Death Stranding had one of my favorite open worlds ever,the fact traversing it was a central gameplay mechanic made everything meaningful,even though the actual world was a fairly barren place.
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Games that actually make good use of Open Worlds?
- Thread starter 1upmuffin
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The size got tiresome after a while, but Novigrad is a really strong justification. The scale and spread of how the land gradually goes from isolate hovels to smaller villages to outlying communities to the outer wall lanes to the dense winding interiors to the grander homes of the highlands of the city is amazing.
Only Kingdom Come Deliverance comes close to capturing that sense of a reasonably sized and spaced medieval setting
I really like the Witcher 3, but I think its open world is one of its weakest aspects. There's little to do in it if you're not doing specific quests, as often you'll run into places that are completely inert until you've triggered a quest or an event. and it relies heavily on the quest tracker, witcher senses and breadcrumbs navigation to be even manageable. I found myself more often than not looking at the minimap rather than the actual game.
I actually prefer the way Witcher 2 is structured (smaller confined hubs). Witcher 2 is really janky in comparison to W3, but I feel it's superior in this way. You truly become familiar with the layout and its characters, and the way everything is connected. It's easy to lose the big picture in W3.
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The only one that's truly kept my interest due to its world has been Breath of the Wild. I actually enjoyed exploring in that game. Being able to glide was a game changer and made everything less tedious.
Gothic 1 and 2 uses open world design extremely well imo. Small but very well realized maps with hand placed items and no hand holding quest markers to guide you, and the enemies don't scale with you so you will get destroyed early on if you wander somewhere you shouldn't be. Makes exploration very rewarding.
Morrowind is also a great example but that's already covered.
Morrowind is also a great example but that's already covered.
Gta5, rdr2 and fallout 4.
These open world games have a good sense of character, when exploring them they can have to varying degrees a feeling of the unknown, which is rare in videogames.
Videogames these days are so predictable, artificial barriers, limited interactivity, physical constraints, dumb A.I etc, the only time i was surprised by a game this gen was RDR2.
Besides from better animations and bigger worlds, games this gen still have the same tedious limitations as they have for the past 20yrs.
Dont get me wrong there are some great games this gen, with some fantastic improvement, but it does get a bit annoying that these improvements are somewhat skin deep.
These open world games have a good sense of character, when exploring them they can have to varying degrees a feeling of the unknown, which is rare in videogames.
Videogames these days are so predictable, artificial barriers, limited interactivity, physical constraints, dumb A.I etc, the only time i was surprised by a game this gen was RDR2.
Besides from better animations and bigger worlds, games this gen still have the same tedious limitations as they have for the past 20yrs.
Dont get me wrong there are some great games this gen, with some fantastic improvement, but it does get a bit annoying that these improvements are somewhat skin deep.
There aren't many open world games I've played that I felt made good use of the open world. A game like Horizon or Assassin's Creed reaches a point after a few hours where I'm just rushing between the few worthwhile points on the minimap actually worth interacting with as I realize most of the activities are copy/pasted busywork and exploration is unrewarding. A game like Metal Gear Solid V places what probably should have just been designed stages in an open world separated by large expanses of literally nothing, again with the only real motivation to deviate from these missions being busywork that becomes increasingly repetitive as you realize there are only a handful of different types of side missions. The only two open world games I've played that immediately come to mind for me that made good use of the open world are Breath of the Wild and Yakuza, for completely different reasons.
Breath of the Wild is the rare game where I actually wanted to explore the whole map from top to bottom. I've thought about why this is, and the two reasons I tend to come back to are that 1) Breath of the Wild feels like it has a sense of level design that's lacking in the other games where the game isn't only large, but very meticulously designed to actually be fun to explore with something to grab your attention in the distance so often and making you think "I want to see what that is", and 2) the lack of minimap icons I think is a blessing, being set by the player themselves as a note to look at the cool thing you saw earlier and not a complete mess of icons indicating things that you inevitably stop caring about after a few hours of playtime.
