The Open World Game

[TheSpyWhoLovedMe]

So, I picked up Red Dead Redemption on midnight release and I must say it's fantastic. This thread isn't about that game specifically but instead about how you go about playing these games. My neighbor comes over regularly to watch / play Red Dead with me, but he doesn't care about story progression and is only interested in the Sandbox / Do-Anything part of the game. Whereas I enjoy the idea of seeing a full and vibrant world whilst being entertained by the story at hand.

What do you like about Open World Games? The freedom to do whatever you please? The engaging environment? Do you not care if it's Open World and you just want the story? Or do you hate Open World Games (because I guess that's a possibility)?

[Pete]

I'm a big fan of open world games. I think it's fantastic when you're not bound by any real rules and can pretty much do whatever you like. Fallout 3, Assassin's Creed and GTA really come to mind, and I really enjoy how each game goes about putting you in check in regards to your actions. If you make enough noise, people start to notice.

I also like how you can just mess around, and try to be as big of an ass as possible. In GTA, I'd go and try to blow up as many cars in a single combo as I could... Plus GTA4 has all neighborhoods that I'm familiar with, so I would just go cruising to spot as many areas as I knew, cause most of the more iconic buildings were copied verbatim.

The only thing I don't like about some of the sandbox games is that sometimes I feel like because the areas are so expansive and have so much going on in them, the missions can take a backseat, or will be overly short. GTA had some really great missions, but at the same time, some of them were very repetitive, and there were a lot of tertiary, filler missions that really just ate up time.

Overall, sandbox games= legit. I wish the FF series would take more of an approach to this in a non- MMORPG.

[CloudTide]

My first Open World game was Spider-Man 2
i loved it
beat it twice
the thing i like this open world game was that you could swing everywhere
you could run on the ground(unlike the first SM game)
and if you werent doing the story you could acually encounter robbers on rofftops or alleys that didnt effect the storyline whatsoever
it was awesome

[Jin]

I have a love-hate relationship with open world/sandbox games. On the one hand, I love exploring all they have to offer. On the other hand, I find they do a disservice to narratives. It's really challenging to tell a believable story when the player spends eight hours cruising around rather than go to the big X on his or her map that indicates an important story mission. It also aggravates me to no end when people treat sandbox games as a desired universal rather than as a genre of game. Some games should not be in an open world, plain and simple, but some act as if any game that isn't is some sort of regressive step backwards - the word linear is used all too frequently in the pejorative. Also, as Pete said, mission design often takes a back seat to environment design. I am so tired of certain mission types.

So, sure, I like open world games as much as the next, but only if it's suitable to the specific game.

[Pete]

I really think that Fallout 3 did a great job of this. You had your story, which was quite good, but you also became immersed in the world as you tried to get from point A to point B. It was a sandbox game of sorts, since you could pretty much do whatever, whenever. At the same time, while you got completely sidetracked, spending hours upon hours scouring the most random of buildings, you still got a real feel for the world. I think this game, more than the others really gave you that complete feeling of immersion and the hopelessness that came from that world.

Sure with GTA and AC, you get a feel for the world, but you don't really feel as connected to the character, or the world itself.

I also totally get what Jin is saying; some games are meant to be pure narratives, and the FF series is like this. At the same time, I think that the series could be that much greater if it took a page from Fallout with it's super expansive world. I like to get a feeing for the actual distance traveled and the days and nights that actually go by on your quest. I really dislike that it's only night time in certain areas, or whenever you feel like napping.

It's one thing if a narrative is meant to take place over the course of a single night, day, or whatever time frame you want. Then no, I wouldn't make it a sandbox game. However, for these sprawling rpgs, I think it would work, so long as the story was strong enough to justify it.

[Jin]

The thing with Fallout is that I don't really think it had a good story. At all. The backstory and the history of the world were superb, but the whole rescuing Liam Neeson thing wasn't exactly a spectacular endeavor in story telling. Given the nature of the game, it didn't really hurt it and having a ho-hum story is almost beneficial to open world games like that, but I'm not sure I'd say that they balanced a good narrative with an open world. They got immersion down, no question about that.

I think Infamous actually did a decent balancing job, but even then, it's clear that the narrative did take away from some open world ideals. There's certainly less to do in it than there is in Fallout or GTA.

As far as Final Fantasy style RPGs, I've always advocated that those should be somewhat more expansive (FF13 for the lose). The games I'm more referring to are action adventure games or shooters. God of War, for example, has no reason to be open world, but it got the "linear" criticism, as did Uncharted and I believe even Modern Warfare. These games are supposed to be linear. That's the whole point. It annoys me when people use that as a criticism.

[Pete]

Yeah, I totally agree about God of War and even Modern Warfare. Those games tell a specific story with specific details and events. If your entire goal in MW2 is to stop global terrorists, where time is of the essence, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to be able to head back to an Air Force base in Germany and try to get into a relationship with beer wenches. Could you imagine trying to line up a crucial sniper shot, when your in game phone goes off and the girl you banged last weekend is calling to tell you she's pregnant?

[Jin]

Wanna know why they call him Soap?

[RagnaToad]

I usually like it when games have an Open World concept. Some RPGs (like FF) wouldn't be the same without it. But I don't think it should be the main focus of a game. There are things in a game that appeal to me more.

That's why I don't like MMORPGs. The focus seems be the freedom, and it is a WoW fan's right to like the game for that reason, but that doesn't appeal to me really. It makes me feel like I'm just wasting my time. Diablo II is not an actual MMORPG (there's a cap of 8 players per game), but the player is free to do whatever he wants, without taking away the focus from other elements of the game like the story.

To me, a game should be a game, not a 'world' where you can be someone else and just roam freely.

So I think Open Worlds can be a great asset to games, but it shouldn't be the main focus, or distract a player from the actual game. Then again, if a game is good enough in terms of story, characters, gameplay etc. you probably won't be wasting too much time doing useless stuff anyway.