Worse trend: 7th gen linear games or 8th gen open world games?

[hanselthecaretaker]

Obvious a subjective subject but I can tell you one thing: I?ve certifiably grown more tired of the latter than I ever was of the former.

By the gods, it?s become a comforting thought that The Witcher 3, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Red Dead: Redemption 2 could be last open worlds for the rest of my gaming life, because I?ll probably never buy or play another open world game. Cyberpunk 2077 and whatever the next GTA is will have to be revolutionary in their design to even warrant a closer look personally.

When the best I can hope for with an open world game is merely to hold my interest enough to finish it let alone entertain the thought of ever replaying it, it?s probably time to close the book on them.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Linear.

There is more gameplay and replay value with Open World games.

I feel like 60 dollars is too expensive for a game like Call of Duty's campaigns.

 

[TrulyBritish]

Linear.

There is more gameplay and replay value with Open World games.

I feel like 60 dollars is too expensive for a game like Call of Duty's campaigns.

I disagree, but I don't really see the value in doing the same "content" that's boring but is how the upgrades are sectioned off. Mad Max was a chore because it kept wanting me to do the same boring tasks in order to get scrap so I could upgrade the Opus.
Where's the value in collecting a billion animus shards in Assassins creed games?
In a hypothetical situation where it's "6 hours of good content" vs "60 hours of good content" then yeah, there's more value in the latter but a lot of the time it's just 6 hours of good content and 54 hours of repetitive faff.
But then again, I never buy games full priced anyway, so it's not like I ever spend $60 on a 6 hour experience anyway.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Linear.

There is more gameplay and replay value with Open World games.

I feel like 60 dollars is too expensive for a game like Call of Duty's campaigns.

I disagree, but I don't really see the value in doing the same "content" that's boring but is how the upgrades are sectioned off. Mad Max was a chore because it kept wanting me to do the same boring tasks in order to get scrap so I could upgrade the Opus.
Where's the value in collecting a billion animus shards in Assassins creed games?
In a hypothetical situation where it's "6 hours of good content" vs "60 hours of good content" then yeah, there's more value in the latter but a lot of the time it's just 6 hours of good content and 54 hours of repetitive faff.
But then again, I never buy games full priced anyway, so it's not like I ever spend $60 on a 6 hour experience anyway.

Try playing Far Cry games guns blazing in one playthrough. Then try playing it all sneaky and stealthy the next.

And I have said that I find the Far Cry games better then Assassin's Creed.

 

[CaitSeith]

It all depends on how good/fun the game is. It's just a shame for people who don't like the current trend (as I didn't like the linear games trend). Not only 7th gen games tended to be linear, they tended to be (or use gameplay from) modern military shooters.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'd say they're both equally bad, seeing as they're both rather obnoxious, though the linear 7th gen trend didn't include all the online money milking bullshit that the current open-world trend does.

Personally, I'll take linear over open-world nearly everytime. Open-world games overall feel less immersive to me, because the closer a game tries to get at simulating freedom the more restricting it ends up feeling when you ultimately reach the borders of that freedom. I was playing Breath of the Wild yesterday, arguably one of the best open-world games to date, and I came to the end of the gamemap only to be confronted by a sudden invisible wall and a text telling me 'you can't go beyond this point'. Stuff like this kills me. There wasn't even a chasm or a body of water cutting me off, no, just a forcefield stopping me from progressing.

Then there's the fact that I kinda wanna do/play something else once I get to a certain amount of playtime. If I've been playing a game daily for two weeks and I still haven't reached the end I find it hard to keep going with much enthusiasm, no matter how much I like the title. 10 to 15 hours is the perfect length for me, because whenever I start a new game or replay one it's those first 3 to 4 days where my excitement is at its peak.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Honestly, both.

Linear games and open world games can be fun so long as they're consistent with their rules (ICO and Just Cause 2, for example). But I hate having an open world game get linear, scripted, practically self-playing missions. The missions themselves in Assassin's Creed and Far Cry and GTA are always the worst parts of those games and go against everything I love from fucking about in the open world and enjoying emergent gameplay. I loved RDR2 for the story but boy if half of the missions don't play like cutscenes.

 

[CritialGaming]

I don't think linearity versus open world games is the issue. Both game styles can be bad, and both can be great.

I think the biggest problem is the plague of half-assed games coming from AAA-publishers who think that releasing MVP's (Minimal Viable Product) is a sustainable good idea.

Releasing a barebones barely functional game only to spend six months fixing it with patches while the paying public fucking suffers through shit while they wait for their expensive game to become worth playing, is a fucking disaster.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

It depends entirely on how much the game grabs me. There are open world games and linear games that I've played through many, many times. Old GTA games like Vice City and San Andreas, every TES game and The Witcher 3. I must have played through each more than 6 times. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I've played through The Witcher 3 10 times, maybe more. And I'm still playing it. I just freakin' love that game.

Same goes for some of the linear games like Max Payne 2 or Resident Evil 4 etc.

 

[the December King]

I'm a huge fan of sandbox games. In contrast, linear always leaves me feeling boxed in, trapped, and I tire of that quickly -it's the illusion of being in control of my character's destiny that I appreciate.

I've played 20 minutes of Metro Exodus so far, and it's really been me just watching characters talk, and then walking to a new spot, and watching scripted events unfold. It's really well made, but I'm just shy of watching a movie - in fact, one of the playmodes is a walk-through, if I remember correctly. So I'm playing Call Of Chernobyl again, and having much more fun. I mean, I'm not done playing Metro, I'll see some more of it before passing judgement. Just, you know... not a great start for my tastes.