Yakuza is a completely different approach, where the open world is far smaller but just completely packed with legitimately fun minigames and side quests. In a genre that seems to primarily care about one-upping the other games with the size of the map (the whole "you can fit 3 of these games in this game's map" nonsense from a few years ago was extremely obnoxious), it's refreshing to see a game that prioritizes the density of the map in terms of fun activities and quests over the size of the map.
A third game I had good experiences with in the open world is Xenoblade Chronicles X, but I didn't finish the game for other reasons. I intend to go back to it one of these days, though.
Breath of the Wild is the rare game where I actually wanted to explore the whole map from top to bottom. I've thought about why this is, and the two reasons I tend to come back to are that 1) Breath of the Wild feels like it has a sense of level design that's lacking in the other games where the game isn't only large, but very meticulously designed to actually be fun to explore with something to grab your attention in the distance so often and making you think "I want to see what that is", and 2) the lack of minimap icons I think is a blessing, being set by the player themselves as a note to look at the cool thing you saw earlier and not a complete mess of icons indicating things that you inevitably stop caring about after a few hours of playtime.
Yakuza is a completely different approach, where the open world is far smaller but just completely packed with legitimately fun minigames and side quests. In a genre that seems to primarily care about one-upping the other games with the size of the map (the whole "you can fit 3 of these games in this game's map" nonsense from a few years ago was extremely obnoxious), it's refreshing to see a game that prioritizes the density of the map in terms of fun activities and quests over the size of the map.
A third game I had good experiences with in the open world is Xenoblade Chronicles X, but I didn't finish the game for other reasons. I intend to go back to it one of these days, though.
GTA3 had a really nice city that was really cool to drive in, had good progression with each island, small enough you could memorize the whole map, and each place had a very specific feeling and look. It was really really great.
There are many types of open world designs, 2 examples that actually grab my attention:
An open world that is more focused on world building making you believe you feel part of something that is there with or without you and are quest driven/activity driven in detriment of interactivity with the world itself like in RDR2, GTAV and TW3.
And there is BOTW, an open world that is tooled to give you freedom to choose how to tackle anything in the world and is designed to make you curious and want to go places without any cue whatsoever and no guarantee you get rewarded for exploring only for the sake of it.
There is a multitude of designs in between those two and both designs have many flaws but at least they give you something to care for that isn't mindless busy work like go do deliver this and fetch that over and over.
An open world that is more focused on world building making you believe you feel part of something that is there with or without you and are quest driven/activity driven in detriment of interactivity with the world itself like in RDR2, GTAV and TW3.
And there is BOTW, an open world that is tooled to give you freedom to choose how to tackle anything in the world and is designed to make you curious and want to go places without any cue whatsoever and no guarantee you get rewarded for exploring only for the sake of it.
There is a multitude of designs in between those two and both designs have many flaws but at least they give you something to care for that isn't mindless busy work like go do deliver this and fetch that over and over.
Absolutely Nier Automata, the design and its concept is super tight and wastes literally 0 space
Call it nostalgia but skyrim. I remember losing hours just wondering around and discovering stuff. Don't know how it holds up today after all these years and so many open world games released. I wonder if I would still feel the same playing it today.
Honestly? I prefer Witcher 2 with it's more linear style and therefore far better storytelling (I'm talking about the main questline).
I disagree strongly about RDR2 in the OP... Like, RDR2 is the best use of open world of any game I've ever played, and by a wide margin. It's makes such brilliant use of it's open world, and the game would not be the same game without an open world. The game is the world.
I guess one exception in RDR2 is a region of the map that is not explorable until the "post-game." THe game has been out for a year so it's probably silly to "spoil" this as you would have likely seen it in screenshots and anything else, but the entire US-side of the RDR1 map is included in RDR2, but it's not explorable for story reasons throughout the primary story mode of the game. A wish they had done more with that part of the map story-wise, but it makes sense in-game canon why they don't: In RDR1, your main character plays a role in which he's a stranger in a strange land, so it wouldn't make too much ssense, story wise, to have that region be part of the RDR2 story mode.
