[Falcon] Open world games
have gotten pretty advanced.
The worlds are big, amazing
and more dense than ever
and yet there’s still
some stuff that just shouldn’t be there.
Hi folks, it’s Falcon
and today on “Gameranx,”
10 things open world games
need to stop doing immediately.
At number 10, launching in a buggy state.
It’s a real minefield out there
for people who like open world games
especially if you’re the type
of person who likes to get
a game the day it comes out.
‘Cause a lot of these, they
are a buggy mess on launch day
like the recent “Saints Row,”
“Cyberpunk 2077,” “Assassins Creed Unity,”
these are some of the
more prominent examples
but almost every open
world game has some issues
that have to be dealt with at launch.
I mean, I get it.
These are some of the biggest
and most complex games out there.
So like it’s actually understandable
that there’s gonna be bugs.
I’m not saying
like every single game has
to be absolutely perfect
with zero bugs in it at launch,
these games are just too big for that.
What I am saying is
that some of these games
at launch ere unacceptable,
like just doing basic stuff.
If that’s a problem or you’re seeing
like graphical glitches all the time
to the point where it’s
actually detracting
from what’s going on,
there’s something wrong.
“Cyberpunk” managed to get
to a mostly functional state
after years of patching,
but it’s hard to forget
just how rough that game
was when it first came out.
And if anything, the recent
“Saints Row” was worse.
Like most of “Cyberpunk’s”
stuff was visual glitches.
Some of it really detracted from the game
but it was visual glitches.
“Saints Row” had some completely
game breaking stuff in it.
Like sometimes it was not
possible to shoot a gun
in an open world crime game.
That’s ridiculous.
“No Man’s Sky” is
another infamous example.
We famously have made videos
about this game on both
its good and bad times
but this game wasn’t just
buggy when it came out.
It was kind of barely a game.
The developers didn’t give
up on it though and it’s gone
on to great success after years
of free patches and updates.
But it was rough, like rough.
Also they said a bunch of
stuff was gonna be there
that wasn’t, also they faked a tech demo
and the fact that they turned
it around as drastically
as they did is incredibly
impressive actually.
But the story in “No Man’s Sky”
and we wouldn’t call common, right?
Especially when you’re talking
about smaller developers working
on what amounts to be an independent game.
A lot of open world games
remain broken to this day.
Like the PC ports of the prototype games,
they’re published by
Activision of all people.
But trying to play these
games on a modern PC is,
well, it’s an exercise and frustration.
There’s a lot of issues and they’re not
like fun bugs like visual
glitches that make you laugh.
They’re just freezes and crashes.
Like even some of the best
games have bugs and issues.
“Elden Ring” still struggles
with some stuttering
on PC and I remember running into a lot
of problems with “Horizon Forbidden West”
when it first came out.
Most of those bugs have
been patched out by now
but I’d rather not have dealt
with them at all, you know?
At number nine, not letting
you name your save files
or only having auto saves.
Open world games are huge, complex
and can take hundreds
of hours to complete.
So it’s kind of bizarre how few
of them actually have decent save systems.
That is to say, is it that much to ask
to have these games let
you name your save file
so that you can mark your progress?
I know most of the games are built
for consoles where typing
can be pretty awkward
but at least give us the
option if we want it, you know?
If you wanna go back to a specific section
of a game before a major
choice or something
then finding the specific
save file is really annoying.
Like I don’t really wanna sift
through about 100 save
house saves or whatever
just to guess the date and
time I made a save that I want.
I know I’m kinda dreaming on this one
’cause there’s so many open world games
where just being able to make
a manual save is a luxury.
Like so many of these games
are auto save or nothing now.
The amount of open world
games that do this is just
like out of control at this point
and they really just rub salt in the wound
by not giving you a way to
replay emissions or anything.
So you wanna go back to a
certain part of the game.
Tough luck.
Your only option is to
start this 100 hour game
from the very beginning.
I don’t wanna start the game over again.
I just wanna play this cool part again.
Is that a lot? Is that so much to ask?
I mean, at least now manual saving is
again becoming more common in games
but it’s still not everywhere.
Open world games need to cut this out.
Put in manual saving,
let me name my saves is
that much to ask really.
And number eight is when character
creation comes out wrong.
This is just as much as an RPG
problem as an open world one.
But at least with RPGs
they usually just start
out with a character
creator right at the start
while open world games,
they get cute with it.
You know what we’re talking about here?
We, you’ve all been there,
you’ve spent a long time
meticulously creating the
perfect character in all the settings.
You start the game and
they just don’t look right.
It’s a never ending problem
that still pops up all over the place.
Games really wanna show
off their characters
so they use like flattering lighting
and high detail models
for the character creator.
But when you exit it,
your character gets hit
with an ugly stick
because the flat lighting
in the actual game, you
know, using less resources
and all that, certain games try their best
to give you the tools to make
your character look right,
like different lighting
options in the creator.
