Games that are ruined by going open world?

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

I wanna say my enjoyment of dragon age inquisition was secerly hindered by it's open world nature.

It certainly did a lot to mask the fact that it only had like 5 main missions. Which is a shame cause it had lkke the best companion group of any bioware game

Inquisition is one of the best examples of an open world that does nothing for the rest of the game. Inquisition's open world zones were almost completely disconnected from the game's main story and added nothing to the experience other than additional play time. I've heard it theorised, though never confirmed, that the open world areas and the multiplayer were intended for another DA game (possibly an MMO?), and then they stitched the open world zones onto the story elements of DA3 because they saw how well Skyrim did and wanted to have an open world, which is why the game feels so disjointed.

 

[sXeth]

The main reason to replay an RPG is usually to play a different class because very few of them have choices done well enough where you wanna play the game again and see what plays out when you make different choices.

Which is again generally at odds with most open world design trends. Everything has to be done by everybody, so content locked to a certain class option has become a massive outlier.

There's certainly logical reasons for that of course. Building a fully realized experience, even a linear one for 3 (or more) differentiated approaches is definitely a worthy challenge. Having the Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard actually engage in the main quest on a noticeably different level (Beyond alternate dialogue and a particular set of combat moves). Mage casts open lock, fighter smashes lock, theif picks lock. Fighter intimidates, rogue persuades, mage casts charm, etc doesn't quite separate the experience notably.

 

[Abomination]

I wanna say my enjoyment of dragon age inquisition was secerly hindered by it's open world nature.

It certainly did a lot to mask the fact that it only had like 5 main missions. Which is a shame cause it had lkke the best companion group of any bioware game

Inquisition is one of the best examples of an open world that does nothing for the rest of the game. Inquisition's open world zones were almost completely disconnected from the game's main story and added nothing to the experience other than additional play time. I've heard it theorised, though never confirmed, that the open world areas and the multiplayer were intended for another DA game (possibly an MMO?), and then they stitched the open world zones onto the story elements of DA3 because they saw how well Skyrim did and wanted to have an open world, which is why the game feels so disjointed.

It was just literally "run exactly 30 seconds mounted in this direction for an event of /4" then you looked at your map and did it again in another direction. Eventually all the dark grey icons with a white border became white icons with a white border.

In The Witcher III, at least those ! marks led to an interesting story with decision tree solutions and unique characters. The side quests felt like extra content and not just padding. The "collect" or "clear lair" quests were often in a direct line to your quest objective if you went off-road, but if you didn't complete them you felt no reason of loss or missing out.

Some of the side quests were the most memorable parts of the game, the troll painter, the Bloody Baron, Roache on Shrooms, the False God... I struggle to remember a single non-main-quest event in Inquisition.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

So many Ubisoft games are ruined by going open world.


Good old Jim Sterling has a few things to say about it.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

I like Aloy far more as a protagonist than Geralt, who I found to be rather dull, it was the characters around him that made everything interesting. Geralt was kinda like the straight-man in a comedy, you need him there for the other characters to work but he's nobody's favorite character. It's been awhile since I played Horizon, I feel like everyone respected/liked Aloy for something she did vs just liking her because she's the protagonist/seeker, it didn't feel artificial. I'm not trying to say Horizon is some perfect example or writing or anything but I feel like it did just enough (and possibly a bit more) for all the character and story beats to work and feel satisfying, basically about 7/10 in the writing department, with W3 being an 8/10 for me (I didn't care for the main storyline that much honestly).

I'm fine with Aloy, but I can't say I really like her, though I don't really like any of the characters in HZD apart from Nil. Everyone is extremely passable. Geralt is relatively dull, but then he's also kinda old and tired. And you can sense this tired sadness to him whenever he's faced with a decision where there's no clear victor and somebody gets screwed over. And then there's the relationship with Yennifer (if you choose to pursue it), where he's in love with a woman who might love him but doesn't exactly respect him, and he knows this. But what's he gonna do?

Geralt has those moments where the hardened Witcher act sheds to reveal he can be just as much of a shmuck as the next guy.

Aloy feels too much like a moral compass from the very first scene. You'd think that Aloy being raised by a man who is very adamant in following the law of the Nora would result in her having some of the same sentiments. But for some reason she has a very early 2000's sense of justice, probably to make her more relatable to players. But it doesn't make much sense for her character, and it leaves very little for her to grow. Rost's death doesn't even have much of an impact on her other than she really wants to get the killers. I hate to pull God of War '18 in here again, but there you could feel how Faye's death hangs over Kratos and Atreus throughout most of the game. In HZD with Aloy.. not even a smidge. Rost is pretty much forgotten once he dies.