I understand how a lot of people get tired of the open structure of RDR2 so I don't fault anybody who just blitzed through the missions, but the essential way to play that game is to explore the whole world. It's so, so, so rewarding. Some of the best storytelling of any game is done in these "micro-stories" told throughout the world, and even after playing it for... hundreds of hours, now in my second full playthrough, I'm stumbling into things that I never stumbled into before and it's amazing that Rockstar puts so much effort into these micro-stories and world-building aspects in the game in regions, places, and activities that the overwhelming majority of people will never experience or even come across. Things with no "icon marker" no "mission goal" no ... point other than building this rich, detailed, believable, enchanting world.
I like Breath of the Wild as a game, the gamey-ness was just wonderful, but it's not comparable to the world building of RDR2. There's so many anecdotes and stories of world building in RDR2 it's tough to even get into it because there's hundreds of them that build this cohesive, believable world that is bigger than your character... A world that exists on its own whether you're they're or a part of it or not.
Someone in the RDR2 thread posted a recent discovery they found, and it's just such a great example of world building that 99% of players won't experience at all. So, there's a town in RDR1 and RDR2 called Armadillo. In RDR1 this is the first town you visit and where a lot of the early story takes place. If you are familiar with the lore of RDR1, you know that Armadillo is a town that had recently had a cholera outbreak prior to the events of RDR1. West of Armadillo is a town called Tumbleweed, and in RDR1, this is a ghost town with bandits in it, and if you do some digging and pay attention then you know that Tumbleweed was a bustling town, but "Then the railroad came through and skipped it..." And Armadillo becomes the thriving town of RDR1, while TUmbleweed becomes abandoned. So there's too many stories related to this to get into, but in RDR2 if you visit Armadillo, it's in the throes of its cholera outbreak, with coffins strewn about, sick people, a semi-abandoned town... In RDR2 there's a mechanic where you can cover your face with a mask when you're robbing stores to not get identifies, so an Era member decides ... hey, there's a contagious outbreak in Armabdillo, it'd make sense to cover my face ALA Coronavirus in real life. SO player does that and as he walks through town the few towns folk comment on it, saying things like "Hey, wearing a mask won't protect you from this disease..." and various comments like that. It's such a tiny, tiny detail, and this game was obviously made before mask-wearing was common in the US or Europe, but it's just this attention to detail in an otherwise unvisited portion of the main mission structure, that 99.9% (or more) people will never experience ... and yet, they record the line and have AI programming to tell you that on the off chance that you ride into Armadillo with your mask on ... it's amazing attnetion to detail.
There's a lot more mystery with Armadillo as well, including tying into a notorious side-character named Herbert Moon, the Strange Man, and more, and RDR2 has all of these supernatural hints and suggestions if you dig *deep* as to why Armadillo got the cholera outbreak and why Herbert Moon seems immune to it. ... As well as why Herbert Moon becomes a racist, anti-semitic conspiracy theorist by RDR1.
If you played through RDR1 and RDR2 and missed this, google "The Mystery of the Strange Man," and there's plenty of youtube videos and wiki's talking about it. Here's a good one:
Red Dead Redemption 2 Easter Egg - The Strange Man
Red Dead Redemption 2 Secret Easter Egg - The Strange ManIn Bayall Edge, Lemoyne there is a shack where you can find some mysterious paintings and writings o...www.youtube.com
There is nothing in the main mission structure of the game that brings you to this shack, it's only if you're really into exploring the world, but if you walk into it and you played RDR1, it will just invite so much curiosity and interest. When I stumbled in I Was like "..... wtf holy shit..." And it really felt like I was a detective uncovering a mystery. There's no reward, no unique gun, no unique outfit, no "achievment unlocked," or anything, it's just there to build the world and give you a sense of awe. And there's dozens or maybe hundreds of little anecdotes and "micro-stories" like this all throughout RDR2.
