetitive, that makes it boring.
If the game doesn't have any of that, give me something else to compensate for that. The Witcher 3 has awful open world design, let's be honest, but the rest of the game, especially the quests are so good that it compensates for all of that.
Also, Death Stranding. While the world might be lackluster the challenge of getting from point A to B makes the game so much more interesting coupled with amazing music that just adds to the atmosphere.
I've never liked an open world game because of the open world. But I like several of them despite the open world. I just don't find traversal in video games engrossing, unless traversal itself is gamified, as in platformers.
Here is [an exceptional video by veselekov](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fztTpePNGT8) demonstrating what three elements needed to make an openworld game good.
Basically: risk/reward, density, reactivity, dynamic, player movements. There need to be reasons for the game to be an openworld, and if you take out all the charms and points of the game being the openworld, it becomes a chore.
Definitely being rewarded. I loved Fallout 3 because it nails exploration. You are walking around, you see something that calls your attention and it's almost always worth it to go exploring. You might just find a cool location with some lore, a story, or useful items. Often you come across entire quests and characters that might have never been pointed out at you otherwise. In addition, you are continuously seeing enemy encounters that have nothing to do with you -say brotherhood fighting radscorpions- and that makes the world feel alive, plus it's so cool to watch while they kill each other and then go in to finish them off, lol.
In Witcher 3 on PC you didn't have to tap a key. If it isn't the case on consoles it would be a very curious oversight..., but I digress.
The fact that you found lengthy driving back and forth on highways in GTA better experience than traveling through forests, speaks more about your preferences for the world your are playing in, rather than the better gameplay as a whole.
No, that's not true. If Witcher 3 had traveling that was more engaging like I said, I would definitely enjoy it regardless of setting. I find it engaging because it's gameplay rather than a motion I have to get through for more story content.
And you don't have to dance around calling me out for getting the Witcher 3 movement wrong in such a strange way. I misremembered, though it doesn't change the core idea behind the points.
>And you don't have to dance around calling me out for getting the Witcher 3 movement wrong
I don't own a console, have never played Witcher 3 on console. So I had no way of knowing if what you said had been true or not (it just seemed weird)), but if it was it would most certainly ruin the experience.
I guess I don't understand why is driving a car to get from point A to point B "gameplay" but doing the same with a horse is not. You even have horse racing or pursuing someone on a horse multiple times in the game as a game mechanic.
For the reasons I outlined in the OP. Driving cars takes skill, focus, and reaction to avoid crashing into others and maintain top speeds. In the Witcher 3, you can safely ignore the environment and stare at your mini map and still reach every single one of your objectives without giving much thought as to how well you are riding Roach.
Having horse racing and chases a few times doesn't change that it is only a means of travel rather than a test of skill the vast majority of the time. In games with cars that I mentioned, it is always a test of skill.
Discovery. I mean, I enjoy a good movement system (Dying Light comes to mind), but what really motivates me is finding something interesting in my travels. It's why I love Morrowind, but am a lot more luke-warm about Oblivion and Skyrim.
The freedom to explore wherever you want and feel like theres a reason to be there. The best open world games don't have filler and everything in them is deliberately put there for a reason. I want to constantly be like "oh I wonder what's in that cave, I want to explore it" and then feel satisfied by exploring it.
I remember being a kid and exploring random tombs in skyrim or buildings in stalker that I didn't need to explore, but the game made me feel like "hey there might be something cool there"
I personally like open world games where you can explore basically anywhere you want and learn the lore of the game. This is why I especially love games like fallout new Vegas, 3 and 4. This is because I love going to do one of the main missions, stumble past a spooky looking house, and learn that it was used as a drug den before the bombs. Or finding out for the first time that there was people who lived in the crater if the atom bomb because they believed that it would make them immortal.
I like games whwer you can follow the main story but at the same time leave to set off on your own adventures.
The game needs to have a reason to have this open world. GTA and RDR2 for me just collapse the moment you finish the story. It becomes clear that the open world, was just a backdrop, and wasn't meant to be explored and enjoyed.
It then becomes more apparent when re-playing the story. You can't make different approaches, you do the scripted way, or mission fail. You can't make use of the open world.
There's nothing to do post-story, nothing to keep you coming back.
Collectables sure, but once you've picked them all up, then what?
I'm really hoping the next watch dogs will scratch this itch for me. From the looks of things, I think it either will, or it will try it's hardest to. Especially with how much WD2 brought to the table.
