It seems like every major studio is competing to make ꦫthe biggest and best open world these days. These games have nuanced freedom of movement which lead to multiple ways of experiencing them. Everybody’s playthrough will be different. As gamers ask𒉰 for more and more player agency, studios respond with bigger and bigger worlds, with more side-quests, more NPCs, and more random events - but it’s not always a good solution.
Big games run the risk of becoming bloated with repetitive fetch quests that add little to the story or flavour of the world – 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed is a huge culprit of this, as many of its games are bloated with huge ♎landscap🌃es that feel incredibly lifeless despite the NPCs within them. I am not against missions ಌand events that don’t directly🎃 contribute to the plot. In fact, I think they’re prime opportunities for making a truly immersive open world, but only if their purpose is to immerse you and not add hours to your playtime.
I loved many of the side-quests of The Witcher 3, many of which t💧ied into other missions or familiar NPCs. Red Dead Redemption 2 has an incredible open world peppered with opportunities to dig deeper into the game and its colourful characters – I remember Marko Dragic’s whole series of side-missions with awe. Skyrim, of course, has many que꧋sts now considered iconic, like the one where you murder a woman for a creepy orphaned child.
There are so many opportunities to create interesting side-quests in open-world games, but it gets more and more difficult as the worlds get bigger. You need more writers, and obviously, studios would rather not hire more people and affect their profit margins. So we end up with huge worlds that feel empty, with glorified fetch quests that vary only with what you’re finding, where, why, and for who. These quest🌱s tell small stories, but leave NPCs flat and boring. It’s a waste of time, and we’d be better off without these sections at all, but studios prioritise marketing the ‘biggest open world yet’ over making that world feel full of life.
Ever since I started playing Yakuza 0 last year, these issues have only become more glaring. Yakuza 0, and every other Yakuza game, are very small in comparison, with characters exploring a minor district in their city. But these districts are so full of life that it’s difficult not to fall in love with them. In Yakuza 0 alone, you can enter many different restaurants, all with different menus, and eat every item. You can go to Club Sega and play the claw game, as well as many di🎉fferent arcade games. You can enter a Don Quijote and buy snacks, drinks, clothes and even items for Pocket Circuit cars. You can go to bars, buy fancy clothes ༒at up-scale stores, watch videos at Gandhara (if you know you know), whack some balls at a batting cage… the list goes on.
That’s not even the most impressive part of the open world – that would be the NPCs. Yakuza is famous for its sub-stories, where you meet NPCs throughout the game and get pulled into their lives. And boy, are they crazy lives. In the game, I’ve met shy dominatrixes, human statues, punks who ⛦didn’t know how to act like punks, a cult leader, and a we𝓰ird, very horny man wearing only underwear and named Mr. Libido. That’s not even half of it. Just walking around, you’re likely to randomly encounter somebody you can interact with and start a sub-story where you get looped into some weird shit. Every story is a surprise, and each new interaction tells me something new about the character I’m playing. That’s the glorious nature of this game.
So of course, playing open-world games makes me a little annoyed now. I’ll meet an NPC in a game and they’ll be completely normal, just wanting me to do something for them, and I’ll do it, and be rewarded with a small cash gift or item. What do you mean you’re just a regular person and you want me to find your husband for you? What do you mean you’re mꦛaking a potion and you need me to collect ingredients? That’s not fun. I want side-quests wher𓆉e the reward is awe that Yakuza actually does that. I want to feel a little more in love with the game and its characters afterwards.
That’s not what I’m getting with these big open worlds. Some of them still surprise me, but others are full of pointless quests meant to fill up a list of things to do while adding nothing. Why keep making games of this scale, instituting crunch and releasing buggy games when you could just scope your projects well and make worlds that feel alive? I’m tired 🤪of sinking tens of hours into a game’s side-missions only to realise at the end of it that I gained nothing from it, that not a single one was memorable. Give me smaller worlds, dense with detail – give me more Yakuza.
