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.
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.
Dragon quest builders is like linear / story mode Minecraft. And there’s Dragon quest builders 2. I’ve never played dragon quest but I freakin love builders. For me it’s far less stressful than Minecraft because I’m not having to be creative to figure out what i want to do. There’s a story line that I can choose to participate in, and I can creatively build whatever I want alongside the tasks and quests. Best of both worlds.
Also blockheads was like a 2D knockoff of Minecraft (so physicality linear. No plot) I loved it so much, and if you kept going right you’d eventually hit the equator, the south pole, the equator, the north pole and then your original spawn point again. It was amazing
Most people who played both probably have an order of magnitude more playtime in Minecraft, though.
You could say a whole new dimension?
It would be nice with some kind of linear quest in minecraft.
However if they were procedurally generated, I’d lose interest. That’s just another layer of grinding.
I like a game world that’s just fun to be in even when I’m not advancing the story. Taking a break to explore is awesome, and much easier in an open world.
Spider-Man for the PS4 had fast travel via subway, by why would you miss out on web-slinging your way from one end of Manhattan to the other?
This is what witcher 3 did best imo.
It’s open world, and it feels large… But it’s not actually that large when you think about it.
And the side areas are so rich and dense that you can do quests from a random hub, some that chain on for quite a while… And then realise this whole time that you haven’t actually done any of the main story.
I was excited to learn more about certain monsters in the bestiary, what oils and elements they were weak to etc.
I’m not sure that it’s *better*, but it’s hilarious when you go off and do all the side quests and end up completely over powered by the time you get round to the main quest and just beat the shit out of the main bad guy without realizing that they’re important.
Big bad: “so you have finally come to meet your doo-”
Competitionist: *drops bag of loot on boss, crushing all his bones*
That’s why you scale the enemies to the players armour and level!
Honestly I really don’t like that in most open world games, mostly cause enemy levels tend to make it feel like I’m just as powerful at lvl 1 as at lvl 40. Bethesda games post Morrowind are particularly bad about this IMO, not to say you can’t have leveled shit just don’t do it to all the enemies, do it like NV where some enemies are leveled but most are flat preset levels.
Sorry, was being sarcastic.
It sucks when you get an item and do 10,000 damage, but now your enemies all have 50,000 HP, especially when it’s the same old enemies just stronger.
At least in Skyrim you start seeing new enemies later on, but sometimes it’s just fun to wreck some bandits as the Dragonborn.
I hate it too, but I don’t think it was that bad in Skyrim or Fallout 4. Mostly just Oblivion that dropped the ball on this.
Nah it was also pretty miserable in Fallout 4, though in that particular case it was moreso due to issues of bullet sponges rather than damage dealt. But Fallout 4 is also probably the worst of the 3D games IMO, especially when it comes to enemy health.
Worse than Fallout 76?
Unironically yes, the leveled areas in 76 are quite a bit easier to deal with. Also I really fucken hate the settlement system.
Fair, the settlement system is annoying. I also hate everything about MMOs, though, and IMO it’s diametrically opposed to everything that made Bethesda games good. And that’s before we get into how much of a mess the release was …
I disagree. I hate when games do this, particularly open world ones. The point of going to find loot and stuff is that it benefits you. If there is no benefit then the game shouldn’t give you the option. Those games should be linear, because they’re trying to make a linear experience out of something non-linear.
If I’m struggling, I want to be able to leave and come back stronger. Even if I wasn’t, I want to come back and feel that I’ve gained power with the time I spent. If I don’t, I know I’m wasting my time.
That’s what Elden Ring really did well imo. The game sort of guides you towards Margit at the start, but he completely destroys newcomers, which causes them to explore the map more and discover more content in the intro areas. By the time they’ve done most of the interesting stuff in the first couple areas and go back to Margit, he’s far more balanced to fight. Still not a pushover but far more reasonable to fight and no longer frustrating.
Yep, and, if you’re paying attention and thoroughly exploring, you can actually go around the castle and totally avoid him. You can get incredibly strong before fighting him. It makes you feel like you’re actually progressing.