But it’s never perfect.
Certain games make it so you can change
everything about your character later.
But most games limit things
to just make up and hair and clothes.
So if you screw up during
the initial creation,
you’re stuck with the freak
you’ve mistakenly created.
This is when an open world game’s tendency
to show off becomes an issue
because you wanna try again
but you’re gonna be stuck
through a long opening
sequence all over again.
You might have to replay the prologue
as a faceless character and only after all
that does the game let you
customize your character again.
It’s the worst.
It’s also the reason why a bunch
of opening sequences to games
are burned into my brain.
At least make it so you
can skip the prologue
if you’ve seen it already.
It’s not like it makes a
difference how I do there.
I just want to change the character.
Why do some games have to
make this so difficult?
And number seven, making the
worlds way too big and empty.
One of the most appealing things
about an open world game is
when you can see things
like a mountain or a city
in the distance and then
you can actually go there.
I know everybody jokes
about the Todd Howard line,
“See that mountain?
You can go there,” but
I mean there’s still
something impressive
about that On some level.
A big open world can still be impressive
but some games go a little overboard
and make the world bigger,
but forget to fill it
with the stuff that
actually makes exploring an
open world interesting.
So you got this gigantic map
but not much to do in it.
A lot of games that I would have
in the biggest open
world games are like this
like “The Crew 2” which
is meant to recreate the
entire United States in an enormous,
at least for a video
game, 1,900 square miles.
That’s an impressive number,
but if you actually play the game,
you quickly notice how much
of it is smoke and mirrors.
Lot of copy and pasted
buildings, repeated roads,
massive stretches of empty nothing.
You know, nothing really
interesting or exciting.
“Ghost Recon Breakpoint” and
“Just Cause 4” are similar.
The maps are so big that a huge chunk
of your time is spent just trying to get
from one place to another and
it gets boring after a while.
Games that intentionally go for realism
like flight simulator, fine,
recreating the entire world is
part of the fun of that game.
And it’s not like I’m gonna
go stop at a gas station
and try to figure out
exactly how detailed it is.
You’re flying an airplane,
you’re in the air.
I’m mostly talking about
normal open world games here.
Bigger, not always better.
I much prefer open world
games that are dense
and interesting with a
lotta unique landmarks
and unique designs for areas.
It’s like the difference
between “Arkham Knight”
and “Gotham Knights.”
The city in “Gotham Knights”
is more realistic and bigger
than the one in “Arkham
Knight,” but it’s pretty boring.
It’s just a bunch of buildings.
While “Arkham Night’s” city is a small
but dense and interesting city with ramps
and changes in elevation and
secrets all over the place
like I hate to break it to you
but like at least relating
to this real life is boring.
If you’re making an open
world game just make it fun.
At number six, introducing
annoying RPG mechanics
to non RPG series.
This one might be a little
divisive, I don’t know
but the way a lot of
developers are trying to sneak
in a lot of RPG mechanics
into standard open
world games kinda sucks.
You know what I’m talking about.
The recent “Assassins Creed” trilogy
of “Origins,” “Odyssey,”
“Valhalla,” the “Far Cry” games
like “New Dawn” and “Far
Cry 6,” “Ghost Recon Break.”
I guess it’s mostly Ubisoft games,
but considering how many open world games
these guys crank out, it’s kind of a lot.
And when I say RPG mechanics,
I don’t just mean leveling up.
That’s kind of an unavoidable feature
for pretty much every game.
I mean more invasive
systems or even versions
of systems like loot drops,
damage vaults, health bars,
things that weren’t part of a game series
and then got shoved into them anyways.
It’s especially weird
in “Far Cry New Dawn”
where you find enemies with
little skulls over them
that are bullet sponges, but
if you’re high enough level,
they suddenly become killable.
It’s not like your guns
or anything got stronger,
it’s just that you reached
the arbitrary level threshold
so you can fight ’em now.
It’s a huge immersion breaker
and it feels wrong in a shooter.
Like different level enemies
should probably not respond to,
you know, bullet wounds that differently.
The “Assassins Creed” games
used to be the same way.
They were basically action games
with some minor RPG elements
but the focus was on stealth and gadgets.
And with the recent trilogy
all that stuff has kinda
been pushed to the side.
It’s not the worst thing.
There’s actually a lot I like
about the recent “Assassin Creed” games
but it does kind of feel
like it’s losing its unique identity.
I’m hoping “Mirage” gets
the series sort of back
on track in terms of
that stuff, but at least
at the time of this writing
we don’t really know
what exactly the direction
the series is committing to.
And this also isn’t to say
that some RPG stuff is bad, it’s not.
Some games implement some
minor RPG stuff pretty well
but I am kinda tired of open world games
just becoming numbers filled RPGs.
Obviously I love RPGs but
not everything has to be one.
At number five, not tracking objectives
and confusing completion tracking.
