| sundin13 said: While some MK style connected-ness would be interesting (being able to see different levels from the one you are in), I don't see how making the game open would make it better. Like I said before, Open World games tend to have a Mission based structure, and there is good reason for that. Just saying, "go explore this huge land", isn't good enough motivation for a player and it can get frustrating to wander around without much direction. Exploration is usually the secondary focus... Basically, what I'm saying is that I don't see how the open world structure would be better than the SM64 style leveled structure.... In fact, it still seems worse to me. I wouldn't mind Nintendo giving it a shot, but in general, open worlds are really easy to do badly and really REALLY hard to do well. In fact, I'm playing through Red Dead Redemption right now and I can really only think of how the open world isn't interesting...
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I think the reason we're not seeing eye to eye is that you seem to be looking at open world through the only lens you have available, while I've made my own.
Open world games now are filled with space to essentially kill time and disguise it as game play while the real game play of most of them is some form of combat or shooting, meaning the environment is simply there to house the gameplay. However the game play of Mario revolves around the environment itself. You could say that the environment of a platformer is its game play. If a platformer is good there's almost no wasted space, and that's what makes an open world Mario so appealing. As long as it's done well, there is none of the typical bullsh*t you encounter with current large scale open worlds.
You act as if Mario 64 isn't open world game play already. It's an open world game in a very tiny world. Mario 64 style game play is the exact way an open world mario would work. What are the advantages of a fully open world over the Mario 64 style hub?
1) You wouldn't be warped back to the start after grabbing a star. This sounds small but it adds more depth to the platforming than you first realize. The way you approach successive challenges varies depending on your current position. Imagine a Mario 64 custom level where you start in a valley between two mountains with signature Mario cloud areas dotting the sky. There is a star at the top of each mountain, but once you grab one you must re-enter from the valley, and from there you must scale the other mountain. In the open world setting, once you grabbed one star, you would immediately be faced with multiple choices. Do you make your way back down the mountain then scale the other from the ground up or do you cross the cloud platforms?
Now you could say, the simple solution is to stay in the world after collecting the star, and continue from the mountain same as my open world example. Fair enough. What happens when you change worlds through the hub though? Say you've accomplished all your goals in Tall, Tall Mountain. You must leave this world and enter another, say Snowman's Land. Just by having this designated starting point, you limit the approaches to the goal. In an open world Mario 64, you could simply continue from the summit of Tall, Tall Mountain, and like before have multiple options on how to go about approaching that goal that a Mario 64 style hub world do not give you. I know this sounds small, but in practice the difference is huge.
2) No one has seen it before. Mario has always been the front runner in platforming, single handedly revolutionizing the genre more times than any platformer has gotten decent sequels. An open world platformer could not only revolutionize platformers, but how people construct open world games in the future. If Nintendo were to approach the open world concept with Mario they would do it because it offers an improvement that changes the way the game is played, not just because they can. They aren't Sega and Sonic.
3) Explroation is awesome. Yes I know the heart and soul of Mario is platforming, but if you make the goal of the platforming tied to exploration like Mario 64 did, then you can have something amazing. I see previous Mario Games as walking one route through Rome, unable to deviate or stop. You may see some beautiful sights, but you miss a lot. An open world Mario would be as if you were a professional parkour runner given carte blanche by the government of Italy to do as you please in Rome. It's a much more exciting prospect, and one that has literally kept me up at night now thinking about it.
I'd also like to point out that I never said it would have to be exploration and star hunting with no goal whatsoever. I was pretty sure I suggested you'd be trying to overthrow Bowser's strongholds in the various Kingdoms across the world, similar to Super Mario Bros. 3 where Bowser's children attacked several kingdoms and Mario traversed the would returning the rightful Kings to power. The stars could have some game play function as well. for example there could be a star powered jump/flight mechanic, or cannons from Mario 64 could return their range dependent upon your current star count.
