Big Empty Sandboxes (The Jimquisition) - General

[QUOTE=ThePanther;51617539]My list of games that do open worlds right (hell, maybe even [b]require[/b] open world design) - GTA series - Zelda - Fallout - Elder Scrolls - Witcher3 - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. What these games have in common is a narrative that works at a player designated pace, actually well developed content that fills the world with memorable and interesting things, good indications of a lived in breathing world, and/or incredible sandbox interaction.[/QUOTE] In what way do you actually interact with the world around you in GTAV? The is detailed and gorgeous but the moment it's in motion it completely falls apart.

Some games can do empty open worlds right(STALKER but it's not really empty) because the emptiness adds to the atmosphere and it gives you something to look for while MGSV has it be a detriment because the open world is supposed to be a warzone but it's just soldiers sitting at camps and a few patrols

[QUOTE=Rossy167;51617980]In what way do you actually interact with the world around you in GTAV? The is detailed and gorgeous but the moment it's in motion it completely falls apart.[/QUOTE] This has been a problem with pretty much any 3D GTA game that comes to mind. I mean, I love the GTA series, but for the resources Rockstar has, they have an unusual tendency to create an interesting reproduction of a city, but very few times do they actually put anything in it that to keep their game world interesting and full of things to actually do. Pretty much any GTA game has a cycle where the average player will probably do all the story missions, and perhaps a few limited side activities like an item collection, or the unusual mission that isn't tied to the progress of the main story. Then, after all the main story is done, the only thing to really do is to either shoot for 100% and collect everything else, or just create general chaos and fight cops for fun.

[QUOTE=ThePanther;51617539]- Zelda[/QUOTE] This is one case where I have to disagree. Yes, in terms of things to do, you have heart pieces, secret goodies and potentially sidequests to pursue depending on the game, but as a series whole? There's several games that drop the ball really hard, particularly Twilight Princess' oversized Hyrule Field separated into districts and Skyward Sword's big, empty flight zone of almost nothing besides a handful of notable things. Plus for the latter, the large areas you do visit get revisited repeatedly for plot purposes and the game doesn't exactly leave a lot to discovery's sake. And even Ocarina of Time's central Hyrule Field was almost devoid of anything to do except hunt Poes as Adult Link for some rupees; once you get the Warp Songs, much less Epona, there isn't any real reason to normally go traveling across the field again except for a very specific sidequest that disables warps. There are other games that do the 'open world' design a lot better, though. Like Link To The Past / Link Between Worlds, which pretty much give you a map and points out your core dungeons but lets you explore to go find goodies and secrets that can have some real benefits. Especially LBW, which doesn't hand you easy upgrades and infact has some missable items, entirely encouraging you to think outside the box and go find things or explore places as you please. Majora's Mask also compacted OoT's field problem by putting the four main dungeon routes in cardinal directions from the central hub town, and then filled said town and the individual areas with plenty of things to discover the hard way.

[QUOTE=Rossy167;51617980]In what way do you actually interact with the world around you in GTAV? The is detailed and gorgeous but the moment it's in motion it completely falls apart.[/QUOTE] Well, when you go on a crime spree, the world starts spawning unlimited amounts of enemies for you to fight off or run from. Can't really do that without open world. You can explore and find random segments of story to interact with. On top of all that, Rockstar's sandbox world is still unmatched by pretty much every other game developer out there, as far as quality experiences go. My point of making that list was to emphasize games that not only use their open world, but would actually suffer from not having one. btw, if you exchange GTAV for No Man's Sky in your question, I think you've hit the nail on the head.

[QUOTE=ThePanther;51618503]Well, when you go on a crime spree, the world starts spawning unlimited amounts of enemies for you to fight off or run from. Can't really do that without open world. You can explore and find random segments of story to interact with. On top of all that, Rockstar's sandbox world is still unmatched by pretty much every other game developer out there, as far as quality experiences go. My point of making that list was to emphasize games that not only use their open world, but would actually suffer from not having one. btw, if you exchange GTAV for No Man's Sky in your question, I think you've hit the nail on the head.[/QUOTE] Nuclear Throne also has a police force that comes for you if you fuck the wrong shit up and it's not openworld.

