Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of open-world games, and I’ve started to notice that there is a pretty massive distinction between
a game being big and it feeling big. The two obviously can coexist, but, at least
with how I generally approach games, the bigger the world, the smaller it feels. For example, I played Ghost of Tsushima for
around 25 hours, and in the early parts of it, I did find myself getting lost in the
wonders of the island, exploring the beautiful landscapes and uncovering various secrets,
however, as time went on, I strayed less and less from the main quest, shrinking the vast
island of Tsushima down to a nearly linear path. When I look back at it now, I categorize it
in the same space games like Uncharted instead of the explorative open-world title it set
out to be. Compare this to one of my favorite games from
the past few years, A Short Hike. There wasn’t a moment while playing where
I didn’t feel that sense of wonder about what was around the next bend or that drive
to keep exploring Hawk Peak Provincial Park. When I think about A Short Hike now, it still
seems massive and undiscovered; it reminds me of the few times in games where I’ve
truly become immersed in the world; it feels like a grand adventure I once went on. And it only took me an hour to beat. A Short Hike isn’t the only small open-world
game that I’ve had this experience with. Just in the past few months I felt it with
The Pathless, Alba, and Bowser’s Fury. These games all left a huge impression on
me, and I felt far more absorbed in their worlds than I did with titles that I played
for dozens of more hours. And this all has me wondering, how do small
open-world games feel big? And as counter-intuitive as it may seem, I
think it actually starts with the fact that they are small. Looking again at my issues with Ghost of Tsushima,
there were two main reasons I stopped exploring and just focused on the main quest. The first was that, like most games of its
size and scope, it repeats a lot of the same ideas over and over again. I understand that a game of this size pretty
much needs to do that sort of thing or else it would just never come out, but there are
still consequences for it. While I found taking out Mongol camps or tracking
a Fox to a shrine to be engaging the first few times I did it, they got old somewhat
quickly. Also, the rewards for doing these things became
less necessary once I had progressed my character to a certain point, so doing these repetitive
tasks just to be rewarded with something I didn’t really care about stopped being worth
it. And that ties into the second reason I stopped
exploring which was that there were so many side quests, enemy camps, and little secret
things to engage with that I got overwhelmed by it all as I didn’t know what would be
worth my time. So due to the sheer volume of content, I opted
to ignore most of it. It being a relatively big game ironically
made me want to engage with it less. On the other hand, I knew A Short Hike wouldn’t
take up a lot of time as, well, it literally has “short” in the title. Knowing that playing it wouldn’t be a massive
commitment caused me to want to engage with every aspect of it. I knew my time with it was fleeting, so I
wanted to savor the exploration as much as possible. Also, due to it being such a small game, the
various things to discover and interact with were all unique, so I found myself more interested
in pursuing them. It didn’t need to have the same kind of
repeated ideas as bigger games do because there wasn’t nearly as much space to fill. With shorter titles, I find myself getting
far more immersed in the world because every bit of content feels important as there is
so little of it. Also I know I’ll have the time to do it
all which is an incentive to actually do it. Furthermore, smaller maps allow me to become
more familiar with the areas I am exploring, making it possible to navigate based on my
own knowledge opposed to following a marker in the distance. I never hit that point of wanting to be done
exploring because small open-world games typically end before I get anywhere near being sick
of them. So when I look back at how they made me feel,
I remember the excitement of discovery where with longer games, when I finish them I am
often tired of their core gameplay loop and just ready to be done, and that, unfortunately,
is what I remember most about them. Where smaller games get me to want to keep
exploring, bigger ones tend to funnel me down one path, making it so I end up ignoring the
vast world around me. Of course, a game being small doesn’t ensure
that it will feel big; it just provides a solid frame to work within. More work needs to be done to really pull
it off. There isn’t just one way to accomplish a
sense of grandiosity in a small package, but there certainly are things that come up a
lot, one of the most notable being how movement ties to the play space. It seems like a lot of bigger open-world games
aim to have some sense of realism to them, so the main form of movement often ends up
being the player character just walking around. Sometimes they’ll have a horse or vehicle
to add a little more speed and excitement to the mix, but even then there is little
more to the movement than just pressing forward and sometimes mashing a button to go a bit
faster. Travel often feels pretty tedious as getting
across massive maps takes a long time. Smaller titles however, generally aren’t
as tied to realism, so a lot of them experiment with movement in really interesting ways. A Short Hike focuses a lot on vertical movement
and the player’s core moveset of gliding, climbing, jumping, and flapping complement
the design of the world really well. Everything is compact and loops around on
itself and as the player increases their abilities, they are able to more easily traverse the
difficult terrain and discover the little secrets spread across the island. Another approach to interesting movement can