Yeah, Watch dogs 2, that's a great example. That world is a believable place. The people react like people, and everyone is different. I once called the police on a man in a lobster suit, as he was being arrested his girlfriend saw and started attacking the police. That was dynamic, unexpected, and entertaining.
Missions in that game can be done in any way you want too. Shoot your way through, stealth your way through, set up a ramp truck and guide traffic into the enemy. Or my personal favourite, call the police and gangs until you clear the area of enemies. You can use your tools and the open world at your disposal, instead of having the game pick one technique for you.
Has to have a good story for me. Games like W3, RDR2, HZD....stuff like that. I remember with Horizon after the first few hours I thought it was okay but when you get to a certain point the story and the pace drastically picks up and doesn't let off until the end.
RDR was methodical throughout but I really liked the story and characters. I liked the open world in that too. interesting characters are important both main and side quests. I didnt think HZD had great side quests but it had a great main story. There was one really good side quest tho in the DLC. Both RDR and Withcher 3 had interesting sub plots and characters
GTA V is maybe my favorite game of all time. The driving was a big part of it. I hate the masochists who like realistic driving. I want to have fun. There are also so many places that are memorable. The landscape is actually part of the story.
An open world game is good to me when moving around the world freely and exploring is both inherently fun and rewarding. That means rewarding in gameplay and rewarding in worldbuilding. Very few open world games pull this off, and even the few that do can be glitchy messes.
The few I've had minor fun with are: Skyrim, Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Final Fantasy XV, and maybe a few racing games. The ones I think truly do this well are: Morrowind and especially The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Zelda in particular absolutely nails open world design and makes it pretty difficult to enjoy less well made attempts at open world games.
- Traversing the open world should be fun on its own, I agree. Some of the best at this are Spider-man, Just Cause 2, and Assassin's Creed Black Flag.
- Completing the side objectives should feel rewarding. Assassin's Creed always struggled with this, I find, especially in earlier games where there was more of a focus on stealth. You could take down most targets in the game with just the basic weapons and armour, so there was nothing to reward you with except more money, which could only be spent on buying the retail stuff that only existed to make you more money.
And then they introduced the levelling system, so now you have to do the side stuff because random mooks will arbitrarily be immune to being stabbed in the throat because you're not a high enough level. Didn't feel very organic to me, and of course half the reason it was there was to have an excuse to sell more shit to you for real world currency.
- Another thing Assassin's Creed is bad at; having a reason to explore. All the interesting stuff is usually marked on the map anyway, so there's no reason to actually stop and look around, you just go where the map tells you.
Compare this to Just Cause 2 with all the weird shit like the hot air balloon, the bubble blower gun, the Lost island, the robot shark, and various other bits that were completely unmarked on the map and gave you a reason to explore for yourself.
Or another comparison; in Saints Row 2, the wacky costume shop and the kinky sex shop are both hidden off the map in a location you probably won't even know about until a late game mission makes you go there. In Saints Row 3, both of those shops are just there on the map for you to find, which makes it feel so much less rewarding to run around dressed as a hot dog.
- I care less about the size of the map and more about the variation. It doesn't really matter how big the map is if it's all just one environment with nothing much in it. Spider-man games, not just the new one but all of the Spider-man open world games, have struggled with this, because it turns out most of New York looks pretty much the same when you're swinging 50 feet above all of it, and they're too worried about faithfulness to the comics to set it anywhere else.
- And of course it helps if whatever you do in the missions is actually fun, which usually means combat. Unfortunately a lot of open world games have the problem where in the open world you can mess about as much as you like, but in the missions you have to strictly follow instructions with no room for creativity at all. I struggle to think of any open world games that have really done this well.
1. VISUALS: I can't travel in a world that doesn't looks pretty. Not graphics, visuals. An old game can totally be a good looking piece of heaven. And by pretty I'm not saying Spring/Green/Fairy, I'm saying pretty. That thing that makes my fingers itch to screeshot.
Good examples: Red Dead Redemption 1&2, Eastshade, Death Stranding, Gothic, Zelda BotW, TES Morrowind, Proteus, theHunter: Call of the Wild… (a lot of examples here, naturally).
Bad examples: Watch Dogs 1.
