The Structure of Open-World Games is Weird

the structure of most open world games is weird the majority of them present players with massive maps that contain countless activities to engage with but progression isn't all that tied to doing those things instead progress typically involves completing a series of story missions and in a lot of cases it feels almost like the developers created what could have just been a linear game and set it inside their big map leading to the main quest in the open world feeling kind of disconnected from each other and because of this with a lot of open world games you can pretty much just ignore the open world solely doing the main quest is usually all that is needed to progress as the rewards received from completing story missions oftentimes improve the character enough for the player to be able to overcome any challenge they may be faced with any character progression earned from doing optional activities may make things easier but not doing them is rarely detrimental like at least on the standard difficulty games like ghost sushima horizon zero dawn and red dead redemption 2 can be beaten easily enough by just mainlining the story of course very few players will approach a title in this way right off the bat as they'll be feeling out how the open world ties into the other aspects of the game and also be driven by their natural curiosity to see what the world is about and especially with the three titles i just mentioned it's no surprise that players would be curious to explore them their worlds are gorgeous and expansive they contain mysteries to uncover and possess tiny details that make almost every location feel lived in telling small stories of the places players come across there is a lot to love about these worlds but mechanically they don't matter that much so as time goes on and the initial shine wears off players will be less likely to engage with the world this type of behavior is exacerbated even further when titles include story elements that call for urgency if the main motivation for a character is to find their child or rescue someone important to them doing anything that doesn't work towards that goal feels weird this sense of urgency is almost always artificial as players can take as long as they want without it impacting anything but this kind of disconnect has always been hard for me to get past for instance the witcher 3 opens with a section primarily meant to establish the bond between geralt and his adopted daughter siri although this segment is a dream so the events of it technically never happened it gives a good sense of what daily life would have been like for the pair back when they lived in cairmorin and it gets the player to care about siri pretty much immediately the dream ends with her being attacked by the wild hunt and as geralt reflects on it afterwards he states that the only time siri appears in his dreams is when she's in danger then a little while later geralt is explicitly told that siri's in trouble because she's being pursued by the wild hunt this setup got me invested in wanting to help siri above all else and while i didn't ignore every single optional activity i came across i was far less likely to engage with them because they didn't contribute to my goal of finding siri now for plenty of people this probably isn't a problem it just depends on where one draws motivation from for those who are intrinsically motivated exploring for the sake of exploring will be enough reason to engage deeply with the various aspects of a game's world but for those like myself who are more extrinsically motivated that drive won't last nearly as long and once it is clear that many aspects of a title aren't all that important for progression they will start to just seek out the things that are so more needs to be done to encourage those players to explore with a lot of games the predominant strategy for getting players to engage with the open world seems to be just placing story missions far apart from each other the idea being that while traveling from quest marker to quest marker players will get distracted by things along their path this certainly will work for those intrinsically motivated players but it poses a bunch of problems the big one being that a lot of the time moving between mission markers will lead to traversing the same areas over and over which gets boring quickly and is more likely to encourage players to fast travel than to interact with the world also for me at least when i choose to do a quest i'm focused on getting it done meaning i'm less likely to stray off the path especially when it has nothing to do with my goals i mostly just think that exploration is at its best when it is the goal and it seems a bit weird to me that so many titles sell themselves on being able to explore these massive open worlds but then don't utilize them all that effectively in their core gameplay loops if a studio is going to put so much effort into crafting an engaging main quest as well as a detailed and full open world the two aspects should complement each other instead of making each other weaker in nicky jakey's video rockstar's game design is outdated he discusses this idea by examining the conflicting nature of red dead redemption 2's mission design which focuses on providing players with a very specific experience and its open world which aims to create a sense of player freedom noting that because rockstar has one foot in each of these contrasting design philosophies it leads to both aspects being less effective than games that are just dedicated to one and this problem isn't exclusive to red dead redemption 2. really most open world games have a bit of a main