[QUOTE=RikohZX;51618494]Majora's Mask also compacted OoT's field problem by putting the four main dungeon routes in cardinal directions from the central hub town, and then filled said town and the individual areas with plenty of things to discover the hard way.[/QUOTE] Do you consider OOT to be 'open world'? My definition of open world is allowing the player to choose their next destination, while allowing the player to revisit areas they've already been to. By my definition, all Zelda games are open world. [QUOTE=Drury;51618528]Nuclear Throne also has a police force that comes for you if you fuck the wrong shit up and it's not openworld.[/QUOTE] My point wasn't so much that you need an open world to have police come after you, more that interaction with the "being hunted" mechanic works really well in their open world. It was an example of interacting with the open world in GTAV.

[QUOTE=ThePanther;51618549]Do you consider OOT to be 'open world'? My definition of open world is allowing the player to choose their next destination, while allowing the player to revisit areas they've already been to. By my definition, all Zelda games are open world.[/QUOTE] I was just saying that some Zelda games don't really do a [i]good[/i] open world. Some do, but Ocarina of Time's kinda dropped the ball. Though it makes sense given that it was a 2D-to-3D transitional game that had to be massively reworked after its original design plans for the 64 Disk Drive fell through.

[QUOTE=AkujiTheSniper;51614349]Comparing MGSV: Ground Zeroes to Phantom Pain is good enough to show how open level can be way better instead of open world. Ground Zeroes had missions that played completely different, and even some had gameplay that wasn't even done in Phantom Pain because of how Snake had to enter a mission in Phantom Pain (The Intel mission where you rode into the map by a truck, a shooting gallery type mission from the helicopter). Ground Zeroes had some of the best gameplay of the MGSV experience and it was a paid demo.[/QUOTE] Despite having a campaign time of about 2 hours I ended up spending as much time playing through GZ as I had on each of the prior MGS games. You could tell they [I]really[/I] focused the design so despite it being really hard there were so many options and capabilities for approaches that it kept being interesting. The problems with the open world map of V were twofold for me. First, there was just [B]so much nothing[/B] between the different locations. Say I rescued an operative and wanted to do another sideop. Well, the other one is on the other side of the map so you could drive for ten minutes (making sure to swerve out of the way of outposts so they don't raise the alert level by the time you get to your destination) or you can call a helicopter, get in it, go back to the ACC, ("return to ACC is nice but the fact that it's hidden in a menu implies they don't want you to do it) bring up the menu, select the other side op, watch the landing cutscene... so much padding. The other thing is that the openness made it too easy to cheese stealth. In GZ if you were spotted you had to think hard and think fast. Get away, crawl under something, hide, shoot - you gotta take action! In V more often than not you can just book it out of the camp - run behind a few buildings to break line of sight and jump into the bushes 100 feet away and you're off scot-free. There's so much more room for error with the opened-up style of encampments that the majority of missions can be done super easily with a silenced tranquilizer sniper rifle. The few ones where you're locked off, like OKB Zero, are quite nice but it feels like too little. I think a better approach would've been a combination of PW and GZ - the larger, connected areas of PW but with the detail and complexity of GZ. I much rather would've preferred different missions and tactics across a few bigger and badder OKB Zeroes or Camp Omegas than the sparse deserts.

[QUOTE=Rossy167;51617980]In what way do you actually interact with the world around you in GTAV? The is detailed and gorgeous but the moment it's in motion it completely falls apart.[/QUOTE] You might not get a great deal of "things to do" but the worlds of GTA IV and V feel so alive and immersive it's just great to walk around. Plus you do see the citizens interact with the world in loads of ways. In GTA IV for example I only just noticed that postmen will put newspapers into those paper box things you see around cities in the early hours. Plus each neighborhood actually feels different, rolling around that Russian Neighborhood in IV feels completely different to say Times Square. Meanwhile in Just Cause/Far Cry every settlement/town feels fucking dead with jack shit going on. It doesn't feel interesting nor do I want to spend time just taking in it's atmosphere because there's none. There's simply no dev who comes close to R* in making cities.

Beyond Good and Evil did this really well

[QUOTE=GrizzlyBear;51618621]You might not get a great deal of "things to do" but the worlds of GTA IV and V feel so alive and immersive it's just great to walk around. Plus you do see the citizens interact with the world in loads of ways. In GTA IV for example I only just noticed that postmen will put newspapers into those paper box things you see around cities in the early hours. Plus each neighborhood actually feels different, rolling around that Russian Neighborhood in IV feels completely different to say Times Square. Meanwhile in Just Cause/Far Cry every settlement/town feels fucking dead with jack shit going on. It doesn't feel interesting nor do I want to spend time just taking in it's atmosphere because there's none. There's simply no dev who comes close to R* in making cities.[/QUOTE] Ok, so it's great, jaw dropping, whatever. Actually stand there and watch it for more than a few moments, notice everything falls apart on closer inspection. Maybe park your car somewhere it shouldn't be, or bump into somebody. Complete fucking chaos, same as every other sandbox open world.

