Does the "open world wilderness" RPG not work in a modern setting with cities and roads?

[SilverX]

Looking at games like Horizon, Monster Hunter, Breath of the Wild, and now Pokemon Legends they all seem to go for a more ancient or primal setting for their formulas. This is most notable for Pokemon, which has always been an RPG in present times with cities and towns, going to a feudal time period as it finally tries to embrace being an open world RPG.

This has me thinking, is this just an easier way to go about this type of game style that embraces the wilderness or does the modern setting work against it?

 

[Cerulean_skylark]

Looking at games like Horizon, Monster Hunter, Breath of the Wild, and now Pokemon Legends they all seem to go for a more ancient or primal setting for their formulas. This is most notable for Pokemon, which has always been an RPG in present times with cities and towns, going to a feudal time period as it finally tries to embrace being an open world RPG.

This has me thinking, is this just an easier way to go about this type of game style that embraces the wilderness or does the modern setting work against it?

Click to shrink...

oh god, dare i say this.... Cyberpunk 2077 showed you can integrate modern cities into rpg stuff.
which was prototyped by the success at just how much time you spend in cities in witcher 3.

this is not a discussion at how successful or problematic those games are, just that it's completely doable.

now it needs to be said, monster hunter isn't open world or an rpg, I would argue BOTW isn't an rpg. and horizon is only RPG adjacent. I'd say dragon age inquisition, witcher 3, and CP2077 are better examples

 

[Goldenroad]

I am confused. "Wilderness" inherently implies the setting is not an urban environment. I guess you could look at Fallout 3/4 or even TLOU2 for how you could potentially do the "wilderness in an urban environment" setting, but it's inherently going to be a less "open" environment if there are buildings and structures that are blocking you from every direction.

 

[Master Milk]

pokemon's change is likely so that it's clearly distinct from the mainline games

 

[ClickyCal']

Days Gone sort of. Post Apocalyptic, but there are at least different spots with people and it's a modern setting.

 

[Karlinel]

I took you post as "animal wild life" and then proceeded to imagine devs modelling a realistic rats, pigeons and roaches ecosystem.

 

[SnakeXs]

Lots of open world RPGs use procedural methods to generate their worlds. That's not so much a thing for cities.
Plus the absurd density and verticality of a city vs open space.

 

[Tuorom]

Wouldn't cities be very resource intensive as compared to a forest where they've created "fast trees" and such

 

[ThreepQuest64]

Of course it works, why wouldn't it?

You have many open worlds in cities and modern eras (Watch Dogs series, GTA series, CP, The Division), they only lack fundamental classic computer-roleplaying elements, which can also be added to modern settings (see Deus Ex, Bloodlines). It's just that so far no one really mixed these two things. There were attempts, of course, like CP2077, which didn't really nail it.

But it should work very well in theory.

 

[Tochtli79]

Definitely could and I'd love to see more.

 

[Pancracio17]

oh god, dare i say this.... Cyberpunk 2077 showed you can integrate modern cities into rpg stuff.
which was prototyped by the success at just how much time you spend in cities in witcher 3.

this is not a discussion at how successful or problematic those games are, just that it's completely doable.

now it needs to be said, monster hunter isn't open world or an rpg, I would argue BOTW isn't an rpg. and horizon is only RPG adjacent. I'd say dragon age inquisition, witcher 3, and CP2077 are better examples

Click to shrink...

Yeah, you can make RPGs in cities, no reason why you couldnt. The reason those games are set in the wilderness is... because they have a focus on the wilderness. Pokemon is about catching monsters, Horizon about reclaiming nature, Breath of the Wild is about... the wild.

If anything, making a city is more asset and resource intensive, so that could be a reason why some devs avoid it.

 

[Ra]

Yes it's easier to do outdoors, because trees are less complex than people.

Cyberpunk showed a city based game is very possible, but VERY difficult.

 

[Slayven]

I always disappointed that RPG almost always means some bootleg tolken stuff. I have high hopes for Starfield.

 

[Yossarian]

It's probably down to resources. I imagine cities take up more memory or whatever compared to open landscapes.

 

[Elfgore]

I think some designers/writers think that's the only way to do, but games like Far Cry 5 and Days Gone show that it 100% can work and be just as enjoyable.