There's a handful of "very obvious" ones, like the well known New Hanover serial killer which most players usually find or discover because the hints are places around the areas that you spend a lot of time in. I really did love this serial killer side-story because it's one that you discover if you pay attention when riding around, and it's the first one where I was like "woah, so there's a lot to this world." BUt then, if you go hunting *knowing* it, you can find so much more, like this random message scrawled in a train tunnel which is super hard to see unless you use the Photo mode in the game and use a filter:
I fucking loved this ambient "micro-story" because it's a mix of genuine discovery but then guided discovery as finding clues about the killer reveals a sort of treasure map, and then you need to know where to go once you find all of the final pieces... Most people who avidly explore the map will know it fairly immediately when they get all of the pieces.
FOr a game that uses it's open world poorly, I'll use another Rockstar example -- GTAIV. Almost all of the story takes place in 2 regions of the map, with a 3rd region barely having any of the story, and one portion of that 3rd region completely unvisited save for maybe one or two "drive through" missions. I think Rockstar knew they'd be releasing DLC for it, so they intentionally didn't put much of the story in 60% of the map, and kept Niko's story mostly contained to 2 small regions of the map. But, I was disappointed when I finished GTAIV. And then, if you explored those areas, there was almost no reward to it. They felt like empty regions with nothing to find and nothing to discover. It's the opposite of RDR2. Once all of the DLC for GTAIV came out, you got a better appreciation for the map, but GTAIV alone was a poor use of its map IMO.
I completely agree with this. RDR2 is the best use of an open world in gaming to date.
OP completely misses the mark. RDR2 has an amazingly justified open world. I played a story mission where an antagonist is killed and deposited in the swaps for the alligators... a few in-game days later I was fishing in the swamps and reeled up a leg. Then Arthur speculates it likely belonged to the deceased character he'd fed to the gators earlier. That mind-blowing level of easily missed detail would not be possible were RDR2 some linear game without an open world backdrop. The linear stretches (chapters 1 and 5) being significantly weaker than the more open chapters (2-4, 6) show how much stronger the game is with the open world than without it, precisely because the scripted missions are not what carry the game.
That said, you're right that there are no conventional "rewards" to exploring (save for finding cool spots for stunt jumps, rampaging, and other mischief) and there are certainly areas that are under-utilized, such as the industrial area in the southern part of Alderney, or the area around the airport in Dukes, but you get around plenty in GTA IV and were the map hidden from the onset with a "fog of war" or whatever, you'd have unveiled 95% of the map by the end of the vanilla game.
Agree with your beautiful defense of RDR2, but having been replaying IV after the latest PC update (the one adding Steam achievements and the DLC), I think you're misremembering just how much of the story is set in Alderney. All of the fixer/assassination missions and Pegarino family missions, as are plenty of missions from the McReary brothers. There are also several strangers there, plus all of the other activities you find around the entirety of the map (like vigilante missions, races, Stevie's cars, etc.).
That said, you're right that there are no conventional "rewards" to exploring (save for finding cool spots for stunt jumps, rampaging, and other mischief) and there are certainly areas that are under-utilized, such as the industrial area in the southern part of Alderney, or the area around the airport in Dukes, but you get around plenty in GTA IV and were the map hidden from the onset with a "fog of war" or whatever, you'd have unveiled 95% of the map by the end of the vanilla game.
yep. for me, completing the storyline was the hard part (actually had to put the game aside, at one point). the easy part? ridin' the open range. i'm still out there enjoying myself...
Red Dead Redemption 2's open world is the best and the game utilize it very well. There's always something new to discover and something to do wherever you go. Every inch of that map has something interesting in it. It's the only open world game that, ~2 years later, I still love to just walk around the world and explore it.
Subnautica
A hand-crafted world of great depth, contextualized by a constantly rewarding loop of exploring deeper to craft better gear to explore deeper still.
