"Open World" Abused by Marketing Miscreants?

[Luridis]

Okay, the title and the tags where done tongue-in-cheek, so don't go looking for your angrypants.

 

I've seen two big RPG releases in the last few years tout themselves as "open world", only for developers to come back quickly and clarify to the effect of...

 

It is open world, but it's not. The areas are big, etc.

 

The two recent games that I know of are DA: Inquisition and Witcher 3. Don't misunderstand, these are both great games and have the kind of large roomy areas that conveniently assuage any potential claustrophobia on the part of the player. However, these don't seem to fit the classic definition. i.e. You cannot run from one edge of the map to the other without opening a menu, which is conveniently called "map", in order to move from one "zone" to another.

 

Open worlds have: stream loading, most or all areas accessible from the start, may or may not have player-relative enemy strength. Personally, I find the games without mob level adjustment have the most charm. After all, nothing says hello quite like a "Welcome Bear".

 

Examples: Skyrim, Fallout, Most MMOs, older Might & Magic games and I remember at least one way back on the original PlayStation, but don't remember the name.

 

 

So, why are we seeing this term thrown around? Is it really just marketing departments seeing "valuable words" produced by the success of others and just too eager to apply them to things they're trying to sell?

 

[Keyrock]

Meh, technicalities.  As long as the areas are fairly spacious and don't include a bunch of invisible walls within them to corral you down paths, effectively rendering the openness of the areas nothing more than illusion, that's open enough for me, I don't particularly care if it's one gigantic open area or 5 big open areas.  While a discussion on the matter of this technicality may be of interest to some, to me it matters as much as the discussion on whether Steam itself (not Steamworks) qualifies as DRM, which is to say, not at all.

 

/shrugs

[Hassat Hunter]

Well, it's bad marketing towards me... everything tagged "open world" immediately gets distrusted and less likely to be bought.

 

Open World is only for a select number of games. And you just need to play a few games where sequels go "open world" (Batman's Arkham series, I look at you) to see that not all games would benefit from it, and... infact, greatly have diminished gameplay aswell as story due to it. Kinda lose-lose.

 

No idea why it's so popular.

[Hurlshort]

How about open to interpretation worlds?

[JadedWolf]

Open worlds have: stream loading, most or all areas accessible from the start, may or may not have player-relative enemy strength. Personally, I find the games without mob level adjustment have the most charm. After all, nothing says hello quite like a "Welcome Bear".

 

[Orogun01]

I find the complaint quite ridiculous as well as the examples provided, Witcher 3 and Dragon Age both have less loading screens than Skyrim but somehow you don't think they're open world enough. By your own definition of stream loading you contradict yourself; if open world where only about the continuous scale of the main game world then at which point does it become open.

Anyways, people will always argue over inane things like semantics because they think their interpretation its better.

[BruceVC]

I find the complaint quite ridiculous as well as the examples provided, Witcher 3 and Dragon Age both have less loading screens than Skyrim but somehow you don't think they're open world enough. By your own definition of stream loading you contradict yourself; if open world where only about the continuous scale of the main game world then at which point does it become open.

 

Anyways, people will always argue over inane things like semantics because they think their interpretation its better.

 

I can understand what Luridis is saying, in your typical Bethesda game if you see a mountain you can walk towards to it and eventually reach it

 

But your DA games may have large active gaming areas  but some places you can never reach so  I  don't see them as true " open-world " ....it may just be about semantics?

 

There is a difference between your Bethesda or Gothic type game and lets say a Witcher game IMO 

Edited August 12, 2015 by BruceVC

[Lexx]

When I was young I thought open world games were games in which you can do whatever you want (e.g. Fallout 1 / 2). Nowadays when hearing about open world, I am thinking of huge maps with lots of fetch quests and c&p content.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Lexx

[Mamoulian War]

When I was young I thought open world games were games in which you can do whatever you want (e.g. Fallout 1 / 2). Nowadays when hearing about open world, I am thinking of huge maps with lots of fetch quests and c&p content.

Yeah.

 

The as soon as I hear open world when someone promotes their game, It makes me go "Watch Out! Fetch quest snore alert!"

 

That is the reason that I am kindly woried about the "open world" approach in FFXV and looking towards to it with biiig uncertainty ( never happened to me before. Even though I got pretty disapointed with Lightning Returns FFXIII. Because it was kind of "open world" as well.

[Luridis]

I find the complaint quite ridiculous as well as the examples provided, Witcher 3 and Dragon Age both have less loading screens than Skyrim but somehow you don't think they're open world enough. By your own definition of stream loading you contradict yourself; if open world where only about the continuous scale of the main game world then at which point does it become open.

 

Anyways, people will always argue over inane things like semantics because they think their interpretation its better.

