Are Open Worlds too Open?

[Your Mom]

So I've been trying Fallout 4 on and off and I find myself a bit lost. There is just too much going on and I never know what I should be doing. I know it's weird saying I want less game but I kinda want less game

[KevinStorm]

I got bored with Fallout 3 very quickly for the same reason.

[Draevyn]

30 minutes ago, Funny name or something... said:

So I've been trying Fallout 4 on and off and I find myself a bit lost. There is just too much going on and I never know what I should be doing. I know it's weird saying I want less game but I kinda want less game

I enjoy an open world game but I hate that it feels like every franchise is employing them. Some games should be more linear. It's one of the reasons I've found it hard to stay interested in the new Metal Gear. I don't think it needed to be as open world as it is and I think it's kind of hurt the story, which was the biggest reasons I played those games.

[Bobfoc]

58 minutes ago, Funny name or something... said:

So I've been trying Fallout 4 on and off and I find myself a bit lost. There is just too much going on and I never know what I should be doing. I know it's weird saying I want less game but I kinda want less game

I don't think you're saying you want less game. You want more game, but less empty space in which to enjoy it. That's a problem with many open world games: they're too open, but there isn't much to do in the extra sandbox area you're given. I haven't played Fallout 4, but I thought that was a particular issue in Fallout 3, and there have been other games, like Brutal Legend, that have had vast, sprawling land masses with nothing much to do in them that couldn't have been achieved in a much smaller area.

Arkham Asylum remains my favourite Rocksteady Batman game because it used its space efficiently to create a pressure cooker environment in which everything felt so authentic and fun to play around with. Contrast that with the open world of City, Origins and Knight, which, despite being games I still liked a lot, lost some of the focus and atmosphere that the original nailed so well.

Don't get me wrong, though; I still love a well-crafted open world game. Red Dead Redemption and most of the Grand Theft Auto titles are some of my favourite games, and I've had plenty of fun with Metal Gear Solid V. As a general rule, if something's announced as being an open world game, I'm not automatically excited, and I'm more often likely to be apprehensive, but there are enough good examples of games that fit nicely within the genre to keep my mind open.

[Your Mom]

I think you're right. Like I walked from one place to the next in Fallout the other day. It was like 10 minutes and all I saw was one practically empty shack and a couple of big flies. Why did I need to waste all that time?

[Gazz]

Whereas I walk for one minute, spend seven minutes searching that shack top to bottom, walk another minute and then spend a minute getting the perfect sneak attack sniper shot on that bloatfly.

[apsham]

I never for the life of me get this - Fallout 4 is probably the most packed within a space game for quite some time as far as I've played. Even if it's just a shack there is usually a story that you can piece together from everything that is laying about. I've found that with just about every location - named or not that I have come across. Even in games that are big for scale with little inside such as Just Cause 2 the massive scale of it all makes it more fun than just 'walk a short distance' to get to the next place.

It can be done wrong - like if the game world is too big and you don't have a good enough way to get from point A to point B but at this point it's a genre like any other. Guess you're either going to like it or not.

[Quom]

Some people play games for the main story, other people can get sucked into the minutiae or crafting their own story. Most open world games for my taste don't give me a reason to care about the small stuff, either there's stuff hidden everywhere and if you collect it all it pads out the story (which is fine, but not when I can only easily find tape recorders 1,2,8,15,27 so that part never makes sense to me). Or it's stuff where by looking at it you can work out what happened (which to me is interesting once or twice). Or they fill the world with mini-game type stuff (car races, hunting etc.) but none of them are anywhere close to being as good as they would be in a stand-alone game and just feel tacked on. Same with the world in general, I don't need a map that's the size of a small country if all it's mainly used for is making me travel 15 minutes to transport something from A-B.

The only recent-ish open world game I got into was Skyrim and for the life of me I couldn't explain what they did well compared to the others. It was probably because it felt more forgiving, in Fallout I always feel like I've levelled the wrong thing or worried I took the wrong gun or whatever, in Skyrim it felt much more forgiving and you weren't lost by changing your mind later.

