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Most Pointless Open Worlds?
- Thread starter s y
- Start date
You gotta love how Super Mario 3D World's "open world" for the world map is ther ebut the only things you can do is move around and do weenie jumps. PATHETIC
Mafia III - Dull and needless open world that actually drags down the otherwise excellent mechanics and story.
As many has already mentioned, LA Noire. Great game, but even the developers must have realised how pointless it was when they added the skip button when travelling between locations.
The potshots at BOTW are pretty ridiculous. It's cool to dislike the game but that open-world is about the furthest thing from pointless.
I enjoyed all previous games but I've been avoiding 5 so far when I read it was open world.
Agreed. Traversal or the means of traversal in 95% of open world games just sucks, so you end up doing the fastest thing possible to get from point A to point B. "You're missing the stuff inbetween!" except there is nothing inbetween the vast majority of the time. You could've trimmed a ton of openness from the games and making it tighter would've been much better.
This discussion puts me in mind of an article I read about the original Western release of Studio Ghibli's movies published by Disney. Taking Laputa/Castle in the Sky as an example, Miyazaki's original had a soundscape full of quiet moments. Sounds of the wind and nature, people talking and conflict in the distance. Those moments filled in the story of the world, the events that were happening. When Disney brought them over they requested that the music composer extend his sound tracks to fill in those quiet moments because "Americans become uneasy if there are long moments without music", and so those movies were altered (a practice Miyazaki put a stop to later on). But maybe Disney was right. Americans have to have constant noise and lack appreciation for quiet or rest. That would also explain the discussion around "Breath of the Wild has no music (despite having the largest sound track of any Zelda)". It's rather frustrating.
Count me in the LA Noire camp. By miles, the most forgettable and useless open-world I ever experienced. Not the one I dislike the most, but the most pointless for sure.
Horizon.
It was a combat focused game that was spread way too thin. No engagment in the map, it was quite the looker but had Spider-Man PS4 levels of open world when it came to thinks to do.
Love the driveby BoTW answers with pretty much no explanation or detail.
It was a combat focused game that was spread way too thin. No engagment in the map, it was quite the looker but had Spider-Man PS4 levels of open world when it came to thinks to do.
Love the driveby BoTW answers with pretty much no explanation or detail.
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First post nailed it. MGSV's open world has to be the emptiest, most boring open world crafted. It would only be slightly better if it wasn't the same environment across the entirety of it. What's worse is they take you to another equally boring wasteland mid way through. Huge disappointment after hearing him praise other open world games and then ignore all of what made them interesting.
ME: Andromeda and LA Noire.
Both make the games actively worse by presenting people with open worlds with fuck all to do that mainly serve as a way of padding time between the actual good bits of the game.
Remove the open worlds from both and they become tighter, better experiences.
Both make the games actively worse by presenting people with open worlds with fuck all to do that mainly serve as a way of padding time between the actual good bits of the game.
Remove the open worlds from both and they become tighter, better experiences.
As a die hard MGS fan. MGSV is subpar to Gound Zeros. If MGSV had been a bunch of Ground Zeros style areas...it would GOAT.
That said, I think Batman Arkham Knight is it. That game is just endlessly filled with the same 10 activities in 10 different zones. It's so annoying.
That said, I think Batman Arkham Knight is it. That game is just endlessly filled with the same 10 activities in 10 different zones. It's so annoying.
MGSV's open world isn't pointless, just badly designed. I know Kojima wanted us to organically infiltrate bases and camps on the map, but the traversal was terrible and many missions end when you escape the base anyway. Having to revisit a lot of locations doesn't really help either.
My answer to the OP's question would be Nier" Automata, it's a great game, but it should have been made with smaller and more intimate levels in mind.
My answer to the OP's question would be Nier" Automata, it's a great game, but it should have been made with smaller and more intimate levels in mind.
It's not really an "open world game", there are just two chapters that have large open world areas that you need to traverse to get from one mission to the next. You don't spend much time at all in those open areas, but, as such there is just really no point in having these hubs. It's still a really good game, and if you've enjoyed all the previous Gears games I'm sure you'd probably still really like this one.
Is quite simple.
Repetitive Open World with only exploration as a strong point.
Combat is really repetitive and basic.. open world could have been more enjoyable if this was not a problem.