 

Less loading screens? How do you figure? I can walk from one end of the place to the other and not see a single load screen in Skyrim. With DAI, if I want to travel from Haven to Hinterlands, that's a load. If I then want to travel to the coast, that's another load. So, I don't follow...

[Rosveen]

 

 

I find the complaint quite ridiculous as well as the examples provided, Witcher 3 and Dragon Age both have less loading screens than Skyrim but somehow you don't think they're open world enough. By your own definition of stream loading you contradict yourself; if open world where only about the continuous scale of the main game world then at which point does it become open.

 

Anyways, people will always argue over inane things like semantics because they think their interpretation its better.

Less loading screens? How do you figure? I can walk from one end of the place to the other and not see a single load screen in Skyrim. With DAI, if I want to travel from Haven to Hinterlands, that's a load. If I then want to travel to the coast, that's another load. So, I don't follow...

Interior cells maybe? You can't walk through the door without a loading screen and there are many doors. Even cities aren't open, much to the chagrin of oldtime fans.

 

As long as the loading screens are caused by geographical barriers like crossing seas or mountains, I don't mind. If I get a loading screen in the middle of the road because I just zoned out, I consider it a fragmented open world or not an open world at all, depending on the execution. I only wish it was honestly marketed as such. I don't base this on playable areas. I don't need to walk to every mountain on the horizon or enter every building in the city. Even in Bethesda games you eventually reach the end of the playable area - heck, Skyrim had invisible walls on the roads leading out of the province, now that was a strange combination of immersive and immersion-breaking at the same time.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Rosveen

[Fardragon]

I'm not convinced that "most" MMOs are open world.

 

But It's not a feature that I care about anyway.

 

Travelling around London by train and tube, it doesn't FEEL like an "open world" even though you can actually walk between "zones" in a few minutes.

[Aoyagi]

tags where done

 

Nice.

 

I don't think "open world" is particularly abused. However, "sandbox" is an entirely different story.

[cirdanx]

I'm not convinced that "most" MMOs are open world.

 

But It's not a feature that I care about anyway.

 

Travelling around London by train and tube, it doesn't FEEL like an "open world" even though you can actually walk between "zones" in a few minutes.

 

Most MMO´s aren´t more open world then Skyrim or Witcher 3, and in some cases probably even less than a GTA. WoW is a good example (because most know it). You can run around on a continent and thats it. Almost every massive multiplayer activity (which in itself is a joke because 20 people isn´t massive) is done in an closed zone (dungeon/raid/PvP, and these days even storylines thru phasing and personal dungeons).

 

I don´t think a fully open world in a true sense of the word (including realism like seasons and AI behavior), is even technically possible at this point. However they are last trying, some succeed more, some less.

 

But yes, i believe from a marketing point, it´s a useless term and easily thrown around. If you, however, fall for marketing, in an industry that is often caught lying about their products and is full of false promises, then shame on you

[Luridis]

 

I'm not convinced that "most" MMOs are open world.

 

But It's not a feature that I care about anyway.

 

Travelling around London by train and tube, it doesn't FEEL like an "open world" even though you can actually walk between "zones" in a few minutes.

 

Most MMO´s aren´t more open world then Skyrim or Witcher 3, and in some cases probably even less than a GTA. WoW is a good example (because most know it). You can run around on a continent and thats it. Almost every massive multiplayer activity (which in itself is a joke because 20 people isn´t massive) is done in an closed zone (dungeon/raid/PvP, and these days even storylines thru phasing and personal dungeons).

 

I don´t think a fully open world in a true sense of the word (including realism like seasons and AI behavior), is even technically possible at this point. However they are last trying, some succeed more, some less.

 

But yes, i believe from a marketing point, it´s a useless term and easily thrown around. If you, however, fall for marketing, in an industry that is often caught lying about their products and is full of false promises, then shame on you

 

 

Microsoft, 2 years ago.... "Don't get Scroogled!"

 

Microsoft, today... "Yes, using Cortana enables a keylogger... to better serve you."

 

"Brand Management" is out in force for Windows 10 too. I see legitimate, logical, and pointed arguments with massive down-votes for every Windows 10 related article. Nothing stops an internet firestorm like a bunch of 3rd world workers, paid a nickel an hour, to come "manage" the commentary on your products.

 

Note that the articles themselves are also suspect. I've noticed commonalities in the same way the gaming sites started showing a couple of years ago. Commonalities that, when viewed in rapid succession, lend the reader a reasonable suspicion that the article was cultured to fit a script provided by the vendor in question. The internet, as a consumer support mechanism, is dying fast in the faces of practices that, outside of the computer would would be highly illegal. (False advertising, bait-and-switch, racketeering, conspiracy to commit fraud, etc.)

Edited August 13, 2015 by Luridis