I’ve only skipped him once because Stormveil Castle is an excellent dungeon but it’s cool I have the option if I want to.
Yeah, it shouldn’t be skipped, but it’s cool that it can be. It’s good for challenge runs, or bjngo.
I’d love to do ER bingo sometime. Looks like a lot of fun.
Yes! It helps if it is clear the bad guy has been doing things as well. (Aren’t there a few games where the bad guy moves locations with this, so if one is really fast, they can catch them rather weak.)
That’s so fucking lazy by the gamedesigner, and takes away all the fun too IMO.
Imagine scaling enemies by actual player skill needed to defeat them, instead of just ‘my number more big than your number’.
Yes. Many. Stop playing Ubisoft checklist simulators.
AAA needs a bit of a reset and it looks like that’s what’s happening now.
RDR2, GTA, Elder Scrolls, is this a shitpost?
Breath of the Wild.
Arguably Outer Wilds.
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.
Oh look, another Korok Seed. How meaningful and rewarding and not complete bullshit or anything.
I think this is a difference between us as players. I’m not a competitionist at all, and I don’t even remember what economy the Korok seeds were for. I probably finished the game with a ton of them collected and unspent.
But in my mind they weren’t meant to be collected as a goal on their own. I’d be exploring up a mountain or whatever, just because I wanted to know what was on the other side, and when I got up to the peak I’d look out over the landscape and enjoy it for what it is. And then while I was up there I’d see a weird rock and go “ah, the developers wanted me to be up here looking at this view” and I’d move the rock, get some little fireworks, and then I’d have a buddy to enjoy the scenery with.
And then hours later, maybe months in real time, I’d be climbing around and see a Korok and go “Oh! I must have been up here before! Hey little guy” and then keep going.
So I liked them because it was something put there by the devs to show that they intended this place to be visited; that they put some attention here, and I had come to a place that wasn’t just endless grass or empty procedural trees or something. It was full of stuff, even if it was silly little guys.
Oh, and you can drop rocks on their heads and they go “oof”. That’s a good one.
Yeah, I think that’s why open world games are so divisive. Some people want the game to reward them for doing the things they’re supposed to do, while some people just view playing the game itself as the reward, and just do what they want within it. The prior hates how difficult it is to find and get to the next objective in an open world, while the latter doesn’t need or sometimes even want objectives, preferring to just be in the world.
Definitely a difference, because I am a completionist. Especially when it comes to Zelda games.
just because I wanted to know what was on the other side
The problem is that the answer is “nothing”. There’s nothing on the other side. Just more scenery, maybe a shrine or another Korok. The core gameplay loop is still just Zelda, so there’s nothing they can do to populate the world with meaningful things to find.
Right, I get that. But I wouldn’t consider the scenery nothing! I liked the scenery!
The old Zelda games were also open world.
Not really. The 2D ones at least. You literally can’t access areas until you’ve progressed by finding an item, usually by killing a boss in a dungeon. Its a fairly linear design actually.
There is some non-linearity in the 2D games. In the first game, you can do some of the dungeons out of order. For example, some people like to save dungeon 6 for last because it’s difficult. Some dungeons do require items from previous dungeons, but not every one.
A Link to The Past also has some nonlinearity in the same way. The dungeons in the dark world are numbered, but you can still do some of them out of order for the same reason as the first game.
Hmmm… I see what you to mean… but it’s in my top 5 games of all time, and none of the other Zelda games are. So I think it just shimmied into a different genre, which I get could be a problem for an existing fanbase that liked the old genre.
You’re spot on!
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
They said cool dungeons, which I understand, BotW shrines all have the same visual style, same enemy types, they can be boring.
I loved BotW as it was… but to be honest if they offered more dungeons without changing the exploring part, I would have taken that on top, for sure.
I did hate Tears of the Kingdom, though, so I guess it’s a delicate balance that just happened to land in my hitbox on BotW.
…this is greentext so…yes, obviously
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.
