Are open world games a bit boring now?

[The Lion King]

The idea of open world gaming always seemed like a dream come true to me. Back when Mario 64 was released, and before I played it, my child brain fantasized that was a completely free roaming environment with no borders and a whole world to explore. I've always loved the idea of games with huge, boundryless maps.

Not long ago I bought a ps4 after years of no gaming,
I've sunk about 50 hours I to fallout 4, played lots of the witcher 3 and am now playing mgs5 and I am longing for something more linear with a focused narrative. I think mgs 5 is a good example of an open world game that lacks any real direction or purpose. You are free to do what you want in whatever time frame you want which takes away any real sense of urgency in the story. Same with fallout4, my son has disappeared and my wife is dead, but I will now roam the wasteland building settlements for a year.

I think I am just a bit bored of the multiple quest line style of gaming and it was mgs5 that really stuck out for me as those games have usually been so direct in their style  of storytelling that it seemed like a cop out to resort to this open world questing form of gaming.

I get that a lot of these games emphasise the exploration element and I did really enjoy that in fallout 4,but I'd quite like a return to say, a world map that is free to roam but the main story is the only real story and each location you visit will have some integral part to play at least at one point in the game rather than being filled with npcs who have lost a tome in a dungeon that you can retrieve for cash. Like final fantasy usd to be really.

Anyone else feel the same way? Any reccomendations for someone looking for something much more linear but still story driven?

[The Boston Crab]

Extremely boring. Cookie cutter crap. Skill trees are also bad. Crafting also bad.

[Delete Delete Delete]

Obscure rating systems bad. For me open world games come into their own in online multiplayer.

[Timothy]

Nah. It's fun.

And MGS's open world was great.

[The Lion King]

Nah. It's fun.

And MGS's open world was great.

It's a world filled with soviet targets living in afghani villages waiting to be eliminated, not one I want to live in!

One thing that these types of games tend to encourage is a sort of dissonance between the written character and the playable one. Gta5 a good example of this - Franklin seems pretty down to earth in the story but will happily go out and murder innocent members of the public. I know that's part of the fun though. Fallout 4 again, I keep having to convince myself of excuses as to why this guy might be going out and exploring the world and not looking for his son as I know that's the best part of the game, shouldn't have to do that!

[biggytitbo]

Can be fun, can be repetitive, can be both. Watchdogs 2 gets the balance right in that its consistently fun and interesting and doesn't get grindy.


I do hope that strong linear single player games don't die though, Sony is helping keeping the genre alive even if they're exclusives.

[Hecate]

Boooriiiiing.
I think far cry 2 was the last one I enjoyed and that was 10 years ago.
People seem to like them though so they'll keep shovelling them out.

[madhair60]

The boring ones are, yeah. I still enjoy the freedom in the good'uns.

Far Cry 2 was and is fucking great. I wish they'd gone even further in that direction than puss out and make Far Cry 3.

[popcorn]

The idea of open world gaming always seemed like a dream come true to me. Back when Mario 64 was released, and before I played it, my child brain fantasized that was a completely free roaming environment with no borders and a whole world to explore. I've always loved the idea of games with huge, boundryless maps.

This is the first thing people imagine when they fantasise about the possibilities of video games. We all asked it, as kids: "What if there was a game where you could do anything?"

When GTA3 came out it was obviously seductive. It was like nothing anyone had seen. I sank hours into it like everyone else. But I got really, really sick of it. The funny thing about GTA3, and most open-world games since, is that the majority of people who played it didn't actually play it "properly", going through the missions and so on. They just mucked about for hours, with the cheats on. It's a fun sandbox to screw around in, to test ideas, to experiment and wreak havoc, but very little of it makes any damn sense. It's kind of a toy.

I was working in a shit second-hand games shop when San Andreas came out. Several customers told me how excited they were about it. They all mentioned that you could get a haircut or a tattoo or go to the gym. They were driven wild with anticipation by the prospect of these features. But to me this sort of thing is aimless wanking.

For me an open world is a world without meaning or purpose. They ask you to make your own fun and that feels like a cop-out.
Nine times out of ten I prefer something designed, an experience that has been crafted and authored and thought about, something with a beginning and a middle and an end.

Recent games like Breath of the Wild and MGS5 have impressed me in lots of ways, particularly MGS5. But there's a difference between a non-linear approach and the sprawl of an open world. MGS5 is basically split into a bunch of bases you have to infiltrate. How you infiltrate them is up to you, and that works well, because there are rules to learn and bend, and the bases are designed with that in mind. But between the bases are miles of empty desert and mountain in which basically nothing happens. Boring mate.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I like Jazz!
Well I like Rock!
Well I like Jazz!