If you’re a completionist,
this is easily the most annoying thing
about open world games.
They really love to pack these things
with all the collectibles you can imagine
and depending on the game,
going for 100% completion
might seem like a fun goal.
If a game’s good about keeping
track of what you found
and what you haven’t, getting
everything isn’t that bad.
But when it doesn’t, oof, it is misery.
The example I always come back to for
this one is “Crackdown.”
It’s a great game but it does
nothing to track agility orbs.
So if you wanna find all of them
then you better be ready to find 99%
of ’em pretty easy and then
spend another 20 hours looking
and re-looking and trying to find the one
or two missing orbs that you
missed the first time around.
It’s an extreme example, but
a lotta open world games are
really bad about tracking stuff.
Like games that do not show you
if you’ve found something on
the map, but give no indication
if it’s been collected
and completed or not.
Some games erase things you’ve done
from the map completely, which
can be extremely annoying
if you’re trying to return
to a spot you’ve already been
because you’ve missed
the treasure, you know,
or something like that.
Bad map tracking one thing,
but certain games are terrible
at quest tracking too.
Mass Effect Andromeda
among its many problems
has some truly terrible quest tracking.
Even stuff as simple as fetch
quests are poorly marked.
They don’t tell you how many
of a thing someone
wants or where they are.
And a game like this where
there’s pretty big maps,
multiple planets, it can get
really easy to miss this stuff.
I’m not saying every game
should cover your screen
with objective markers all over the place
but at least give us a decent checklist
and a description of what
we’re supposed to do.
And number four is pointless
unfun mini games and systems.
The grand unifying ethos
of open world games is more
and more and more and
more quests, more maps,
more points of interests,
more systems, more everything.
And it can be tiresome after a while
especially when the games
start getting overwhelmed
with pointlessly complex systems
that don’t feel relevant.
The “Assassins Creed”
series loves this stuff
but easily the worst examples
show up in “Assassin Creed 3.”
Remember that whole
confusing caravan system
or the tunnel system thing?
I don’t even really know
but nobody bothered with it,
the tunnel thing.
If you played the game you
know what I’m talking about
’cause you remember the introduction
to it and all that but you didn’t use it.
There was also ship combat,
the homestead, crafting,
everything felt like it was
designed by a separate team
and nothing really came
together quite right,
even if some of it was pretty cool
like the ship combat,
I mean, that was great
but it just felt totally
disconnected from everything else.
Seriously, the “Assassins Creed”
games are kind of the kings
of pointless stuff like this.
Like there was tower defense
missions and revelations.
It was bomb making and revelations.
What was that about?
And you know, a lot of
the settlement stuff
from “Fallout 4” I’m thinking of now,
it felt pretty tacked on,
like especially the settlement defense
which was way more
annoying than interesting.
Yeah, you could make some cool stuff
with settlements for
sure, but the settlement
always felt weirdly disconnected
from everything else.
Like often I was questioning
why I was doing it.
I have a story to complete.
Allegedly I should care about that,
but I’m here in the
settlement wasting time
defending these people that
are doing nothing for me.
And you know, crafting
systems count here too
especially in games where you
have absolutely like no choice
but to engage with it
to make any progress.
I’m not saying some
games don’t do this well,
there’s some great crafting systems
in some open world games,
but a lot of them are kinda
just annoying checklists
that force you to do
boring hunting stuff to get
upgrades to your character
that would be stuff you could
just buy in a different game.
It’s like a fetch quest
under any other name
and it’s usually more
frustrating than fun.
“Horizon Forbidden West”
was absolutely great
but I don’t want to waste my time hunting
down bunnies to upgrade my weapon pouch.
Please get that crap outta my face.
And number three, forcing you to engage
with a quest without any warning.
A huge part of the fun of open
world games is exploration.
You know, taking things at your own pace
seeing what you can do,
seeing what you can find.
These types of games are really perfect
for just zoning out and
taking it easy sometimes.
They’re podcast games.
Part of the appeal is knowing
when the story stuff is
and where the open world stuff is.
It’s not always the most immersive thing
but, wow, do I hate it when
open world games force you
into doing something outta your control.
Like you wander too close to a quest
and the game forces you to engage with it.
Or if a mission starts automatically
at a certain point like give
me a warning or something,
don’t just steal the control away
and force me into some mission
I don’t wanna do right now.
I’m hunting collectibles
or just trying to clear out the map.
I’m not trying to advance the story
or get stuck in long
dialogue with a stranger.
I’m obviously not saying
every random encounter is bad
but when a game forces you
away from something you’re
in the middle of and maybe have
been doing for a long period
of time and are in the zone
on, it’s really annoying.
The obvious example here is “Far Cry 5”
where if you did too much
damage to a certain region,
the leader will start to just hunt you
and eventually you get
forced into a story mission.
You can try to avoid these for a while,
but eventually the game just forces you
to do ’em no matter what.
They’re not short either.