I love a good hub, especially when it actually changes and grows
Generally, good open world games have a lot more emergent content - situations that emerge from the interaction of agents and simple mechanics (in the style of how simple rules create complex outcomes in the “Game of Life”) - whilst good linear games have highly curated set-pieces scenarios which were created by level designers directly.
For an example of the former, imagine you’re running around the Game World looking for a special kind of plant to create a potion that you need. You come across a battle between bears and a bandit group. When they die their drops are free for the taking and both groups are too high level for you to take on your own. None of this was setup to happen when you crossed some trigger line, it literally just happened because those the entities in those groups are part of enemy “factions” and the patrol route of one group (a route which might itself be procedural rather than fixed) passed near enough the position of the encampment of the other.
This kind of thing randomly happen is just not something you get in linear games which are generally just set-pieces and even the ability to pull on group of high level enemies to another group has to be designed in (mainly by making the restricted game area big enough for it in that section and placing the groups in the right places).
This is also why in a linear game if you die and restart you get the same fights in the same places you had before up to the place were you died unless that section of the game was designed with enough alternate paths of mechanics (say, hide mechanics) that you can go around and avoid certain fights.
Emergent content is also why Multiplayer can be a lot of fun, though in this case the “agent” whose interactions can give rise to all sorts of situations are other players.
Oh hell yes.
I’m playing Horizon Zero Dawn Complete (it includes the DLC) and as soon as I got to Daytower, I ran into a guy named Ohtur who mentioned The Cut… I pivoted and headed up there and by sneaking around everything with higher stats than I had, (which was almost everything) I managed to find resources that got me a wickedly powerful weapon. Game changer. Literally.
Getting to any part of the map and find it’s hidden goodies is amazing.
Emergent content is what I liked about loading a ton of Skyrim mods. Too bad it was also crashy as hell.
I’d like to start a new game but since I’m Linux only these days it makes it harder.
I think sequence breaking is fun, and it works better in open world games. IME many modern open world games avoid this by tightly tying loot to levels or stats that you increase by leveling or even advancing the main story, which kinda defeats the point of open world games IMO.
Though honestly, I do enjoy having at least an illusion of choice, very linear games that don’t even maintain an illusion of openness feel really restricting to me. Modern open world RPGs just took it way too far while getting some of the important details wrong.
My favorite open world game that ISN’T a fantasy rpg also happens to be the easiest “finish the game early” I’ve ever experienced.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
Basically you start the game in “realism” mode which turns loot levels off,. Then in the intro mission, when you see the bad guy kill a team member, you gain control of your character before he gets in a helicopter and leaves. Run forward with a scoped gun to shoot him in the head, or have something explosive ready to blow up the helicopter.
Congrats, you’ve killed the main bad guy of the game and the last level no longer has you fight him in some building.
You still have to do everything else in the game, but I managed to do that by accident my first play through. Put probably 150 hours in that game over the years and multiple playthroughs and still have yet to play with loot leveling on. I do sometimes let him live though just for funsies.
That’s amazing, and surprising that the boss actually stayed dead!
Being able to fuck around can be fun. A linear Elder Scrolls (morrowind, oblivion, skyrim) would be boring
GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas. Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 (yes), New Vegas. Elden Ring. Subnautica.
Try making San Andreas linear and you would instantly destroy one of the best games ever made.
On the other hand later GTAs didn’t embrace the open worlds for which the series is known. Once you start a mission the games turn extremely linear without giving the player options.
Very true! I remember in GTA3, some missions could be done in different ways, if you already knew what would happen.
OTOH, just drifting along the map and running into a total stranger who feels perfectly safe in trusting you to escort his daughter or something is kinda meh.
I like open-world, but procedural anything, not so much.
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.
That’s what I’m saying. The only open world games that truly utilise their worlds are ones that first close it off
Open world =/= giant map
Take resident evil games, Control, Batman. Some larger maps than others, but the key is open. Most of the map or level is available to you to explore how you like, with a linear story guiding you through as well, and then progression opens smaller locked areas and new levels.
