Open world

Aghast!

I would rate my last few open world games something like this.

Horizons / Zelda
Mass Effect
Elex
AC Egypt

Horizons & Zelda are both great and worth playing. ME was flawed but not something I would want to miss, Elex even more so in the flaws but hate to miss category. I love me some Piranha Bytes.

AC is AC, I still don’t know how they manage to make such a beautiful, interesting open world boring but they do it so well. It starts off great like they all do but the game mechanics very quickly wear out their welcome. I thought this one would be the exception because it has an upgrade system for tools and weapons that has direct bonuses to gameplay but nope. After 20ish hours despite seeing some tiny fraction of the content I just stopped caring.

Just stopping to think about the gameplay makes even more bemused, it looks and sounds fun but it so quickly turns tedious.

I will also jump on the Zelda love train as I’ve been playing it the past week or so. Getting to the first village in Breath of the Wild is one of my favorite video game moments I’ve had recently. The game, especially early on before you get to the first stable, does an excellent job of making the player feel isolated in an abandoned world. You see ruins of what was scattered along the road, shattered houses, broken machinery, a cursed castle in the distance, all while occasionally running into hostile creatures. It really does feel as if there is nothing left aside from the odd fellow traveler you meet on the road. To suddenly be able to interact with a bunch of friendly NPCs after spending so much time alone fighting monsters and gamboling around the wilderness is such a cool feeling. This holds true away from villages too, when you spy a stable / trading outpost in the middle of nowhere and feel joy and relief at having found a place of relative safety and civilization in a barren (but still lush and pretty) world. It’s a neat trick and this is coming from someone who doesn’t normally like Zelda games.

I haven’t played Elex or Kingdom Come, but Andromeda is way better than its reputation suggests. It might be my second favorite Mass Effect (not as good as the second, roughly on par with the third, and significantly better than the first). Nowhere near Breath of the Wild, but solid nonetheless.

A lot of good comments here and I thank you. Now: Final fantasy XV (opening up tomorrow) purports to be open world (I’ve even downloaded the demo) and Final Fantasy XII was open world I think. Any comments on the Japanese perspective? And yes I get 4 guys in leather clothes isn’t really appealing. But …

Nice article on PC Gamer about this very topic:

About Kingdom Come:

Andy Kelly attempts to summarize the scope in his review: “If you get caught stealing, you’ll end up serving some time in jail. If you unsheathe your sword during a fist fight, your opponent will back down and maybe even apologise. Nobles will be more willing to speak to you if you’ve had a bath. If your reputation in a town is especially high, people on the street will shout your name and sing your praises.”

He goes on for a while, and even then, barely touches on everything. The detail in the simulation is almost absurd, a depth most big studios wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole, but Kingdom Come manages to keep everything together well enough. And through it all you play a naive, vulnerable, unremarkable young man. Small dangers cast tall shadows over Henry, a lovable oaf, imbuing a plain world with the mystery and danger we look for in great open world adventures.

STALKER

In Stalker, the open world is your enemy. Gamma pockets, anomalies and radioactive storms can end you in moments. Any building can hide scavengers or horrifying mutated creatures. Ammo and armour is scarce, and you’re lost in a wasteland so bleak as to be almost completely alienating. But as the Stalkers know, the Zone has a strange allure. Explore the blasted husks of Ukranian factories and apartment blocks, and try not to be too unnerved by the lifeless quiet. After a while, Stalker’s desolation becomes beautiful.

Witcher 3

An outstanding technological achievement, The Witcher 3 is the vanguard of a new wave of open world games able to leverage the power of modern gaming systems to create environments of extraordinary detail and scope. The bogs of Velen are a moody aperitif that primes you for the bustle of Novigrad and the sweeping forests of the nordic Skellige region—one of the most beautiful game locations ever.

You can spend hours sailing around those islands, stumbling upon quests, breaking curses, killing monsters and playing Gwent with rowdy locals. The Witcher 3’s towns are noisy, bustling places that make other open world towns seem lifeless by comparison. It’s a pleasure to simply pick a direction and walk—the hallmark of a great open world.

You know Zelda is Japanese right? :)

Only the first half of FFXV is open world (unless the DLC changed that). And I thought the characters were quite appealing. They have chemistry, which is something you don’t see in many games.