Actual cities work as well. Homefront: The Revolution, though not an RPG, is an open-worldish game exclusively in cities. It's incredibly fresh too because of it.

 

[Cerulean_skylark]

Yeah, you can make RPGs in cities, no reason why you couldnt. The reason those games are set in the wilderness is... because they have a focus on the wilderness. Pokemon is about catching monsters, Horizon about reclaiming nature, Breath of the Wild is about... the wild.

If anything, making a city is more asset and resource intensive, so that could be a reason why some devs avoid it.

Click to shrink...

I think another point to make is that natural environments have their development streamlined by a number of middle-ware solutions and general use of procedural tools.

Trees, grasses dirt etc are not as design intensive as named streets with buildings that need unique elements and vertical layering.

 

[BassForever]

I think the sense of discovery is different. When you're in the wilderness you have this illusion that you may be the first person to have ever seen this. In a city you know people have been there since stuff was built.

 

[Anno]

I think it can, it's just way harder. And I'd still probably take a took wilderness to explore anyway.

 

[Uzzy]

It's easier for sure. Cities imply a level of organisation and, well, civilisation that needs to be accounted for and explained to keep the verisimilitude of the game world. You need to fill it with people, need to have 'problems' for the player character to resolve and explain why the police or authorities wouldn't just solve them. You've got complex human and societal interactions to account for, power dynamics and the like. What's the politics of the city, what do the people in the city eat, etc etc etc.

The wilderness, by contrast, can get by very well by having a large forest with some animals in.

 

[Djalminha]

It's just more expensive to make and takes longer. A city makes it way harder to mask procedural generation, requires way more NPCs on screen, more interactions, more systems.

Oblivion did a great job with its biggest city, I don't recall the name. GTA VI will probably set the bar.

 

[Servbot24]

Most of those games would be better if they had a big city or two (I though Horizon did actually?), it's just that they're hard to make.

 

[Deleted member 56803]

Eastshade does it pretty well, but the game has a small map compared to others

 

[Foreign Jackass]

Wilderness = less assets to create

 

[dasu]

I always considered the whole GTA "sandbox" style adventure games thing to be adjacent to the open world RPG.

I guess the reason why there aren't more RPGs set in those types of urban environments is that if you make a game in a modern city setting, then you might as well make it an action / shooter since those are generally easier to market. Plus a city environment would require more contextualization to why there is an endless supply of baddies that you can mindlessly grind for exp.

 

[Zephy]

Final Fantasy XV gave it a try but wasn't successful IMO.

 

[Deleted member 197]

Having urban environments really go against the spirit of a game like Monster Hunter or BOTW though, it just wouldn't add much to the game. I haven't played Horizon but i imagine is a similar situation.

 

[UraMallas]

From the past 3 months, I thought both Cyberpunk and Yakuza Like a Dragon did good jobs of having open world RPGs set in cities. There was some hiccups in both but I think they show you can definitely do RPGs in big city settings.

 

[Carbon]

It's probably down to resources. I imagine cities take up more memory or whatever compared to open landscapes.

Click to shrink...

It's partially memory, but it's A LOT about the CPU. Cities are filled with people, and all those AI citizens have to be able to react to the player, whether you're just walking down the street or running around in a murderous rampage. Add in cars, random detritus in the streets, possibly animals as well, and it can all take a heavy toll on CPU if you're not "faking" it. GTA fakes it better than almost any other game, but they've had literal decades to iterate on their tech to make it look realistic while still working within the harsh limitations of the console platform. And GTA is also not an RPG, so there is limited player interaction in the world apart from cars, buildings, and weapons.

 

[Mr.Deadshot]

GTA: San Andreas was proof in 2004 that it works.

 

[Glio]

No, it does not work, because the small-scale cities of these games if they are modern do not work.

You see the capital of a medieval empire having 50 houses and it doesn't break your suspension of disbelief immediately, a modern city does.

Intact cities are not interesting to explore. For example in Spider-man New York has a few cool places with nods to Marvel but little else. It is fun to move in the city but not to explore it.

Same in GTA V. There is nothing interesting to explore in the desert. You can't fill it with elven ruins, dungeons with the undead, or find abandoned places where post-apocalyptic raiders have settled. It's just desert and it's boring.

