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?
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