They’re long and when they’re
over they usually dump you
out in some random part in the map,
sometimes miles away from where you were.
Very counterintuitive to what
makes an open world game fun.
And thankfully most games know better
than to try and copy it.
Another example actually
less egregious one
but still annoying is “Sonic Frontiers”
where you get close to a random boss enemy
and it pulls the camera
control away from you.
focuses it on the boss and
it’s not the worst thing
’cause it doesn’t force you to fight it,
you can just run away.
But if you play the game long enough
it starts to get really annoying
because you’re probably
trying to do things
in the open world that aren’t
the bosses at this point.
I don’t know, open world games almost more
than anything else are games
where you really wanna be
in control of what you’re doing.
So taking the control away can
be just really aggravating.
And number two is annoying
and unfun mission types.
Let’s start this one off right by talking
about some standard mission types that pop
up a ton in open world
games that no one likes.
I’m talking about stuff like fetch quests
which are ubiquitous to the genre.
They’re unavoidable, usually pretty dull,
you know what I mean.
Like the classic collect
five random bits of garbage.
If you can do that,
I’ll give you five gold
just like “Tony Hawk’s
Pro Skater” level crap.
And just to be fair
like it was actually okay
in “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater”
because getting around
was the point of that game
and it was another reason
to get you to skate.
This is not so in these
types of missions nowadays,
they’re also common RPGs as
well as open world games.
But one thing you’ve pretty
much almost only ever see
in open world games is the
tedious trailing missions.
They come in two types,
they’re pretty much never fun.
The “Assassins Creed” type where
you have to follow somebody
without getting spotted, which
is at best is kind of boring
and at worst is frustrating.
Then there’s the “GTA” type
trailing mission where you’re
in a car and you have to stay
within a certain distance
of the other car and, you
know, if there’s some kind
of meter telling you how close
or far you’re supposed to be.
they’re not usually that much trouble.
But there’s so many of
these games out there
that straight up don’t tell you
where you’re supposed to be.
So you’re constantly
getting too close or too far
without being able to tell what the game
actually wants you to do.
While we’re talking
about standard annoying
open world game types,
anytime a game forces you
to herd anything sucks
like recently “Sonic
Frontiers” made you do this
and “Sonic Frontiers” is a
really pleasant experience
in terms of 3D sonic games
and it just slows it down.
Like is this the worst version
of this I’ve ever seen?
No, but it’s really not fun.
It slows down the game,
takes you outta the stuff
that you wanna be doing
which is actually a decent
amount of stuff in that game.
All these mission types, they’ve been used
and overused to death at this point.
There’s gotta be somebody out
there that loves these things
but I don’t.
The reason they show up so
much in open world games is
probably just because they’re
easy to program and implement.
But if I never saw another
trailing mission in my life,
I’d die happy.
And finally at number one,
blatant story padding.
I don’t know about you
but one of the most annoying
things in open world games is
when they start getting
blatantly padded out.
I’m talking about stuff like unlocking the
true ending in “Arkham Knight.”
It’s a great game obviously
but they make you get
every single Riddler trophy
in the game to unlock the real ending.
Like could 75% have not been enough?
I feel like that could have been enough.
Another game that goes
way too long is “Assassins
Creed Valhalla.”
Seriously, there’s no reason
to have to conquer every single country
on the map before the
ending becomes available.
Like why make it so you
can select a story arc
if the game forces you
to do ’em all anyway?
It’s already massive.
Is it really that necessary
that you have to take control
of everything before you
can do the final mission?
In “Assassins Creed Syndicate,”
you only need to conquer three
of the boroughs to be
able to finish the game.
Imagine how much of a slog it would be
if you had to clear out everything.
Like I don’t mind a game
having some requirements
but some open world games are
really ridiculous with it.
Like “Middle-Earth:
Shadow Of War” used to be
one of the worst games about this.
The shadow war section took forever.
It was just the most tedious
and frustrating thing
but the game was patched
and it made that whole section
significantly easier and shorter.
Usually I’d be really disappointed
by something like that
but in this case it made
the game way better.
“Mafia III” is another open world game
that pads things out like crazy.
There’s no reason why you
have to take out every racket
in the area before you can
actually take out the leader.
It’s just shameless and
it makes the game longer
and that’s the only reason it’s there.
Doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not,
that’s why it’s there.
Like open world game
designers, don’t do this.
Or really any of like, if
you’ve listened to this point,
open world game designers,
just like find alternatives to this stuff.
Or if you have to do some
of them, make it good.
Like I said, like there’s good examples
of most of this stuff in games.
It’s just gonna be hard
for you to do it that way
because you’re gonna
have to find a new way
to do something that we’ve done
about a million times at this point.
So I would recommend leaning
towards not doing this
stuff and finding new stuff.
That’s me though.
I’m just a bird.
What do I know?
That’s all for today.
Leave us a comment, let
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right here on “Gameranx.”