Out of curiosity, has anyone played a S.T.A.L.K.E.R mod that they would recommend? I've got CoC and love it, and I also played Misery (was a bit too micro-managy for me).

 

[Trunkage]

Can't we just have a little bit of both
Sometimes open world is good, sometimes linear and its going to change based on my mood

 

[Kerg3927]

There is more gameplay and replay value with Open World games.

It's the opposite for me. I usually play a good, relatively short, linear game multiple times, and then come back to it again later for more replays. Games like...

Mass Effect trilogy (4+ playthroughs)
Dragon Age: Origins (4+ playthroughs)
Dragon Age II (2 playthroughs)
Dark Souls trilogy (3+ playthroughs)

^^All games that even a completionist can finish in under 100 hours.

Whereas the massive open world games I've completed, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Witcher 3, each took me like 200-300 hours, and I was soooo ready for them to be overwith by the end that I never came back to them and probably never will.

For me, replay value is about quality of content. A smaller, more linear game with high quality content is going to have much more replay value for me than a massive, bloated game with lots of boring padded content and maps so big that exploration becomes a tedious chore.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Linear is better because I prefer master-of-one vs jack-of-all-trades.

 

[BrawlMan]

There is more gameplay and replay value with Open World games.

It's the opposite for me. I usually play a good, relatively short, linear game multiple times, and then come back to it again later for more replays. Games like...

Mass Effect trilogy (4+ playthroughs)
Dragon Age: Origins (4+ playthroughs)
Dragon Age II (2 playthroughs)
Dark Souls trilogy (3+ playthroughs)

^^All games that even a completionist can finish in under 100 hours.

Whereas the massive open world games I've completed, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Witcher 3, each took me like 200-300 hours, and I was soooo ready for them to be overwith by the end that I never came back to them and probably never will.

For me, replay value is about quality of content. A smaller, more linear game with high quality content is going to have much more replay value for me than a massive, bloated game with lots of boring padded content and maps so big that exploration becomes a tedious chore.

This. Open-World games don't have much to offer now as they're all to similar to each other. It's either Far Cry, GTA, a GTA clone, Assassin's Creed, or some other game made by a publisher that does not stand out from the crowd. The last open world game I enjoyed was Saints Row 2. Aside from playing GTAV's single player with my older brother, I checked out of sandbox games, because they got too repetitive.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Linear.

There is more gameplay and replay value with Open World games.

I feel like 60 dollars is too expensive for a game like Call of Duty's campaigns.

i disagree. While I understand open worlds have some benefits, I feel linear games are at least a one-time purchase. Open world games have become 'live services' and are just vectors for DLC and micotransactions. And that level of anti-consumerism is way worse than merely boring linear games

 

[PapaGreg096]

Honestly all trends sort of show the worst sides of their respective genre.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

It's not about linearity vs open world. I love the game Dark Cloud 2, I love the artstyle, music, characters, plot, and gameplay, but I am never EVER going to replay it because while the amount of stuff you can do in it is amazing, it's also overwhelming.

Dark Cloud 2 is a linear game but it has a lot of things that one has come to expect from modern open world games with the amount of different things you can do in it but not always a lot of reason to do it and a lot of time required to do it in. My issue with current open world games is that they're too big. Either they have a lot of good unique content that you're never going to see all of before you get tired of it or it's all repetitive stuff that you're doing constantly.

People need to stop taking the open WORLD part of the genre so strictly. You can have a big playground to run around in while still not taking up ten city blocks.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

There is more gameplay and replay value with Open World games.

It's the opposite for me. I usually play a good, relatively short, linear game multiple times, and then come back to it again later for more replays. Games like...

Mass Effect trilogy (4+ playthroughs)
Dragon Age: Origins (4+ playthroughs)
Dragon Age II (2 playthroughs)
Dark Souls trilogy (3+ playthroughs)

^^All games that even a completionist can finish in under 100 hours.

Whereas the massive open world games I've completed, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Witcher 3, each took me like 200-300 hours, and I was soooo ready for them to be overwith by the end that I never came back to them and probably never will.

For me, replay value is about quality of content. A smaller, more linear game with high quality content is going to have much more replay value for me than a massive, bloated game with lots of boring padded content and maps so big that exploration becomes a tedious chore.

Same. SoulsBorne and most recently Uncharted 4 are games where I really enjoy multiple playthrough's; often times more-so with each successive run because I find new things or new ways of doing things. SoulsBorne replay speaks for itself, but Uncharted 4 is surprisingly adept at yielding a good variety of strategies in almost every decent size combat encounter due to multiple approaches like stealth, guns blazing, sniping, rope swinging in and out of danger, platforming to your positional advantage, etc. The levels are big and varied enough to encourage all of this without any unused terrain there simply to fill a map out.

I thoroughly understand the appeal of open worlds, and I'm really enjoying my time in the immersive world of Kingdom Come: Deliverance and The Witcher 3, as well as RDR2 and even Mad Max, but once I'm done with everything that pops up on their maps I will feel like I've exhausted every significant bit they have to offer and be too fatigued by it all to go back at all. Maybe a decade or so later for nostalgia if I had absolutely nothing else to play, but it simply wouldn't hold the same appeal in terms of gamepaly that a smaller scale, more tightly designed game has.

 

[Squilookle]

Man that's a real toughie. But as bland and uninspiring as Sandboxes are in general these days, I'm not sure they're as bad as that awful plague of chest-high wall linear shooters from last gen. Honestly those were far more disposable and forgettable than the open worlds of today, so my vote's going for the linear 7th genners being the worse option.