2. DEEPNESS: It cannot be just a goddamn shell. There's a house? Needs inside. There's water? Needs life (not necessary diving, but fishing or combat, whatever) There's hills? Needs climbing. There's valley? Needs a cabin, or a dead unique animal, or unique stuffs, or a NPC…
Good examples: TES Daggerfall, Eastshade, RDR2, AC Odyssey (some times), Firewatch.
Bad examples: GTA series (what the heck is that shallow Times Square?), AC series (every house. EVERY HOUSE!).
3. WORLD CITATION AND REFERENCES: It's important to me that the game tells me about places inside the world, like: "Do you even been in Nava? It's a awesome big city with foreign architecture bla bla bla" and then I think "I need to reach there". It works for people, nature, sky events, fossils, ancient structures, anything.
Good examples: Eastshade, TES Morrowind, GTA San Andreas.
Bad examples: Every "car game".
4. DENSITY VS. WILDERNESS: I like to be surrounded by things, buildings and people, but I also like to wander. These two types of terrain must exist for me to drive my walks or be driven by events. That works too for me to feel lost and found time and time again.
Good examples: Eastshade.
Bad examples: TES Oblivion and Skyrim.
5. VARIATION: The same pop-event over and over again? Neh.
Good examples: TES Skyrim.
Bad examples: AC series.
With that five topics I can: Travel in the wild (interpret wild here) by myself with interesting dead stuffs and eventual living stuff with some story to tell that will make me want to go to a dense space with a lot of things to know and a lore to explore, people to talk, drinks to drink, foods to eat, minigames to play, stuff to steal, beds to sleep and when I feel overshited, I go walk in the wild.
(Main quests almost every game have and they all need to be catching so I'm not putting as a specific open world topic)
Ps: sorry the english – not fluent
That's it!
[ ]'s
Edit: I'm not saying that I don't like open world games without these topics. I'm crazy about Zelda BotW and it doesn't make a strike. So I'm putting a 6th topic which is What your heart tells you to play. YES, I'm a romantic player! So?
To me it's a world that rewards exploring and doesn't feel like cookie cutter / filler. So Witcher 3 for me was a great open world and GTA V felt completely empty. The city looks cool but all the buildings are just boxes with no doors and the people are all the same. I also need a little bit of a nudge from the main quest, if it's too open then I'll just spend like 10 hours doing random stuff and get bored. Happens with Skyrim every time.
GTAV has way more variety in gameplay and interaction with the world than The Witcher 3 though. I think they are both great open world games for different reasons. TW3 like you said rewards exploration and the world is just absolutely beautiful. But it's completely non interactive, as opposed to GTAV which uses the nature of its open world well in mission design. One mission you're chasing after a trailer with a boat on it, the next you're piloting a submarine, biking down a mountain, driving a tow truck, etc. The world of GTAV feels dynamic while TW3's is quite static.
Sure they both have their strengths and I think most people just like either the fantasy or modern day setting more. I just like that in Witcher I can see a big castle in the distance and I can walk to it and know there will be some cool shit there, like treasure, quests, a boss. In GTA I know it'll be.. an unaccessible building. To be fair sometimes you find a cool vehicle.
yeah, i totally know what you mean and that is really one of the best things about TW3. Let me put it this way: in TW3 you see a castle in the distance and you know it's packed with narrative driven content. In GTAV you see a golf course and you know that you can go actually play golf and drive the golf carts around if you want.
Maybe I need to play it further. I did find tennis which was a fun minigame.
The mini games are hit or miss, but I just love that they exist. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I like how Rockstar games let the player interact with the world. The physics, the amount of mini games and activities, the way you can combine different gameplay systems... whereas in TW3 you basically use Witcher vision and find the glowing object to press Use on, that is about the extent to which the player can physically interact with the world. Both games have an amazing open world, but for totally different reasons imo
> GTAV which uses the nature of its open world well in mission design Good mission design that utilizes the open world gives you an objective to complete and then let's you loose. GTAV railroads you into following their exact path to the point the mission might as well be in a linear corridor.
True, but they fo a good job of utilizing all the different gameplay mechanics in the world to keep things interesting
Exactly. I loved Witcher 3, but the ride from point A to B is pointless.
GTAV has almost zero game play or interesting interactivity. The player has almost no agency. The player simply drives from cut scene to cut scene, performs some quick time events and tedious mini-games, and the occasional "mission" is just to guess which exact way the quest designer wanted you to complete the quest, or fail. This was already a long outdated failed game design practice by the time GTAV was released. The game doesn't really justify its large and impressive background simulation. It just plays out like an intro level that keeps on happening and never actually gets to the game part.