This discussion is going nowhere fast.

[Clownbaby]

I think they've only got boring because a lot of these games have the same approach to the format. I don't like that when I buy a new open world game I already know exactly how to play it because the gameplay and features are so generically familiar. I don't have a vast knowledge of games so maybe I'm talking shite though

[PlanktonSideburns]

It's a world filled with soviet targets living in afghani villages waiting to be eliminated, not one I want to live in!

One thing that these types of games tend to encourage is a sort of dissonance between the written character and the playable one. Gta5 a good example of this - Franklin seems pretty down to earth in the story but will happily go out and murder innocent members of the public. I know that's part of the fun though. Fallout 4 again, I keep having to convince myself of excuses as to why this guy might be going out and exploring the world and not looking for his son as I know that's the best part of the game, shouldn't have to do that!

Yea the dissonance that comes from the removal of the character in the gta games is weird. They're kinda like serial killing psychopath simulators, but their main characters often have a very different style

[popcorn]

Yea the dissonance that comes from the removal of the character in the gta games is weird. They're kinda like serial killing psychopath simulators, but their main characters often have a very different style

The GTA games are contradictions to their very core!!!!!!

Ostensibly they're these open-world try-anything total-freedom sandbox games. But the mission design is the very opposite - they're absurdly tightly scripted, and the minute you go beyond a very tight set of parameters, you fail, often without warning. It's a fundamentally confused design. Whereas MGSV and Zelda actually let you solve problems your way, which ought to be the point.

A good friend is a mission designer for Rockstar, and he tells me this is a result of the head honchos being completely in love with movies and wanting to emulate that experience. In which case they should be making scripted linear games like Uncharted, but whatever.

[bgmnts]

Yes.

[biggytitbo]

I'm currently playing the much maligned Assassins Creed Unity, which aside from the still slightly loose controls is a lot of fun. They massively overfill the map with hundreds of side quests, tasks and busy work, all of which are optional. If just that was the game it would get tedious fast, but there also a perfectly good linear single player story too, which has enough variety too it to remain interesting. But mainly theres the world itself, which is a thing of beauty, no other game has ever had such a dense city in it before or since, with the sheer amount of stuff going on at once, especially the sometimes thousands of nps's milling about the streets doing superficially real looking things, its often amazing, along with the lovely lighting and usual attention to detail in the architecture and decor. Syndicate is a beautiful game in its own right, and actually controls better, but by comparison the streets of London look abandoned with something like 1/10th of the amount of people about.


Its only after playing something like Unity do you realise how 'empty' most games are in comparison, even now. Apart from perhaps the new Hitman (whose crowds are much cruder than Unity), the streets of other open world games just look eerily barren in comparison. This was in many ways its achilles heal though, it came out 4 years ago and massively overreached for the consoles and pcs of the time, so it chugged along like turd and was full of glitches (most of which are fixed now, but clearly too late for its reputation).


This is definitely the future of these type of games though, 4k etc is all well and good but its still more realistic crowd simulations, npc's, AI and physics that will make better open world games.

[Timothy]

Depends on the game and the world tbh. For example imo Zelda was quite boring. Same enemies everywhere etc. Where Horizon was great.

[wooders1978]

Depends on the game and the world tbh. For example imo Zelda was quite boring. Same enemies everywhere etc. Where Horizon was great.

Agree with this - the game determines the boringness level of the open world in my opinion

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Skill trees are also bad.

Oh yes, I'm very bored of these. Nothing saps my enthusiasm for a new game more than seeing that empty skill tree screen for the first time and thinking of all the hours it'll take to to fill out.

No one seemed to care for the RPG elements in GTA: San Andreas, but I like the way that your skills level up the more you use them. More of that I say. If I have to develop skills, let me do so naturally, instead of arbitrarily spending XP on them. If I have to gain some new skill or equipment, how about earning it via a little side quest, mini game or suchlike?

[bgmnts]

Oh yes, I'm very bored of these. Nothing saps my enthusiasm for a new game more than seeing that empty skill tree screen for the first time and thinking of all the hours it'll take to to fill out.

No one seemed to care for the RPG elements in GTA: San Andreas, but I like the way that your skills level up the more you use them.

Bethesda obviously didn't mind it.

[PlanktonSideburns]

The GTA games are contradictions to their very core!!!!!!

