Why Have Open World Games Become Boring

when I first played Skyrim I was amazed by the sheer size of it bethesda's open world was Built to Amaze the player right off the bat you're going through the hills not really paying attention to anything going on around you and after escaping and being inside of a small town to a cave you end up finding your way out and there it is the world of Skyrim when I was younger I couldn't truly appreciate the way they made this opening but it is actually amazing when you think about it it's what all great open worlds do with The Witcher you're going around the area of white Orchard and think wow this place is a decent size then you find yourself riding around the north of the continent with roach not knowing how far you'll go but knowing around every corner you'll either have an amazing view or an activity to do in Elden ring you start off running around in this small cave doing the basics and then you open the doors and see the sheer size of the world but not only does it look outstanding you'll be wandering around and be teleported to one corner and then another corner and then you'll open up your map and see how that one part that you thought looked massive is in fact minuscule in comparison to the rest of the game now what all of those games have in common is that they're some of the best open world games that have ever been made period now some games I'll quickly just mention now because I know that I'm not going to be talking about them in this video in particular is breath of the wild and goes to tsushima don't worry I don't think the games aren't amazing or that their open worlds aren't amazing and didn't deserve to be in this video is just solely I haven't played them enough to give an opinion on them I'll be talking about open World Games in this video and why I think we've hit a point where they just look like massive tasks to complete and some are just lifeless vessels but the main question I'm going to pose to you and hopefully answer in this video is why are open worlds starting to feel boring and are they boring now now I'm not saying that each one of the games are boring but I've found that most open worlds are becoming a bit more stale across the board and maybe that's just because I don't have the time anymore or that maybe it's because the some of them don't have enough content to justify the game or that some of them aren't being made to have the content that gives depth to the world well that it's adding for the sake of depth but in reality becomes bloated with bad content so what we'll be discussing in this video is some of the possible reasons as to why this might be the case but then diving a bit deeper into four games in particular and the way their Studios have made their open Worlds the way they have and how to go about it in my opinion when designing a great open world game now for some quick Fire Reasons Why this seems to be the case one could be that we've become too spoiled another might be that there's just too much shallow content in many of these games the worlds themselves could just be feeling exhausting they're too big and because of that it feels exhausting and lastly the time that you spend in them becomes a debate of whether or not you're actually going to get the value for spending all that time you're going to be putting into the game now I'm going to talk about some of those and deconstruct them a bit more so firstly have we actually become more spoiled this is something that I saw a lot in my comment section when talking about the modern day state of gaming and a lot of people have this thought I was going to start off by listing all the open world games that have come out over the last decade but honestly there's way too many and I don't really feel like doing so so I'll just show you on screen here what Google tells you when you search up open world games so just off of that quick search it's roughly around about four to five have come out every single year over the last 10 years and out of those only around seven have actually been asked as amazing open world games now what we need to get out of the way right now just so that we understand everything and what I'm going to be comparing these off of is what I class as the two key factors to an amazing open world one is to be engaged by the world to the point where you feel the need to explore which our class games like Elden ring and breath of the wild as these sorts of games and the other is that the world has to feel so believable that even if you weren't there it would still exist so a game like The Witcher or GTA 5 would come to mind for that and then for me I think you have some that do a good blend of the mixture of both which would be Skyrim and red dead 2. so to reiterate my thoughts on what makes an open world game amazing is that the world has to make you feel like it would be functioning completely without you playing so it ends up having to feel alive but also the other Mage component is the desire to explore and want to know what is around every single corner now all of these games I've just mentioned I would say have a degree of both of these parts in them but a game like Elden ring to me feels the need to explore but when I'm not playing the game I don't really ever feel like the world is functioning by itself and I'll go into that later on but effectively what I mean by this is just that a game like The Witcher the world feels so believable so alive that everything feels as if it could be its own place in your imagination it could be whereas Elden ring has always given me the vibe of the moment I click pause everyone else pauses around you the world would not exist without the player and in comparison you'd have something like The Witcher 3 where the world feels so Lively it is ingrained into the fantasy land that has a massive amount of character that you could imagine is having a load of things going on when the player just isn't playing so I would say that we've become to a degree spoil by choice if you were to only look at it from a numbers perspective but if we take the games that are decent and amazing and then put them together you're probably only around about 10 to maybe you could argue 12 of those games but overall a lot of these games they're on this list do not hit my personal criteria of what makes a great or even good open world I would say no to this question I don't think it's that we've become spoiled necessarily purely because if you were to look at it from the perspective of how many good open world games there are there isn't enough for us to justify this idea then on the flip side of that if we were to now look at a load of the open world games that have come out over this time span you'll see that a lot of them are fairly shallow they have an open world that you can explore but why explore something with no depth examples of this in my opinion would be things like the Horizon series The Assassin's Creed RPGs and things like Shadow of Mordor now for me all of these share the same issue of shallowness this doesn't mean that all of these are terrible games I just feel no drive to explore in Horizon zero Dawn or when I tried to an AC foul Hala I found myself walking through the map of England and feeling as if nothing was going on Shadow of Mordor is a game that I wish I wouldn't be pausing in this group and category as I do love the game but from an open world standpoint I've never felt like I'm exploring it because the world is interesting I was exploring it for the sake of finding WarChiefs to kill but in games like Horizon zero Dawn as Shadow of Mordor they're only around 30 hours long so even though the world didn't feel as alive as something like The Witcher and the drive to explore like Eldon ring they didn't need to necessarily do this as the games were short