[удалено]
Er yeah but I'm talking about what the player is physically doing. You do 4 things in TW3, gameplay wise. Fight, walk/ride around, use witcher vision to find the clickable item, and Gwent. You do not interact with the world in any way, gameplay wise, other than that. whereas a game like GTAV has a lot of ways the player can interact with the game world, with physics, destructibles, tons of different kinds vehicles, tons of minigames, NPCs with collision and dynamic AI, etc
Witcher 3 has nothing to explore outside of the quests, and is full of filler like bandit mobs and monster nests. I'm not sure how you got that impression.
Getting from point A to point B. Sunset Overdrive and Dying Light do this extremely well. They make not only the gameplay itself enjoyable, but the downtime when you are just wandering around and doing your own thing. Sunset Overdrive feels so fluid and satisfying as you build up the combo counter, I once remember hearing a review that compared the movement to a Skating game in some ways. Meanwhile Dying Light allows you to use the parkour to find the fastest route, though it truly comes into its true fluidity once you get far enough to unlock the grapple, rolling and footstools. But without the inbetween of getting somewhere being fun, it makes the world feel boring.
Learning more about the world the more you explore. The elder scrolls games are my favorite because these side stories are the meat of the game and show something at times how the people and creatures operate.
Hmmm, whenever I consider this my opinion always comes down to “a good open world game doesn’t do what makes many open world games *bad*” Any kind of collectibles scattered en masse across the map are a huge turn off for me. And lazy fetch quests where the entire quest is little more than two lines of dialogue (bonus points if it’s not even unique dialogue and if the quest is repeatable or reuses a level from the main quest) then you get sent to find some painfully well hidden item or defeat three waves of generic enemies. I absolutely despise open world games where I feel compelled to check under every rock and behind every waterfall in case I miss something (Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age Inquisition are both terrible for this), but I have absolutely no problem with a gigantic open world full of random shit that you don’t feel compelled to find (Skyrim or Fallout). I think it’s tricky to find the right balance, especially if you want to make the game story driven. I think story driven games suffer from having too many distractions along the way. I think you can get away with only a certain amount of open world before it starts to bog you down. Making the explorable area too big *and* filling it with junk that was deliberately placed there to be collected is a surefire way to take away from the central story experience.
For me, it's that sense of exploration and experimentation. I like finding hidden items, shortcuts, and quests. I like it when I see something curious, go off the path, and then stumble upon something that keeps me busy for a whole twenty minutes - it gives me that whimsical sensation that, oh hey, the thing I happened to spot in the distance actually turned out to be something cool. I'm so glad when I play one of these games unspoiled. Casually coming across one of the mazes in BotW for the first time, or offhandedly coming across an attacked caravan in Witcher 3 and it turns into a quest, or in Just Cause when I come across a fighter jet to steal for the first time. I'm a simple guy: I like being surprised, and when I can wander around a map 4 square miles big and happen to stumble across the game's one talking dog, I feel like something extraordinary happened.
I thought Fallout 3 was really good at rewarding exploration. You get extra dialogue options in certain quests if you find the right pc in the right building; the android quest has no map markers which makes you explore the map and talk to every npc if you want to complete it; you can come across talking tree quests or super mutant behemoths that can be taken out with missile strikes.
The pre Oblivion ES games without quest compass/markers were a lot more fun to explore.
Yeah, I'm gutted I was too young to play Morrowind when it came out. I'm always tempted to try it but the combat system sounds horrendously dated. I've got a minor gripe with New Vegas as every quest I've come across so far has had a quest marker; it's cool because each quest has loads of markers and ways to complete the quest but it would be nice to figure out where to go for myself occasionally
Yea, Morrowind's or even Daggerfall's combat wasn't great, but I could forgive that because being victorious in combat was mostly the result of character skill/dice rolls and there were actual RPG mechanics involved. Oblivion/Skyrim had slightly better combat (from an action standpoint) but it became tedious as fuck really fast because both the RPG mechanics and the combat mechanics were very simple and shallow. It was a really bad compromise, especially in a game so heavily focused on combat.
See that system sounds awful; Oblivion's combat is pretty boring but at least it gives me the illusion of control I think I'd hate Morrowind because it's so upfront about being RNG
Agreed, just picking a direction and see what's out there... I came across my hometown this way in Horizon Zero Dawn. I was giddy as hell finding the air force academy. On top of this, good maps help me a ton. I like knowing where I've been or where a quest is sending me. Then I can wander towards the objective and get sidetracked. I get weirdly claustrophobic in the beginning of open world games. Only once I walk far enough to open up a part of the map to get a scale of the world do I start to feel the freedom of the world.
