| mZuzek said: Yeah, agreed with all of this big time. After the release and massive success of Breath of the Wild, I thought the industry would take a turn for the less handhold-y, but to this day it seems every open-world game is still filled with objective markers and icons littered everywhere. I guess it'll just continue to be an industry standard, and that games that believe in its players will continue to be outliars. |
Yeah "games that believe in its players" - that is something of a rare sighting. There are tricky puzzle games. And games with very difficult combat. But to make the open world the difficult part is something I cannot recall many games doing.
Death Stranding might be interesting in this department. Never played it but from what I understand, it is very much about the actual act of traversing the land.
I'm currently playing Ghost of Tsushima and I had really big hopes for it being less handhold-y. But boy is nothing anybody says or does in this game ever important for you to know what you have to do. It actually feels like a very small game that can be finished in less than two hours stretched out over a big map. There are many instances of a game (here is another camp, here is you riding a horse, here is another duel, now the camp is bit bigger, etc.) but no cohesive whole.
-I actually felt more immersed in the very generic looking Days Gone that had me driving slowly on a bike into uncertainty and at least getting gas for my tank from time to time than I do feel immersed in GoT, mindlessly beaming around the map to clear shit.
I like GoT actually quite a bit, but it, along with 90 % of other open world games could be easily improved by having to pin your targets on a map yourselve. You heard about an area where thing x is, you read that name in your map, you set a pin at somewhere there and off you go. And make fast travel consumable, make it mean something, like an item you have to gather, or money you have to spend.
And perhaps make more sidequests dependant on time. You just should not be able to help the peasent family that was in danger in the beginning of the game after you beat the final boss. No more kilometers of quest-lists you have to work through. Would really also help to sell the illusion, that this world keeps on going without you and is truely here, with its population and their problems ever changing.
