I genuinely think the current trend of Ubisoft-esque open world games with "map vomit" is stagnating the Western triple-A games industry. It seems to be that or well designed FPSes at this point. Devs play it safe with a well known method that works and sells well. I found out I can only take a handle of these types before I get sick of them.

Hello? Does the forum work? Kay, the forum works. Just checking. Thought the news of Drew's announcement to quit shut down the forum.

... DREW! ;__;

@hippie_genocide:I think it all depends on the game. If the game is good, plays well, and you're having fun - then who is to say the formula is bad. IF the game world is simply not that interesting and your interactions with it aren't that fun then I guess the game itself isn't designed all that well. I want developers to innovate as well. I'm a big fan of Assassins Creed and enjoyed most of those games, but hey I too want them to evolve the gameplay. For me though thats evolving the gameplay which is very often completely separate from the world in which it takes place. Watch Dogs 2 wasn't all that great for me because the world simply wasn't all that fun and getting around in it wasn't especially thrilling either. inFamous Second Son didn't have a significantly more interactive world, if anything it was even more static than Watch Dogs, but getting around in it thanks to all the powers was a ton of fun so I never noticed the open world fatigue.

That said I'm with you partly on Horizon. All along I thought it was going to be like a modern version of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - a linear, narrative heavy post apocalyptic romp with some quasi open wordliness going on. When I learned this has a map and missions that send you out in it I likewise recoiled a little. For me though it was because an open world needs amazing gameplay to keep you going and even that is sometimes not enough. Tomb Raider was a fantastic reboot that I enjoyed quite a bit and the sequel decided on a more open world approach, which in my opinion wasn't the greatest choice. Still had a ton of fun as the game was great to play, but I didn't need all those areas to connect like that as it diluted the flow of the story in a way. So Here is hoping the entire internet isn't wrong and this game still manages to pull through despite alerts and camps and resource gathering.

It's not how I would do a Batman game, but think the Arkham games are among the better collect-a-thon games. Almost every one of them is a little puzzle. In a Ubisoft game, it's simply 300 flags sitting there for you, most requiring no thought or skill.

@disco_drew22: Every AAA game will be a Total War game. Just you wait...

@humanity: Thanks for reminding me that Enslaved is a shining beacon atop my pile of shame.

If I see that mountain over there, I'd like to go to it, but not every game needs to be a 100+hour journey either. There's not a damn thing wrong with linearity and a tight, 6-8 hour package. Open world isn't ruining games, but it is creeping in where it isn't needed from time to time.

Given that I keep getting new open world games that are amazing and apparently Zero Dawn is also amazing... no? Obviously not?

Context in what you are doing in an open world game matters.

@hippie_genocide: I'm really curious if the story will follow a similar path. Enslaved was an alright game with some great voice acting, mocap, and a really intriguing story. The whole mystery behind what happened to the world and what is up with these creatures and robots was what kept my interest piqued to the very end. So far everyone is saying Zero Dawn has a great story, and a single scene from the GameSpot review got me realllly curious if this will be very similar to Enslaved.

Ahah, no. Morrowind has less to do with Oblivion than Oblivion has to do with Fallout 4. The map, the quest structure, fast travel, all the objects you can pick up, the NPC behavior and a million other gameplay mechanics got their start in Oblivion. Bethesda has been reusing the same template ever since with some adjustements in Fallout 3.

Let me put it this way: if they made a game that was instpired by Morrowind it would be a very different game than if they just made another elder scrolls sequel with the Oblivion template. I'm not saying it would be better, I'm just saying I'm totally over the Oblivion template at this point and they need to switch things up.

The answer to that is no, but at some point when I was playing Far Cry 4 that specific template of open world design (We'll call it "The Ubisoft school") broke for me in a way that dampened my enthusiasm for a lot of other games with similar checklists of cookie-cutter side activities that feed into barely-relevant progression mechanics. I'm not going to get all sneery and talk about how modern games are filled with pablum and skinner boxes instead of meaningful content, but I don't want to climb towers, I don't want to have to skin a bunch of animals so I can craft a bigger quiver, and I don't really want to set my map marker from enemy camp to enemy camp so I can clear them out as surgically as my video game OCD demands.

That's not to say that I'm opposed to open world design in games though (I really liked The Witcher 3), or that I haven't enjoyed open world games using that framework in the past (though I seriously do wonder if I'd like Shadow of Mordor as much now as I did in 2014.) It's more that I need something else around that framework, and a big world by itself isn't enough to interest me anymore. For all I know, Horizon side-steps a lot of these problems from either a gameplay or a story standpoint, not to mention that Zelda will probably do something similar.

