I've only played three open world games: Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Breath of the Wild, and Horizon: Zero Dawn, but playing just these three games, I can tell what I like and not like in Open World Games.
Horizon: Zero Dawn and Odyssey do so many things right (click link for reviews), such as having a compelling hero, NPCs, story and lore, beautiful graphics, incredible combat that's precise where you have to use strategy, dodging, parrying as opposed to tanking through. They both have RPG elements, and I hope that their next games would have even more extensive leveling systems.
In this post, I'm adding things that would improve these games' experiences.
Overworlds and Dungeons
First, all three of these games have overworlds that have some verticality such as mountains and building structures, but mostly are areas where you can easily beeline to the next objective without getting lost (just look at map and go from area A to B in straight line).
I would love to see an open world game that has the level design of Dark Souls 1 where the areas are so complex that you get lost. In other words, each area is distinctive and unique in the ways you need to get around, with complex verticality, multiple ladders and shortcuts that you need to find. You easily fall to your death as there are tricky holes and traps.
I feel the reason why these open world games don't have this bespoke maze-like structure is because they're so large, so it's hard to come up with mazes that are extensive enough to cover that amount of area. Dark Souls is very compact but even so it takes a long time to find your first Blighttown bonfire because how confusing Blighttown is.
Is there a way in which an open world can have a smaller map? Or if you want the map to be larger, you can just make the space from start of the area to a special key that'll open a shortcut 500 yards away as opposed to 50 yards. In other words, just scale up. Dark Souls can be extremely large if they have you walk more from one area to the next.
Within the complex, labyrinthine overworld, you then have the huge dungeons, hopefully at the level of Zelda dungeons (Ocarina of Time through Skyward Sword).
The issue is that designing something as complex as Dark Souls overworld and Zelda dungeons is extremely difficult and it's much easier to just throw in some mountains and buildings across a flat land.
Quality of Life and Customization
I very much appreciate Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Horizon: Zero Dawn for all their quality of life features, and ability to customize. Their controls are very intuitive that I just used the default controls. Even so, it's vital that you can reassign buttons to fit your playstyle which these games allow.
I love how both games allow you to skip cutscenes and respect your time. I also love the options of turning on and off notification systems like enemy health, meters, markers and the like to customize how you want to play the game.
For instance, as an old time Monster Hunter fan, I don't want to see enemy health bar, but find knowing damage numbers crucial so I don't have to break immersion and find out where the monster hunter weak spots are. You can easily tell that through damage numbers and it can gauge which type of weapon is best against that monster (i.e. elemental).
In other words, it would be nice for those who want enemy health bar to turn on, and I can turn off. If you don't want to see damage numbers, you can turn off. The more customization, the better.
I wished these open world games have a Monster Hunter: World system where you can easily equip and load your armor pieces, so that if you want to use your Lance offensive build for Pickle, you can just click on that set.
In Odyssey, you have to put on the individual pieces each time. so if you want to use your more Assassination appropriate armor, you have to manually put on each piece. This is a drag and time-wasting, so it'll be nice to just click on your assassin armor/weapon build.
I appreciate Assassin's Creed Odyssey for their overlay/transmog system so you can have Fashion souls, but using your best armor pieces. This is a must for all games, not just open world. No one wants to look like trash!
The fetish now in gaming is to make the world as realistic as possible. I think that's a great goal, but not at the expense of gameplay. Swimming is slow in real life, but in gaming, you don't have to make swimming this slow. It's a drag to spend 5 minutes just going from A to B. This is a video game, and it's not realistic that your hero can do these physically impossible things, so why does it need to be realistic in terms of swimming?
If you want to fit fast swimming in the lore of your game, you can have your hero be an Olympic swimmer (but multiply the speed x 10 at least), or your hero stumbles upon a propeller device that he or she can use at all times. I always cringe in games when there's swimming involved, because it's always so slow.
Choices
I know there are some open world games that if you make a choice, it may lock you out of quests. This is a huge problem because you don't want your choices to prevent you from doing a potentially exciting quest. This will lead to immersion breaking as you'd look up guides to see how to avoid missing a potential quest, and you may stumble upon spoilers.
I would make sure that the game never locks you out of any specific quests.
I'm also very salty about multiple endings, because I always get the bad ending. Therefore, I read guides on how to get the best ending, and by doing so, I see all the spoilers. I prefer Horizon: Zero Dawn's structure where you get the same ending regardless of what choices you make. That prevents immersion breaking and spoilers.
However, as you make choices in the game, I'd like to see it affect the world. For instance, if you help someone clear out evil oppressors, when you come back, the town is rebuilt with home improvements, nice shops and booming economy. Or, if you help a woman with her finances, you come back and notice her playing with her children instead of laboring away at the fields.
So if you don't do these missions, when you come back, you'll see how miserable the NPCs are in that oppressed town, and the poor woman working, her children crying because they're left alone at home.
Since your choices will change the world, you may end up looking up the consequences of your choices, but at least it would just be for those particular quests, and won't spoil the content of other quests.