quest problem between how their stories are presented in the way their missions are structured they often end up funneling players into a linear experience taking the openness out of the open world and this is pretty much the opposite of how it should feel when i play an open world title i want almost everything i interact with to have importance i want to feel like whatever i'm doing at any given moment is the right thing to be doing and yeah you guessed it this is the part of the video where i talk about breath of the wild for a bit after clearing the great plateau the player is tasked with the goal of destroying ganon it is an undertaking they can attempt at any point although doing so right away will almost assuredly lead to certain death the most effective way of dealing with ganon is by completing the main quest of freeing the four divine beasts but only doing that won't be nearly enough for most players to be able to overcome the challenges the game presents at the start of breath of the wild the link is extraordinarily weak practically making it mandatory to explore the open world in order to get stronger which is done through finding spirit orbs that improve link's health and stamina collecting cork seats to be able to have a bigger arsenal and gathering stuff like weapons armor and materials that can be used to improve link's equipment and provide other mechanical bonuses because everything aside from defeating ganon is technically optional it is on the player to determine what combination of activities they want to engage with in order to be properly prepared for the final fight giving more weight to things that are typically just seen as side tasks on top of that even the way the main quest is presented helps set the tone for how players should approach the game i think by having the initial goal be to destroy ganon it puts the focus on link becoming strong enough to beat him whatever that might take there certainly is some urgency to this as his existence threatens what is left of hyrule but i don't think it creates nearly as much urgency as it would have had the main quest been labeled something like rescue zelda in general saving a loved one is personal in a way that defeating a villain is not it's a concept that most people will be able to relate to so it acts as a stronger pull furthermore beating the bad guy is how most games end as that is what heroes do but the safety of others isn't always guaranteed making it feel like more of a threat now chances are nintendo will never you know kill zelda or at least not in any sort of permanent way but i do still think that had the focus been on saving zelda instead of destroying ganon i probably would have tried to approach it in the same way i did with the witcher 3. in a lot of cases story hooks that would be effective in typical narratives aren't well suited for open world games because they direct players too much now breath of the wild is a bit of an extreme example as it pretty much throws story to the wayside as players have so much freedom in how they approach the game it would have been nearly impossible for nintendo to control the pace of certain story beats as there is no guarantee players would ever even see them so most stories within breath of the wild are self-contained and they barely relate to or reference each other in any sort of notable way the few story moments that do are all flashbacks which give insight about links zelda and the other champions but ultimately it is all supplemental information leading to the game not having a typical narrative this is one of the big reasons breath of the wild's world has so much freedom but i don't think it is by any means impossible for a game to have a compelling main story and an effective open world that complement each other both narratively and mechanically it certainly is harder and given the nature of open world games the pacing will never be perfect as so much control is in the player's hands but it is possible it just takes avoiding certain kinds of story beats and using the right structure that's a big part of what frustrates me so much about ghostatsushima red dead redemption 2 and horizon zero dawn with a few changes to their structure they'd be able to keep their interesting stories while also giving more importance to the various aspects of their worlds for instance at the start of the game goes to sushima seems like it will have a similar structure to breath of the wild after losing a battle against the game's villain jin's uncle is captured and the player is tasked with gathering enough strength to storm the castle where he is being held and reclaim it from the mongols when i first played i was really excited by this setup as it seemed like i'd be going around the countryside to clear out enemies in order to weaken the mongol forces and in turn the strength of castle canada while simultaneously recruiting allies who would make the assault on the castle easier and on paper the game kind of does that but it is all part of the predetermined main quest there are a set amount of characters that the player has to convince to come with and nothing can change that number also when the player eventually gets to the castle the help the side characters provide is minimal pretty much at any given time only one character accompanies gin and they don't do much so the player will have to do most the work anyway getting strong enough to invade the castle is dictated by the story not the actual progression of jyn's abilities or the player's skills just to see what would happen when i first played i went to castle canada early and instead of being able to do anything there i got a warning that i was entering an area with