[The Lusophone]

I'm finding Fallout 4 to be a lot more packed in than, for example, a lot of the Elder Scrolls games or Fallout 3, but I do still get points where its just 'well this is brown and that other place was brown and i'm not entirely sure I haven't just gone around in a big circle'.

Far Cry and Just Cause address this problem by having a dozen or so interrupting car chases or gun battles between you and wherever you want to go, but I'm not entirely sure that's an ideal solution to the problem.

[Stevie B]

San Andreas seemed just about the right size to remember where things are, and the right way to get from point A to B. I've found GTA 4 and  GTA 5 far too big and uninteresting. 

I had @9 to 5 screaming at me the other the week because I couldn't find the racetrack on that overly bloated map.

[Naitch]

I echo the sentiment that Arkham Asylum was perfectly laid out whereas its two sequels lost some of the magic due to their openness.

[Plubby]

7 hours ago, KevinStorm said:

I got bored with Fallout 3 very quickly for the same reason.

Wut. Half the map on Fallout 3 is linear. Once you cross into the city, there's only one way to get to places.

In my experience, I have not much enjoyed "open world" games because I like to be told a story. I get my game enjoyment from how the story is told to me. When I play a game like...heck, even Call of Duty...I enjoy being told "You are *character*, then investing myself in that character, taken from place to place and be told my story. I don't care much for open world games that don't "end" when the main story finishes (At least Fallout 3 and NV did that).

The biggest problem I have playing open worldish games like Fallout is that it's great having the freedom to dally and do side quests at my leisure as I go through the main storyline, but I never know when to then get on with the main story. Also because I can go anywhere, I can stumble upon higher-level areas before I'm "meant to". Usually when I play through these games I struggle to do anything other than "roleplay myself". I guess I've just lost my childhood imagination.  I'm starting to enjoy games like Fallout more, but these are still quasi-open-world compared to stuff like GTA - at least IMO.

[Benji]

I think some games that are open world don't need to be (Watch_Dogs immediately comes to mind), and some open world games just don't have enough content and have too much open space, but so long as quick travel exists that's a moot point for the most part (barring the shitty GTA method of taxis, just let me quick travel anywhere any time FFS). But getting lost and too much going on? Never. The first is why maps and quick travel exists, and the second is literally never ever a problem, the more content the game has the better value for my money.

[Benji]

6 hours ago, Stevie B said:

San Andreas seemed just about the right size to remember where things are, and the right way to get from point A to B. I've found GTA 4 and  GTA 5 far too big and uninteresting. 

I had @9 to 5 screaming at me the other the week because I couldn't find the racetrack on that overly bloated map.

I think in that respect the problem is less how big it is, and more the lack of identifiable landmarks, especially down in the south eastern part of the map, those roads and areas are so damn samey.

[JasonM]

1 hour ago, Benji said:

I think some games that are open world don't need to be (Watch_Dogs immediately comes to mind), and some open world games just don't have enough content and have too much open space, but so long as quick travel exists that's a moot point for the most part (barring the shitty GTA method of taxis, just let me quick travel anywhere any time FFS). But getting lost and too much going on? Never. The first is why maps and quick travel exists, and the second is literally never ever a problem, the more content the game has the better value for my money.

I am still trying to get through that game, but the travel is just such a fucking grind that I have little patience to try and finish it... Especially when you're on a mission and you CANT auto-travel for raisin's. So you're on one end of the map and it tells you to drive to the other end, and it'll take you a good 5-10 minutes of tedious driving to get there... And the only thing you're doing is driving with minimal to no exposition to keep you interested... I commute every day, I don't want to do it in a god-damned video game...

I personally have never finished any TES game nor have I finished a (3d) fallout game... I just get overwhelmed with what to do and I end up getting stuck doing sidequest stuff, and after 30-60 minutes of that I have no interest to continue the story so I just quit the game and go play something else for the rest of the day.

