The problem is that the bigger the world, the more open space there is (duh), and that open space gets really, really boring and tedious to traverse unless you fill it with something to do. And that something-to-do usually ends up being tedious kill x amount quests, because writing creativity has its budget limits. Also, the more quests you have, the more of them have to be side quests, because they can't all be essential to the overarching plot, and the more side quests you have, the less urgent and engaging the main plot becomes.Samtemdo8 said:MMORPG playable as an offline single player game, but of course without the negative aspects of MMORPG gameplay. Imagine World of Warcraft, but none of the grindy questing of "Kill X amount of mobs" with much more deeper and engaging story quests and a party system akin to Dragon Age Origins.
The Witcher 3 made the best attempt at it I've seen, putting huge effort into most of the side quests. Voice animated, cut scenes, solid writing. But in the end, for me at least, it still faced the glaring problem that doing a million side quests made the main quest feel silly. Oh no, Ciri is one step ahead of the Wild Hunt... we must find her immediately and save her before all is lost!!! But meh, on second thought, let's spend three months clearing bandit camps, playing Gwent, doing horse races, drinking ale, fucking whores, and killing minor monsters for the peasants to earn cash to pay our bar/brothel tab. Don't worry, we have this Ciri-and-the-Wild-Hunt pause button here, and you can pause the main story indefinitely. Really, nothing bad will happen. It's really fucking urgent, but it's not really urgent.
Anyway, it's a huge problem in games today. They all want to be massive open world, because ooh pretty mountains and landscapes. But I've yet to see one maintain a thrilling and engaging main story like Dragon Age Origins and the Mass Effect trilogy, and I'm not sure that it's actually doable in the massive open world format.