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The benefit is the experience. The difference in experiences comes down to the level design. Are you in a maze or in a field?
The best game designs masks this in both scenarios.
The well designed linear game doesn’t always feel like a maze, and has sections that feel like fields between mazes.
The well designed open world game contains mazes that you discover in a field that feels roped off into clearly defined sections that differ from each other and contain large landmarks to orient and draw you in.
Both feel bad if they don’t include (at least the illusion of) the other. A linear game is boring without any choice. An open world game is boring without linear moments.
Yes, but the open world has to exist in the game as a meaningful set of gameplay systems/potentialities.
There have to actually be things that could challenge you, cost you, reward you, capture your attention, present you with a secret if investigated, set off an actually meaningful chain of events, etc.
If ‘open world’ is implemented as simply ‘big space with occasional trash mobs wholly disconnected from the rest of the game’… you have a very shitty implementation of an open world.
Open world doesn’t, or I guess shouldn’t simply mean ‘big empty space’.
If your game has a fast travel option that you regularly or often use to skip the open world, your open world sucks.
I think OP needs to stop playing ubisoft sandboxes
Witcher 3 is so much better than 2 or even 1 (which was also confusing).
Also, imagine Gothic, Skyrim or Dragon Age in linear.
While Crysis would be worse with a fully open world. It plays as a narrative.
Test Drive Unlimited.
When progression is properly controlled such as in fallout: new vegas or hollow knight, then a larger map can do wonders
I wouldn’t put Metroidvanias (with large maps, back tracking, ability gating and flexibility in which area to go to next) alongside other open world adventure games (like GTA, Witcher, Breath of the Wild, etc). I love Metroidvanias and linear games, but I wouldn’t touch open world adventure RPGs with a 10 foot pole.
The problem is not “open world” but “the ubisoft game”. New region, find watchtower, reveal map, do 1 quest, attack enemy camp, liberate area, new area, find watchtower, …
Most open worlds are also just way to big. GTA San Andreas felt huge but is tiny compared to V. And it was better for it. Modern open worlds never have a hub. A place that you actually build a relationship with and see change over the course of the game. Its always: area completed, next!
Yeah San Andreas was the open world game I was thinking of too, with the expanding of your crime syndicate. It’s pretty much the only game I’ve played that implements an open world properly and I’ve been chasing that since then. Fallout 4 maybe, but building settlements or forts didn’t have real impact. Diablo IV is way too driven to rush through and get to the endgame.
I think you really need to design it to be more of a simulation game that reacts to player actions and with a story inserted, not as a “feature” to check off. And a distinct goal or win condition for playing the open world.
If every place/area only serves one purpose then the game should be linear. Some of my favourite games are the old Gothic and Gothic 2 RPGs. They are open world, but tiny compared to modern RPGs. They dont have “areas” with a set difficulty that you can complete and then move on, instead the map is like a skeleton of fairly save roads and settlements and the further you go away from the roads the harder it gets. So you see the whole map in the first chapter but have explored very little of it. You always return to the same areas and they feel like home. And every chapter of the story adds new enemies, quests and events to all areas of the game. All of it is hand picked. No “radient quests” to trick you into going to an completed dungeon again, no random encounters on the roads to make travel through the world feel less empty…
IMO, they have the best open worlds I have ever seen. The studios follow up open world games (Gothic 3, elex 1&2) fell flat because they tried to be huge as well and felt empty as a result.
Working with constraints does actually produce gems. Fallout, farcry, GTA, skyrim just throw billions of dollars at a project to make it huge. But everything there is is just a set piece to be looked at once and be discarded …
Gothic does sound awesome especially with the Gothic 1 Remake.
Outer wilds is the only true open world game since you are exploring a whole (kind of miniature) solar system and you can just fly in one direction forever (kind of). And it’s open worldness is integral part of the gameplay. There is literally no story arch (except the ending), you are just exploring.
Breath Of The Wild did it well, but because they built the game around the concept from the ground up instead of doing an Assassins Creed.
Eh breath of the wild was huge but empty
Is it weird I like empty?
Feels a lot more natural and makes discoveries more meaningful.
BotW was empty only if you didn’t know how to look at it.
If you look at it without before having ever seen Elden Ring, it’s pretty impressive.
If you look at it after having seen Elden Ring, BotW is dogshit.
I disagree. Especially because you have to put in context: BotW came out five years before Elden Ring, as an exlcusive bridge title between consoles, and still rocked a degree of interaction with the world (its physics/elemental system and the use of stamina as an advancement barrier) that ER still dreams of. IIRC Miyazaki himself said that the team was heavily inspired by LoZ’s work with the formula.
There’s so many challenge runs I can think of trying in Elden Ring, but then I remember the 40 minute Run-Around-and-Collect-everything marathon.
Gonna try a deathless DS3 run instead
Why not both? -your average dark souls enjoyer
Genuinely no, and many people keep on designing open world ones when what they really want is to make linear ones
RDR2, GTA, Elder Scrolls, is this a shitpost?
…this is greentext so…yes, obviously
Breath of the Wild.
Arguably Outer Wilds.
Breath of the Wild has to be the single worst example of an open world game. I am still mad it did not even have any cool dungeons whatsoever.
Breath of the wild. No dungeons.
GG on your base health/stamina finish I guess
BotW is one of the most boring games ever. Zelda games were fun because of the linearity thanks to finding items that let you progress… And FUCK weapon degradation. What a terrible mechanic.
The old Zelda games were also open world.
Oh look, another Korok Seed. How meaningful and rewarding and not complete bullshit or anything.
Genshin does have a story somewhere, but exploring the world is the real fun.
Satisfactory lol. Factorio lol. Stardew Valley too ig.
wtf even is a mario
I dont think Minecraft would do too well being linear.
Minecraft: Story Mode was actually pretty popular. It was basically a story-rich RPG set in a Minecraft world.
Most people who played both probably have an order of magnitude more playtime in Minecraft, though.
Maybe, but it was nowhere near as popular as plain Minecraft. The sales numbers alone can attest to that, plus the fact there hasn’t been a sequel should be all the proof you need to say that a linear minecraft wouldn’t do too well.