Never too large to feel boring, but spread out enough to create a sense of tense progression into darker and more alien biomes
This is the real answer.
BOTW is a close 2nd in so far as it utilizes the world well to allow for its non-linear approach.
I personally loved AC: Origins. Main story was linear, however, the world was structured well so your progress through it felt great.
I guess it depends on what you mean by saying "good use". Personally, the empty space open world of SOTC is good use because it plays an important rôle in the ambiance, setting, story etc. even if there are no tasks and sidequests or anything like that.
On the opposite side of things, I love the small but packed open world of Dying Light and the importance its level design makes during "traversal" or PtP/mission to mission gameplay . It makes traversal fun.
On the opposite side of things, I love the small but packed open world of Dying Light and the importance its level design makes during "traversal" or PtP/mission to mission gameplay . It makes traversal fun.
No game has ever instilled a sense of full-on wonder and stoke to explore that Morrowind did. I booted that game up and played until like 4:00 AM the first night. I've never had that feeling since—in regards to open world games.
Also Spider-Man PS4 might not have had the deepest world, but I could spend hours just swinging around beating up groups of thugs. It just felt so fucking GOOD to move in that game.
Also Spider-Man PS4 might not have had the deepest world, but I could spend hours just swinging around beating up groups of thugs. It just felt so fucking GOOD to move in that game.
Awesome stuff, dude. Really well thought out. Most of Rockstar's open worlds are, to me, pre-alpha versions of The Matrix. We just keep getting closer and closer to that true "real world" simulation.
RDR2 does have shit mission design, but it has one of the best, lively worlds in video games. The world tops BOTW imo.
RDR2 is a technical marvel. The world just..."feels" alive and bursting with life. You can just wander for hrs on end. It's not announced obvs but my most anticipated game...is GTA6.
3D Fallout games to my experience have invisible walls which battle against the idea of an open world and in an off-putting way lead the player. Never felt FOs very open in that regard.
It's ridiculous that RDR2 is in the OP just because the missions are "linear", nothing wrong with linear mission design. There's a ton of shit that you will miss on a normal playthrough, even paranormal crazy stuff.
RDR2 is the most beautiful, most fully realized dynamic open world I have ever seen. It's the benchmark for open world games going forward.
I also like Yakuza's small open world design, and the mysterious desolate emptiness of SotC.
RDR2 is the most beautiful, most fully realized dynamic open world I have ever seen. It's the benchmark for open world games going forward.
I also like Yakuza's small open world design, and the mysterious desolate emptiness of SotC.
RDR2 is nuts!I disagree strongly about RDR2 in the OP... Like, RDR2 is the best use of open world of any game I've ever played, and by a wide margin. It's makes such brilliant use of it's open world, and the game would not be the same game without an open world. The game is the world.
I guess one exception in RDR2 is a region of the map that is not explorable until the "post-game." THe game has been out for a year so it's probably silly to "spoil" this as you would have likely seen it in screenshots and anything else, but the entire US-side of the RDR1 map is included in RDR2, but it's not explorable for story reasons throughout the primary story mode of the game. A wish they had done more with that part of the map story-wise, but it makes sense in-game canon why they don't: In RDR1, your main character plays a role in which he's a stranger in a strange land, so it wouldn't make too much ssense, story wise, to have that region be part of the RDR2 story mode.
I understand how a lot of people get tired of the open structure of RDR2 so I don't fault anybody who just blitzed through the missions, but the essential way to play that game is to explore the whole world. It's so, so, so rewarding. Some of the best storytelling of any game is done in these "micro-stories" told throughout the world, and even after playing it for... hundreds of hours, now in my second full playthrough, I'm stumbling into things that I never stumbled into before and it's amazing that Rockstar puts so much effort into these micro-stories and world-building aspects in the game in regions, places, and activities that the overwhelming majority of people will never experience or even come across. Things with no "icon marker" no "mission goal" no ... point other than building this rich, detailed, believable, enchanting world.