Not really. It's more subjective than anything else. It really comes down to how fun or rewarding a person finds that side content.

I find playing too much of any one genre of video game to be boring. I probably only play 1 or 2 open world games a year so I dont burnout on them. Horizon seems to be that game for me this year.

The problem is we're just getting a lot of them now, and lots of franchises are turning into it.

There's no problem with it inherently. I'd just like less of them lately.

I don't think so but i think i am just burnes out on them. I think the chase for 80+ hour every game just leads me to skip most of the big ones. I miss linear games that go from point a to b and are just a good time while they last or are short but replayable

The last time I felt truly excited to play an open world game was The Witcher 3. The formula has grown stale at this point and it's dampening my spirits for Horizon or even RDR 2. Something needs to come along that really changes the blueprint. I feel like Shadow of Mordor did this to an extent with the Nemesis system but there's been little effort since then to shake things up.

Warning, I'm about to get super rant-y and more than a little elitist. A nerd is about to vent...

The typical modern open world game has no teeth and loses too much trying to appeal to too large an audience. Open world isn't inherently flawed but the popular design of today thinks far too little of the player. Replace meaningful engagement with busywork and interesting mechanics with "I don't know...it feels good". Does your player ever fail at something in your game because they weren't paying attention? Rip that shit out, if they can't complete your game while understanding none of it then you're asking too much of the consumer. Open world to many developers doesn't mean "there are many ways to play our game" so much as it means "it doesn't matter how you play our game" because they're terrified of ever telling the player they fucked up. Modern open world games don't let you fail in any meaningful way and succeeding never has lasting consequences.

is horizon zero dawn even strictly in that framework of game though? im really interested in seeing a lengthier playthrough of it (hopefully here and with a mr scanlon onboard so we can get as much use of him as possible before leaving :) )

I love open world games. My problem is when they jam pack the map with a bunch of useless garbage. I think the worst offender of that was AC Unity. I honestly don't mind a little busywork as long as the gameplay loop is fun and the game gives you a good way to navigate the world. The problem is that most games tend to suck at that and oftentimes developers make their open worlds way bigger than they need to be.

I think that open world games are just the new genre that is being over done much in the same way that first person shooters and third person cover shooters were a while back. I think I personally felt that after completing The Witcher 3 and all the DLC. I remember specifically beating the last DLC and looking at the new map that had still a ton of side quests to complete and I could still invest more into my Villa, but in my mind I just kept asking myself... why? The story is done and anything I would continue to do would just be for completion sake rather than actually enjoying the content. Maybe I might have missed a funny quest or an interesting side story, but it just didn't really seem worth it anymore since Geralt's story was done. Not to mention the obscene amount of hours I had sunk in the game just made me want to put it down and not touch it or other open world games again for awhile. The fatigue from Witcher 3 even influenced me in not getting Final Fantasy XV just because I could not do it anymore.

It has been awhile and Horizon Zero Dawn looks refreshing to me, but I'm also a bit cautious. The good praise is definitely a good thing and hearing that it has a good story makes me even more intrigued, but every reviewer seems to be pointing about viewpoints, clearing enemy camps, scanning tools, all give me flashbacks as to why I and I think many people can't stand these tropes anymore. As long as people keep buying these games though it doesn't seem like it's going to change anytime soon.

No. As any other form of design, it is only bad if it is badly executed.

I haven't played any games where this is a problem and I still love games, so no, it's not ruining games.

@ezekiel: Yea but when i see a collectible i want to pick it up and i hate it when you don't have certain skills to do so.

Maybe im just crazy but missing a collectible makes me sad and angry sometimes :P

Haha, that's the first game where I really started to notice it too.

I don't have a problem with it, as long as the content is substantial. For example, I found that Dragon Age: Inquisition was full of fetch quests, whereas Witcher 3 had well written and varied sidequests. Both have a map that is full of icons when you look at it, but one of them is a lot more fun to explore.

@samanthak: The key is to never care about collectibles ever again. 99.9% of the community finds them by using video guides of FAQs. Forget this discussion about the open world template, collectibles are and always have been terrible (when connected to unlocks of some sort) and should be scrapped from game design.

I remember having to find all 50 Calcified Fragments in Destiny because it was tied to an Exotic weapon. Jesus Christ, I've never wanted to murder everyone who associated themselves with a developer as much as then.

