Why some open world games suck

[Frogger]

HoloDust said:

Frogger said:

I think a linear narrative game set in an open world is still an open world game. My critique is more about map design and content withing those designs. Even Zelda 1 understood this balance. You explore the overworld to find the underworld, and explore the underworld to re-enter the overworld. It's a perfect loop. The underworld felt like 50% of that game.

I think the overworld can totally be a safe place for you to mess about endlessly, if your game has a good underworld balance. I can totally imagine a game where the overworld is totally peaceful, but the underworld is dire. If there was ever a good open world Persona game for example, I'd imagine it'd have this structure. Peaceful overworld in a city, with explorable buildings and dungeons for the underworld. The balance just needs to be right.

We already have bigger worlds. We need denser ones.

Well, yes, it does feel that you were talking about Zelda alike structure from the get go - and not all open worlds are based on that structure. (As aside, original Zelda 1 didn't have overworld at all, it was just a hub form where you choose what "Labirynth" you enter (akin to Demon's Souls), but Miyamoto desided (under unluence of Ultima that he played) to add overworld as well.)

And yes, I agree, in Zelda alike games fine balance between "overworld" and "underworld" is crucial (and why BotW/TotK formula is not good in my opinion).

That said, Zelda, although somewhat open world-ish (its actually gated open world), is not open ended game, and thus, from my POV, is not epitome of open-world games (which again, stem from early D&D and its open ended gameplay).

I wasn't talking about a Zelda-like structure. Xenoblade has this structure, Zelda 1, as it was released, has this structure, and you can imagine a game set only in a city where most of the buildings are enterable having this structure (like Shadows of Doubt).

Note I said overworld and underworld, not overworld and dungeon.

If you don't think Zelda is open world, we aren't talking about the same thing. You can just call what I'm talking about "wopen orld" if it makes it easier for you. Nothing about my definition of wopen orld games says they need to be open ended. Wopen orld just has to do with how the player space is designed. I should have defined what I meant by open world in the OP to be fair.

For example, I think all mainline Pokemon games and most Zelda games are open world games. Most classic jrpgs are open world games. GTA 1+2 are open world games. Dark Souls is an open world game. None of the Persona games are open world games. Etc. I'm only bringing up contested example here to show how wide my definition is.

I don't know where you got the impression that open world games come from open-ended gameplay in D&D. I'm pretty sure open world is just a term about the interconnectedness and accessibility of all aspects of the exterior physical game world. A really linear story in a big interconnected world is still an open world game by most people's understanding of that the term is meant to invoke. Most of the time when people call a game an open world, they just mean a game with only one map with no loading screens between area on the map. That's more specific than my definition, but nothing about that has anything to do with the gameplay being non-linear.