be seen with The Pathless which has a system where the player can shoot talismans that
are spread across the world to increase their dash meter; it becomes a test in timing and
paying attention to one's surroundings, and when done successfully it leads to fluid movement
that makes traversing the world feel good. There’s also the ability to glide and fly
up higher with the help of the eagle companion, and all of this gives a lot of freedom in
how the player moves around. This system allowed the developers to add
a lot of space between the various puzzle areas spread across the map without padding
out the game to be hours longer than it needs to be. It doesn’t take long to get from one place
to the next because the player character is so fast, but the world itself still feels
massive because of how much space there is in it. Bowser’s Fury has a similar approach. The various zones Mario can explore are on
different islands, and he can jump on Plessie to zoom between them. Plessie’s movement is fast and loose and
really fun to mess around with. Also, there are always coins to collect and
conflicts to overcome between the islands, so it gives players something to engage with
instead of just mindlessly moving from one place to the next. This adds a lot of space in the world, making
it feel bigger without doing in a way that wastes the player's time. Both Bowser’s Fury and The Pathless have
another system that makes their worlds feel bigger that comes in the form of conflict. In Bowser’s Fury it can be seen with, well,
Bowser’s Fury. Every so often he appears on the map to reign
havoc down on Mario. His attacks end either when enough time passes,
the player gets a shine, or Mario turns into a big cat and knocks him out. This game is so weird. The set up creates an added challenge for
the player as they not only have to focus on getting a shine, but they also need to
avoid Bowser’s dangerous attacks. It feels like traversing an entirely new area
despite the same space being used. With The Pathless, a massive red cloud constantly
moves across the world, and if the player gets sucked into it, they are separated from
their eagle companion and need to sneak around without being spotted by the boss. Getting caught can take up a fair bit of time
and even risk losing certain abilities if the player is spotted too many times, so avoiding
these clouds is really important. Everytime one of them would get close, I’d
be filled with nervous excitement as I bolted away from it, looking for some sort of cover
as to not put myself at risk. The Red Cloud and Bowser’s Fury both recontextualize
the worlds of each game, by giving players a new way to briefly interact with it. Both have them retreading the same old ground,
but the new lens makes it feel unique, creating a sense that there is more space in the world
than there actually is. It’s worth noting that I think that systems
like these would almost certainly get annoying in a longer game, but as both The Pathless
and Bowser’s Fury are so short, they end just before it starts feeling tedious. In a similar yet wholly different vein, Alba
also recontextualizes it’s world as the player continues to explore it, but instead
of it being from needing to avoid a threat, it comes from the game taking place across
multiple days, allowing for different events to happen on the island for the player to
engage with. Each day a new mechanic is introduced, giving
the player a fresh way to interact with the world so that running across it doesn’t
become entirely boring. It let’s players become familiar with and
connected to the island without getting sick of it. Ultimately, what matters most about a game
world feeling big is more about how a space is used than anything else. The games I’ve talked about all feel big
because I interacted with their worlds in meaningful ways. I actually explored instead of just moving
from one waypoint to the next waypoint. Nothing felt padded and nothing wasted my
time. I didn’t have to determine if a sidequest
was worth my time because there wasn’t much time to worry about. When I finished A Short Hike, The Pathless,
Bowser’s Fury, and Alba, while I did feel like I got enough out of them, part of me
also wished they had been longer. And I used to think that leaving a game with
that sort of feeling was a bad thing, but now when I finish a game, I kind of want to
feel that way. I want to leave wanting more. Obviously, there’s nuance to this; sometimes
I wish titles had been longer because they never live up to their potential as they end
before actually building on their main mechanics, which is always a bummer. Also, when you bring the cost of games into
things, I understand why people get frustrated when they spend $60 on something that only
lasts for a few hours. With all that said, in general, I’d much
rather finish a game wishing it was longer than wanting it to have ended 10 hours sooner. And look, I’m sure plenty of people don’t
struggle with big open world games in the same way I do. I know for a fact tons of folks had no issue
getting immersed in the worlds Red Dead Redemption, The Witcher, and Ghost of Tsushima. Everyone looks for different things in games
and that’s what's cool about them; I just think that the constant push primarily by
AAA publishers to make bigger and bigger games often ends up creating experiences that don’t
really encourage the kind of exploration they are hoping players will experience. While I don’t think massive open-world games
should stop being made, I do hope we see more stuff like Bowser’s Fury from AAA developers;
tight open-world experiences focused on maximizing every mechanic instead of spreading themselves
thin across the biggest digital space imaginable. I guess what I’m trying to say is that,
at least with video games, size doesn’t matter; it’s how you use it. And on the topic of using things well, let’s
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