Yoichi Wada once asked that question and my thought at the time was, "What the fuck is that man on?". That question is totally relevant now. I have been playing Assassin's Creed: Odyssey for 145 hours with probably another 60 hours on the way. I'm getting that Platinum dammit. AC:O is not only an amazingly fun game it opened my eyes to what a "real" open world game should be and I have to say that Final Fantasy XV, as an open world game, failed in every single way.
I was convinced to buy a western developed open world game by a friend as a challenge. I had convinced him to buy FFXV which he played for a grand total of 3 hours before he put it down. When I pressed him about it, all he could give me was a bunch of comparisons to other games; you can do this in the Witcher 3, you can do that in Skyrim blah blah blah. Bunch of artificial bullshit. He came back with the if you broadened your horizons and played more western based games you would understand it. Oh really? I took that challenge and we narrowed it down to AC:O because I wanted something comparable to FFXV. So, I went down to Gamestop and dropped 60 bucks on something that I was set to dislike to prove my homie wrong.
I played the game for 7 hours straight.
In those 7 hours I understood everything. Here is a few of my most notable comparisons:
- AC: O has a massive world. The minute the game became open I turned my focus to exploring 100% of the world while totally ignoring the main path. I am 145 hours in and currently at 87% explored. Fucking nuts at size of this game. FFVX, you could get into your car and if you wanted, have all locations on map found in a few hours.
- This massive world is filled with over 100 points of interest; caves, camps, fortresses, underwater temples/shipwrecks,land temples and you are always rewarded for exploring them. Always. I stopped getting out of my car/chocobo in FFXV because all that shiny shit littered on the ground was just worthless. Very rarely do you get cool shit.
- You get a Ship in this game and when I first set sail to my next island in real time I was blown away. I am so used to JRPG's and their world maps with traveling being simplified, or FFXV's sorry excuse for water travel or travel in general. Traveling in AC: O is just fun as shit. You get a hoarse early into the game but I probably only called that fucker like 10 times in 145 hours because the way the protagonist moves throughout world is just awesome. There is no type of obstacle that he/she cant interact with; climbing mountains like hes Spider-man, swan diving off of mountain tops, skipping across roof tops, jetting through water live a dolphin. Very versatile character. A knee high fence needs to walked around in FFXV. Bushes act as barriers. A jump button that amounts to absolutely nothing in regards to traveling the world. Altissa is a pain in the ass to traverse because we just cant jump down floors! We have a jump button and this is open world game! Why cant just jump down!?
- The world has a sense of being alive. civilians travel large distance across the map, Animals roam all over place, Bandits roam the lands, Mercenaries travel looking for their next bounty, Spartans and Athenian patrol their regions and they all interact with each other. Civilians will be attacked by roaming animals or bandits. If Spartans and Athenians cross paths they will fight it out. I once saw Spartans vs Bear vs Boar vs bandit battle. Shit happens in the world regardless if you participate or not. FFXV? nothing. completely lifeless world. Your the only people doing shit.
It took AC:O for me to realize how underdeveloped the world of FFXV is. Multiple heads at SE have already hinted that the next FF will continue the open world trend (rumors say that Destiny is a major influence), but I am wondering if SE has the balls to fully commit to a strong open world, because it is going to have take another major overhaul of the brand to get there.
Last edited by Xxain - on 31 January 2019