enough that you're getting a nice taste of it but in the example of AC Valhalla where it's at 70 plus hour long game the open world actually does need to start being good the story can't hold it up for 70 hours of the player's time and even that wasn't that good in Valhalla so because of the issue of shallowness you end up with games like Valhalla that end up leaving a bad taste in your mouth for loads of these sorts of games you're feeling as if you're being dragged through the game and that playing them is nothing more than a chore once that starts to happen a lot of us will fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy where you've spent so much time in this game that you now don't want to stop until it's done as you feel like you've made it this far and then you end up wasting another two whole days to get through to the end of the game that's not even a satisfying ending so I would say this is definitely a big issue into why open world games are becoming more boring because once you experience one game like this it starts to make you or at least it did for me not want to dedicate multiple days of my life to a virtual world if I don't have a guarantee of depth now this leads me nicely into the next of these feeling exhausted by the world now this is something that I think does affect us but only does when you experience one that is actually exhausting or you find exhausting which is where I think the issue comes from which is ensuring that you don't walk into a game that you're going to find exhausting and learning when to cut the chord early I think AC games are a great example of exhausting games or at least the most recent ones are but you need to know when to cut the cord if you're going to try and play them the games I don't agree with the idea that you can't talk about a game if you haven't played it a lot or all the way through if I'm reading a book for example in the first 80 Pages haven't captivated me then why would I continue reading the book as I feel like I just end up wasting my time sure there might be a load of great things being spoken about in this book or great Stories being told but if it doesn't Captivate me right off the start then that is not my fault as most likely whatever quality you're getting at the beginning and you're not being captivated and hooked in by right there and then feeling that all the way through and it's gonna feel like a drag however games like Valhalla do a very good job of hooking you in they front load the game heavily with things to do areas to explore but when you end up hitting the dips within this game where it ends up slowing down massively in the story you end up doing all the side quests to get enough XP to level up for the next mission then you start to question if you should continue or not one part of you says I've already played this game for 30 hours already so I might as well see where it ends but the other part of you knows that you're about to feel like this for the entire rest of your playthrough it's the exact same thing with a film TV show Game or book if the opening acts of these aren't captivating you enough to the point where you feel the drive to be in the world or the idea that they're wanting you to explore then you need to cut the chord early it's down to them to Captivate you not the other way around so this is an issue but it's one that I believe we as the players can solve and then the last thing of this small list is that they have become too time demanding specifically for the average plan who's only going to be choosing most likely one game to play over the next two to four months after they've finished their shift or school work so because of that a lot of open worlds decide they're going to be as long as they possibly can which is where you get into the issue of whether or not the world is explorable enough and has enough content to constitute enough of an open world title A lot of people will write this off as an idea and I got this within my years gaming dying video but most people who tried to dismantle the idea in my opinion don't have anything going on outside of gaming as their main hobby so really they don't care about this idea in the first place which that isn't meant to be a diss is just realizing that people are different some people are able to play games as their only Hobby and others have other things to focus on ceramics choosing the game that you're going to be putting your time into a very important choice you either have to have done your research about the game and know that it's most likely something you'll enjoy or you have to understand your limits and knowing when to cut the cord a lot of people start to dislike gaming at large when they've played one of these bad titles for a massive amount of time he ends up leaving a massively awful taste in people's mouths so again this is one that is a massive problem that I think can only be solved by the games trying to focus on these two key factors making the game explorable and making the world also feel alive now let's talk about the different types of open worlds and I'm going to be talking about four studios in particular the reason for this is that these four I think are good ways of showing the spectrum of which these games are made and More in particular open world games one side of it you'll have Ubisoft and on the other side of it you'll have eldenra but then in the middle ground you're going to have people like Bethesda and then on the other side of that rock star so let's talk about all four of them what their pros and cons are from how I see it anyway but before I do I want to talk about One Last Thing Before jumping into this that heavily affects open world titles and that is the UI design and how it plays a massive role in developing your open world UI design is massive important to one key feature out of what I mentioned as my two main aspects I want to see in an open world and that is explorability now the UI can affect the way you get immersed into a world but overall if the world is great then this won't matter but the two main comparable ends of this spectrum for UI is going to be Assassin's Creed or the Horizon games anyway where you've got tons of stuff on your map on your compass you can fast travel to every location within 10 meters and there's question marks everywhere on your map so as soon as you've unlocked an area you know exactly within what distance everything is viable to you now this makes people not really want to explore for the right reason the reason that you want people to explore is this idea of wanting to find out what is behind every single Corner this idea to become fascinated by the world that you are in for this period of time however most of the time in these sorts of games you end up exploring solely so that you can get either all the Collectibles or to just remove these annoying question marks off of your screen so you aren't really exploring what you're doing instead is following a line to a so-called reward now a game like Elden ring is something that does the polar opposite of this they reward exploration heavily but for some new players I could definitely see how this can become an issue as with little sense of direction that they give you you can definitely become bored or Fed Up purely because you're impatience to find things around Each corner when there's no traces around which is why I put them both on the opposite ends of the scale because you've got one that gives you way too much information and then the other that in my opinion gives a little bit too little information so now let's talk about all four of these games now that we've got the UI conversation out the way and we're going to start off with the worst UI out there Ubisoft the Ubisoft approach as we're starting off with Ubisoft I think we'll at least give them