I like Breath of the Wild as a game, the gamey-ness was just wonderful, but it's not comparable to the world building of RDR2. There's so many anecdotes and stories of world building in RDR2 it's tough to even get into it because there's hundreds of them that build this cohesive, believable world that is bigger than your character... A world that exists on its own whether you're they're or a part of it or not.
Someone in the RDR2 thread posted a recent discovery they found, and it's just such a great example of world building that 99% of players won't experience at all. So, there's a town in RDR1 and RDR2 called Armadillo. In RDR1 this is the first town you visit and where a lot of the early story takes place. If you are familiar with the lore of RDR1, you know that Armadillo is a town that had recently had a cholera outbreak prior to the events of RDR1. West of Armadillo is a town called Tumbleweed, and in RDR1, this is a ghost town with bandits in it, and if you do some digging and pay attention then you know that Tumbleweed was a bustling town, but "Then the railroad came through and skipped it..." And Armadillo becomes the thriving town of RDR1, while TUmbleweed becomes abandoned. So there's too many stories related to this to get into, but in RDR2 if you visit Armadillo, it's in the throes of its cholera outbreak, with coffins strewn about, sick people, a semi-abandoned town... In RDR2 there's a mechanic where you can cover your face with a mask when you're robbing stores to not get identifies, so an Era member decides ... hey, there's a contagious outbreak in Armabdillo, it'd make sense to cover my face ALA Coronavirus in real life. SO player does that and as he walks through town the few towns folk comment on it, saying things like "Hey, wearing a mask won't protect you from this disease..." and various comments like that. It's such a tiny, tiny detail, and this game was obviously made before mask-wearing was common in the US or Europe, but it's just this attention to detail in an otherwise unvisited portion of the main mission structure, that 99.9% (or more) people will never experience ... and yet, they record the line and have AI programming to tell you that on the off chance that you ride into Armadillo with your mask on ... it's amazing attnetion to detail.
There's a lot more mystery with Armadillo as well, including tying into a notorious side-character named Herbert Moon, the Strange Man, and more, and RDR2 has all of these supernatural hints and suggestions if you dig *deep* as to why Armadillo got the cholera outbreak and why Herbert Moon seems immune to it. ... As well as why Herbert Moon becomes a racist, anti-semitic conspiracy theorist by RDR1.
If you played through RDR1 and RDR2 and missed this, google "The Mystery of the Strange Man," and there's plenty of youtube videos and wiki's talking about it. Here's a good one:
Red Dead Redemption 2 Easter Egg - The Strange Man
Red Dead Redemption 2 Secret Easter Egg - The Strange ManIn Bayall Edge, Lemoyne there is a shack where you can find some mysterious paintings and writings o...
There is nothing in the main mission structure of the game that brings you to this shack, it's only if you're really into exploring the world, but if you walk into it and you played RDR1, it will just invite so much curiosity and interest. When I stumbled in I Was like "..... wtf holy shit..." And it really felt like I was a detective uncovering a mystery. There's no reward, no unique gun, no unique outfit, no "achievment unlocked," or anything, it's just there to build the world and give you a sense of awe. And there's dozens or maybe hundreds of little anecdotes and "micro-stories" like this all throughout RDR2.
There's a handful of "very obvious" ones, like the well known New Hanover serial killer which most players usually find or discover because the hints are places around the areas that you spend a lot of time in. I really did love this serial killer side-story because it's one that you discover if you pay attention when riding around, and it's the first one where I was like "woah, so there's a lot to this world." BUt then, if you go hunting *knowing* it, you can find so much more, like this random message scrawled in a train tunnel which is super hard to see unless you use the Photo mode in the game and use a filter:
I fucking loved this ambient "micro-story" because it's a mix of genuine discovery but then guided discovery as finding clues about the killer reveals a sort of treasure map, and then you need to know where to go once you find all of the final pieces... Most people who avidly explore the map will know it fairly immediately when they get all of the pieces.