Shrines are part of the open world and they are also repetitive.. the first 3 or 4 times is fun.. after that is just a chore.
Since the game has a really lackluster story the open world feels empty and also the music is absent most of the time.
I could keep going with things that are not well done in the game but I rather wait for part 2 and hope that is going to a be a game 90% different from BOTW.
I think you're waiting for the wrong game, dude. BOTW 2 is going to be more of the same, and I think that's more or less what everyone* wants from it.
*Well, almost everyone.
Ooh yeah, that really does make a lot of sense. I too often find myself needing constant engagement but I recognize it and can switch it off for things like BotW.
I scarcely get why Breath of the Wild is mentioned, though that severely stretches the definition of "pointless" in relation to this game. Only makes sense if you are saying that the conception or existence of the game itself is pointless, though that is most likely not what the OP is asking.
I more get some of the flak it gets in relation to substantial content beyond the usual oooh-ing and aaahh-ing of the world itself. Its mostly a grind/loot fest with only the world itself to distract from it. The world is outstanding and the game is far from the worst open-world effort I have played, but there is definitely ample room for improvement in BOTW2.
I think I'm going to decide that Dragon Age: Inquisition is my #1 pointless. It added so little to the game and cheapened much of the questing compared to prior games. In addition, the world itself was so forgettable due to the scale size of the MC in relation to it. A couple had almost no content whatsoever. It also fragmented the world which otherwise would have been cohesive if woven together like prior games.
LA Noire and the like may have pointless worlds, but you aren't really forced to slog through them for hours on end. Just soak in the eye candy from a distance and move on. To me, they are more "harmlessly pointless"
I more get some of the flak it gets in relation to substantial content beyond the usual oooh-ing and aaahh-ing of the world itself. Its mostly a grind/loot fest with only the world itself to distract from it. The world is outstanding and the game is far from the worst open-world effort I have played, but there is definitely ample room for improvement in BOTW2.
I think I'm going to decide that Dragon Age: Inquisition is my #1 pointless. It added so little to the game and cheapened much of the questing compared to prior games. In addition, the world itself was so forgettable due to the scale size of the MC in relation to it. A couple had almost no content whatsoever. It also fragmented the world which otherwise would have been cohesive if woven together like prior games.
LA Noire and the like may have pointless worlds, but you aren't really forced to slog through them for hours on end. Just soak in the eye candy from a distance and move on. To me, they are more "harmlessly pointless"
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Mass Effect Andromeda
Never anything interesting, terrible driving, braindead mining, awful map that sometimes doesn't load, questionable fast travel points.
And if you count the planet navigation too, before patching you had to sit there and watch 20 seconds of star travel animations. Cool the first few times, and then just brutal to sit through, further aggravated by the fetch quest design.
Oh skill progression and story bits tied to collectathon of random "fragments" for no reason.
Finally, first contact alien world that already displays Arabic numerals. Why bother doing open world if you don't even try scifi world building.
It was even worse when BotW came immediately afterwards
Never anything interesting, terrible driving, braindead mining, awful map that sometimes doesn't load, questionable fast travel points.
And if you count the planet navigation too, before patching you had to sit there and watch 20 seconds of star travel animations. Cool the first few times, and then just brutal to sit through, further aggravated by the fetch quest design.
Oh skill progression and story bits tied to collectathon of random "fragments" for no reason.
Finally, first contact alien world that already displays Arabic numerals. Why bother doing open world if you don't even try scifi world building.
It was even worse when BotW came immediately afterwards
MGSV wasn't pointless, it was just empty and vapid and was poorly done to the point where it renders some of the best game mechanics in existant useless for 99.9% of your playtime. Like Venom plays amazingly but the world is so empty with boilerplate repetitive Soviet checkpoints that you barely get to do anything with him. So it's more harmful than pointless.
LA Noire was genuinely pointless.
LA Noire was genuinely pointless.
The open-world in Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise was..... ugh.... the shitty buggy didn't help. It made sense on paper, you'd absolutely want to explore the wasteland. But Mad Max did it a million times better.
Great game otherwise.
Great game otherwise.
Repetition and loops are part of gaming experiences. If they don't feel rewarding to you they aren't fun, that doesn't mean that the open world is "pointless." They are very intentional in its design and interactivity. There aren't many open worlds that let you do what BoTW does.