People have decided that survival games need to be difficult, bleak, and stressful, rather than playgrounds.
The now-defunct Lost In Blue series is an exception there, and is basically a harvest-moon like forage-build-explore loop where starvation is only really a concern for the first week or so, and the rest is just exploration and storyline. But it doesn’t look realistic (being on the DS and all).
I think the major thing, as noted above, is cost. Making a realistic looking game is expensive, and exploration / crafting content is basically single use, you can’t amortize it as a system over thousands of repeatable encounters.
@CLWheeljack I took realistic to mean in world and setting, not nesecarially graphics. A Lost in Blue type game, I am vaguely familiar with those though never played them, is in the general direction of what I was meaning though.
There is a pretty big rift on the forums of how much game versus story that Firewatch actually is. It’s good as the latter and I really enjoyed it. I’m not sure that I would put it into a realistic sandbox though, there just isn’t enough game in … the game. You follow a defined story, and only do things to unlock more of the story.
For what it’s worth, kristina, I would highly recommend an afternoon with it, because after day one, it speeds up pretty quickly with in-game mandated time passing. You can probably finish what you have left in about 4 hours, give or take.
It’s not open world in the sense of the OP, though. Otherwise any driving game not based on tracks would be a “non-violent GTA”. And the fidelity/detail of the world is not remotely close to the AAA open world games.
A huge part of the problem is the gameplay loop problem. Exploration is fine and all, but you need something to do while exploring to stretch out the exploration content. The standard drive car / shoot gun mechanics are well tested and satisfying.
Spiderman 2, Crackdown and BotW solved that by making the traversal itself somewhat interesting. Harvest Moon tries to solve it by substituting a pretty satisfying farming loop for shooting, but a lot of the actual time in Harvest Moon is spent talking to townspeople.
Some of the later, more open world Tony Hawk games did do similar things (THAW / THUG, I think?) No More Heroes had a peaceful “open world” hub, IIRC all of the violence was in missions (but the open world was pretty minimalistic).
Depending on your tolerance, Yakuza is kind of like this. I mean, combat is part of the core mechanics of the game, but the fights are instanced, so you can mostly avoid the drunks and just wander around Kamurocho shopping, and going to karaoke. I think that fights are the main money source though.
I’m wondering what an urban Harvest Moon could be. I could see an urban bike-courier / uber / delivery driver game as hitting a lot of those standard driving mechanics while giving you something to do. Maybe have you make money to upgrade your apartment, and work your way to better vehicles to do a broader range of activities. There are lots of non-violent urban odd-jobs you could do. (Gentrification: The Game!)
Hmm. You could probably build that as a GTA mod (have you looked for GTA mods?)
It’s not at all the right genre that you are comparing to, but part of the reason I enjoy civilian flight sims is the feeling of exploring the real world without having any layer of game contrivance to get in the way of exploring.
Aerofly FS2 is especially good if you’ve lived in their area of coverage, since it’s photographic scenery, and you can follow any stream and landmark. It would be even better if they added traffic and/or multiplayer to not feel so… alone, though.
The google Earth flight sim lets you fly around building-accurate 3d for any of the world’s major metropoles, too.
Which is the crux of it. I recognize that GTA games are well crafted, monumental games. I also realize they are not for me. I’ve played several, but never really enjoy them as much as the acclaim it gets. I enjoyed Saints Row 4 for about 20 hours of nuttiness, partly because I could ignore guns entirely. But in any of your traditional open world games I tend to have very limited or no enjoyment of them.
However I do enjoy ETS2, I love the Zelda series, I played The Crew for a while and did like it. I even have played many of the AC series games to completion, especially the Ezio ones. So I can enjoy open worlds, but the convergence of many of the big ones into a homogenized paste leaves me quite sour (I dropped the AC series post Rogue for this reason).
So the idea of alternate gameplay styles is what intrigues me. The notion of adding drive and shoot gameplay, because it works well, is literally the opposite of what I have interest in. And, hey, if they don’t make the kinds I’d like, I’ll just do other things.
Have you tried Yakuza? As noted, it has brawler-combat, and requires an affection for a Tokyo nightlife setting, but no random gun violence and no driving. It’s a very interesting alternate approach to an open world game.
I think Sleeping Dogs also had relatively little gunplay, but still leaned on the basic mechanics of GTA.
I was very intrigued by Yakuza. Unfortunately, it is mostly a brawler-combat thing. It has all that other stuff that I find cool, but you have to play through too much brawler combat to get to it. So if you’re not into that combat, it’s not worth the time to get to the other stuff.
Been really digging Abzu the last couple of days, very nice and relaxing to just swim around observing ocean life, looking for hidden shells, and especially not killing anything. I even rescued a great white shark for pete’s sake. Not really all that open world, it’s divided into discrete levels, but they’re pretty big and fun to explore.
The name really doesn’t do the game any favours. There is some violence, in the form of a boxing minigame and, err, stink bombs, but you also have to show up for class and passing a class has an effect on gameplay.
In off-time you can go through an almost ridiculous amount of side missions, or just go around exploring.
I’ve heard Bully is superb, haven’t played that one yet. Thanks for keeping the discussion going everyone! I’d love to play this Rescue open world game someday, I think it sounds like an awesome gameplay hook. Maybe it could be titled “First Responders”.