credit for one thing and that is that the worlds they create within the open world RPGs are easy to understand for the average player who doesn't have a ton of time to sink into games but still wants to explore a world and a time in history so for someone who just wants to experience playing as a viking then Valhalla will be a great game for you or if you want to walk around Paris and feel immersed into this era then you can and you'll enjoy exploring around Unity but if you're wanting to go into a world that makes you want to explore because of your own curiosity then this will definitely not be the one for you the first thing that I'm going to be talking about is going to be the collect-a-thon that is Assassin's Creed games all you have to do is head over to howlongtobeat.com and you'll find out the horrifying truth about AC Valhalla the main story takes about 60 hours to complete the side content adds on 34 hours and to 100 this game you're looking at 139 hours now this would be fine when you realize around 5 and maybe even arguably seven of these Kingdom areas that you're going through in Valhalla don't really progress the plot or add anything of value to the story not only that but I will go as far as to say that these were initially intended to be side missions but they decided to put them into the main story to bloat up the number from 30 hours to 60. now all of this is also if you're an average player and playing through this at an okay rate but let's say you are playing it in a bit more of a relaxed manner then they found that a lot of people will be taking up to 250 hours to complete this game and the sad truth about it is that almost all of this content adds no value to the story or the player that's 10 and a half days in this game that gives you absolutely nothing not even a good story by the end of it so what do they do to try and counterbalance all of this they add tons of Collectibles and this isn't something specific to the new games and in fact is something that Ubisoft just seemed to do since like day one really but when your game is borderline almost all collectibles and you'll probably end up spending 2 much of your time finding random things over the map than actually experiencing a great story and a great open world is ridiculous to me but talking about the story that I've been mentioning is even something that could save this game definitely not I won't be getting into this massively as in the future I will be making an Assassin's Creed video essay about Valhalla but all I have to tell you is that one part of a great open world is its side content or at least side content that complements the world in which they are in but what this game does instead is have side content that is really just Red Dead Redemption 2's random events that lasts on average about two minutes long and then the content that you would have expected to be side content is for some reason shoved into the main story as in they don't seem to have anything to do with the mainline plot that is going on and being pushed but to be fair some do build up the world and this maybe happens three out of seven extra bits that I mentioned that were thrown in into the main story content which if that was actually side content then maybe my thoughts on this game would have been a lot better and maybe not as an negative but for that reason I have to mention this as because of the lack of depth within this game and the massive amount of bloat this game has it ends up ruining the whole experience instead of adding anything of value they add loads of Collectibles instead of having a good story overall that could have been shorter they decide to pump up the number by bloating up the game and taking the side content and shoving it into the mainline Story the game has next to no character that actually feels alive the main characters in The Game feel dead inside the cities are too underpopulated to feel like they're actually alive and sprawling with character so what does this game actually have to offer as an open world experience well the only thing that I can actually think of is the ability to run around in England as a viking and do next to nothing on a regular basis now both of those issues the collect-a-thon and the lack of depth create one issue nobody wanting to explore the open world that the dev team have created due to the fact that it is not being driven to explore for the sake of exploration you're just chasing things when you have a game that doesn't have any depth the UI is telling you where everything is and a massive amount of Collectibles this game ends up becoming a hollow shell of what it could have been the game they wanted to mimic was The Witcher 3. instead of having a compelling story and characters that felt alive you had a boring story and a character that had less emotion than a Witcher instead of Psy content like carnal sins or Wild at Heart we got random events with a guy who can one punch you and I'll be honest I've had more fun in the Random Encounters within rdr2 where I'm being robbed at random so a game that wanted to be The Witcher 3 became litter 3. okay yeah that was a bad joke but it has to be said the game is awful and it like I don't understand how it just confirmed and released we shouldn't really even be comparing the two games as this game does not deserve to be on the same scale as The Witcher 3 but now that we've discussed the Ubisoft approach to open worlds which is the same across the AC games the Far Cry games and for some reason Guerrilla games decided when making the Horizon games that they were going to make them like this let's move swiftly on from the disgrace of an open world game that we were just talking about to what I would class as the grandfather of modern day open world games that is Skyrim now yes I'm very aware that there was other games out there before Skyrim but none of them can stand up to Skyrim from a sales perspective or just any form of spectrum of numbers across the board the Bethesda approach now I've already mentioned it at the beginning but I definitely need to talk about the opening of this game once again now this is something that all great open worlds do as I said earlier as I'll also be talking about Red Dead Redemption 2 and Elden ring I'll just show you the differences between all the way that they did it versus Valhalla now literally within the very same second of your character being playable you can blatantly see how big the world is and you end up within five minutes going to a Viewpoint that kind of gives you an idea of scale now this would be decent if they had actually set up the beginning moments as you in a very small location or even giving us a sense of actual true size but the open world that is shown is nothing more than icand they show you a massive open world at this point to try and make you feel the sense of a massive game when you realize how quickly you get around the areas because you have no reason to explore you don't have any interest in walking around the world they don't give you any drive to be immersed and they don't even try and add things in that might make you feel like you're taking the unforeseen path but reason why this isn't in my mind a good opening to set up an open world is because they don't utilize the sense of enclosure and the open feeling that you're going to be getting once embracing the actual World they just throw you in with literally zero sense of scale of what is small and what is big and effectively just want you to be amazed by the sheer size of the world and thinking wow this map looks so big whereas someone like Skyrim you're going through the mountains you're enclosed behind you you're confined to a car and finally once you're able to move you have to spend the next 10 to 15 minutes walking through a cave that if you end up playing