I think the only open-world game (other than GTA/Just Cause) i've finished is the Witcher franchise, but that's purely because the lore and story gripped me completely... Even then finishing them took the better part of 3-6 months of on/off gameplay, especially for Witcher 3 because it's just so stacked... But like others have said, you can fast travel to almost anywhere...

I don't work well with games that just toss me into a huge (drab) world and tell me to do whatever... I know I can follow the main story, but I don't want to miss out on the sidequests... But then i'm afraid I do quests in a wrong order or stumble upon something I shouldn't have stumbled upon, and I don't want that.

Like others have said, Arkham Asylum worked extremely well with a contained open world, where you could roam a bit but the action was contained to general areas. The story kept rolling and at the same time you could play the side quests you were supposed to do at that time, so you never got a feeling you were playing out-of-order...

I feel that most games are perfectly right to take place in open worlds, but I must admit that the games i've finished the most are the ones that are reasonably linear (e.g. TellTale series) and keep you rolling on the story. Nowdays every game needs to be open world and that means developers just create a huge world for the sake of having a huge world, and adding nothing of substance that makes the world matter. I've not played F4 so I can't judge that game, but the trend is obvious.

[Robsturgh]

I've really been enjoying Fallout 4, but I have a lot of the same problems with its content as I did with Witcher 3 - I just don't have tons of time anymore, and I don't know where the "good" side stuff is. So I find myself hurrying from location to location hoping to find something good, and getting annoyed when its just another "clear out this building of enemies and loot stuff". This feeling only intensified as I reached the more built up areas in both games, there was just so much to explore. If I had more time in my life other than the odd hour, I would love this. The actual combat in those games are good, but not good enough to make them enjoyable without contextual merit; I can't just run around Fallout or Witcher 3's world and have fun just messing dudes up without an end goal. (Bare in mind I've only just got to Diamond City - I've been told to push through that first bit and the game starts to get a bit crazier)

It's why I preferred MGS 5 and it's mission structure; you have a clear set of objectives and you pick the way you approach and complete them, throw in a little situational complications and you had a really fun moment-to-moment gameplay loop that was established. 

My opinion is probably going to change over Christmas on Fallout and Witcher (though I have fucking lost my Witcher 3 save after being a moron) as I'm putting aside some serious time to play them in the exploratory way I want to. 

So for me? These open world games are more restrictive for me than their linear counterparts because of the time I can put into them. Which sucks.

[Benji]

I find the point about not being linear enough sort of weird. They're as linear as you want them to be, that's the point. As soon as I get bored doing side quests I'll jump back into the main story and come back to side quests when I want.

[Robsturgh]

16 minutes ago, Benji said:

I find the point about not being linear enough sort of weird. They're as linear as you want them to be, that's the point. As soon as I get bored doing side quests I'll jump back into the main story and come back to side quests when I want.

My point is that I know that I'm missing out on good stuff then, it's the weird completionist in me that's a hold over from my teen years. I simply want to see the good shit, but don't know where it is! I admit, it's a bit of a weird problem and coupled with the impatience I have in games due to my time limitations; means I'm probably a fucking arse about games these days. I'm that guy.

[Benji]

I kind of get that, but it still doesn't make sense to me. In games where it "ends" once you go past a certain point then it'd be a fair note, but I don't think I can name an open world game that doesn't allow you to enter post-game and keep doing side quests you missed out on.

[Robsturgh]

38 minutes ago, Benji said:

I kind of get that, but it still doesn't make sense to me. In games where it "ends" once you go past a certain point then it'd be a fair note, but I don't think I can name an open world game that doesn't allow you to enter post-game and keep doing side quests you missed out on.

I actually think I need to try just mainlining the story in Fallout - and see what that experience is like. I've never really done it before simply because I'm a bit of a completionist; I always like to do most of the side stuff available before moving forward. It doesn't solve the problem I have with knowing what side stuff is worth doing though.