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Most Pointless Open Worlds?
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Anyone saying Breath of the Wild doesn't seem to get that there's a difference between not liking the game design and the open world itself being pointless. BotW is completely built around the open world design and the mechanics (gliding, climbing, the restriction to a limited number of major items etc) would not translate well to a linear experience. What you wanted is a more traditional Zelda design, but that is not what the thread is about.
It makes about as much sense as someone creating a thread about "the game with the most pointless stealth mechanics" and replying with Metal Gear Solid.
It makes about as much sense as someone creating a thread about "the game with the most pointless stealth mechanics" and replying with Metal Gear Solid.
That's how I felt about Nier as well. The game was at its best in the linear sections.
This. I thought the game was OK, but I couldn't imagine buying it day one after I played through that world.
Like 60% of FFXVs map was cut. You can obviously tell the train section was added as a means to blast through that section of the game because while the locations were mapped out geographically, they never actually had the time to fill out Niflheim.
Its entirely clear from what DLC provided vs. What we originally got:
- Royal edition/Episode Ardyn: gave us a ton of explorable Insomnia. They cut out the entirety of the invasion of Insomnia due to time constraints and made it a 2 hour movie, rewrote the beginning to make Noctis and crew secondary viewers, instead of the the actual victims looking for revenge. This should have been part of a relaxing prologue and the first 5 hours. FF7 had an entirely different structure the first 3rd vs the latter portions of the game.
- Episode Ignis: A bigger Altissia to play around with. However the whole continent was cut. There was clearly additional towns in Accordo and they removed them.
- Episode Prompto: Added an open mountainous area.
Then you get to the hypotheticals:
- Episode Aranea would have given us an explorable Gralea and areas beyond it
- Episode Luna was supposed to be more of Niflheim
- Episode Noctis was suppsed to flesh out the WoR more and expand the ending (which was already perfect so honestly kind of happy they didnt mess with it)
The game is chock full of unrealized potential. It should have been the biggest fantasy game in scope. Instead it felt like a large collection of broken promises.
OP
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To be entirely fair, making the player dick around a city you're never going to be allowed to return to until the very ending for five hours would've been a terrible way to intro FFXV. It would've felt like a completely different game.
Gta3
where you weren't even allowed to visit half the map until you got to a certain point in the game
where you weren't even allowed to visit half the map until you got to a certain point in the game
In my opinion just because a world is pretty doesn't mean it's worth exploringI wonder if the people claiming Horizon had a pointless open world just thought saying BotW was too obvious a troll.
I spent quite a bit of time just exploring in Horizon, taking pretty screenshots. One time I fell into a mountain river and was carried towards a place that was not reachable in any other way, then found a great spot for overlooking the valley:
One of the most memorable moments in gaming for me, and it was because Horizon's world was so big and freely explorable. The way I got to this spot was so weird that I was sure this was my own personal spot, something probably unique to my playthrough. Sure, there was a bit of a disconnect between main story and open world, but the world by itself was so immensely gorgeous and worth exploring that I can't understand why you would think it pointless, beyond just not liking exploring open worlds in general. In which case, stay away from the genre, it's okay, nobody likes everything.
No More Heroes by far. It just a big empty landmass that only has a few random shirts in trashcans, the few activities to do and the mission locations. I just used the fast travel to get everywhere as it was so bad to drive in. Glad the second game just gave you a map and menu to select locations.
off the top of my head, gears 5 takes the cake. the only purpose, which i actually do appreciate, is a break from the action and to pace out the game.
I would kind of agree with this. Horizon's game world is GORGEOUS but I felt virtually no impetus to bother exploring it. That probably had something to do with the fact I LOATHED the core combat mechanics, though, so any time my exploration was "rewarded" with enemies it just felt like the game telling me "time to quit!"
Not really. Ground Zeroes was a lot more constrained in that respect.
MGS5 wasn't even an open world -- that would imply some kind of permanence to the player existing there. It just gave the player a large play space to every mission which if you found pointless, was probably a result of how you went about playing it.
Eh, not really. I never expected insomnia to be 100% explorable. I expected the game to have a proper beginning. A linear section depicting Noctis's prince life and his friends lives in Insomnia would have been enough. Lots of games have slow, relaxed starts. A lot of this is shoehorned into an anime, audiobook and more. . The invasion should have been through his eyes too, not a film.
My biggest problem with FFXV is the fact that Noctis and his friends are entirely removed from nearly the entire main plot to collect weapons and summons.
- They arent present during the fall of Insomnia, which is the whole reason the game plot starts.
- They are essentially bystanders during Altissia's invasion, save for the epic fight against Leviathan.
- Noctis barely, if at all, has time to
Really know Luna, yet grieves for her unbelievably
- They are not present for the invasion of Tenebrae. It is also not at all explorable.
- They are not present for the downfall of Gralea. This was going to be Aranea's DLC.
The plot literally is explained at times through letters of what happened in Gralea.
Yea and ground zeroes serves as a mere appetizer for what MGSV offers.
Final Fantasy VII is also not a road movie. You can't tell a road movie story and then spend 5 hours NOT on the road before you get to the road part.
