GTA IV and crackdown are some of the best uses of an open world i can think of at the moment. Im having trouble thinking of a game that "failed" with an open world design.
Open World Gameplay
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Open worlds are amazing, and gives the player a sense of freedom, where there is the posiblity of making choices, instead of leaving the player with that sense of "That was stupid.. I would have done it otherwise..."
There is an immediate problem though, and that is incentive. Far Cry 2 fails here.
To me, Far Cry 2 was amazin in the beginning. Awesome combat, great realism... But it was just that. While I had an open world to drive around ad fuck up, there was the ever present question of "why?". why would I want to go here and do this? This is what missions are there for, to give you reasons for exploring this open world, to give you some incentive to jump into the sandbox. If the open world is your sandbox, then the missions are your sandcastle. How you build it, and if you build it, is up to you. But the game is supposed to suggest you several different sandcastles, some easy, square, others with elaborate towers and sporting detailed imagery. Far Cry has the problem, that it only has a handful of sandcastles. And it makes you build them over, and over again, with no reward. GTA gave you the option of following a storyline, so did Oblivion. Far Cry 2 doesn't seem to have a point(and Yahtzee has pointed this out, I know). I can go here, kill these dudes, but there's not really any difference from when I did it over here, and it seems to accomplish nothing, but to satisfy my own need to riddle something with bullets. If I get in a sandbox, I don't want to build the same sandcastle 10 times, each time only to have it flattened upon completion. I want it to stay there, to have impact. And more importantly, whenever I tire from fooling around on my own, I want to engage in some main plot. Let's call this... a friend. A want a friend in the sandbox, who both gives and takes. He takes freedom from me, in telling me what sandcastles to build, and where I should build them, but giving me free choice if what spades and buckets to use. And I want him to give me ideas, I want him to join me in posting sooldiers on the sandcastles. I want to sit with him and pretend that we need to build the sandcastle, before the evil dragon arrives.
I think I may be a bit lost in my own analogy now, but I hope you catch my drift. Without purpose, without a bit of control and direction, open worlds, sandbox games, becomes boring. GTA did that great in GTAIII (the only of the 3d GTA's I have played). Oblivion did it too, in a slightly different way. Far Cry 2 was pointless, at least up till the point where I gave up. The save says I'm, 19 % through. At this point, something should be happening other than "Here's a gun, have fun."
There is an immediate problem though, and that is incentive. Far Cry 2 fails here.
To me, Far Cry 2 was amazin in the beginning. Awesome combat, great realism... But it was just that. While I had an open world to drive around ad fuck up, there was the ever present question of "why?". why would I want to go here and do this? This is what missions are there for, to give you reasons for exploring this open world, to give you some incentive to jump into the sandbox. If the open world is your sandbox, then the missions are your sandcastle. How you build it, and if you build it, is up to you. But the game is supposed to suggest you several different sandcastles, some easy, square, others with elaborate towers and sporting detailed imagery. Far Cry has the problem, that it only has a handful of sandcastles. And it makes you build them over, and over again, with no reward. GTA gave you the option of following a storyline, so did Oblivion. Far Cry 2 doesn't seem to have a point(and Yahtzee has pointed this out, I know). I can go here, kill these dudes, but there's not really any difference from when I did it over here, and it seems to accomplish nothing, but to satisfy my own need to riddle something with bullets. If I get in a sandbox, I don't want to build the same sandcastle 10 times, each time only to have it flattened upon completion. I want it to stay there, to have impact. And more importantly, whenever I tire from fooling around on my own, I want to engage in some main plot. Let's call this... a friend. A want a friend in the sandbox, who both gives and takes. He takes freedom from me, in telling me what sandcastles to build, and where I should build them, but giving me free choice if what spades and buckets to use. And I want him to give me ideas, I want him to join me in posting sooldiers on the sandcastles. I want to sit with him and pretend that we need to build the sandcastle, before the evil dragon arrives.
I think I may be a bit lost in my own analogy now, but I hope you catch my drift. Without purpose, without a bit of control and direction, open worlds, sandbox games, becomes boring. GTA did that great in GTAIII (the only of the 3d GTA's I have played). Oblivion did it too, in a slightly different way. Far Cry 2 was pointless, at least up till the point where I gave up. The save says I'm, 19 % through. At this point, something should be happening other than "Here's a gun, have fun."
Too bad there wasn't much variation in what you could do.Xander15 said:
Anyway, I like both equally, the only thing I want is that the game is just good, properly worked out be it linear or open world.
My biggest gripe with open world game is the integration, or lack there of story. The more freedom that is given or offered, the more compromise to narrative. Pulling off a GOOD story in an open world game is tough since that freedom comprises the integrity and cohesiveness of the story. It's called a storyLINE for a reason and I have yet to play is open world game that gave me a story worth trekking through. My other complaint is the freedom itself and having nothing of real importance or interest to do. GTA is the biggest culprit of this for me as it has ingrained me with a saying for open world games "so much to do, but nothing worth doing".
As far as MMO's go I don't mind them all too much...but then again the closest thing to an MMO I play is guild wars. i just don't the good in open world games...at least not yet. They can still pull off a game that can fix these 2 massive problems of mine but as of now I dislike them...or don't see them to be that great.
PS: And for the love of god do NOT respond to this by saying Fallout 3, that's just a great big NO.