Had to explain this to a friend when I called the original Deus Ex titles “open world” games. (It’s technically semi-open world but, meh, nuances)
It’s 100% Open World I’d argue. It was just ahead of it’s time
Cyberpunk 2077.
I like the linear missions, but just exploring the open world and discovering things naturally is fun too. I think they could have done more with that, and it definitely feels like the game was way more linear in early development, but with all the updates CDPR managed to make something pretty cool IMO.
You might like the Dark Future mod, its roughly the equivalent of New Vegas’ hardcore/jsawyer mode.
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.
I mean like, compare a … hub and spokes style immersive sim game, to any given open world game.
With an ImSim, you often get planted into an area, with a single or multiple main quests, and a whole bunch of essentially discoverable sidequests… and, when done well, those optional sidequests significantly affect how the main quests play out, and may give you different options for how to approach or conclude those main quests.
Then, onto the next hub/spoke section.
ImSims are not typically associated with literal huge open spaces… but the spaces they do have tend to be well interwoven.
There are often entirely optional, missable ‘sidequests and submazes’, basically, even in a typically smaller amount of literal space.
But also, they’re not strictly linear in the way of like … an FPS campaign/single player mode usually is. Sure you can have the literal levels be maze like, but typically/traditionally, theres usually only one entrance and exit, and the specifics of what you did in any given maze don’t really impact the next maze beyond your weapon and ammo count and health maybe carrying over.
ImSims open up the conceptual field of a given linear sequence of levels, by allowing totally different play styles to yield signifcantly different experiences, and often the additional mechanics they do this with are more than just combat… social and exploratory play can be rewarded or punished by altering the narrative itself.
Last night I had a realization that the whole reason fallout 3 was given a radio is to fill the hours and hours of nothing in between locations. And also for the dungeon crawling.
For me, half the fun in Fallout is discovering some old building and piecing together what fucked up thing happened there.
Bethsoft often pisses me off or lets me down but they are absolutely good at environmental storytelling, no doubt
I dunno. I find them on average a bit ham fisted. I love those elements in their games for sure, but it never moved me like certain environments in the last of us, for example.
There’s definitely something to that. I liked that detective kind of work too. Games don’t need dialogue to tell good stories. There’s even good ways to just wander a large empty world and see sights.
Too bad that the music selection is so tiny that you basically need mods with more (lore-friendly) music.
Agreed.
As a completionist open-world games give me progressively more anxiety. Worried I might miss something or mess up a quest line I like.
I am perfectly fine with a clean story or just don’t bog me down with a growing list of uninteresting side quests. No I don’t want to harvest 500 goblin dicks for a helmet that completes my set.
Tap for spoiler
Yes the helmet is a big floppy dick for my Phallus gear set. I get all the pieces, it unlocks a projectile attack that sticks enemies in place.
the helmet is a big floppy dick for my Phallus gear set. I get all the pieces, it unlocks a projectile attack that sticks enemies in place.
Well now I want the helmet, but if I complete this other minor side quest it’s going to become uncompletable, but it doesn’t mention that anywhere I have to read a strategy guide to know that.
You were supposed to run up in time to kill the first hard-dicked goblin you see first, before it dies in its scripted sequence.
Then you can loot the sticky gobnut item, and if you interpret its lore correctly, you’d know that finishing the side quest where you find the lost canoe tribe would quell the hunger of the hard-dicked goblins, changing their world models and drops so you can’t craft the helmet recipe after that.
Duh. Git gud.
Try Kenshi.
There’s no main quest at all, beyond try not to die.
Everyone has different tastes. My tend to get narrowed the older I get.
Now I pretty much stick to co-op games with drop-in and out via a matchmaking. Usually with a mechanic for tweaking things, like DRG or Darktide.
If I play anything solo, I’m a big mech fan (MW5) or I lean towards city builders.
But overall I need more than survival games or open world blank slates. I know people love those, but I’m from an era without that as the norm. I don’t mind some rails if it’s good content.
