You must log in or # to comment.
I dont think Minecraft would do too well being linear.
Minecraft: Story Mode was actually pretty popular. It was basically a story-rich RPG set in a Minecraft world.
Maybe, but it was nowhere near as popular as plain Minecraft. The sales numbers alone can attest to that, plus the fact there hasn’t been a sequel should be all the proof you need to say that a linear minecraft wouldn’t do too well.
Dragon quest builders is like linear / story mode Minecraft. And there’s Dragon quest builders 2. I’ve never played dragon quest but I freakin love builders. For me it’s far less stressful than Minecraft because I’m not having to be creative to figure out what i want to do. There’s a story line that I can choose to participate in, and I can creatively build whatever I want alongside the tasks and quests. Best of both worlds.
Also blockheads was like a 2D knockoff of Minecraft (so physicality linear. No plot) I loved it so much, and if you kept going right you’d eventually hit the equator, the south pole, the equator, the north pole and then your original spawn point again. It was amazing
It would be nice with some kind of linear quest in minecraft.
However if they were procedurally generated, I’d lose interest. That’s just another layer of grinding.
I like a game world that’s just fun to be in even when I’m not advancing the story. Taking a break to explore is awesome, and much easier in an open world.
Spider-Man for the PS4 had fast travel via subway, by why would you miss out on web-slinging your way from one end of Manhattan to the other?
This is what witcher 3 did best imo.
It’s open world, and it feels large… But it’s not actually that large when you think about it.
And the side areas are so rich and dense that you can do quests from a random hub, some that chain on for quite a while… And then realise this whole time that you haven’t actually done any of the main story.
I was excited to learn more about certain monsters in the bestiary, what oils and elements they were weak to etc.
I’m not sure that it’s *better*, but it’s hilarious when you go off and do all the side quests and end up completely over powered by the time you get round to the main quest and just beat the shit out of the main bad guy without realizing that they’re important.
Big bad: “so you have finally come to meet your doo-”
Competitionist: *drops bag of loot on boss, crushing all his bones*
That’s why you scale the enemies to the players armour and level!
Honestly I really don’t like that in most open world games, mostly cause enemy levels tend to make it feel like I’m just as powerful at lvl 1 as at lvl 40. Bethesda games post Morrowind are particularly bad about this IMO, not to say you can’t have leveled shit just don’t do it to all the enemies, do it like NV where some enemies are leveled but most are flat preset levels.
Sorry, was being sarcastic.
It sucks when you get an item and do 10,000 damage, but now your enemies all have 50,000 HP, especially when it’s the same old enemies just stronger.
At least in Skyrim you start seeing new enemies later on, but sometimes it’s just fun to wreck some bandits as the Dragonborn.
I disagree. I hate when games do this, particularly open world ones. The point of going to find loot and stuff is that it benefits you. If there is no benefit then the game shouldn’t give you the option. Those games should be linear, because they’re trying to make a linear experience out of something non-linear.
If I’m struggling, I want to be able to leave and come back stronger. Even if I wasn’t, I want to come back and feel that I’ve gained power with the time I spent. If I don’t, I know I’m wasting my time.
That’s what Elden Ring really did well imo. The game sort of guides you towards Margit at the start, but he completely destroys newcomers, which causes them to explore the map more and discover more content in the intro areas. By the time they’ve done most of the interesting stuff in the first couple areas and go back to Margit, he’s far more balanced to fight. Still not a pushover but far more reasonable to fight and no longer frustrating.
Yep, and, if you’re paying attention and thoroughly exploring, you can actually go around the castle and totally avoid him. You can get incredibly strong before fighting him. It makes you feel like you’re actually progressing.
I’ve only skipped him once because Stormveil Castle is an excellent dungeon but it’s cool I have the option if I want to.
Yeah, it shouldn’t be skipped, but it’s cool that it can be. It’s good for challenge runs, or bjngo.
I’d love to do ER bingo sometime. Looks like a lot of fun.
Yes! It helps if it is clear the bad guy has been doing things as well. (Aren’t there a few games where the bad guy moves locations with this, so if one is really fast, they can catch them rather weak.)
That’s so fucking lazy by the gamedesigner, and takes away all the fun too IMO.