What can’t be done in the open world games?
[Falcon] Open world games
have gotten pretty advanced.
The worlds are big, amazing
and more dense than ever
and yet there’s still
some stuff that just shouldn’t be there.
Hi folks, it’s Falcon
and today on “Gameranx,”
10 things open world games
need to stop doing immediately.
At number 10, launching in a buggy state.
It’s a real minefield out there
for people who like open world games
especially if you’re the type
of person who likes to get
a game the day it comes out.
‘Cause a lot of these, they
are a buggy mess on launch day
like the recent “Saints Row,”
“Cyberpunk 2077,” “Assassins Creed Unity,”
these are some of the
more prominent examples
but almost every open
world game has some issues
that have to be dealt with at launch.
I mean, I get it.
These are some of the biggest
and most complex games out there.
So like it’s actually understandable
that there’s gonna be bugs.
I’m not saying
like every single game has
to be absolutely perfect
with zero bugs in it at launch,
these games are just too big for that.
What I am saying is
that some of these games
at launch ere unacceptable,
like just doing basic stuff.
If that’s a problem or you’re seeing
like graphical glitches all the time
to the point where it’s
actually detracting
from what’s going on,
there’s something wrong.
“Cyberpunk” managed to get
to a mostly functional state
after years of patching,
but it’s hard to forget
just how rough that game
was when it first came out.
And if anything, the recent
“Saints Row” was worse.
Like most of “Cyberpunk’s”
stuff was visual glitches.
Some of it really detracted from the game
but it was visual glitches.
“Saints Row” had some completely
game breaking stuff in it.
Like sometimes it was not
possible to shoot a gun
in an open world crime game.
That’s ridiculous.
“No Man’s Sky” is
another infamous example.
We famously have made videos
about this game on both
its good and bad times
but this game wasn’t just
buggy when it came out.
It was kind of barely a game.
The developers didn’t give
up on it though and it’s gone
on to great success after years
of free patches and updates.
But it was rough, like rough.
Also they said a bunch of
stuff was gonna be there
that wasn’t, also they faked a tech demo
and the fact that they turned
it around as drastically
as they did is incredibly
impressive actually.
But the story in “No Man’s Sky”
and we wouldn’t call common, right?
Especially when you’re talking
about smaller developers working
on what amounts to be an independent game.
A lot of open world games
remain broken to this day.
Like the PC ports of the prototype games,
they’re published by
Activision of all people.
But trying to play these
games on a modern PC is,
well, it’s an exercise and frustration.
There’s a lot of issues and they’re not
like fun bugs like visual
glitches that make you laugh.
They’re just freezes and crashes.
Like even some of the best
games have bugs and issues.
“Elden Ring” still struggles
with some stuttering
on PC and I remember running into a lot
of problems with “Horizon Forbidden West”
when it first came out.
Most of those bugs have
been patched out by now
but I’d rather not have dealt
with them at all, you know?
At number nine, not letting
you name your save files
or only having auto saves.
Open world games are huge, complex
and can take hundreds
of hours to complete.
So it’s kind of bizarre how few
of them actually have decent save systems.
That is to say, is it that much to ask
to have these games let
you name your save file
so that you can mark your progress?
I know most of the games are built
for consoles where typing
can be pretty awkward
but at least give us the
option if we want it, you know?
If you wanna go back to a specific section
of a game before a major
choice or something
then finding the specific
save file is really annoying.
Like I don’t really wanna sift
through about 100 save
house saves or whatever
just to guess the date and
time I made a save that I want.
I know I’m kinda dreaming on this one
’cause there’s so many open world games
where just being able to make
a manual save is a luxury.
Like so many of these games
are auto save or nothing now.
The amount of open world
games that do this is just
like out of control at this point
and they really just rub salt in the wound
by not giving you a way to
replay emissions or anything.
So you wanna go back to a
certain part of the game.
Tough luck.
Your only option is to
start this 100 hour game
from the very beginning.
I don’t wanna start the game over again.
I just wanna play this cool part again.
Is that a lot? Is that so much to ask?
I mean, at least now manual saving is
again becoming more common in games
but it’s still not everywhere.
Open world games need to cut this out.
Put in manual saving,
let me name my saves is
that much to ask really.
And number eight is when character
creation comes out wrong.
This is just as much as an RPG
problem as an open world one.
But at least with RPGs
they usually just start
out with a character
creator right at the start
while open world games,
they get cute with it.
You know what we’re talking about here?
We, you’ve all been there,
you’ve spent a long time
meticulously creating the
perfect character in all the settings.
You start the game and
they just don’t look right.
It’s a never ending problem
that still pops up all over the place.
Games really wanna show
off their characters
so they use like flattering lighting
and high detail models
for the character creator.
But when you exit it,
your character gets hit
with an ugly stick
because the flat lighting
in the actual game, you
know, using less resources
and all that, certain games try their best
to give you the tools to make
your character look right,
like different lighting
options in the creator.