I’ve played all mentioned bar Kingdom Come (waiting for patches) and I’d rank them:

  • Zelda Breath of the Wild
  • Elex
  • AC: Origins
  • Final Fantasy XV
  • Horizon Zero Dawn
  • Mass Effect Andromeda

Why HZD so low? Everyone else seems to love it…

For me, a lot of the characters fell right in the uncanny valley, which ruined the immersion.

Maybe I’ve not played Horizon enough, as I kind of got distracted when Zelda came out and never really went back. It seemed competent but bland and lacking personality.

Zelda and Elex really trigger my love of exploration and discovery, and both have great character to them. AC:O is I think the best/most detailed environment ever made and I found it kind of amazing just to travel through. FFXV maybe I rank too high, I’ll re-evaluate after playing PC version. ME:A kind of grated, it all seemed so adolescent and jokey in tone. I mostly cringe whenever someone opens their mouth. ;)

I haven’t really played a lot of open world games, but I can recommend ELEX, F:NV, STALKER, and Underrail. I would someday like to play BotW, Witcher 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn. (I can’t really say I want to play Andromeda, since I did not like ME1 much at all.)

Slavic magic best magic.

Arma3 with open world mods like Antistasi or DUWS or Overthrow are pretty close to my favourite open world games.

Sure I know Breath is Japanese. I was wrong to stereotype the Final fantasy series. Breath seems different than those games.

So I have no idea – Is FFXV open world only a half? and is FF12 open world?

I don’t run with consoles so I don’t always get the nuances of what the cutting edge of Japanese rpgs are. But it appears that they are porting better on pc.

And before I seem like a bit of a dickhead I did run consoles for FFX and VII years ago.

Bottom line: Do we have two new(ish) open world JRPGS games on the pc?

My favorite open world is probably Dragon Age Inquisition. For me, it hit on all of the good parts of MMO exploration with the rewards you’d find in a single-player RPG. I love the crafting mechanic so all of the material hunts are worth it, and going out of your way to investigate a group of bandits unrelated to the main quest will always yield a cool reward. The many different, huge areas are very distinct, have their own story, and are enjoyable to traverse. My favorite area is the Hinterlands but there are so many more I have fond memories of. Weird is the fact that I’ve had no desire to pick up the expansions. I still go back to this one every now and then to get reacquainted with Thedas.

I couldn’t get into the newest Mass Effect, though. The second open-world planet you travel to… the rainy one with the jungle mushrooms … was a slog and had none of the payoffs I enjoy with open-world exploration. I need to go back and finish the game though.

Ha, you’re like reverse me. I loved the hell out of Andromeda and found Inquisition really hard to get into. I do need to get back and try again one of these days.

Tons of open world stuff coming. If I had a console i’d play that Zelda game. I may roll back to Striker and mod it or clear sky.

These games have to be tough to make. In that thought I tend to give them a bit of a break game-play wise. I mean some of the open world games are just amazing in graphics, exploration, and physics (like fallout 4? those skyscrapers downtown?)

SHOULD we give open world games a bit of a break when the WORLD is done fairly well?

No. If you fill a beautiful world with boring things to do, I’m not going to bother seeing most of it. There has got to be something to it. The Assassin’s Creed games have hovered right on this edge, except for Syndicate which I thought was pretty good.

And now I hear that Far Cry V is an open worlder that we should give a break to. I don’t mean to derail the Far Cry 5 thread or even supplement it. But open world doesn’t necessarily mean roleplaying open world. Is Far Cry 5 and AC Egypt open words that are worth going into even if the underlying gameplay is soft?

That said, I actually hear Far Cry V gameplay/open worldiness is going pretty good. We should define what makes an open world game good.

FWIW I would define Far Cry 5 as what it is, an open world shooter. Not open world rpg. Not as lore and strangeness intensive as Stalker, but with some fun due to the environment and setting. I mean if FC5 is open world, so is Just Cause 2. They really aren’t in the same league as some of these other mentions.

I would throw in a few things for FC5’s favor, though: hunting, collecting for crafting (a little,) peppered lore/back story, scarcity (for a while) of any friendlies in large quantities, and a fairly decent mission system building upon where you’re at in the game at the time.

But compared to a good open world RPG, no. Not in the same league.