Imagine scaling enemies by actual player skill needed to defeat them, instead of just ‘my number more big than your number’.
Yes. Many. Stop playing Ubisoft checklist simulators.
AAA needs a bit of a reset and it looks like that’s what’s happening now.
RDR2, GTA, Elder Scrolls, is this a shitpost?
Breath of the Wild.
Arguably Outer Wilds.
…this is greentext so…yes, obviously
Generally, good open world games have a lot more emergent content - situations that emerge from the interaction of agents and simple mechanics (in the style of how simple rules create complex outcomes in the “Game of Life”) - whilst good linear games have highly curated set-pieces scenarios which were created by level designers directly.
For an example of the former, imagine you’re running around the Game World looking for a special kind of plant to create a potion that you need. You come across a battle between bears and a bandit group. When they die their drops are free for the taking and both groups are too high level for you to take on your own. None of this was setup to happen when you crossed some trigger line, it literally just happened because those the entities in those groups are part of enemy “factions” and the patrol route of one group (a route which might itself be procedural rather than fixed) passed near enough the position of the encampment of the other.
This kind of thing randomly happen is just not something you get in linear games which are generally just set-pieces and even the ability to pull on group of high level enemies to another group has to be designed in (mainly by making the restricted game area big enough for it in that section and placing the groups in the right places).
This is also why in a linear game if you die and restart you get the same fights in the same places you had before up to the place were you died unless that section of the game was designed with enough alternate paths of mechanics (say, hide mechanics) that you can go around and avoid certain fights.
Emergent content is also why Multiplayer can be a lot of fun, though in this case the “agent” whose interactions can give rise to all sorts of situations are other players.
Oh hell yes.
I’m playing Horizon Zero Dawn Complete (it includes the DLC) and as soon as I got to Daytower, I ran into a guy named Ohtur who mentioned The Cut… I pivoted and headed up there and by sneaking around everything with higher stats than I had, (which was almost everything) I managed to find resources that got me a wickedly powerful weapon. Game changer. Literally.
Getting to any part of the map and find it’s hidden goodies is amazing.
Emergent content is what I liked about loading a ton of Skyrim mods. Too bad it was also crashy as hell.
I’d like to start a new game but since I’m Linux only these days it makes it harder.
When progression is properly controlled such as in fallout: new vegas or hollow knight, then a larger map can do wonders
I wouldn’t put Metroidvanias (with large maps, back tracking, ability gating and flexibility in which area to go to next) alongside other open world adventure games (like GTA, Witcher, Breath of the Wild, etc). I love Metroidvanias and linear games, but I wouldn’t touch open world adventure RPGs with a 10 foot pole.
That’s what I’m saying. The only open world games that truly utilise their worlds are ones that first close it off
Being able to fuck around can be fun. A linear Elder Scrolls (morrowind, oblivion, skyrim) would be boring
GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas. Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 (yes), New Vegas. Elden Ring. Subnautica.
Try making San Andreas linear and you would instantly destroy one of the best games ever made.
On the other hand later GTAs didn’t embrace the open worlds for which the series is known. Once you start a mission the games turn extremely linear without giving the player options.
Very true! I remember in GTA3, some missions could be done in different ways, if you already knew what would happen.
OTOH, just drifting along the map and running into a total stranger who feels perfectly safe in trusting you to escort his daughter or something is kinda meh.
I like open-world, but procedural anything, not so much.
Open world =/= giant map
Take resident evil games, Control, Batman. Some larger maps than others, but the key is open. Most of the map or level is available to you to explore how you like, with a linear story guiding you through as well, and then progression opens smaller locked areas and new levels.
Had to explain this to a friend when I called the original Deus Ex titles “open world” games. (It’s technically semi-open world but, meh, nuances)
It’s 100% Open World I’d argue. It was just ahead of it’s time
Cyberpunk 2077.
I like the linear missions, but just exploring the open world and discovering things naturally is fun too. I think they could have done more with that, and it definitely feels like the game was way more linear in early development, but with all the updates CDPR managed to make something pretty cool IMO.
You might like the Dark Future mod, its roughly the equivalent of New Vegas’ hardcore/jsawyer mode.
The benefit is the experience. The difference in experiences comes down to the level design. Are you in a maze or in a field?