the first part of this game the way that they intended you to play it you'll be spending the first 30 minutes of this game enclosed and finally once you're able to get out and see the world of Skyrim for the first time you were just amazed and you feel that sense of Freedom that you didn't just before purely because of the amount of time that you've just spent locked away you end up feeling true freedom to explore and that is the key to making open world feel truly open for exploration Elden ring does this to a degree but mixes in the Valhalla approach of a map scale with Elden ring you run around the tutorial area in a cave very closed in everything like that you open the doors and you have this massive scale of grandiose you are then teleported from one area of the map to another like I mentioned earlier and then you can open your map and see the sheer perspective and it will make you think this opening area that I can see in front of me is nothing in comparison to the rest of this game Red Dead Redemption 2 is slightly different they spend the first two hours in the snow and in a slow smaller scale of the map and you're following the main route that the game wants you to take you're kind of confined to what they want you to do but once you get to Horseshoe Overlook you're now able to utilize that Overlook and see far into the distance you're able to ride to Valentine and continue looking around for whatever you see fit but not only that but you realize just the sheer size of the world now that you're let off the leash to do whatever you want and because of this I do think that Skyrim is the epitome of how an open world game should be set up to start making you feel enclosed and then giving you that freedom let's talk about the UI of Skyrim as well for a moment now this game definitely does get a lot of flack for its UI but overall I think this game actually has a well thought out UI for open world exploration now the differences between let's say Valhalla or any other AC game and Skyrim is that with Assassin's Creed they tell you where the treasure is on the map and just allow you to find the easiest and quickest route to run after it and they just send you off in the direction follow it and don't even think whereas Skyrim there's no question marks on your map it's only on your compass so you can only go to the things that are close within your facility so it forces you to walk around the map if you're just fast traveling everywhere you won't explore the map properly which is why I don't think that they go out of their way to try and like prompt you to fast travel everywhere even though you now know with those question marks on your compass that there is something around which is most likely a band at camp but it still gives you that sense of there being something out there and whatever it might be is normally connected to some form of story element or at least adds a sense of care character to the world whereas Assassin's Creed they just change that full Collectibles is that really that great instead of having you know Bandit encampments and you know storylines being told out in these different random settings a giant camp or you might find some random statue or you might find a devil worshiper well not devil Daedra worshiper instead what you get is hey this random ancient book cool that all these gold markers on your map are all treasure go find them like none of it adds character it is just finding Collectibles for the sake of it Skyrim is designed to encourage Exploration with breadcrumbs whereas Elden ring is allowing you exploration by the unknown and Valhalla is simply being walked by your owner Ubisoft and you are their dog now one thing that I find really interesting about Skyrim's open world is how big it feels yet it's smaller than almost any of the other three now I'm not gonna lie to you obviously Elden ring feels like 10 times if not even more than that bigger than Skyrim but if you compare let's say Red Dead Redemption 2 AC Valhalla Odyssey it's kind of absurd the difference in scale of these games yet Skyrim seems to feel like a similar sized world now I think the real key thing to this is based off the traversal methods of each of these games with Skyrim you're most the time going to be spent on foot whereas with red dead you're going to be on your horse most the time if you walked around on foot of Red Dead I guarantee you the world will feel way bigger than Skyrim however because most of us don't spend our time walking around Red Dead um you end up on your horse all the time it ends up kind of making the world feel a little bit smaller than it actually is you have Assassin's Creed Valhalla and odyssey which are sure massive games but they have zero character to them Skyrim feels like you're playing in a world and which hits its own place even though that we're fully aware that we're within a fantasy setting that Strays away from the believability of a world something like Skyrim with the Civil War affecting the whole region vampires lurking in the shadows thieves having eyed up places to Rob Undead holding the dragon Lord's strongholds and much more ends up giving this world so much more character and the lore just adds to it now because of something like the 60 second rule which Skyrim does utilize to a degree but I'd say it's more like a 60 to 90 second version of the rule he ends up captivating you even more you'll always find something to do or look at within the next 60 to 90 seconds of your game now all of that basically means that the world doesn't feel bloated it doesn't end up feeling for a lack of depth or feeling as if too much has been shoved in versus let's say like Valhalla as it keeps you engaged now because of the activities and the fact that they make sense within the world that they're taking place in the world never feels bloated and actually keeps you engaged but this is where I will Levy at least a little bit of criticism towards this game is that the fact that the areas are very copy-paced when you look at it obviously a lot of them are just fetch quests however for the time I don't really think there was no other way of doing it interestingly and I would probably argue if anything it's kind of the same with literally every single game ever almost every single game is a fetch Quest or go murder this person almost every single one so I find it a very hard criticism to truly Levy but what this game does really well is its believability within its setting it has NPCs that interact with one another and they combine everything including the lore the NPCs the world design everything and the stories being told to completely make this world feel believable and something you want to be within and explore I think the best way of showcase seeing an idea of how great site content can help complement the world is just looking at Skyrim or The Witcher in which both of these games have amazing side content that heavily complements the world and it makes sense within the setting that it's in for example in Skyrim you've got the quest missing in action which is one Quest that if you don't interact with the greymanes aka the family and Whiterun who are the ones who support the Stormcloaks they're part of this family War that's in Whiterun that's going on where these two families are constantly arguing about the Stormcloak Rebellion this Quest will take you on an investigation to learn what happened to Borland greymane you don't know if it was the battle borns who are behind the capture or not after plenty of work you end up finding out that the thalm or have him captive and you're gonna go rescue him now this Quest is rooted fully within the world that it inhabits the Civil War and the Thalmor the ones who want to crush anyone who is sympathetic to the storm cloaks or worship Talos and you're then sent