Nameless Voice on 8/3/2017 at 00:27
Others have already said similar, but I prefer structured worlds with a high degree of freedom over true sandbox games.
True sandboxes tend to feel a bit more like toys than games, and also tend to lack a sense of progression or purpose.
In Gothic, you can explore every area and find something unique and hand-placed, and you can also systematically murder all the monsters and clear the area.
The game is balanced rather than infinite or random, so each hand-placed item that you find is useful. Each monster that you kill helps you reach a higher level.
Gothic has an open world, but it also has a fairly linear narrative and a logical progression between most areas.
Meanwhile, compare that to The Elder Scrolls games, which are more sandbox. Most places feel repetitive, both in terms of architecture (re-using the same designs over and over) and in terms of content. You kill enemies, but they just respawn later. You gain skill levels, but it doesn't really matter since the game is infinite. You find items, but they are pointless because, again, they are infinite and random. It doesn't really matter if you clear out a dungeon or not, because you tend not to gain anything of true value or any real progression through doing so.
The Elder Scrolls games give you a vast world to explore, but the exploration often feels meaningless because while it fullfils the "open world" part, it falls down on the "game" side of things.
The same applies to other sandbox games. You have an open world where you can do a number of things, but those things quickly get repetitive and boring, and since a lot of areas are filled with random, respawning content, there's no real sense of progression outside of the quests.
Running around mowing down uruks in Shadow of Mordor is fun for a bit, but when a thousand more uruks will spawn to take their place and you don't get anything out of it, it quickly starts to feel pointless.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that while open worlds can be fun for a while, I tend to think of games with a proper narrative (both in terms of story, and in terms of game progression) to be superior as games.
icemann on 8/3/2017 at 03:25
Open worlds I've enjoyed more than others were where stuff went on that was regardless of you. So say your out in the woods looking for reagents and then nearby a bunch of elves get into a battle with a troll or whatever. When your not the be all and end all in a game, you feel more immersed as it's more of being in that world.
Was something I always loved in WoW and in the other games I've experienced it in.
Thinking about this last night, System Shock 1 & 2 + The Bioshock's (not including the main campaign of Infinite) sprang to mind. Now I fully know that they are not "open world", but the continued eco-systems of their maps, which mean that no map is ever fully "clear" of enemies, allow for areas that felt more alive. And you always needed to keep one eye open / never let your guard down entirely, as something could pop up out of nowhere at any time. And since they all feature hub-levels, means that you can go back and forth whenever you want, unlike traditional games.
Thirith on 8/3/2017 at 07:48
Since Bethesda's open worlds were mentioned: I've played a bit more Skyrim, and I'm reminded again by how inconsistent Bethesda's worlds are visually. There are moments in Skyrim, even unmodded, that are absolutely gorgeous - and then there are others where the game looks like an early version of a small indie game that bit off more than it can chew. I've seen beautiful sunrises and sunsets outside Whiterun, but yesterday when I came around the corner and saw my first glimpse of the plains stretching beneath Whiterun, I was struck by how bad it looked. The flat mid-day lighting made it even worse.
Sulphur on 8/3/2017 at 09:39
Another game I loved running around and headbutting things in was Okami. Truth be told, it was the first thing that came up when I saw the thread title, but I immediately dismissed it as 'not memorable enough'.
But that's a lie. It's plenty memorable, for its aesthetic and its construction and its gameplay. Its only faults are that it could be more populated, and it's very easy to take its beautiful environments for granted.
heywood on 8/3/2017 at 18:08
To some degree, respawning is necessary to keep a non-linear game world feeling alive. But it has to be carefully balanced to avoid being gamey. If you clear a level and it stays clear forever, that's usually not very realististic (depending on the story). Conversely, if the respawn rate is too high it's not very realistic either, and it can make for tedious, immersion-breaking gameplay.
For example, in SS2, I liked the fact that if you cleared the Med/Sci deck in the beginning and then went back later in the game to get the AR or raid the chemical storeroom, there were some hybrids who had come down there to patrol the halls again. On the other hand, the boxes of droids in the cargo bays in Engineering suggest that there is a finite number of the droids and they're going to be coming from the bays, but if you loiter around Engineering their respawning pattern quickly becomes obvious and immersion-breaking. There is also a choke point somewhere in Ops where spiders and hybrids respawn as fast as you can kill them. On the whole though, respawning helped the game.
Bioshock had a lot of spots like that too, where splicers respawned too quickly and sometimes way too close to the player, getting in the way of exploration and contributing to non-immersive "arcade shooting gallery" feel to it. But the worst of all for me is Far Cry 2. The AI was pretty good but the respawning almost single-handedly ruined the game for me.
Nameless Voice on 8/3/2017 at 19:19
Yes, minor levels of respawn with significant delays are fine.
You still clear the decks of the Von Braun in System Shock 2 - you get all the items, and kill most of the enemies. A few will reappear to keep the place from feeling too empty, but the whole thing doesn't just reset like dungeons in The Elder Scrolls.
There's also the thing which Gothic did - it would periodically spawn more enemies into areas, at key points during the story progression. If you had already cleared the area, then there would be some new monsters - if you hadn't, there'd just be more monsters there.
In that case, the repopulation is carefully controlled and balanced, rather than the areas just resetting.
Thiefgarett on 12/3/2017 at 02:06
Has anyone ever played shenmue?
demagogue on 13/3/2017 at 15:12
I was thinking about this yesterday driving around in GTAV. One thing I really like about its world, especially living as an expat, is how incredibly American it is.
I don't mean in the patriotic sense. I mean in the sense that every country has its own look and feel if you were plopped down in any arbitraty town you could tell right away (if you knew its characteristics. There's a great google maps game that does just that btw). It's in things like the street signs, the shape of curbs, the landscaping around streets and buildings, the architectural styles, but even the way garbage cans or chainlink fences are strewn about. It feels like being home, except for the one detail that my actual home has vast flat praries with long lines of sight and no palm trees, but little things like that aside, it feels exactly like driving in anywhere USA, not even impressionistically, but very literally.
What got me thinking was that I wish there were games that could evoke that level of presence in other countries so you coukd feel genuinely there. I mean Far Cry 3 did have moments where it evoked some of what you could see on some Carribean islands, but it didn't stick and I didn't really believe I was really in one like I believed I was in the US in GTAV. All the rebel bases and whatnot didn't help. Similar thing with ArmA2/3 & E.Europe, or Stalker & Ukraine. Flashes of it, but not quite in its natural world of everyday life. More than anything, I'd like it if a game let me explore some real world places I can't get to easily, like the back roads of Rio de Jenero or Kuala Lumpur.
Thirith on 13/3/2017 at 15:25
Yeah, GTA V is definitely one of my favourites. It's the kind of open world where I enjoy just being there. Combine that with giving me enjoyable means of traversing the world and I'm a very happy gamer. Some games do the former really well, others the latter, but if you get both right, I'll name my kids after you.
*shouts*
And I saw that, Grand Theft Auto! You steal one more cookie from the jar and I'm sending you to your room without dinner!
Pyrian on 13/3/2017 at 16:23
Not until you change my name to petty theft cookie.