Runescape is my favourite open world experience. But then again it is an mmo

MGS5 was pretty good but it got stale extremely fast once I realized the "open world" was nothing. What kept me interested was the hope there'd be something like GZ somewhere in there. Was really disappointed that there wasn't. And, not only is there miles of boring sand between all your objectives, eventually there is miles of walkways between you and all the other places on Mother Base. What the fuck? Every time I'd go back I was annoyed about having to explore it to find something or talk to someone because it was a god damn nightmare to navigate. I really liked the game but that was open world done completely wrong. MGS2 and 3 are still my top MGS games. They're linear as hell but the way they're presented and navigated make it feel much more open level like Crysis, which is something that I feel always works in the game's favor. Even Assassin's Creed, by far one of the most repetitive games I've ever played, managed to keep things at least mildly interesting with the world building. I always thought it was cool to go through all the setpiece locales they threw in just to look at them. MGS5 had something like that going for a bit until it became a chore to have to ride on a horse for kilometers to the next thing. I was hoping 5 would've been a bigger version of MGS3. There's just so much wasted potential with it, it's sad. Skyrim honestly does have a really nice open world with a ton of shit to find and explore and it kept me interested for over 100 hours. I particularly liked the unmarked side quest where you have to find all those dwemer ruins and help the ghost lady find stuff. The problem with open world games is they all eventually get stale. Open level designs are by far much better, because the game is developed around a centric series of events that allow it to tell a story. It has a beginning and an end. The developers don't need to cater to post-ending content like an open world game. They don't need to worry about keeping you interested in playing it after you've gone through the meat of the game. And an added bonus is more detail can be placed into linear setpieces. As a result, things that you can find by exploring feel like they have a reason to be there. Each event just caters to multiple approaches in gameplay design. Deus Ex is a great example. There's so much shit you can find by wandering around that spans into a one or two hour side mission, and it feels like it belongs there. Crysis felt more "free" and "open world" than MGS5 and Skyrim.

If you want what NMS should have been, check out Astroneer. [url]http://store.steampowered.com/app/361420/[/url] actually has co-op.

[QUOTE=Novangel;51614061]I don't really mind open world but they should really stop focusing on the size of the map but the content instead.[/QUOTE] For a long time map size was the big seller for open world games. It was the thing that looked great in headlines and had a "wow factor". What we're seeing now seems to be result of games companies taking that further and further, losing sight of the reason why. We could use a perspective shift.

[QUOTE=rampageturke 2;51619187]Runescape is my favourite open world experience. But then again it is an mmo[/QUOTE] It might be a little unfair to use Runescape as an example, but I do wholeheartedly agree. They drop you in the world without explaining much and never tell you where to go. It's up to you to talk to NPCs and do quests or train your skills. There's tons of areas you can't visit at first because they're too high-level for you, but as you progress you can eventually walk through dungeons without getting attacked. You were never railroaded into the world.

Hubs need to come back, I'd rather have a fairly small area like in the 3D Mario games or Banjo Kazooie and Tooie's than an enormous area that's scale for the sake of scale.

[QUOTE=OmniConsUme;51613984]I'd rather have hybrid where it's not open world, but it is not an extreme disguised corridor, almost kinda like Super Mario 64/Sunshine.[/QUOTE] as far as i know final fantasy 15 did that open world then shrinks back into a linear format then back to a open world area and so on and so forth only played a game for a few hours but it basically tells you when it is gonna be linear for a bit.

[QUOTE=Nautsabes;51617314]mgsv needed a big ass grozny grad -like fortress to infiltrate with hallways and locker rooms and traps[/QUOTE] MGSV should have been Peace Walker without loading screens imo.

[QUOTE=Erfly;51614047]In a way, MGS V tried to do that, and it worked semi-decently.[/QUOTE] MGSV was a fairly poor [I]open world[/I] game. Instead it just felt like a game that happened to have two open worlds. [editline]3rd January 2017[/editline] The world was static, and you had no lasting effect on it. Ground Zeroes handled the idea phenomenally, but sadly, that was just for the demo/prologue.