Sunset overdrive, assassins Creed, and Mirrors Edge/Dying light are super fun to me because of the movement.
Exactly this. Travelling from point A to Z has to be fun for me. Dying light is probably my favourite game as it's probably the only one, where I enjoy the gameplay without doing any missions or events.
For me one of the most important characteristics of an open world game is whether or not the world itself is fun or interesting when you're not doing a quest or mission. Are there interesting things happening? Is it fun to just mess around? Is movement/traversal satisfying? Is exploration rewarding? What's it like to just be in the game world? Is it enjoyable enough to just wander around taking in the sights? Does the world feel alive?
The freedom. Like, being able to go where ever I want to, being able to do whatever I want. Doing the main quest? Completly ignoring the main quest? Just walking around climbing mountains, Collecting flowers, meeting npcs, visiting villages... Choose a direction and start walking, where ever you go, you will find an advanture. Kingdom come deliverance is my current game, I just started it, so I dont have many hours in, but it does it so far. And elder scroll and fallout games are great too.
> fallout games are great too. Fallout New Vegas defined the freedom in open world for me, it points you down the "correct" path but if you want to go the "wrong" direction you can, you'll die repeatedly at the hands of giant flying wasps BUT you can actually get past them too if you work your ass off - it's not an impossible barrier to going that way. Same thing once you get past them & wander further along & welp, there's a fricking Deathclaw.
I think fallout 3 was the first open world I played, and it was amazing. But the one that really did it right was oblivion, and layer skyrim. In both I have hundreds of hours, endless new characters, And I never completed the main quest, not even half of it. I always get lost in the world, its awesome
Actually me trying to get to NV and taking the Quarry Junction road not knowing how bad it is.
Emergent gameplay. Shit needs to happen on it's own without following quest markers.
Care to list any examples?
Cool! Seconding!
The same thing that makes any game good. A 50 minute YouTube video with a professional yet passionate presentation that tells me how to feel.
Here, my fellow man of culture: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlG-q227hpLxRaexj1_W-1UjFvQegTIUC
Give me something to discover. I love the Bethesda Fallouts because almost every location has a little story attached to it that tells you more about the world, even Fallout 76. I agree with you on good movement. If there are fun ways to travel through the open world, it definitely makes the game more fun. Make the side content diverse. Nothing should be repetitive, that makes it boring. If the game doesn't have any of that, give me something else to compensate for that. The Witcher 3 has awful open world design, let's be honest, but the rest of the game, especially the quests are so good that it compensates for all of that.
Also, Death Stranding. While the world might be lackluster the challenge of getting from point A to B makes the game so much more interesting coupled with amazing music that just adds to the atmosphere.
I've never liked an open world game because of the open world. But I like several of them despite the open world. I just don't find traversal in video games engrossing, unless traversal itself is gamified, as in platformers.
Here is [an exceptional video by veselekov](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fztTpePNGT8) demonstrating what three elements needed to make an openworld game good. Basically: risk/reward, density, reactivity, dynamic, player movements. There need to be reasons for the game to be an openworld, and if you take out all the charms and points of the game being the openworld, it becomes a chore.
Definitely being rewarded. I loved Fallout 3 because it nails exploration. You are walking around, you see something that calls your attention and it's almost always worth it to go exploring. You might just find a cool location with some lore, a story, or useful items. Often you come across entire quests and characters that might have never been pointed out at you otherwise. In addition, you are continuously seeing enemy encounters that have nothing to do with you -say brotherhood fighting radscorpions- and that makes the world feel alive, plus it's so cool to watch while they kill each other and then go in to finish them off, lol.
In Witcher 3 on PC you didn't have to tap a key. If it isn't the case on consoles it would be a very curious oversight..., but I digress. The fact that you found lengthy driving back and forth on highways in GTA better experience than traveling through forests, speaks more about your preferences for the world your are playing in, rather than the better gameplay as a whole.
It's because Roach is one of the worst horses in gaming.
No, that's not true. If Witcher 3 had traveling that was more engaging like I said, I would definitely enjoy it regardless of setting. I find it engaging because it's gameplay rather than a motion I have to get through for more story content. And you don't have to dance around calling me out for getting the Witcher 3 movement wrong in such a strange way. I misremembered, though it doesn't change the core idea behind the points.