off into the cold mountains to help feel fully ingrained into Skyrim and the next Quest truly is the definition of common the world and in turn the open world in which it inhabits and that is the foresworn conspiracy however I'm not going to go massively into depth with this as I'm kind of surprised by how many people haven't played this questline I've seen plenty of videos online where people in the comments section saying I didn't even know this Quest existed effectively you'll go around Markov learning about the law and sentiment that the people have around this group called The Force War you'll find out who they are and what they stand for and all around it's an amazing Quest that heavily complements the world in which it inhabits and making the open world feel so much more believable now I think just because I know that I'll get some backlash for purely supporting Skyrim and hardly having anything negative to say obviously I'll just mention again the whole idea of it being really repetitive honestly at least they don't have a load of Collectibles within their open world they don't like yes they have a load of fetch quests but I'd rather have fetch quests to be honest than running around a map and collecting feathers collecting random treasure chests collecting random just nothingness that gives no value like 10 times I would rather have fetch quests and go murder someone quests than that overall though I think Skyrim does a great job of using its story side content and law to complement the world and in turn the open world because its UI design is also like I mentioned allowing you to follow breadcrumbs to explore everything about the way Skyrim is made is made to complement this idea of going out and exploring in the believable and Alive world next up on the spectrum of open World Games is going to be Rockstar and more specifically red dead 2. now is debating which game I was going to choose but I've chosen rdr2 for two reasons one is because it's the most recent game that they've released so it's the most up-to-date with what their best work is however it's not the main reason as if I was using that as my main argument to choose different games then obviously I would have either chosen Fallout 4 or 76 for Bethesda so I'm not going to use that as my way of cherry picking something my actual reason is because in my opinion this is Rockstar's best open world game that they have ever made so I'll now talk about a few things that made this world feel so great and then I'll go over my only negative takeaway from it but this game is in my mind the definition of a world existing outside of you or at least the feeling of such a thing the world is believable entirely from the moments you're in the Hills to the train robbery in sandini and that is the first thing that I believe Rockstar as a whole does really well but Red Dead 2 really highlights is the ability to make a world that feels believable with characters that come across in the same way now I would say this game definitely is more of a game that feels alive than it actually makes you want to explore however it's not for the reason that it is not engaging to explore this game definitely encourages you to go out and explore and do random things from everything from random events helping the gang hunting side quests but overall this game's story takes such a precedent and is so good and so gripping that you're just compelled to continue on with it so it's kind of one of those weird things that the story is so good but it kind of takes you away from the open world elements it's very random but it's something that I find very interesting now because of that I was less likely to explore on my first playthrough and I've done a bit more on my second but overall it just engaged me so much in that story that I ended up just falling in love with the world itself that was created as a side piece I was in love with the story but in turn it made me actually love the world now the way that this game is set up is to try and get you to do World activities that are just a part of being being a person and a member of this gang they want you to go out hunting for food and pelts they want you to go out and do loan shark missions and collect debt go out drinking hunt down Outlaws there seem to be a lot worse off or just generally more insane than the members within the gang most of the time anyway but they also try and set up the world to feel genuine and real with things like the gang's conversations at the campfires this is something that loads people will talk about but not many people actually sit and observe the relationships between all of these characters and how much effort was put into building these characters to help complement building the world and in turn make you want to explore like I said earlier an open world game is only as good as its world or its believability and the drive to explore and those two things are what all great open worlds attempt to try and have together but many of them can only Excel at one and kind of be okay at the other but not only this but even though the story is really compelling and makes you want to keep doing more to know what is next in this game it then makes you travel the distances is that you have to to do all these different missions and on the way you'll always find yourself doing something else along the way you might find yourself helping someone back to their local town and then in that town you end up meeting a couple of locals who need some help and then it takes you 20 to 30 minutes to do that random bit of side content or you'll almost be ready to go and do a mission and as you cross the bridge another gang recognizes you and tries to hold you up attempting to kill you for all of your belongings but none of it feels annoying or in the way of your goal to continue the story as it all complements the world and continues to make the world feel more alive and believable none of it is obscure if it doesn't make sense within the world that it's thriving within and that is something that a lot of games struggle with and they end up irritating the player when they shove in constant things to try and make the world feel believable but in turn makes people remember that they're just playing a game now you might hear me praising these Random Encounters and thinking isn't this exactly what I was criticizing Assassin's Creed Valhalla about yes it was however these two games make fundamentally different decisions on how they approach this Rockstar took the approach of genuine surprise whereas Valhalla might have been a random event That Is Random in nature of what is going on but it isn't when you realize that all of the side quest markers are all Random Encounters they can't be Random Encounters anymore once they're being given markers to go in find this is something that they did really well within rdr2 as it's something that they did alongside the genuine side content so the Random Encounters felt like they made sense and didn't break immersion what these Random Encounters do for a game world and more importantly in open world is that they make them a believable experience as if you were there living in the cowboy western experience that probably wouldn't have been able to get safely around you would have felt like you were in fear every now and again of being robbed or being stopped this game makes you feel that at times when it happens the first time when you're a new player and you end up getting robbed for the first time and you don't know how to deal with it you're not used to how the game plays you're probably gonna die or get robbed and you end up questioning on your chance of getting from A to B am I going to get held up again adding a genuine sense of humanity to this game now talking about the A to B experience this game does something that