The best game designs masks this in both scenarios.
The well designed linear game doesn’t always feel like a maze, and has sections that feel like fields between mazes.
The well designed open world game contains mazes that you discover in a field that feels roped off into clearly defined sections that differ from each other and contain large landmarks to orient and draw you in.
Both feel bad if they don’t include (at least the illusion of) the other. A linear game is boring without any choice. An open world game is boring without linear moments.
I mean like, compare a … hub and spokes style immersive sim game, to any given open world game.
With an ImSim, you often get planted into an area, with a single or multiple main quests, and a whole bunch of essentially discoverable sidequests… and, when done well, those optional sidequests significantly affect how the main quests play out, and may give you different options for how to approach or conclude those main quests.
Then, onto the next hub/spoke section.
ImSims are not typically associated with literal huge open spaces… but the spaces they do have tend to be well interwoven.
There are often entirely optional, missable ‘sidequests and submazes’, basically, even in a typically smaller amount of literal space.
But also, they’re not strictly linear in the way of like … an FPS campaign/single player mode usually is. Sure you can have the literal levels be maze like, but typically/traditionally, theres usually only one entrance and exit, and the specifics of what you did in any given maze don’t really impact the next maze beyond your weapon and ammo count and health maybe carrying over.
ImSims open up the conceptual field of a given linear sequence of levels, by allowing totally different play styles to yield signifcantly different experiences, and often the additional mechanics they do this with are more than just combat… social and exploratory play can be rewarded or punished by altering the narrative itself.
Last night I had a realization that the whole reason fallout 3 was given a radio is to fill the hours and hours of nothing in between locations. And also for the dungeon crawling.
For me, half the fun in Fallout is discovering some old building and piecing together what fucked up thing happened there.
Bethsoft often pisses me off or lets me down but they are absolutely good at environmental storytelling, no doubt
I dunno. I find them on average a bit ham fisted. I love those elements in their games for sure, but it never moved me like certain environments in the last of us, for example.
There’s definitely something to that. I liked that detective kind of work too. Games don’t need dialogue to tell good stories. There’s even good ways to just wander a large empty world and see sights.
Too bad that the music selection is so tiny that you basically need mods with more (lore-friendly) music.
Agreed.
As a completionist open-world games give me progressively more anxiety. Worried I might miss something or mess up a quest line I like.
I am perfectly fine with a clean story or just don’t bog me down with a growing list of uninteresting side quests. No I don’t want to harvest 500 goblin dicks for a helmet that completes my set.
Tap for spoiler
Yes the helmet is a big floppy dick for my Phallus gear set. I get all the pieces, it unlocks a projectile attack that sticks enemies in place.
the helmet is a big floppy dick for my Phallus gear set. I get all the pieces, it unlocks a projectile attack that sticks enemies in place.
Well now I want the helmet, but if I complete this other minor side quest it’s going to become uncompletable, but it doesn’t mention that anywhere I have to read a strategy guide to know that.
You were supposed to run up in time to kill the first hard-dicked goblin you see first, before it dies in its scripted sequence.
Then you can loot the sticky gobnut item, and if you interpret its lore correctly, you’d know that finishing the side quest where you find the lost canoe tribe would quell the hunger of the hard-dicked goblins, changing their world models and drops so you can’t craft the helmet recipe after that.
Duh. Git gud.
Try Kenshi.
There’s no main quest at all, beyond try not to die.
Everyone has different tastes. My tend to get narrowed the older I get.
Now I pretty much stick to co-op games with drop-in and out via a matchmaking. Usually with a mechanic for tweaking things, like DRG or Darktide.
If I play anything solo, I’m a big mech fan (MW5) or I lean towards city builders.
But overall I need more than survival games or open world blank slates. I know people love those, but I’m from an era without that as the norm. I don’t mind some rails if it’s good content.
Midnight club 2 was pretty dang cool.
The open world nature made the races very fun and was a big (arguably genre defining) departure from other racing games with invisible walls.
It’s had a rare combination of skill, map utilization, and novelty that made it a fun game to play
Honestly a very good example here of ‘open world’ done in a genre that usually doesn’t see it so much.
The Witcher 3. Linear as hell story, super fun open world. It was literally gwent simulator for me by the time I finished that game.