Since I've only played 3 open world games, I'd like to get more ideas on what you'd like to see in Open World Games?
The How of Happiness Review
Horizon: Zero Dawn and Odyssey do so many things right (click link for reviews), such as having a compelling hero, NPCs, story and lore, beautiful graphics, incredible combat that's precise where you have to use strategy, dodging, parrying as opposed to tanking through. They both have RPG elements, and I hope that their next games would have even more extensive leveling systems.
In this post, I'm adding things that would improve these games' experiences.
Overworlds and Dungeons
First, all three of these games have overworlds that have some verticality such as mountains and building structures, but mostly are areas where you can easily beeline to the next objective without getting lost (just look at map and go from area A to B in straight line).
I would love to see an open world game that has the level design of Dark Souls 1 where the areas are so complex that you get lost. In other words, each area is distinctive and unique in the ways you need to get around, with complex verticality, multiple ladders and shortcuts that you need to find. You easily fall to your death as there are tricky holes and traps.
I feel the reason why these open world games don't have this bespoke maze-like structure is because they're so large, so it's hard to come up with mazes that are extensive enough to cover that amount of area. Dark Souls is very compact but even so it takes a long time to find your first Blighttown bonfire because how confusing Blighttown is.
Is there a way in which an open world can have a smaller map? Or if you want the map to be larger, you can just make the space from start of the area to a special key that'll open a shortcut 500 yards away as opposed to 50 yards. In other words, just scale up. Dark Souls can be extremely large if they have you walk more from one area to the next.
Within the complex, labyrinthine overworld, you then have the huge dungeons, hopefully at the level of Zelda dungeons (Ocarina of Time through Skyward Sword).
The issue is that designing something as complex as Dark Souls overworld and Zelda dungeons is extremely difficult and it's much easier to just throw in some mountains and buildings across a flat land.
Quality of Life and Customization
I very much appreciate Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Horizon: Zero Dawn for all their quality of life features, and ability to customize. Their controls are very intuitive that I just used the default controls. Even so, it's vital that you can reassign buttons to fit your playstyle which these games allow.
I love how both games allow you to skip cutscenes and respect your time. I also love the options of turning on and off notification systems like enemy health, meters, markers and the like to customize how you want to play the game.
For instance, as an old time Monster Hunter fan, I don't want to see enemy health bar, but find knowing damage numbers crucial so I don't have to break immersion and find out where the monster hunter weak spots are. You can easily tell that through damage numbers and it can gauge which type of weapon is best against that monster (i.e. elemental).
In other words, it would be nice for those who want enemy health bar to turn on, and I can turn off. If you don't want to see damage numbers, you can turn off. The more customization, the better.
I wished these open world games have a Monster Hunter: World system where you can easily equip and load your armor pieces, so that if you want to use your Lance offensive build for Pickle, you can just click on that set.
In Odyssey, you have to put on the individual pieces each time. so if you want to use your more Assassination appropriate armor, you have to manually put on each piece. This is a drag and time-wasting, so it'll be nice to just click on your assassin armor/weapon build.
I appreciate Assassin's Creed Odyssey for their overlay/transmog system so you can have Fashion souls, but using your best armor pieces. This is a must for all games, not just open world. No one wants to look like trash!
The fetish now in gaming is to make the world as realistic as possible. I think that's a great goal, but not at the expense of gameplay. Swimming is slow in real life, but in gaming, you don't have to make swimming this slow. It's a drag to spend 5 minutes just going from A to B. This is a video game, and it's not realistic that your hero can do these physically impossible things, so why does it need to be realistic in terms of swimming?
If you want to fit fast swimming in the lore of your game, you can have your hero be an Olympic swimmer (but multiply the speed x 10 at least), or your hero stumbles upon a propeller device that he or she can use at all times. I always cringe in games when there's swimming involved, because it's always so slow.
Choices
I know there are some open world games that if you make a choice, it may lock you out of quests. This is a huge problem because you don't want your choices to prevent you from doing a potentially exciting quest. This will lead to immersion breaking as you'd look up guides to see how to avoid missing a potential quest, and you may stumble upon spoilers.
I would make sure that the game never locks you out of any specific quests.
I'm also very salty about multiple endings, because I always get the bad ending. Therefore, I read guides on how to get the best ending, and by doing so, I see all the spoilers. I prefer Horizon: Zero Dawn's structure where you get the same ending regardless of what choices you make. That prevents immersion breaking and spoilers.
However, as you make choices in the game, I'd like to see it affect the world. For instance, if you help someone clear out evil oppressors, when you come back, the town is rebuilt with home improvements, nice shops and booming economy. Or, if you help a woman with her finances, you come back and notice her playing with her children instead of laboring away at the fields.
So if you don't do these missions, when you come back, you'll see how miserable the NPCs are in that oppressed town, and the poor woman working, her children crying because they're left alone at home.
Since your choices will change the world, you may end up looking up the consequences of your choices, but at least it would just be for those particular quests, and won't spoil the content of other quests.
Since I've only played 3 open world games, I'd like to get more ideas on what you'd like to see in Open World Games?
The How of Happiness Review
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