FOr a game that uses it's open world poorly, I'll use another Rockstar example -- GTAIV. Almost all of the story takes place in 2 regions of the map, with a 3rd region barely having any of the story, and one portion of that 3rd region completely unvisited save for maybe one or two "drive through" missions. I think Rockstar knew they'd be releasing DLC for it, so they intentionally didn't put much of the story in 60% of the map, and kept Niko's story mostly contained to 2 small regions of the map. But, I was disappointed when I finished GTAIV. And then, if you explored those areas, there was almost no reward to it. They felt like empty regions with nothing to find and nothing to discover. It's the opposite of RDR2. Once all of the DLC for GTAIV came out, you got a better appreciation for the map, but GTAIV alone was a poor use of its map IMO.
"Open world" in the sense it'd be okay if it was the size of just one of Xenoblade Chronicle X's continents and just packed to the brim with ways to explore it and vastly more interactive. So sandbox, but not necessarily open world. It seems like the general feel MP was going for if it didn't have to segment the world through creative loading through elevators and doors and such
I think you named them, OP. Those games really take advantage of the open-world design.
For me, Rockstar & Ubisoft open-worlds are beautiful and realistic, but they only really serve as a backdrop for content that doesn't really need an open-world to exist. Witcher 3 as well; it's a great game, but the stuff that's great is largely independent of it being open-world or not. It's more a great game that happens to also be open-world, as opposed to being a great open-world game.
That's usually my determining factor. "Did this game need to be open-world to accomplish what it wanted to accomplish?" And in most cases, the answer is "no" for me. Bethesda RPGs, Breath of the Wild, and Death Stranding are among the few exceptions where those games wouldn't be what they are - and wouldn't be as good as they are - if they weren't open-world games and didn't fully embrace that construct.
For me, Rockstar & Ubisoft open-worlds are beautiful and realistic, but they only really serve as a backdrop for content that doesn't really need an open-world to exist. Witcher 3 as well; it's a great game, but the stuff that's great is largely independent of it being open-world or not. It's more a great game that happens to also be open-world, as opposed to being a great open-world game.
That's usually my determining factor. "Did this game need to be open-world to accomplish what it wanted to accomplish?" And in most cases, the answer is "no" for me. Bethesda RPGs, Breath of the Wild, and Death Stranding are among the few exceptions where those games wouldn't be what they are - and wouldn't be as good as they are - if they weren't open-world games and didn't fully embrace that construct.
Definetly NOT GTAV, the game is full of nothing and there is nothing to incentivize exploring around.
One of the best game in this regard is Lego City Undercover, that game is filled with secrets and places to climb and explore, just lovely.
Crackdown nailed it. The open world is a huge obstacle course that rewards you for exploring the map, by giving you the skills to explore even more of the map. Great game.
I guess the key is just making me actually want to explore it.
Might and Magic 1 is almost shockingly open-ended. You begin the game with absolutely no guidance and can go almost anywhere you can survive. It's up to you to find your own path through the game, including finding the main quest.
Might and Magic 1 is almost shockingly open-ended. You begin the game with absolutely no guidance and can go almost anywhere you can survive. It's up to you to find your own path through the game, including finding the main quest.
The thing that makes me want explore the most is the chance of adventure and rewards. I'm not one for exploring for the sake of exploring. So I much prefer games like Fallout, Skyrim and Witcher 3 over say BotW. BotW feels empty and boring because I'm not getting any pay off.
OP
OP
Hmm, I think I did not explain my reasoning well. There is nothing wrong with linear missions, I think it's more the strictness that gets me? It''s a weird dichotomy between the beautiful open world (which I do think is one of the most detailed and pretty game worlds), and the extremely strict linear mission design that you can fail far too easily.
I hope it didn't seem like I think RDR2 is a bad game, I think it's quite a good game.
Unrelated, I think the Skate open worlds are also well done, as finding cool spots to skate on in the city can be rewarding (Skate 2 is my fave)