How Deus Ex was almost too complex for its own good (Warren Spector interview on Ars)

Pyrian on 20/12/2021 at 15:28

We can debate details, degrees and semantics all day, as long as we agree that whatever open-world means, Deus Ex isn't it. :p

ZylonBane on 20/12/2021 at 18:46

But is The Nameless Mod open world?

Jason Moyer on 27/12/2021 at 23:07

I wouldn't consider a game like, say, System Shock 2 open world just because you can revisit earlier levels. It's still a game comprised entirely of discrete levels.

Mass Effect 1/2/3 and Dragon Age 1/2 let you mostly visit and revisit levels at any time and in any order you want, but they aren't open world games. Andromeda and Inquisition, on the other hand, are.

I also wouldn't consider being able to access the entire open world at any time as a prerequisite. GTA3 is clearly an open world game, but you spend significant chunks of it with access to a very small part of that world.

I'd also make a distinction between open world and hub-based. In a sense both Morrowind and Hexen feature maps that you traverse in order to gain access to many discrete levels, but the former takes place in an open map and the latter consists of a series of hubs.

ZylonBane on 27/12/2021 at 23:36

So you're saying a game is only open world if it streams the map loading.

Jason Moyer on 29/12/2021 at 03:56

I'm saying it's open world if it's set in an open world. SS2 is a nice, sprawling, non-linear game, but it also takes place entirely in corridors. I don't think the categorization of a game as open world is 100% cut and dry, i.e. TDS/T4, DXHR/DXMD, Prey, etc. I find Prey to be a weird case, because it has the same non-linear level-oriented design as SS1/2 but there's also a layer above that because you can (and have to at various points) move around outside the station and access the levels that way.