Ostensibly they're these open-world try-anything total-freedom sandbox games. But the mission design is the very opposite - they're absurdly tightly scripted, and the minute you go beyond a very tight set of parameters, you fail, often without warning. It's a fundamentally confused design. Whereas MGSV and Zelda actually let you solve problems your way, which ought to be the point.

A good friend is a mission designer for Rockstar, and he tells me this is a result of the head honchos being completely in love with movies and wanting to emulate that experience. In which case they should be making scripted linear games like Uncharted, but whatever.

Well put. It's crazy they're so desperate to emulate a film, when they've made one of the most interesting games I've ever played that totally feel like a bit of new media, proper immerse pieces of art. Maybe the fact that there is this more traditional game system there all the time - which I promptly ignore so I can go play the game properly - aids the sense of immersion- the missions are the bland reality that send you down the rabbit hole

[mobias]

Maybe games are just boring generally? Open world games are a bit boring. Skill trees are boring. Linear games are boring. FPS's are boring. RPG's are boring.

I know whats not boring - Farming Simulator.

[The Boston Crab]

And fishing.

[The Boston Crab]

Loaded up Sleeping Dogs remaster last night for five minutes. I did 140 flying kicks in a row, holding X and tapping Square, wellying man woman and child in the damn head, sending them spinning and weeping, gasping for their life.

[Hecate]

serial killing psychopath simulators

I remember playing deus ex HR, shooting a woman just so I could look up her skirt. Playing basketball with corpses, decorating my apartment like Ed Gein.

You skulk around in the dark alleyways with the tramps for a bit, then you start to notice that the police don't bother going back there very often so you just pick off the odd one here and there and hide their bodies behind the bins, and then obviously you get a taste for it and it snowballs.
I didn't ask for this. The guy behind the counter said that you played as a security guard.

Worrying to think that children are playing this sick filth.

Maybe games are just boring generally?

It's exciting when you get a new one for a bit though, isn't it?

[Bhazor]

I'm feeling this playing the Witcher 3. The game world seems horribly bloated in the Ubisoft sense with inconsequential "monster nests", "smuggler drops", "protected treasures", "abandoned villages" (which are straight out of Far Cry 3 onwards). I realised I'd spent two hours just going from ? to the next ? completely mindlessly. It doesn't help the combat is shite and the loot is all level scaled so the legendary elf forged silver named in a hushed whisper as Aenull Sh'lave discovered deep in the pits of the great Hell Fuck Beast is basically a butter knife compared to the sword some generic mugger will be carrying in a couple hours. The more I play the more I think Witcher 3 is good almost purely in spite of itself. Sticking strictly to quests, whacking the difficulty down and ignoring all the crafting stuff is giving me a way better experience. Basically treating it as an action game with dialog trees rather than an RPG. It's made me appreciate the more linear RPGs I've played recently like Tyranny and Original Sin.

[Barry Admin]

I remember playing deus ex HR, shooting a woman just so I could look up her skirt. Playing basketball with corpses, decorating my apartment like Ed Gein.

You skulk around in the dark alleyways with the tramps for a bit, then you start to notice that the police don't bother going back there very often so you just pick off the odd one here and there and hide their bodies behind the bins, and then obviously you get a taste for it and it snowballs.
I didn't ask for this. The guy behind the counter said that you played as a security guard.

Worrying to think that children are playing this sick filth.

It's exciting when you get a new one for a bit though, isn't it?

Oh it's you.

[Hecate]

Are you going to hit me?

[LanceUppercut]

I remember playing deus ex HR, shooting a woman just so I could look up her skirt. Playing basketball with corpses, decorating my apartment like Ed Gein.

You skulk around in the dark alleyways with the tramps for a bit, then you start to notice that the police don't bother going back there very often so you just pick off the odd one here and there and hide their bodies behind the bins, and then obviously you get a taste for it and it snowballs.
I didn't ask for this. The guy behind the counter said that you played as a security guard.

Worrying to think that children are playing this sick filth.

It's exciting when you get a new one for a bit though, isn't it?

Fuck me that's odd behaviour!

[ziggy starbucks]

nah, witcher 3 and skyrim are the best games I've ever played and I've just started witcher 3 again because its so great.

[Mister Six]

The more I play the more I think Witcher 3 is good almost purely in spite of itself. Sticking strictly to quests, whacking the difficulty down and ignoring all the crafting stuff is giving me a way better experience. Basically treating it as an action game with dialog trees rather than an RPG. It's made me appreciate the more linear RPGs I've played recently like Tyranny and Original Sin.

I stupidly burned myself out on the game doing too much exploring, card playing and minor quest-solving, and now I'll probably never finish it. That's my fault as much as the game's though.