overwhelming forces and then i got shot at by archers that i couldn't really do anything about before promptly dying and i get that i shouldn't have expected it to be any different but it still felt pretty disappointing imagine though if it were possible to attack the castle at any point doing so without the proper support would be near impossible but it would be an option taking out forces could chip away at the strength of the castle and the more allies the player recruits the fewer enemies they would have to face on their own once they got there this formula could have been repeated for each of the major areas giving set points to reveal story beats which would have made it possible to have a cohesive narrative while also creating a sense of freedom essentially taking breath of the wild's design philosophy and splitting it into smaller sections that are worked through linearly this type of structure would encourage player choice as they would be in charge of deciding what to do in order to increase their chances of a successful invasion putting the importance on player driven gameplay and not just the story of course while i think that this approach would work for ghost sushima based on how its regions are set up it wouldn't make nearly as much sense for a game that isn't about overcoming some insurmountable challenge so a title like red dead redemption 2 which is more about moment-to-moment living wouldn't fit great with this sort of approach oddly enough an example of a structure that would have worked for rdr2 can be seen with far cry 5. please stay with me the game is split into three regions that can be tackled in any order each is run by a different member of the seed family who is in charge of a cult known as eden's gate and the player is tasked with destabilizing their reign in order to reclaim the region and eventually take them out this is accomplished by earning resistance points which are received through a slew of activities ranging from rescuing hostages to destroying structures built by the cult to capturing outposts to completing side and story missions nearly everything the player does nets them resistance points giving more significance to the open world antics as it all helps progress the story once the player reaches certain thresholds they gain the attention of the zone's leader unlocking a mission that moves the story forward now admittedly far cry 5 stumbles a fair bit with its execution of this structure players don't get to choose when they start the majority of the mandatory story missions and instead the members of the seed family just kidnap them after they earn a certain amount of resistance points which is cool the first time it happens but it is far less interesting every time after that this leads to an even bigger problem as certain missions become unavailable after killing the region's leader which wouldn't be an issue the player got to choose when the story missions were triggered but given that they are almost always thrown into it unwillingly it stands to create a fair bit of frustration furthermore it feels a bit unbalanced in terms of how quickly the player gains resistance points it should take a bit longer to liberate each region so that players have the chance to explore more of it before they lose their incentive to engage with the world as once a region is cleared there isn't a good reason to keep doing things within it despite all of that the frame of having nearly all open world activities contribute to the progression of the story is a simple yet effective one it still puts weight on doing actual missions as they will yield bigger rewards but it gives more of a reason to interact with the various happenings in the world as they also will bring about progression to be honest it seems like red dead redemption 2 almost had a system that operated similarly to this with the camp init is a box where arthur can contribute money to that is then used for various upgrades through the camp ledger the majority of which really don't matter that much and this seems like it would have been the perfect way to incorporate a progression system major story missions could have been tied to putting a certain amount of money into the camp funds this would have given more value to doing any activity that earns money like hunting fishing robbing completing bounties until even playing poker for this sort of change to work the amount of money earned from every activity especially missions would have to be rebalanced but if done right it would encourage players to do everything the game has to offer this would mean a handful of quests that are currently mandatory would probably have to become optional as it would be tedious to fill the camp funds 80 times or whatever but given the contents of some of the missions in the game i don't think that's expressly a bad thing along with incentivizing players to explore and engage with the world it also would have made money matter more well there are plenty of things to spend cash on money as a resource never felt that important to me as the vast majority of items i could buy were cosmetic after getting some cool threads and guns i liked i didn't really need money for much but i kept getting it for completing missions and because i didn't have anything to do with it it eventually stopped feeling like a useful reward had there been a stronger mechanical reason to spend it getting money would have felt more meaningful now not all open world games need to have every activity lead to progression sometimes it's just about identifying the most interesting aspect of a title and tying it to that like take pokemon legends arceus the game essentially has two forms of progression