[QUOTE=Whomobile;51620019]MGSV should have been Peace Walker without loading screens imo.[/QUOTE] That sounds super rad, actually. Tone down the rehashed missions and make the mission areas more complex, and you've got everything that Ground Zeros should have been.

I feel like too many game designers feel that games with open ended mission structures [I]need[/I] to be open world, rather than the open world being an integral aspect of the game's design. Games like Dishonored do a really good job of giving you extremely open ended missions with many ways to complete them, while not needing to be an open world. Open world games need to have mechanics that only work in an open world. My favorite game was Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, and I've always felt it did a really good job tying it's mechanics to the world. A huge part of the game is hunting down bounties, and there's a fantastic sense of discovery as you explore the world and stumble across enemy bases housing the all important bounty targets. Or S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which is all about exploration and mystery. Searching around abandoned facilities only to run into some strange mutant or anomaly you've never seen before is the true joy of the game. Players need gameplay motivation to explore an open world. There needs to be meaningful systems that tie directly into the gameplay experience that utilize the size of the game.

[QUOTE=KillerJaguar;51619769]It might be a little unfair to use Runescape as an example, but I do wholeheartedly agree. They drop you in the world without explaining much and never tell you where to go. It's up to you to talk to NPCs and do quests or train your skills. There's tons of areas you can't visit at first because they're too high-level for you, but as you progress you can eventually walk through dungeons without getting attacked. You were never railroaded into the world.[/QUOTE] There's also the fact almost everything has an examine option. Even if it's only basic interaction, you can do it with almost everything in the world and they make the object feel used

Big empty maps like Just Cause 2's can still be fun sometimes because it gives you room to dick around without going in circles.

All this talk about a perfect game being a mix of those two, but in my opinion, games that work best as corridors (hl) should stay that way, and same for open world games like gta. I understand business and product recognition value, but if you want to take an old loved game and "explore a new direction!", just make a new IP. Don't make Fallout 4 and call it fallout. It's a great shoot-n-loot with a very cool world to explore, but just name it something else.

I have to disagree with Jim on the point that it's "lazy" to utilize real-world locations and cities in open-world games. It's not about the space itself, it's about how you use it to tell a story or deliver gameplay. I think the problem is more that these locations are being [I]used[/I] lazily as opposed to being used [I]because[/I] of lazyness. [editline]4th January 2017[/editline] That, and I think it's just a tiny bit disrespectful to the environment artists who put their blood, sweat and tears into these worlds, regardless if it's a real place or not. In terms of that, not even Watch_Dogs Chicago is a 1:1 replication, it's still got a lot of personal touches and additions.

[QUOTE=Coyoteze;51621914] That, and I think it's just a tiny bit disrespectful to the environment artists who put their blood, sweat and tears into these worlds, regardless if it's a real place or not. In terms of that, not even Watch_Dogs Chicago is a 1:1 replication, it's still got a lot of personal touches and additions.[/QUOTE] It's not disrespectful or relevant at all. Artists do what they're told. No one's dissing their art, but the setting itself.

[QUOTE=Coyoteze;51621914] That, and I think it's just a tiny bit disrespectful to the environment artists who put their blood, sweat and tears into these worlds, regardless if it's a real place or not. In terms of that, not even Watch_Dogs Chicago is a 1:1 replication, it's still got a lot of personal touches and additions.[/QUOTE] I'd rather argue that the ones disrespecting the artists' hard work are the writers and gameplay designers who use the carefully crafted environments for fetch-quests and collectible-hunts.

[QUOTE=Coyoteze;51621914]I have to disagree with Jim on the point that it's "lazy" to utilize real-world locations and cities in open-world games. It's not about the space itself, it's about how you use it to tell a story or deliver gameplay. I think the problem is more that these locations are being [I]used[/I] lazily as opposed to being used [I]because[/I] of lazyness. [editline]4th January 2017[/editline] That, and I think it's just a tiny bit disrespectful to the environment artists who put their blood, sweat and tears into these worlds, regardless if it's a real place or not. In terms of that, not even Watch_Dogs Chicago is a 1:1 replication, it's still got a lot of personal touches and additions.[/QUOTE] I can respect an artist's attempts at design and the recreation of real-life locations, I may hate the Assassin's Creed series but boy howdy do the artists love their attention to detail. I can't respect the writers that make a lot of these ass plots, though, and I can't respect the coders and programmers who transform the beautiful canvas the artists create into yet another generic open world game while rushing the Q&A for holiday release so things are unpolished, buggy, and potentially borderline unplayable for a triple-A title.