 

[lovecatt]

I think a lot of people just still equate wilderness=freedom

Also it's probably just a lot more difficult to make buildings instead of trees

 

[Faintcolt388301]

I mean I think GTA shows you can do this. Fun to explore and has plenty to do and engaging NPCs littered around. Just put an RPG in that environment instead of shoot bang.

 

[Vulcano's Assistant]

Far Cry is an example of modern times open world that is mainly wilderness. The thing is that the gameplay is all about killing armed forces that are there in the wild which suggest something is not right with the area.

Nothing stops a game like GTA from having as much Wilderness as RDR or Watch Dogs from having as much as recent AC other than missions and the stories in modern times usually revolve around urban areas if society is supposed to be working correctly instead of being overtaken by zombies or paramilitary forces.

 

[Glio]

I mean I think GTA shows you can do this. Fun to explore and has plenty to do and engaging NPCs littered around. Just put an RPG in that environment instead of shoot bang.

Click to shrink...

I don't think GTA V is very fun to explore. The most exciting thing I found exploring was a weed shop to buy.

 

[Yossarian]

It's partially memory, but it's A LOT about the CPU. Cities are filled with people, and all those AI citizens have to be able to react to the player, whether you're just walking down the street or running around in a murderous rampage. Add in cars, random detritus in the streets, possibly animals as well, and it can all take a heavy toll on CPU if you're not "faking" it. GTA fakes it better than almost any other game, but they've had literal decades to iterate on their tech to make it look realistic while still working within the harsh limitations of the console platform. And GTA is also not an RPG, so there is limited player interaction in the world apart from cars, buildings, and weapons.

Click to shrink...

Ah, thanks for the explanation. I have no idea about programming and am only dimly aware of bits of concepts, so this was very interesting. 👍🏽

 

[Dyle]

It depends a lot on what verbs the character has available to them. If your verbs are mostly drive and shoot than urban or developed areas can make sense, but you're also going to need a lot of undeveloped areas for driving anyway in between developed areas. If your verbs are heavy on stuff like climbing and gliding then it makes a lot more sense to go with an wild environment.

 

[OnanieBomb]

HD towns are still hard

 

[RAWRferal]

Wilderness = less assets to create

Click to shrink...

Ding ding ding!

Cyberpunk 2077 is a prime example of why we don't see many city settings in open world RPGs - the amount of pure artwork and asset creation required to make a believable setting is astounding. They still didn't finish the game properly after all that time, surely the task of creating such a rich and detailed world had a big part to play in that.

This ties in to a wider issue in gaming which only gets worse with time: people always want more realistic and detailed experiences, but there is only so much you can do to optimize the speed of the asset creation process. More detailed artwork simply takes more time to create.

It's why many indie titles are using more creative visual styles which rely less on detailed textures, complex geometry etc.

 

[Faintcolt388301]

I don't think GTA V is very fun to explore. The most exciting thing I found exploring was a weed shop to buy.

Click to shrink...

Well let's change out of explore. It's a fun city to play in. Wilderness is better for exploration, but I think cities give you more opportunities. I don't think there it's impossible to make a fun RPG in a city.

 

[SeeingeyeDug]

I feel like Rockstar does open world cities so well that if they tried to make an RPG game like Cyberpunk, they could pull it off. I feel like making the AI feel believable and realistic in a bustling city is just really hard to do. Those other settings dont have to worry about it. Even Assassins Creed does pretty well with bustling areas but those cities don't have to worry as much about believable traffic patterns for cars, etc.

 

[TissueBox]

This has me thinking, is this just an easier way to go about this type of game style that embraces the wilderness or does the modern setting work against it?

Click to shrink...

Here are the difficulties in making an interactive open world densely populated with NPCs GTA-style:

- Keeping the world from feeling lifeless and non-interactive
- A million gazillion assets, scripts, AI functions
- Having it run in a stable manner
- Giving at least most NPCs auto-generated dialogue that doesn't get stale
- Creating contextual events littered throughout the city
- Making it both a fun and well controlling action-adventure world PLUS a well-written, choice-driven RPG narrative that affects the world's physicality and culture
- And many more

A Beth game set in a modern city like GTA, or even TOWN, has always been the dream for me.