people who love Elden ring consider that the perfect game and the perfect example of an open world would class as an issue and that is feeling as if you are going from A to B it's definitely something that you can sense once you're like 40 hours into this game so you have to have put a lot of time in before this starts to really kick in that it feels like you're going from A to B but the difference between going from one location to another within this game or let's say Valhalla is there in Valhalla you're literally just going there and you'll probably put your horse into Auto running whereas in this game on your road there you'll probably find other random things to do or then be sent off in another Direction you'll then be like oh what's that in the wilderness oh is this very close to where this location is for me to go hunting oh is that a villager who needs some help like there's always random things to do along the way whereas with Valhalla you'll find yourself just putting your horse in Auto riding mode for five minutes straight As there's nothing to do but being bored on your journey there so all in all it makes the experience of going from A to B and Valhalla awful and then A to B in this game at least somewhat more bearable as you have things to do that complement the world and in design of everything Auto horses in my opinion are the bane of open World Games giving people the option to do this only does two things one is to make players not have to deal with having to be focused on riding your horse for five minutes to something you know like in Valhalla that can come up to like 10 minutes of horse riding but the issue is that there is nothing to do along the way as there is zero reason to go off of the Beeson path and red dead does have this feature so obviously you'd think why am I not completely dismantling this well to be honest I never used it I rarely did uh for two main reasons one I think a lot of players won't use it because overall it's not as immersive when you're using like you know the Cinematic camera mode and honestly I find the Cinematic camera just too off-putting to use regularly so I never use Tuesday which then kept me ingrained in the game thinking about the game more and more with Valhalla literally you just press one button in I think it's the thumbstick and it just acts as if nothing's happened it just shoves you on the path so there's literally zero reason not to use it why would you ever not just use it it makes no sense and because of that you end up spending like out of let's say an hour session playing the game you'll spend probably 20 minutes of that with your auto horse so you're on your phone scrolling Tick Tock whilst waiting for your horse to get to your destination and that's a really bad thing for any open world game and for the very other side of the spectrum of open world games from the Ubisoft method comes from software and their standout game that destroyed the gaming World in 2022 one game of the year and simply put is an amazing looking and feeling open world game Elden ring now a lot of what I've previously discussed in the way of an open world genre gets used in this game however this game doubles triples if not quadruples or even quintuples down on this idea of players exploration however the same thing that I would say is a massive positive towards this game's open world is also the negative and that is the lack of information and Direction before the Elden ring stands come at me and tell me to shut up and that I have a bad opinion on this let me at least try and explain it to a degree so the benefits of next to no information is to go off and do what you see fit go and explore find out what's around the corner and be amazed when you find it you find yourself running around finding caves catacombs and Dragons you'll roam around the world in pure awe of everything you're seeing but sadly this is also its negative due to the lack of information this game puts a lot of players off of progressing within this game which isn't because the game isn't good but simply because when people are playing this game they probably don't have the patience to just look around for myself I found myself just ending up Googling a lot of things I was getting impatient with exploring and this game I think does a great job of wanting you and pushing you to explore however it ends up in a way using that against itself because you're trying to explore enough but eventually you can only explore so much but to be fair this game wasn't made for everyone I do think this game is an amazing open world and this game is the epitome of making an open world that you want to explore even when you don't know what is going on you find yourself just kind of walking around riding around for hours completely bewildered about everything around you and just feeling the need to see what is around the corner which is something that very few games can say they are able to accomplish it is why I think fundamentally this game is great for people who just want to explore another world but if you want something with a living world then you would go for something more similar to a Red Dead 2 or if you wanted to get a blend of both of these then I'd say Skyrim and or the best thing might be The Witcher 3. now yes Odin ring does have a good story but overall it's not its compelling Point that's used towards getting new players in the door nobody talks about the Amazing Story of Elden ring when discussing this game and because of all that overall I do feel like I have the drive to explore the world I just don't have the feeling as if the world feels believable real or in its own thing it never feels as if you could imagine it being a thing that's existing and doing things outside of the player clicking play When I close Elden ring I would feel as if everything is just paused itself whereas a game like The Witcher 3 feels like everything would still go on the Casual farmer would continue trying to sell his crops the monsters will still be out trying to snatch people and the cities will be fully functioning now this is something that you can probably just wave Away by saying it's a stupid argument no gaming world will continue when the player's not playing it but it's the factor of imagination games are meant to tap into your imagination as well and for me that heavily helps the idea of the world feeling alive and immersing you within it but all in all this game does one thing really well and that is the ability to get people for hours upon hours exploring so now we know my general overall thoughts of why our class is the four ways of making an open world game from one end of being complete trash maybe except for the outstanding graphics and imagery without having so much going on with its UI the open world feels like nothing more than being guided around the map by a personal tour guide to something like Elden ring where there's next to no guide in how to go around the map and making you want to explore because of it however that can end up becoming in a way overwhelming now if I was to choose one game out of all of the ones that I've mentioned which one would I say in my opinion does the open World Experience almost perfectly obviously there'll be a few issues but I have to say it has to be Skyrim now some Runners up for me would be The Witcher 3 and Red Dead 2 however I have to choose Skyrim the reason for this is that I feel like it does the most things right all together even if it doesn't excel in any particular thing it does everything at a good enough Pace to make the open world feel like a good experience now again let's go over why class is the two key factors in what makes an open world game great and then I'll add a few extra things on there to not up the bow the first was to give you a drive to explore and the second