@zevvion: Yeah but i would love it for companies to make an open world game without them, i don't really see the point of them most of the time.

The thing about MGS 5 i love is that you feel like a badass all the time and you can approach everything in a different way.

It still has SOME collectibles like the animals and emblems but they don't just put them on the map for you to pick up which i appreciate.

The map is rather empty actually in MGS5 which isn't a bad thing in my opinion.

Options 1 and 3 in the poll simultaneously. Map vomit makes it difficult for an open world to breathe.

Yes and no.

No because of Far Cry 4, Fallout 4 and hopefully Zero Dawn Horizon

Yes because of Far Cry Primal, Mafia III and Dragon"s Age Inquisition

I think most people are falsely associating 'open world design' with the far cry archetype aka the 'icon barf'. If you're talking about the type of open world where you climb a tower and unlock dots on the map where you do essentially the same loop of actions on each of those dots, then absolutely they are repetitive at this point. However I'm thinking of the best open world games I've played in the last few years(maybe all the way till 2010) and I don't see anything wrong with 'open world games'. I think GTA5, witcher 3, dragon age inquisition, red dead, fallout, skyrim are still going strong. What makes them work so well would be how much of a sense of place they have and resonate with me, and I would associate all of the narrative, humour, politics, characters, to all be part of that experience of that particular world. That must be why people love the witcher 3 so much despite how much of that game is also a bunch of icons on a map. You cannot detach your acknowledgement of the emotional and narrative aspects of that world from it's raw mechanics which is go from point A to point B and kill some dudes. That makes for an effective open world. The same goes for GTA5 and red dead, I haven't seen anyone make the claim they don't care about the impending arrival of RDR2, which is insane when I think about it.

Only when some narrative-focused game decides to go open-world for no good reason.

I enjoyed MGS V, but there was no need for it to go open-world. Snake Eater had huge open areas while maintaining a focused narrative, but by the end of V I had spent hours running between objectives. But that's specifically a series that I felt was better as a linear action game.

Same with the Batman series. Asylum was so tightly designed, but City had an overabundance of crappy side crap. Once I started ignoring the side stuff, Arkham Knight felt like a much better game.

Some games make it fun to screw around. Red Faction: Guerilla and Shadow of Morder were perfect as open-world games. Infamous, as well. So although I feel the fatigue now and then, I can't condemn open-worlds forever because they can still be great when the gameplay design can support them. Which MGS V did... it just wasn't a true MGS 5 to me. Granted, it was a V.

The fact of the matter is, I don't want to spend 30 to 50 hours dicking around in a virtual city/environment every time I pick up a new game. I remember playing watch dogs 2 and loving it, but wishing the entire time (Why can't I just instantly go to the next mission. Maybe select it from a menu or something. Driving long distances every time I want to continue the game got old real quick.

I never finished Far cry 4 and went back to finish it last year, but found it impenetrable because I had to go on cross country journey every time I wanted to start a mission. I just... don't have the time or patience for that kinda thing anymore; especially given it's so prolific nowadays. Same thing happened with GTA 5, Fallout 4, FF15, and AC unity. As long as there's something meaningful to do in between things I can give it a pass. I just don't want to waste my time being bored waiting to actually play the game and have fun. A good example of what I mean is Just cause 2 and 3. Just getting around the map is super fun in those games. I want more of that and less of GTA (driving in a car and walking around on foot.) Batman has been mentioned as a negative example, and while I won't refute that point, it's still better to me because (like Just cause) it's super fun to traverse the environment in those games.

I wouldn't say it's ruining them, but there's certainly fatigue on my part. Enough that the positive reception to Horizon isn't enough to make me want that game right now, after playing so much open world stuff lately.

That and there are so many not open world games coming out that look fantastic and look fresh by virtue of their genres not getting as much saturation (Nier, Yakuza, Persona 5).

I don't think it ruins games.

But what I do think is that games shouldn't really fill up the map with something just for the sake of having the map full of things to do.

There's a difference between pointless filler and meaningful content.

If there's nothing to put there, or if there's no reason to put something there, don't put it there!

Mafia 1 and Mafia 2 are great examples of fantastic linear-but-open-world games with no side content all over the map that still feel amazing to play through and the open world greatly helps with the immersion and overall feeling of the game.

I am absolutely certain I wouldn't have enjoyed those two games as much if they weren't open world, and I am also certain that throwing garbage all over the map wouldn't have made me enjoy them any more. Pretty sure having garbage across the map would have actually made me stop playing at some point because stuff like that tends to get overwhelming.