the player needs to focus on the first is the progression of the story which unlocks in a linear fashion as each mission is completed the second comes in the form of the player's galaxy team rank which increases as they identify capture and battle against pokemon found throughout the world obtaining higher ranks allows them to access new areas and command higher level pokemon this structure makes it so players can't just rush through the main story because in order to unlock all the regions they need to raise their rank by filling out the pokedex which means they need to explore the world having progression be tied to not only the story but also interacting with the pokemon the player comes across encourages engaging with the coolest aspect of the game being around pokemon while the story itself isn't stellar and they almost certainly could have included more things to do with the pokemon this two-pronged progression structure is a solid way to tell a clear story while also pushing players to engage with the central aspect of the game i think this approach could have been a solid fit for horizon zero dawn in my opinion the game has two things going for it that make it stand out an intriguing story and robot dinosaurs uncovering the mystery of what happened to the world and how aloy fits into it all is a great experience and the fights against the robo dinosaurs especially the bigger ones call for a ton of creativity and full utilization of aeloy's arsenal making them extremely satisfying to take down the main issue is that these two aspects don't mix all that often the main quest does take alloy all around the world discovering ruins and protecting cities but the most common enemies in these sections are humans and corrupters which when compared to the wide array of robots in the wild are rather boring to fight as for the dinosaurs themselves engaging with them is almost always optional there are some incentives to interact with them like getting slightly better weapons or being able to hack different kinds of robots but these upgrades aren't all that pivotal so the activities to get them are easily skippable and it's a shame because the content centered around the dinosaurs is the most fun stuff in the game whether it be the cauldrons the hunting ground missions or just finding a big dinosaur in the wild and learning how to take it out i think had they added a system similar to the one in arceus where the player needs to hit a certain threshold of research points in order to progress that are earned from doing robot related activities it would have better encourage exploration and given more importance to the coolest part of the game and just to cover my bases it is entirely possible that horizon forbidden west improved upon the structure of the first title in some notable way but i beat like eight open world games for this video and the idea of playing another one right now brings me physical pain obviously every idea i've suggested would need to be fine-tuned just right to work but i think in general these kinds of structures help players like me who are extrinsically motivated get more engaged with the title's open world while not really changing all that much for those who would just explore it anyway what i like most about them is that they safeguard players from rushing through a story making it so even if a narrative calls for urgency they can't just abandon the world around them it's also worth mentioning that regardless of structure a game's difficulty can play a big role in getting players to explore as well a recent example of this can be seen with elden ring which uses punishing bosses to gate progress these fights especially the early ones are balanced in a way where low level characters without much gear will be at a huge disadvantage so when players hit these bosses for the first time they will most likely get decimated unless they're really good now fromsoft games have always featured bang your head against the wall bosses but the skills seem tipped in their favor more than normal leading to the standard get good approach not feeling as viable the goal of this design is to get players to realize they aren't ready for a challenge so they go off to engage with the other parts of the world in eldon ring's case doing so will net them weapons spells items for upgrades and most importantly runes which are used to improve pretty much everything this design worked really well for me as when i hit the point i would normally rage quit in a typical souls game i just went off to explore somewhere else until i was strong enough to go back and kill the boss now this system isn't perfect while runes will always be important to players they will inevitably be rewarded with a ton of things that aren't applicable to their build which can kind of diminish the joy of finding things also even though the design of eldon ring clearly wants players to explore the world instead of getting hard stuck on one boss some people are really stubborn so they will spend seven hours trying to kill something that they're really not supposed to at that point it also doesn't help that previous fromsoft games have conditioned players to throw themselves at bosses countless times no matter the odds lastly as eldon ring is such a massive game its difficulty is not perfectly balanced throughout because it'd be kind of impossible to do so for me there was a good chunk in the middle where i dominated every boss i came across and it wasn't until the end when things got a bit more linear that the bosses became challenging again getting the balance right is the hardest part of using difficulty as an incentive to explore as folks of all skill levels will play any