There's this piece of concept art of Aloy where she's much younger looking, I'd say about 15, sporting that same hairdo she has during the very beginning of the game, and in it she looks much more like she's still figuring herself out. And it's this character that I wish we would've gotten. Someone who has known nothing but Nora law all her life and believes it to be true, only to have her eyes opened slowly throughout the game.

Hell, everything hangs over Kratos for most if not all of the game. I got the feeling fulfilling Faye?s wishes lifted about 2% of Kratos? colossal burden, and Atrius is just too unaware/young/innocent to really understand it all.

One of my favorite scenes was when he needs the heart from that troll. You could just sense how tired of it all he was through body language alone, getting on top of the creature and cutting it out. I literally felt nothing but empathy and sadness for that moment, and that?s pretty powerful direction on Santa Monica?s part.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

After MGS5 and Witcher 3, I was burnt out enough on open world games that I called a personal boycott against them.

I backtracked on that for Zelda: BOTW, but it'll take another game of that caliber for me to even consider playing another open world game. Horizon Zero Dawn might be good enough to try, but I haven't gathered up enough patience to play beyond the introduction.

If you?re like me it shouldn?t take much more patience, because the intro is by far the most awkward, dull part of the game. I kinda think GG did it on purpose to make the contrast of child Aloy so different from the grown Aloy.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Aloy feels too much like a moral compass from the very first scene. You'd think that Aloy being raised by a man who is very adamant in following the law of the Nora would result in her having some of the same sentiments. But for some reason she has a very early 2000's sense of justice, probably to make her more relatable to players. But it doesn't make much sense for her character, and it leaves very little for her to grow. Rost's death doesn't even have much of an impact on her other than she really wants to get the killers. I hate to pull God of War '18 in here again, but there you could feel how Faye's death hangs over Kratos and Atreus throughout most of the game. In HZD with Aloy.. not even a smidge. Rost is pretty much forgotten once he dies.

There's this piece of concept art of Aloy where she's much younger looking, I'd say about 15, sporting that same hairdo she has during the very beginning of the game, and in it she looks much more like she's still figuring herself out. And it's this character that I wish we would've gotten. Someone who has known nothing but Nora law all her life and believes it to be true, only to have her eyes opened slowly throughout the game.

It's obvious Aloy is supposed to be that type of character. I always wonder if there were people with progressive thinking in the past (as it's not completely implausible) as you have quite a few characters like that in other works, for example Christoph Waltz's character in Django. Also, Aloy's society is pretty young so it's different than thousands of years of engrained 'status quo'. God of War does do the little moments far better than Horizon. I guess they didn't go that route with Aloy because she was into/explored the old ruins with technology and whatnot so she knew from a young age there was more than just the Nora.

The main reason to replay an RPG is usually to play a different class because very few of them have choices done well enough where you wanna play the game again and see what plays out when you make different choices.

Which is again generally at odds with most open world design trends. Everything has to be done by everybody, so content locked to a certain class option has become a massive outlier.

There's certainly logical reasons for that of course. Building a fully realized experience, even a linear one for 3 (or more) differentiated approaches is definitely a worthy challenge. Having the Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard actually engage in the main quest on a noticeably different level (Beyond alternate dialogue and a particular set of combat moves). Mage casts open lock, fighter smashes lock, theif picks lock. Fighter intimidates, rogue persuades, mage casts charm, etc doesn't quite separate the experience notably.

Yeah, most RPGs are basically your standard shooter that has the gun-blazing or stealth approach options yet is full of so much unneeded fluff. Focusing on decisions that is reflected back onto the player from the game world should be the core of an RPG.

 

[Drathnoxis]

L.A. Noire, there was no point. All it did was introduce weird character inconsistencies like: why is Cole Phelps, a by the books detective with a strong moral code, stealing people's cars, smashing them into pedestrians, and then backing up over the bodies until they stop moving? There was nothing to do but drive to the next mission or get your partner to, and in fact if you care about getting top detective rank (I didn't) you should always let your partner drive to avoid any chance of damages reducing your rank. There were also 'hidden vehicles' spread around the map that I never once went looking for because the game would always snap you back to the story car every time you went to a new location. Frankly they never should have wasted the time modeling the whole city and instead focused their money on improving the lousy interrogations and story.

Edit: Actually, I guess there were the street crimes too, which I forgot about because I quit after about 10 because they were universally boring.

And all the chatter from random civies was really weird. Random insults and EVERY FREAKING PERSON commenting on how Cole is an honest cop. Like could everybody just shut up and let me walk to my car in peace?