I am also one of those few people who didn't like Assassin's Creed 2, because of the very same "map filled with junk" thing. At the time, it was incredibly overwhelming and ultimately put me off the game. I'm sure that now, going back to the game, I would perhaps enjoy it a lot more after having played and enjoyed countless games that have done the same thing since, but coming from the first Assassin's Creed's fairly empty map and linear story and jumping into AC2's vomit map was a shock.

I dunno, Zelda games always seemed like open world games to me, only sectioned off due to the limitations of the hardware. I personally love open world games, when it's done right (Witcher, Fallout, Skyrim, GTA, MGS5), but it's up to the developer to use it to benefit the game they're trying to make.

I will jump in an say this as well, there are A LOT of open world games out there and I can't play 2 back to back. I love a tight, linear campaign..

I don't know about "ruining", but for me personally, it has certainly made me quit a few games because I just couldn't be bothered to slog my way through the world. It helps if I get engaged with the story (Like with GTA V and Mafia 3) and can just kinda ignore the open world activities around me. Or if the world seems more inviting than your usual sandbox for some reason (Like Watch Dogs 2, especially in comparison to the bland Chicago from the first game or Horizon Zero Dawn with it's kinda unique world), I can see myself playing through the story and enjoying some of the side-activities while doing so.

I'm not sure which game eventually made me go "Uuugh, give me something more linear, please...". I know I really enjoyed open world in games like Outcast and GTA 3/Vice City, especially because it was still a new experience back then. Obviously World of Warcraft blew my mind with it's world, that was bigger than anything I had ventured through before virtually. But I guess WoW also might've had a hand in ruining it for me, because I played that game for around ten years and experienced more than enough world travelling during that whole time.

I've always enjoyed linear experiences more, though, even back when open world structure first got introduced. I'd be really bummed if those eventually withered away and we'd only be left with (online) sandbox experiences.

Haven't played Horizon Zero Dawn yet, but I would say open world gaming has become too much of a crutch. Over the past year plus, the only two open world games I've really enjoyed and thought they felt fresh were MGSV and FFXV.

It's not that open world games are bad, it's that developers are lazy on implementing them.

I believe open worlds can be an amazing place to tell meaningful stories. The problem is when the content used to fill large spaces feels like it's there as filler. I would prefer small open worlds that feel like they're packed with a few awesome quests with wonderful stories than a large open world to explore with dozens of quests that ultimately do nothing to progress the narrative or provide meaningful character development.

So, yes, they can be awesome. But a lot of times they aren't.

I don't think very highly of collectibles either. If I made a game, it wouldn't have any collectibles. But I appreciate collectibles that are well done, like the puzzles in Batman.

I understand why it would make you frustrated, not being able to pick it up, but at least it stays on the map and you can go back to it later. You never have to blindly search the map in Batman. I've completed all three Rocksteady Arkham campaigns, even though I usually ignore that extra stuff.

@ezekiel: I did the trophies in Arham Asylum but i couldn't be bothered to collect them in city because as soon as i saw that you needed catwoman for some trophies i was out.

I'm going to say No, it's not ruining gaming. I mean the only open world game I've liked in recent years is Fallout 4 (and I guess the Souls series and Starbound if they count). I just steer clear of all the others since I can't get into them and play something else instead, happily so.

It just dawned on me that with Zelda looming on the horizon, and being open world, there's certainly not zero chance that I'll change my mind.

Open world destroyed the MGS series...and no I don't care that everyone loves MGS V, it sucks for me.

It's ruined ghost recon in my opinion, that's a game with a lot of really cool ideas that is hindered by its massive empty open world

Bad Open World Design is ruining games. Open world games are not inherently bad or evil.

A bit of topic, but why do people always make poll answer so nuanced? Why not just make the answer yes, maybe and no?

I like good open world games, I like them more often than not. but I agree that they feel forced sometimes.

The short answer is, nope. As long as it's done well.

I think it just happens to be in vogue. I'm certainly tired of the Ubisoft ur-game open world template. MGS5, Yakuza, Dark Souls all use the open world model well without puking pointless map icons / collectibles / towers over every inch of the map. GTAV does an expansive open world really well too.

All in all, I expect in a year or two the industry will move on from its obsessions, both with open-world RPGs because of the Witcher and Skyrim and MOBAs because of League and DOTA. I expect to see a lot of studios taking shots at Overwatch-style eSports games that aren't necessarily MOBAs.