Adventure Gamers - Forums

I was curious on y’all’s opinions of open world vs semi-open world games. I have noticed as I have gotten older I finish less and less of purely open world game such as ghost of tushima, Red Dead Redemption 2, or Assassin’s Creed games.

That is actually one reason I prefer The Witcher 2 to The Witcher 3 because I feel like The Witcher 2 is more focused on HUB worlds and it makes it easier to go through at times, if that makes sense. I also think that’s the reason I get through games like Jedi Fallen order or Persona 5 because it’s spaces out the content. In fact the last open world game I completed even though it was not a huge was Spider-Man.

I was just wondering am I alone in this or not and I’m not sure if it’s to do with my age and time constraints. That’s one reason I adore adventure games because I know I’m getting a 6 to 12 our experience and that’s it. there is something to be said about short and to-the-point games, that get in leave an impact and get out.

What matters to me is the extent that the game respects my time, more than anything else. An open-world game that ALLOWS me to explore every nook and cranny but doesn’t INSIST on it can be excellent. I liked Breath of the Wild, for example, because it didn’t try to do too much with its story and just set itself up as an exploration game with fun bite-sized dungeons.

That said, open-world games tend to be more narratively disjointed. The PS4 Spider-Man was fun, but the freedom of exploration actively worked against the plotting. Of COURSE Spidey’s going to go collect some collectibles, they’re right there, popping up on your map, distractingly!

Hub + spoke games have an easier time controlling plot progression and making a pre-defined story work, and usually, I prefer that. (Not only that, they often have an easier time managing the gameplay pacing!) While there’s been a lot of talk about how games should just “let the players make their own story,” there’s no such thing unless the game you’re talking about is “a lone child playing pretend in the woods.” Even the most free-form video game sets some limitations on the story a player can make.

Hub and spoke with multiple explorable spokes at once, and lots of juicy, interconnecting paths? That’s fantastic, but hard to pull off. Dark Souls did it.

See I thought Spider-Man side activities in their open World worked because it wasn’t too big and they didny put too many side quest that I found overly bad and in fact I loved the puzzles in Doc ock’s lab, but I get your point. Games like Assassin’s Creed with a thousand things to collect for no apparent reason just annoys me and in the case of ghost of tsushima I found after I 100% the first part of the island and all the same Quest popped up in the second part of the island, that it killed my joy for the game and I never picked it up again

I’ve been thinking about this lately as well and I have such a weird relationship with open worlds. Last year because of quarantine I had the time to play big open world games that I wanted to play like Breath of the Wild, Assassins Creed Odyssey and Death Stranding and had a blast with them, maybe because they had different approaches to the open world and maybe I was just in the mood for that. I love the sense of freedom to travel and engage with the world but at the same time I can easily feel overwhelmed. I’m not the completionist type so if the game is too big and long I just start to focus on the main story. As much as I adore games like The Witcher 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn, I played them at a time when I was rather busy so I skipped a lot of side content and I’m left with this weird feeling that I might’ve missed a lot of cool stuff but I just didn’t want to be stuck playing them forever since I have tons of other games to play.

I recently started Mass Effect LE and it made me realize how much I enjoyed its approach to hub world and a mostly linear structure. Now I don’t have as much time as last year I can start to see how I prefer games that respect my time more, like I’m not being distracted with side stuff all the time and not having a big map full of stuff feels so refreshing (even though is and older game). So yeah I’m definitely with you on this, I can see myself now gravitating towards more to-the-point games

danigar - 17 July 2021 08:49 PM

I’ve been thinking about this lately as well and I have such a weird relationship with open worlds. Last year because of quarantine I had the time to play big open world games that I wanted to play like Breath of the Wild, Assassins Creed Odyssey and Death Stranding and had a blast with them, maybe because they had different approaches to the open world and maybe I was just in the mood for that. I love the sense of freedom to travel and engage with the world but at the same time I can easily feel overwhelmed. I’m not the completionist type so if the game is too big and long I just start to focus on the main story. As much as I adore games like The Witcher 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn, I played them at a time when I was rather busy so I skipped a lot of side content and I’m left with this weird feeling that I might’ve missed a lot of cool stuff but I just didn’t want to be stuck playing them forever since I have tons of other games to play.

I recently started Mass Effect LE and it made me realize how much I enjoyed its approach to hub world and a mostly linear structure. Now I don’t have as much time as last year I can start to see how I prefer games that respect my time more, like I’m not being distracted with side stuff all the time and not having a big map full of stuff feels so refreshing (even though is and older game). So yeah I’m definitely with you on this, I can see myself now gravitating towards more to-the-point games

Exactly I think it has a lot to do with game length, compared to game play loop. most open-world games are quite lengthy. For example The Witcher 3 had great side content I would even say better side content than the main story, but it took me forever to complete that game. almost 2 years to be exact and that’s not even including the expansions which I’ve never played even though I heard they are great. it’s just too time consuming for me