But it’s never perfect.
Certain games make it so you can change
everything about your character later.
But most games limit things
to just make up and hair and clothes.
So if you screw up during
the initial creation,
you’re stuck with the freak
you’ve mistakenly created.
This is when an open world game’s tendency
to show off becomes an issue
because you wanna try again
but you’re gonna be stuck
through a long opening
sequence all over again.
You might have to replay the prologue
as a faceless character and only after all
that does the game let you
customize your character again.
It’s the worst.
It’s also the reason why a bunch
of opening sequences to games
are burned into my brain.
At least make it so you
can skip the prologue
if you’ve seen it already.
It’s not like it makes a
difference how I do there.
I just want to change the character.
Why do some games have to
make this so difficult?
And number seven, making the
worlds way too big and empty.
One of the most appealing things
about an open world game is
when you can see things
like a mountain or a city
in the distance and then
you can actually go there.
I know everybody jokes
about the Todd Howard line,
“See that mountain?
You can go there,” but
I mean there’s still
something impressive
about that On some level.
A big open world can still be impressive
but some games go a little overboard
and make the world bigger,
but forget to fill it
with the stuff that
actually makes exploring an
open world interesting.
So you got this gigantic map
but not much to do in it.
A lot of games that I would have
in the biggest open
world games are like this
like “The Crew 2” which
is meant to recreate the
entire United States in an enormous,
at least for a video
game, 1,900 square miles.
That’s an impressive number,
but if you actually play the game,
you quickly notice how much
of it is smoke and mirrors.
Lot of copy and pasted
buildings, repeated roads,
massive stretches of empty nothing.
You know, nothing really
interesting or exciting.
“Ghost Recon Breakpoint” and
“Just Cause 4” are similar.
The maps are so big that a huge chunk
of your time is spent just trying to get
from one place to another and
it gets boring after a while.
Games that intentionally go for realism
like flight simulator, fine,
recreating the entire world is
part of the fun of that game.
And it’s not like I’m gonna
go stop at a gas station
and try to figure out
exactly how detailed it is.
You’re flying an airplane,
you’re in the air.
I’m mostly talking about
normal open world games here.
Bigger, not always better.
I much prefer open world
games that are dense
and interesting with a
lotta unique landmarks
and unique designs for areas.
It’s like the difference
between “Arkham Knight”
and “Gotham Knights.”
The city in “Gotham Knights”
is more realistic and bigger
than the one in “Arkham
Knight,” but it’s pretty boring.
It’s just a bunch of buildings.
While “Arkham Night’s” city is a small
but dense and interesting city with ramps
and changes in elevation and
secrets all over the place
like I hate to break it to you
but like at least relating
to this real life is boring.
If you’re making an open
world game just make it fun.
At number six, introducing
annoying RPG mechanics
to non RPG series.
This one might be a little
divisive, I don’t know
but the way a lot of
developers are trying to sneak
in a lot of RPG mechanics
into standard open
world games kinda sucks.
You know what I’m talking about.
The recent “Assassins Creed” trilogy
of “Origins,” “Odyssey,”
“Valhalla,” the “Far Cry” games
like “New Dawn” and “Far
Cry 6,” “Ghost Recon Break.”
I guess it’s mostly Ubisoft games,
but considering how many open world games
these guys crank out, it’s kind of a lot.
And when I say RPG mechanics,
I don’t just mean leveling up.
That’s kind of an unavoidable feature
for pretty much every game.
I mean more invasive
systems or even versions
of systems like loot drops,
damage vaults, health bars,
things that weren’t part of a game series
and then got shoved into them anyways.
It’s especially weird
in “Far Cry New Dawn”
where you find enemies with
little skulls over them
that are bullet sponges, but
if you’re high enough level,
they suddenly become killable.
It’s not like your guns
or anything got stronger,
it’s just that you reached
the arbitrary level threshold
so you can fight ’em now.
It’s a huge immersion breaker
and it feels wrong in a shooter.
Like different level enemies
should probably not respond to,
you know, bullet wounds that differently.
The “Assassins Creed” games
used to be the same way.
They were basically action games
with some minor RPG elements
but the focus was on stealth and gadgets.
And with the recent trilogy
all that stuff has kinda
been pushed to the side.
It’s not the worst thing.
There’s actually a lot I like
about the recent “Assassin Creed” games
but it does kind of feel
like it’s losing its unique identity.
I’m hoping “Mirage” gets
the series sort of back
on track in terms of
that stuff, but at least
at the time of this writing
we don’t really know
what exactly the direction
the series is committing to.
And this also isn’t to say
that some RPG stuff is bad, it’s not.
Some games implement some
minor RPG stuff pretty well
but I am kinda tired of open world games
just becoming numbers filled RPGs.
Obviously I love RPGs but
not everything has to be one.
At number five, not tracking objectives
and confusing completion tracking.