given game it is exceptionally hard for a title to present a challenge that gets it right for all of them and that's why on paper difficulty options are great as they can provide players with a challenge that works for them to be honest i wouldn't be surprised if a handful of my issues with certain open world titles would be soothed if i always played at the difficulty option best suited for me the problem is it's tough to know what that setting will be before playing a game like i don't know if a title will be too easy or too hard for me on the normal difficulty so it takes plain a fair bit before finding out what i should set it to and even then i find it hard to switch as i feel pot committed to the experience i started with i completely understand this part of the problem is largely on me and i need to be better about finding the best difficulty option for my skill level i just wish that was easier to do with that said even when playing a game at the correct difficulty it's not always going to be perfect most likely it will make the earlier parts of a title feel like a suitable challenge but as time goes on that often shifts as i pointed out with eldon ring balancing a sizeable open world game will almost always have issues because if the player has actual freedom over how they engage with the world there are just too many factors for developers to account for a big one being that different kinds of players want different things some will only be happy the final boss is the biggest challenge they face and others will strive to get as overpowered as possible in order to crush anything they come across so even though difficulty is an effective tool i generally say it is best to also pair it with a structure that is built to get players to explore so if the challenge breaks down they don't lose all their motivation it's not beyond me that all of the titles i've been critical about in this video are well beloved by millions they are considered to be some of the best in the genre and honestly in gaming in general like any game though i just think they could be better when looking at the structure of open world games in this way i find myself wondering why so many of them end up being designed with stories and worlds that feel separate from each other it could be that trying to maintain a cohesive vision when designed in a massive open world game is exceedingly difficult it could be that they want players to be able to approach them like a linear title if that's how they choose to play and it could be that open world games sell a lot of copies so even if the main focus of a game director is to tell a story doing so within a giant ass open world will be more financially viable whatever the reason i hope to see more studios reconsider how they do open worlds because just placing a linear story within a big map feels like wasted potential to be honest before breath of the wild came out i thought i hated open world games but playing it opened my eyes to how good they could be and that is why i'm so critical of them it's a genre i genuinely love and feel like has so much promise but not enough open world games really justify having an open world frankly there's an argument to be made that a lot of these titles would have been better off as linear games that have some exploration through a hub world like god of war 2018 and i feel bad even thinking that because so much work goes into creating these gorgeous and massive worlds i just want them to matter which is why i think open world games should put their worlds first and do everything they can to encourage all players to want to explore them and speaking of exploring new and old frontiers let me tell you about this video's sponsor brilliant brilliant is a problem-solving website that provides interactive courses to teach you new ideas and hone your understanding of topics primarily relating to math and science it's great for people trying to learn something for the first time and also those who want a refresher about stuff that they learned when they were young but forgotten years ago i grew up loving these subjects until all of my classes turned into tedious lectures pretty much stamping all of the joy i had for them out of me which is a bummer for a lot of reasons but mostly because now i feel like there are a ton of practical stem skills i missed out on and that's why i think brilliant is great as it gives a frame to work within with courses that are actually fun to do making it much easier to engage with one course that i've been enjoying is focused on probability and its applications in the real world i play a lot of tabletop rpgs and when something unlikely happens through a series of roles i'm always curious about what the probability of that thing happening was and this course taught me the skills of how to figure that out which is rad so to get started go to brilliant.org button and sign up for free also the first 200 people that go to that link which by the way is also in the description will get 20 off the annual premium membership it's a great service that honestly everyone could benefit from so go check it out anyway thanks to brilliant for sponsoring this video for those still here bless off thank you to my patrons for making this channel possible and a special shout out to william glenn age for being an honorary bag mutant i hope you have a great day and or night i will see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Razbuten

Views: 1,401,279

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Id: 3UBhy2nDlxw

Length: 24min 31sec (1471 seconds)

Published: Tue May 31 2022

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[u/EricThePooh]

What time in the video?