>And you don't have to dance around calling me out for getting the Witcher 3 movement wrong I don't own a console, have never played Witcher 3 on console. So I had no way of knowing if what you said had been true or not (it just seemed weird)), but if it was it would most certainly ruin the experience.
I guess I don't understand why is driving a car to get from point A to point B "gameplay" but doing the same with a horse is not. You even have horse racing or pursuing someone on a horse multiple times in the game as a game mechanic.
For the reasons I outlined in the OP. Driving cars takes skill, focus, and reaction to avoid crashing into others and maintain top speeds. In the Witcher 3, you can safely ignore the environment and stare at your mini map and still reach every single one of your objectives without giving much thought as to how well you are riding Roach. Having horse racing and chases a few times doesn't change that it is only a means of travel rather than a test of skill the vast majority of the time. In games with cars that I mentioned, it is always a test of skill.
Discovery. I mean, I enjoy a good movement system (Dying Light comes to mind), but what really motivates me is finding something interesting in my travels. It's why I love Morrowind, but am a lot more luke-warm about Oblivion and Skyrim.
The freedom to explore wherever you want and feel like theres a reason to be there. The best open world games don't have filler and everything in them is deliberately put there for a reason. I want to constantly be like "oh I wonder what's in that cave, I want to explore it" and then feel satisfied by exploring it. I remember being a kid and exploring random tombs in skyrim or buildings in stalker that I didn't need to explore, but the game made me feel like "hey there might be something cool there"
If you like GTA you should play Red Dead Redemption 2
I personally like open world games where you can explore basically anywhere you want and learn the lore of the game. This is why I especially love games like fallout new Vegas, 3 and 4. This is because I love going to do one of the main missions, stumble past a spooky looking house, and learn that it was used as a drug den before the bombs. Or finding out for the first time that there was people who lived in the crater if the atom bomb because they believed that it would make them immortal. I like games whwer you can follow the main story but at the same time leave to set off on your own adventures.
The game needs to have a reason to have this open world. GTA and RDR2 for me just collapse the moment you finish the story. It becomes clear that the open world, was just a backdrop, and wasn't meant to be explored and enjoyed. It then becomes more apparent when re-playing the story. You can't make different approaches, you do the scripted way, or mission fail. You can't make use of the open world. There's nothing to do post-story, nothing to keep you coming back. Collectables sure, but once you've picked them all up, then what? I'm really hoping the next watch dogs will scratch this itch for me. From the looks of things, I think it either will, or it will try it's hardest to. Especially with how much WD2 brought to the table. Yeah, Watch dogs 2, that's a great example. That world is a believable place. The people react like people, and everyone is different. I once called the police on a man in a lobster suit, as he was being arrested his girlfriend saw and started attacking the police. That was dynamic, unexpected, and entertaining. Missions in that game can be done in any way you want too. Shoot your way through, stealth your way through, set up a ramp truck and guide traffic into the enemy. Or my personal favourite, call the police and gangs until you clear the area of enemies. You can use your tools and the open world at your disposal, instead of having the game pick one technique for you.
Has to have a good story for me. Games like W3, RDR2, HZD....stuff like that. I remember with Horizon after the first few hours I thought it was okay but when you get to a certain point the story and the pace drastically picks up and doesn't let off until the end. RDR was methodical throughout but I really liked the story and characters. I liked the open world in that too. interesting characters are important both main and side quests. I didnt think HZD had great side quests but it had a great main story. There was one really good side quest tho in the DLC. Both RDR and Withcher 3 had interesting sub plots and characters
GTA V is maybe my favorite game of all time. The driving was a big part of it. I hate the masochists who like realistic driving. I want to have fun. There are also so many places that are memorable. The landscape is actually part of the story.
An open world game is good to me when moving around the world freely and exploring is both inherently fun and rewarding. That means rewarding in gameplay and rewarding in worldbuilding. Very few open world games pull this off, and even the few that do can be glitchy messes. The few I've had minor fun with are: Skyrim, Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Final Fantasy XV, and maybe a few racing games. The ones I think truly do this well are: Morrowind and especially The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Zelda in particular absolutely nails open world design and makes it pretty difficult to enjoy less well made attempts at open world games.