If you’re a completionist,
this is easily the most annoying thing
about open world games.
They really love to pack these things
with all the collectibles you can imagine
and depending on the game,
going for 100% completion
might seem like a fun goal.
If a game’s good about keeping
track of what you found
and what you haven’t, getting
everything isn’t that bad.
But when it doesn’t, oof, it is misery.
The example I always come back to for
this one is “Crackdown.”
It’s a great game but it does
nothing to track agility orbs.
So if you wanna find all of them
then you better be ready to find 99%
of ’em pretty easy and then
spend another 20 hours looking
and re-looking and trying to find the one
or two missing orbs that you
missed the first time around.
It’s an extreme example, but
a lotta open world games are
really bad about tracking stuff.
Like games that do not show you
if you’ve found something on
the map, but give no indication
if it’s been collected
and completed or not.
Some games erase things you’ve done
from the map completely, which
can be extremely annoying
if you’re trying to return
to a spot you’ve already been
because you’ve missed
the treasure, you know,
or something like that.
Bad map tracking one thing,
but certain games are terrible
at quest tracking too.
Mass Effect Andromeda
among its many problems
has some truly terrible quest tracking.
Even stuff as simple as fetch
quests are poorly marked.
They don’t tell you how many
of a thing someone
wants or where they are.
And a game like this where
there’s pretty big maps,
multiple planets, it can get
really easy to miss this stuff.
I’m not saying every game
should cover your screen
with objective markers all over the place
but at least give us a decent checklist
and a description of what
we’re supposed to do.
And number four is pointless
unfun mini games and systems.
The grand unifying ethos
of open world games is more
and more and more and
more quests, more maps,
more points of interests,
more systems, more everything.
And it can be tiresome after a while
especially when the games
start getting overwhelmed
with pointlessly complex systems
that don’t feel relevant.
The “Assassins Creed”
series loves this stuff
but easily the worst examples
show up in “Assassin Creed 3.”
Remember that whole
confusing caravan system
or the tunnel system thing?
I don’t even really know
but nobody bothered with it,
the tunnel thing.
If you played the game you
know what I’m talking about
’cause you remember the introduction
to it and all that but you didn’t use it.
There was also ship combat,
the homestead, crafting,
everything felt like it was
designed by a separate team
and nothing really came
together quite right,
even if some of it was pretty cool
like the ship combat,
I mean, that was great
but it just felt totally
disconnected from everything else.
Seriously, the “Assassins Creed”
games are kind of the kings
of pointless stuff like this.
Like there was tower defense
missions and revelations.
It was bomb making and revelations.
What was that about?
And you know, a lot of
the settlement stuff
from “Fallout 4” I’m thinking of now,
it felt pretty tacked on,
like especially the settlement defense
which was way more
annoying than interesting.
Yeah, you could make some cool stuff
with settlements for
sure, but the settlement
always felt weirdly disconnected
from everything else.
Like often I was questioning
why I was doing it.
I have a story to complete.
Allegedly I should care about that,
but I’m here in the
settlement wasting time
defending these people that
are doing nothing for me.
And you know, crafting
systems count here too
especially in games where you
have absolutely like no choice
but to engage with it
to make any progress.
I’m not saying some
games don’t do this well,
there’s some great crafting systems
in some open world games,
but a lot of them are kinda
just annoying checklists
that force you to do
boring hunting stuff to get
upgrades to your character
that would be stuff you could
just buy in a different game.
It’s like a fetch quest
under any other name
and it’s usually more
frustrating than fun.
“Horizon Forbidden West”
was absolutely great
but I don’t want to waste my time hunting
down bunnies to upgrade my weapon pouch.
Please get that crap outta my face.
And number three, forcing you to engage
with a quest without any warning.
A huge part of the fun of open
world games is exploration.
You know, taking things at your own pace
seeing what you can do,
seeing what you can find.
These types of games are really perfect
for just zoning out and
taking it easy sometimes.
They’re podcast games.
Part of the appeal is knowing
when the story stuff is
and where the open world stuff is.
It’s not always the most immersive thing
but, wow, do I hate it when
open world games force you
into doing something outta your control.
Like you wander too close to a quest
and the game forces you to engage with it.
Or if a mission starts automatically
at a certain point like give
me a warning or something,
don’t just steal the control away
and force me into some mission
I don’t wanna do right now.
I’m hunting collectibles
or just trying to clear out the map.
I’m not trying to advance the story
or get stuck in long
dialogue with a stranger.
I’m obviously not saying
every random encounter is bad
but when a game forces you
away from something you’re
in the middle of and maybe have
been doing for a long period
of time and are in the zone
on, it’s really annoying.
The obvious example here is “Far Cry 5”
where if you did too much
damage to a certain region,
the leader will start to just hunt you
and eventually you get
forced into a story mission.
You can try to avoid these for a while,
but eventually the game just forces you
to do ’em no matter what.