As far as MMO's go I don't mind them all too much...but then again the closest thing to an MMO I play is guild wars. i just don't the good in open world games...at least not yet. They can still pull off a game that can fix these 2 massive problems of mine but as of now I dislike them...or don't see them to be that great.
PS: And for the love of god do NOT respond to this by saying Fallout 3, that's just a great big NO.
Open world and I have had some ups and downs. While I certainly like the idea of being able to do whatever I want, but two issues arise: I rarely know what it is that I want to do making the game aimless often leading to boredom; when I finally do find out what I want to do it is often extremely limited by gaming capacity.
In all honesty I prefer more linear progression games. They feel more well-crafted to me. Open world can stay over there with its target audience and I'll sit here hugging my copy of Grim Fandango.
In all honesty I prefer more linear progression games. They feel more well-crafted to me. Open world can stay over there with its target audience and I'll sit here hugging my copy of Grim Fandango.
Mirror's Edge with more ass kicking and more freedom then, yeah? I love it.Romicron said:
I think GTA does it the best, aside from a few issues (walking is waaaaaay to slow, in GTA4 at least, and have to unlock areas). Mount and Blade is awesome but I find it lacks direction, you could wander around for ages and do nothing, which, in some ways, is awesome. Assassins Creed suffers the same drawbacks as GTA but I love just running around, climbing buildings and killing random guards on rooftops.
I think the best system would be to take GTA3/Vice City/San Andreas, keep the controls, make the area bigger, make everywhere is unlocked from the start, add zombies and go. It would be fucking awesome. Also maybe add the option to play it in first person or third person, which ever you prefer.
I realy enjoyed the way Crysis played.
It was a linear story in a massive world. Not exacly what I'd call Open-World but it was pretty massive.
I liked the semi-linear part of it so you dont end up getting lost or forget what you're suposed to be doing.
It was a linear story in a massive world. Not exacly what I'd call Open-World but it was pretty massive.
I liked the semi-linear part of it so you dont end up getting lost or forget what you're suposed to be doing.
I agree. Some sort of open world multy player game would be realy fun. And in responses to you question I find that as long as the game is fun and it can hold the same graphical level thru the whole game. I played mercenaries 1 on the ps2 and after a while the cars would turn into blocks.RAKais said:
Yeah, the emptiness of "I did something but it doesn't matter five minutes later" hurts the freeform pay in open world games. A full simulation however will not be feasible for most games (besides, having simulated people in the city who die permanently wouldn't go together with a respawning protagonist). I think the X games simulate the whole universe's economy so if you (or someone who most definitely isn't you) destroy a factory that factory's input will be produced too much while its output will be missed in the universe (or at least the near area), in turn the game makes penalties fairly harsh (no respawn on death, hostilities remain until you make amends which aren't as easy as driving up to a pay & spray) so you can't just fly aroudn and blow up the universe bit by bit.
I think if we want a game world with consequences we can't just have the consequences exclude the player, making death and hostility just temporary issues lets the player have more instant gratification fun but it makes it hard to have a simulated world that survives for any meaningful length of time (seriously, if dead people in GTA stayed dead and you could destroy buildings how long would it take until your city would look like the aftermath of an Earth Defense Force battle?).
Of couse consequences and stories don't get along either, you can't just let the player permakill people if they're important for a later story event but it'd be kinda silly if the whole city is in ruins except the one row of buildings that the final mission will take place in... Progression where you have to complete stuff to reach other stuff doesn't fit into a real city either, people wouldn't like it if e.g. the city had many large walls that require a grappling hook to traverse. Also the whole concept of missions you can fail messes with the open world concept too, so what if the informant got killed before he could tell you the secret or if the enemy car makes it into the garage? Can't the game just continue with those consequences in place? E.g. if you failed to chase the car can't you just go into the place it got to and blow everything to hell there? It's not really open world if there are points where the game just tells you "you did that mission wrong, retry it!". A particularly annoying example was in the Saints Row final mission for the VKs, you absolutely have to keep that stupid car alive even though cars in the game are completely disposable and if you wreck one you bail and get another. No, the mission ends if that car gets destroyed even if you're already where you wanted to go and everyone on your team is still alive.
I think if we want a game world with consequences we can't just have the consequences exclude the player, making death and hostility just temporary issues lets the player have more instant gratification fun but it makes it hard to have a simulated world that survives for any meaningful length of time (seriously, if dead people in GTA stayed dead and you could destroy buildings how long would it take until your city would look like the aftermath of an Earth Defense Force battle?).
Of couse consequences and stories don't get along either, you can't just let the player permakill people if they're important for a later story event but it'd be kinda silly if the whole city is in ruins except the one row of buildings that the final mission will take place in... Progression where you have to complete stuff to reach other stuff doesn't fit into a real city either, people wouldn't like it if e.g. the city had many large walls that require a grappling hook to traverse. Also the whole concept of missions you can fail messes with the open world concept too, so what if the informant got killed before he could tell you the secret or if the enemy car makes it into the garage? Can't the game just continue with those consequences in place? E.g. if you failed to chase the car can't you just go into the place it got to and blow everything to hell there? It's not really open world if there are points where the game just tells you "you did that mission wrong, retry it!". A particularly annoying example was in the Saints Row final mission for the VKs, you absolutely have to keep that stupid car alive even though cars in the game are completely disposable and if you wreck one you bail and get another. No, the mission ends if that car gets destroyed even if you're already where you wanted to go and everyone on your team is still alive.