one was to have a world that feels alive believable and if you weren't playing the world would Exist by itself for myself Skyrim does all of this all round the best again remember that is my opinion but uh yeah it doesn't stump the player like Elden ring might and it doesn't give the player all the bits of information like Assassin's Creed titles wood again this is my ideal open world and if you find someone like Elden Ring's full ability to explore without any hand-holding perfect then that is completely fine but for me eventually my patients ran out and it made me look everything up eventually and for a lot of players I wouldn't be surprised if they just eventually stopped playing it because of the same reason that makes this game so great I love the fact that it made me want to explore but again I would rather have the Skyrim approach when you load up Skyrim for the first time you're met with a beautiful open world that gives you some markers but not many where you can go and follow them to your quest objectives if you wish to but the moment you leave the cave you're able to do whatever you want to an extent anyway obviously you still need to do some parts of the main story to do everything however all across the board you can pretty much do whatever the ability to explore the world with nothing on your map showing you where to go means that the player has full freedom to do whatever the only things giving you an idea of what to do is the question marks on your compass so you know that there's things around but you don't know exactly what is where and what is the most densely packed area of content the characters you meet along the way complement the world itself and when roaming around you feel as if you've explored every inch of the map available to you from the hidden caves by the top of solitude by the Sea and the Dawn Guard all the way in the mountains of Riften all of it feels like you've stumbled across something new and cool every single time even when things feel a bit copy pasted it ends up making you feel like you've come across a story that complements exploring an entirely new area now I do think Skyrim lacks in two elements which is size and cities scar makes an amazing use of its map yes the game is Big especially for the time that it was released however The Witcher 3 has novograd which in my opinion is the best city in the whole of gaming and it feels incredibly alive and Suits the world and when walking around the map of The Witcher you go around a massive world that feels genuine and utilizes the 42nd rule perfectly now half in Elder Scrolls 6 we get a lot of what we got in Skyrim but with more AI to make cities feel a bit more alive then that would be great I do think the game never at any point feels like it's lacking this massive city as Everything feels too scale like sure I wish I had something like Nova garage within Skyrim however before that's happened it would require the game to be a lot bigger because if you're gonna have a city the size of novograd it would probably take up like the whole left corner of the map so it's kind of hard to say that it's definitely a good thing unless they added even more NPCs into the game and Skyrim has one key element which is almost every single NPC has its role has its story has a background almost every single one obviously there's some that don't but generally speaking almost every single city has NPCs in them that makes sense for why they're there they have their own individual stories their own characters everything like that whereas something like novograd the city feels like a genuine City but almost like I'd say 95 if not more than that 99 of what you're seeing doesn't really matter because they do nothing outside of making the city feel densely packed so I've now spoken to you about the current open World Market or at least how I see it in this video so let's jump back to those initial reasons as to why open World Games seem to feel boring now the first was the idea of us becoming spoiled by choice now I do think to say that where spoil is going to be an overall bad all-round take the idea of us being spoiled would mean that we have so much that we have just become rotten which I wouldn't say is the case we've had a lot of open World Games sure but only a small amount of them have actually been great maybe you might say that companies like cdpr Bethesda Rockstar from soft and a couple others out there have been able to set the bar so high that the rest have massive mountains to climb but if this was the case and it was our expectations that are too high for all of these releases then the simple answer to quo expectations would be be realistic to your fans showcase gameplay that actually shows off the game fully and doesn't mislead people stick to what you're good at and try to adapt if you need to and don't just make a u-turn on your franchise because the Witcher was massively successful and expect zero backlash when you sell a game that has the idea that it's going to be back to its roots are built in but in reality you're just playing as a viking sure we might have high expectations from time to time but it's not down to Unreal reasons if we have unrealistic expectations that would be understandable but the expectations a lot of players end up having is down to Prior experiences that they've had with other games and just wanting slight improvements on top of them normally it's not like they don't stem from this prior experience for me my expectations for something like Elder Scrolls 6 would be you know having some more up-to-date Graphics than Skyrim um I'd then want a new engine which I think they've already said they're doing I don't remember and then a combat system that is slightly better but I'm not too fussed on that I probably guess though that everyone would have this thought process for people who say that Elden ring is the new standard for games in my opinion isn't correct I think they've set the standard of at least releasing a game that runs relatively well on release yes it had issues on launch I wouldn't say it was at the same degree as a lot of games out there right now the open world is amazing for exploration but personally I don't think it exactly made the ceiling massively higher than anything The Witcher 3 had previously done all around I can't say that if you were comparing them both from an open world RPG perspective I don't think either one of them is better than the other I'd say it's a very hard argument to make that The Witcher 3 is better or worse than Eldon ring purely because it's a very hard debate to have when both of them are objectively different games even though they're within the same fantasy open world RPG genre they both go about it in two different ways so overall I don't think that we're spoiled by choice and that's the issue I do genuinely think that just companies out there every now and again make amazing games that give us new expectations of hey give us a game like this game Elder Scrolls 6 has to be as good as The Witcher 3. there is a reason and that is because the only game that was comparable to The Witcher 3 at the time was Skyrim and that was it so that is what it's comparison is it's not going to be Elden ring it will probably just be Skyrim and The Witcher 3. so all around I'd say is a bad argument to say that it's because of us being spoiled so let's jump into the next one have too many games become shallow in content now thought about this some more whilst doing this video and overall I would say no however considering Ubisoft are the only company that are a big Contender just pushing out open world after open world with AC Far Cry and Watchdogs we have to at least say Ubisoft are currently tainting the state of the open world games maybe not the whole amount of the open world games that are coming out