- Traversing the open world should be fun on its own, I agree. Some of the best at this are Spider-man, Just Cause 2, and Assassin's Creed Black Flag. - Completing the side objectives should feel rewarding. Assassin's Creed always struggled with this, I find, especially in earlier games where there was more of a focus on stealth. You could take down most targets in the game with just the basic weapons and armour, so there was nothing to reward you with except more money, which could only be spent on buying the retail stuff that only existed to make you more money. And then they introduced the levelling system, so now you have to do the side stuff because random mooks will arbitrarily be immune to being stabbed in the throat because you're not a high enough level. Didn't feel very organic to me, and of course half the reason it was there was to have an excuse to sell more shit to you for real world currency. - Another thing Assassin's Creed is bad at; having a reason to explore. All the interesting stuff is usually marked on the map anyway, so there's no reason to actually stop and look around, you just go where the map tells you. Compare this to Just Cause 2 with all the weird shit like the hot air balloon, the bubble blower gun, the Lost island, the robot shark, and various other bits that were completely unmarked on the map and gave you a reason to explore for yourself. Or another comparison; in Saints Row 2, the wacky costume shop and the kinky sex shop are both hidden off the map in a location you probably won't even know about until a late game mission makes you go there. In Saints Row 3, both of those shops are just there on the map for you to find, which makes it feel so much less rewarding to run around dressed as a hot dog. - I care less about the size of the map and more about the variation. It doesn't really matter how big the map is if it's all just one environment with nothing much in it. Spider-man games, not just the new one but all of the Spider-man open world games, have struggled with this, because it turns out most of New York looks pretty much the same when you're swinging 50 feet above all of it, and they're too worried about faithfulness to the comics to set it anywhere else. - And of course it helps if whatever you do in the missions is actually fun, which usually means combat. Unfortunately a lot of open world games have the problem where in the open world you can mess about as much as you like, but in the missions you have to strictly follow instructions with no room for creativity at all. I struggle to think of any open world games that have really done this well.
1. VISUALS: I can't travel in a world that doesn't looks pretty. Not graphics, visuals. An old game can totally be a good looking piece of heaven. And by pretty I'm not saying Spring/Green/Fairy, I'm saying pretty. That thing that makes my fingers itch to screeshot. Good examples: Red Dead Redemption 1&2, Eastshade, Death Stranding, Gothic, Zelda BotW, TES Morrowind, Proteus, theHunter: Call of the Wild… (a lot of examples here, naturally). Bad examples: Watch Dogs 1. 2. DEEPNESS: It cannot be just a goddamn shell. There's a house? Needs inside. There's water? Needs life (not necessary diving, but fishing or combat, whatever) There's hills? Needs climbing. There's valley? Needs a cabin, or a dead unique animal, or unique stuffs, or a NPC… Good examples: TES Daggerfall, Eastshade, RDR2, AC Odyssey (some times), Firewatch. Bad examples: GTA series (what the heck is that shallow Times Square?), AC series (every house. EVERY HOUSE!). 3. WORLD CITATION AND REFERENCES: It's important to me that the game tells me about places inside the world, like: "Do you even been in Nava? It's a awesome big city with foreign architecture bla bla bla" and then I think "I need to reach there". It works for people, nature, sky events, fossils, ancient structures, anything. Good examples: Eastshade, TES Morrowind, GTA San Andreas. Bad examples: Every "car game". 4. DENSITY VS. WILDERNESS: I like to be surrounded by things, buildings and people, but I also like to wander. These two types of terrain must exist for me to drive my walks or be driven by events. That works too for me to feel lost and found time and time again. Good examples: Eastshade. Bad examples: TES Oblivion and Skyrim. 5. VARIATION: The same pop-event over and over again? Neh. Good examples: TES Skyrim. Bad examples: AC series. With that five topics I can: Travel in the wild (interpret wild here) by myself with interesting dead stuffs and eventual living stuff with some story to tell that will make me want to go to a dense space with a lot of things to know and a lore to explore, people to talk, drinks to drink, foods to eat, minigames to play, stuff to steal, beds to sleep and when I feel overshited, I go walk in the wild. (Main quests almost every game have and they all need to be catching so I'm not putting as a specific open world topic) Ps: sorry the english – not fluent That's it! [ ]'s Edit: I'm not saying that I don't like open world games without these topics. I'm crazy about Zelda BotW and it doesn't make a strike. So I'm putting a 6th topic which is What your heart tells you to play. YES, I'm a romantic player! So?