But alas, it's such an undertaking that only the dumb or the brave would dare to go about it. I will applaud anyone in the AAA space who tries, because it would be the kind of game that serves as climbing a proverbial Mt. Everest -- aiming to maximize the potential of what a video game can do on an ultimate interactive, audiovisual, and developmental level. People disagree, which is fine, but Cyberpunk 2077 is the only game that took that step in recent years so far, and I love it for it, despite its writing's/design pitfalls.

Anyway, other than Cyberpunk, Persona and Yakuza create effective instanced partitions of larger contemporary cities that have been a staple in my personal list of series darlings for years. Unfortunately, it's not exactly a full realization of a dense, freeform modern-day city space integrating narrative-based roleplaying mechanics, but maybe one day we'll see more games attempting the caveats that CDPR tried (and shakily succeeded) to tackle with the clustertruck that was C2077.

Hence why these days when you see HUGE OPEN WORLD, it is mostly equivalent to HUGE OPEN WORLD CONSISTING 90% OF FLORA and/or ravaged post-apocalypse.

Hell, it's hard enough as it is to create a meaningful choice-driven RPG amongst a cast of under 10 characters alone in a cabin, let alone a whole living, breathing world of them.

Once again, keep in mind that to make this work, you basically have to create 2 games: first, is the large scale open world game that will take an incredible amount of work, resources, time management, and meticulous attention to detail, PLUS a strong, substantial roleplaying game with good characters and consequential effects reflected both through gameplay and story. That is, if you want a GOOD open world game that doesn't feel like an oversight in the shadow of the roleplay, and vice versa.

In other words, I don't know how something like that can really be done -- compromises in some departments would probably have to be made -- but a mortal can dream that one day, the biggest and brightest team would be given the most efficient tools to get it done, somehow. :p

 

[Deleted member 15240]

I feel like you could easily build on GTA San Andreas to make an awesome open world city rpg. Tons of side activities, stats that improve through use, romance options, lots of customization options; SA had it all back in 2004.

 

[Nateo]

The issues with modern cities etc is the lack of enterable places which comes down to the amount of time it would take to make a real dense city with things to do. Like look at Cyberpunk its modern city is basically a cardboard cut out its extremely shallow and that city was meant to be THE city for modern games. Its easier to work with things with minimal modern areas or just country land.

 

[Bishop89]

I've never liked that these games are set in the wilderness.

I want vibrant urban worlds

 

[Glio]

Another problem that damages exploration is that it is much more difficult to make a place stand out naturally to the player by indicating that there is something there in a city.

You are in the middle of a forest in Oblivion and you see some elven ruins on the horizon. You know there is something to explore there. You are in the middle of a post-apocalyptic wasteland and you see an abandoned supermarket or a former military camp. You know there is going to be something interesting there.

You are in the middle of a city. There is no way to tell with the naked eye if a structure is decoration or something you want to explore.

 

[cvbas]

Cyberpunk's Night City is the most impressive part of the game but also the main culprit for a lot of its problems. It's probably the most ambitious videogame city ever created with all its huge buildings and unique architecture, but also a great reminder as to why so many developers do medieval or post-apocalyptic settings.

Bad traffic AI, bad pedestrian AI, not enough stuff to do, severe technical problems (a lot of them related to streaming assets or dealing with large crowds)...That's all because it's set in a big urban city. CDPR did one of the best open-world RPGs ever with The Witcher 3 and still could not deal with moving to an urban setting.

 

[dex3108]

Because it is easier to do it. Why do you think Ubisoft switched to older eras for Assassin's Creed?

 

[Lunatic]

Yakuza 7 worked pretty well as a turn based RPG in modern japan if you ask me.

 

[Wispmetas]

Isn't GTA basically this...?

 

[cvbas]

I feel like you could easily build on GTA San Andreas to make an awesome open world city rpg. Tons of side activities, stats that improve through use, romance options, lots of customization options; SA had it all back in 2004.

Click to shrink...

I'd argue it would be 10x harder to build something like San Andreas today considering the graphical fidelity and depth of mechanics that are expected from a AAA game in 2021.