that we're getting are actually shallowing content but it isn't like all of them are great I know that many people like to say the games like Spider-Man and The Horizon games are outstanding open worlds but frankly Spider-Man is almost perfect but it is shallowing content if you look at it you might be able to swing around New York and it feels as if you are actually playing as Spider-Man but outside of the feeling of being Spider-Man the world doesn't have much character the story acting in movement is what upholstered as this game and I still stand by that this game is an amazing game but not for the open world and the Horizon games in my opinion are just Ubisoft games released by another company that are exclusive to Sony now that's about it now I know that the Horizon games have got a massive fan base but I've never really been able to get into them on the same level as any of the other great open world games like The Witcher 3 Skyrim Elden ring or Red Dead 2 and even Spider-Man so again it's not that all of these games are shallow in depth but I think Ubisoft and some other games out there they're being released have kind of Tainted the market and made them feel more shallow because they've been Mass producing them have openworld games become exhausting I would say yes across the board if you're a player who's wanted to play an open world game in 2023 you'll have many different options we'll just go with Elden ring Assassin's Creed Valhalla Horizon forbidden West Red Dead 2 Witcher 3 and goes Toshiba altogether to complete the story inside content of all of these games It's Gonna Take You 417 hours for all of them so just over 17 days even if we were to take the shortest game on this list ghost of tsushima then you would still need to dedicate an hour a day for basically two months to get this to a hundred percent which does now mean that you're buying a game to commit to them especially now that you're reaching the 70 pound price tag for games so you're now entering territory of not only is the money worth it but also is the time in spending the next 60 hours of my life worth it due to the general length of a lot of these games I would say they've become exhausting which is why many of us need to take an extended break when it comes to open world games I became used to the length of these games so much so that when I see a game that's only 20 to 70 hours long I end up questioning its quality which is really stupid I would say a game like the Ezio collection well the three games technically and I'll what I'll do just for the sake of reality it's two games then a DLC really if you were to look at the Quality and value and so on all of that is the exact same length as assassin discrete Valhalla but one game has so much more character so much more depth to it and the story is so much better with the better characters across the board yet one has 60-hour story The Others is a 20 hour a 25 hour and a 12-hour game it becomes exhausting as you know you're going to be dedicating a lot of time for a game and that is also connected to the last question of whether or not the time sink of openworld games is worth it especially if you're gonna buy it on release not knowing if it's any good to jump in beforehand now the reason why their length of games is an issue is because it's perpetrating the gaming Market in general people start to Value length over quality and I think Valhalla is basically the best example of this if you bought it on release or within the first month you would have fallen prey to almost every single review out there that was saying this game was great almost every single one was saying that it was a decent game all round it's then after that month that they then added in what they claimed they would never do which was XP boosters people then realized after you know they've been playing the game it really did not deserve the high ratings because it's boring the characters have no depth the world looks great but the open world sucks but it took time for people to realize this because there's so much time you have to sink into it so to get Day One release of hey here's my review of it would have required a lot of time and a lot of YouTubers weren't given access to copies early enough to give a Justified review of this game all of this adds into one issue which is uh sunk cost fallacy a lot of games I feel like use this to their advantage which is reeling you in and then you've played so much that you feel like you need to finish it because otherwise you've just wasted all this time all I'll say is instead of buying a game on release or near release wait for reviews from creators that you trust or reviewers that you trust the people that you shouldn't take reviews from are the people who gave death Loop a 10 out of 10 when it came out that's for one but um overall I'd say like for example for myself when Mirage comes out I will be getting it on release because I want to see how the series goes but also I want to make plenty of content about about it so you'll see many videos about it and I think I will give you a overall good opinion from a Assassin's Creed fan perspective so as I've mentioned in this video many times what our class as a good open world is the ability to make you feel like you're in a real world that feels alive and gives you the drive to explore and want to be there I think these two things if done correctly with great law a great story and characters but Above All Else a UI that complements the open world design will allow players to truly enjoy whatever game it is that they're within are open worlds boring not all of them but I'd definitely say this is the superhero genre of gaming and it's become a bit more stale than it used to be yes we might have had Alden ring come out last year but for one Elden ring we have 10 valhallas so overall I do think they're getting boring purely because they are starting to become bloated messes that seem to put length over quality I'd say that open mods have their place but I'd love to see more games like dishonored Where you feel like you have a load of options they're given to you and the sense of Freedom as an open world but within a Sandbox and put gameplay and even story first over the game being an open world and being massive for the sake of it now again I love a lot of the games that I've mentioned within this video but I wanted to talk about open worlds in the current state of them in my opinion if you guys did enjoy this video please make sure to leave a like And subscribe for more content this is my first video essay of the year and I can't wait to do even more there's going to be one every three weeks hopefully that's the goal every single three weeks you'll see a video essay so if you do want to see more of this content make sure to subscribe for more in the future and if you want to support the channel further than just subscribing or leaving a like or commenting on this video feel free to join members only section of the channel they're the lowest one currently is two pounds a month it would be amazing if you wanted a support obviously you don't have to currently um once I've got people in and want to seek more content and that sort of thing then they can dictate what I produce for them basically that's the goal so yeah with that all being said hopefully you guys enjoyed this video if you did make sure you like do subscribe and I'll see you guys in the next one on go check out the other channels and have a good one

Channel: Exiled

Views: 1,832,593

Keywords: Open Worlds, Open world games, Good open worlds, Open worlds Video Essay, Red Dead 2, RDR2, EldenRing, Elden Ring, Red Dead Redemption 2, Skyrim, Witcher 3, Assassins Creed, Ac Valhalla, Valhalla

Id: S4_mw8AkfuA

Length: 55min 0sec (3300 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 20 2023