Phantom Pain has multiple missions that involve traversal between Ground Zeroes-esque bases and points of interest that would not be achievable in isolated maps like Ground Zeroes. I honestly don't see the harm in having the bases connected in one contiguous world, especially considering many players will just exfiltrate the hot zone via helicopter anyway (as you would in Ground Zeroes-like maps). I personally enjoyed exfiltrating the hot zone on foot or by vehicle after missions and just going around the world doing side ops. Removing those connecting areas would only serve to limit mission variety and player options. And the alternative would be, what, either having a bunch of island bases or bases with invisible walls or mountains around them? More would be lost than gained were MGSV have ditched its large biomes (and I'm not even really sure what would be gained).
I dunno why people are listing open worlds games like horizon, botw where the world has things to do in it? Sure it might not be be your cup of tea, but there is at least some point to it being there.
Mafia 2 and LA noire would have been exactly the same games if the world wasn't open. You can't get more pointless than that!
Mafia 2 and LA noire would have been exactly the same games if the world wasn't open. You can't get more pointless than that!
This I agree with. They added utterly nothing to the experience and basically serve as glorified loading screens between mission areas. I'm not even exaggerating when I say I fell asleep multiple times in coop when my friend was guiding us on the skiff.
I didn't play MGSV like a conventional open world game - I helicoptered in and out of basically every mission - but it was integral to the experience. You cover a lot of ground in some missions - like the one with the ruins and the helicopter, and the snipers in the mansion - and the open world allows you to approach them from a lot of different angles. Getting from one place to another, through multiple encounters, was the fun of that game.
The game was never advertised as a road movie only. The first trailers depicted the invasion, before the rebooted development on the game. They could have literally done whatever they wanted. It would have followed the same structure as FF7: Linear-> Open World/Travel-> Linear.
Only the Versus trailers showed the invasion. Every XV trailer did not. XV's debut trailer was set during the Altissia stuff.
Right. I forget the name of the mission, but the one where you have to intercept the two convoys of tanks and those are your only instructions. You have full agency over how to deal with them and can use everything, including the terrain, to your advantage.
That mission doesn't work in a constrained level.
MGSV is definitely my pick. Kojima wanted an open world without understanding what makes a good open world. Even the points of interests on the map weren't very interesting. No amount of side-ops or being able to tackle things from different angles redeems the open world. Its still just a boring open world with the same few things spawning in it. They should have kept the Ground Zeroes structure. Man I don't even remember there being any bases the size of Camp Omega, or at least not as detailed and interesting. I put well over 100 hours into MGSV and I can't help but feel how much more I would have played it if it was structured like GZ.
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I hope I get beaten by then but no, the game wouldnt Be half as impactful without all that empty space. It created a very particular setting that I thought was very important for the game as a whole. I remember when I was a teenager I was desperately exploring every nook and cranny in order to find a single damn clue about that world. And locating the collosi was part of the fun.
Gears 5 of course. "Open" for the sake of being open. It wasn't fun and it wasn't better for it. The best parts of Gears 5 were the traditional Gears of War levels.
I really don't understand the "pointless open world" argument for LA Noire. It gives a game a sense of scope which really lends to the world building and story about a corrupt ass city. Like, gamers complain about collectathon, Ubisoft-style open worlds crammed to the brim with repetitive activities but yet LA Noire is too empty.
Agreed 100%. MGSV having a "pointless open world" is also odd. You can make all sorts of strong, valid arguments on how the linear style of previous entries were superior or how you like that style of gameplay better but to say that in the open world in the context of what MGSV's open world is trying to achieve is completely asinine. It literally opened up MGS's gameplay to all sorts of awesome sneaking opportunities. Many games advertise "tackling mission/quests/levels how you want" and I feel like MGSV is one of the few games that actually delivered on that, precisely because the open-world expanded the already emergent gameplay of MGS.
Agreed 100%. MGSV having a "pointless open world" is also odd. You can make all sorts of strong, valid arguments on how the linear style of previous entries were superior or how you like that style of gameplay better but to say that in the open world in the context of what MGSV's open world is trying to achieve is completely asinine. It literally opened up MGS's gameplay to all sorts of awesome sneaking opportunities. Many games advertise "tackling mission/quests/levels how you want" and I feel like MGSV is one of the few games that actually delivered on that, precisely because the open-world expanded the already emergent gameplay of MGS.
Not liking the game's open world or the direction a game took doesn't make it pointless. I'm only about 8 hours in but how can you say with a straight face that BotW's open world is pointless? Sure there are some spots that are just empty spaces with nothing to do but come one. It's practically a living breathing world that you interact with. MGSV's sandbox also serves the purpose of giving you a playground with an infinite number of ways to approach a mission with. Maybe it would've benefited from being a bit smaller but it absolutely has purpose.
I hate to say it but its true. Its just vast stretches of nothing. They wanted this seamless thing but it would have been far better to do something like FFXII /XIV's zone structure so you can at least keep the game relatively dense. The need to build the game around the roadtrip theme backfires the second you have to get out of the car to do anything. The game is like 95% speedtree wilderness or some shit and doesn't really make me want to explore because i'll just be somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the dark constantly being chased by daemons anyway.
You know I use to think it was pointless but then NMH2 came out and I kinda wished they didn't get rid of it. There's just something about it.