They’re not short either.
They’re long and when they’re
over they usually dump you
out in some random part in the map,
sometimes miles away from where you were.
Very counterintuitive to what
makes an open world game fun.
And thankfully most games know better
than to try and copy it.
Another example actually
less egregious one
but still annoying is “Sonic Frontiers”
where you get close to a random boss enemy
and it pulls the camera
control away from you.
focuses it on the boss and
it’s not the worst thing
’cause it doesn’t force you to fight it,
you can just run away.
But if you play the game long enough
it starts to get really annoying
because you’re probably
trying to do things
in the open world that aren’t
the bosses at this point.
I don’t know, open world games almost more
than anything else are games
where you really wanna be
in control of what you’re doing.
So taking the control away can
be just really aggravating.
And number two is annoying
and unfun mission types.
Let’s start this one off right by talking
about some standard mission types that pop
up a ton in open world
games that no one likes.
I’m talking about stuff like fetch quests
which are ubiquitous to the genre.
They’re unavoidable, usually pretty dull,
you know what I mean.
Like the classic collect
five random bits of garbage.
If you can do that,
I’ll give you five gold
just like “Tony Hawk’s
Pro Skater” level crap.
And just to be fair
like it was actually okay
in “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater”
because getting around
was the point of that game
and it was another reason
to get you to skate.
This is not so in these
types of missions nowadays,
they’re also common RPGs as
well as open world games.
But one thing you’ve pretty
much almost only ever see
in open world games is the
tedious trailing missions.
They come in two types,
they’re pretty much never fun.
The “Assassins Creed” type where
you have to follow somebody
without getting spotted, which
is at best is kind of boring
and at worst is frustrating.
Then there’s the “GTA” type
trailing mission where you’re
in a car and you have to stay
within a certain distance
of the other car and, you
know, if there’s some kind
of meter telling you how close
or far you’re supposed to be.
they’re not usually that much trouble.
But there’s so many of
these games out there
that straight up don’t tell you
where you’re supposed to be.
So you’re constantly
getting too close or too far
without being able to tell what the game
actually wants you to do.
While we’re talking
about standard annoying
open world game types,
anytime a game forces you
to herd anything sucks
like recently “Sonic
Frontiers” made you do this
and “Sonic Frontiers” is a
really pleasant experience
in terms of 3D sonic games
and it just slows it down.
Like is this the worst version
of this I’ve ever seen?
No, but it’s really not fun.
It slows down the game,
takes you outta the stuff
that you wanna be doing
which is actually a decent
amount of stuff in that game.
All these mission types, they’ve been used
and overused to death at this point.
There’s gotta be somebody out
there that loves these things
but I don’t.
The reason they show up so
much in open world games is
probably just because they’re
easy to program and implement.
But if I never saw another
trailing mission in my life,
I’d die happy.
And finally at number one,
blatant story padding.
I don’t know about you
but one of the most annoying
things in open world games is
when they start getting
blatantly padded out.
I’m talking about stuff like unlocking the
true ending in “Arkham Knight.”
It’s a great game obviously
but they make you get
every single Riddler trophy
in the game to unlock the real ending.
Like could 75% have not been enough?
I feel like that could have been enough.
Another game that goes
way too long is “Assassins
Creed Valhalla.”
Seriously, there’s no reason
to have to conquer every single country
on the map before the
ending becomes available.
Like why make it so you
can select a story arc
if the game forces you
to do ’em all anyway?
It’s already massive.
Is it really that necessary
that you have to take control
of everything before you
can do the final mission?
In “Assassins Creed Syndicate,”
you only need to conquer three
of the boroughs to be
able to finish the game.
Imagine how much of a slog it would be
if you had to clear out everything.
Like I don’t mind a game
having some requirements
but some open world games are
really ridiculous with it.
Like “Middle-Earth:
Shadow Of War” used to be
one of the worst games about this.
The shadow war section took forever.
It was just the most tedious
and frustrating thing
but the game was patched
and it made that whole section
significantly easier and shorter.
Usually I’d be really disappointed
by something like that
but in this case it made
the game way better.
“Mafia III” is another open world game
that pads things out like crazy.
There’s no reason why you
have to take out every racket
in the area before you can
actually take out the leader.
It’s just shameless and
it makes the game longer
and that’s the only reason it’s there.
Doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not,
that’s why it’s there.
Like open world game
designers, don’t do this.
Or really any of like, if
you’ve listened to this point,
open world game designers,
just like find alternatives to this stuff.
Or if you have to do some
of them, make it good.
Like I said, like there’s good examples
of most of this stuff in games.
It’s just gonna be hard
for you to do it that way
because you’re gonna
have to find a new way
to do something that we’ve done
about a million times at this point.
So I would recommend leaning
towards not doing this
stuff and finding new stuff.
That’s me though.
I’m just a bird.
What do I know?
That’s all for today.
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