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SvennoJ on 28 November 2025
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Shadow1980 said:
curl-6 said:

Yeah I also find shorter games more approachable and often better quality than a lot of really long games, which are often padded out with a ton of filler.

I feel like this effect really kicked in last gen, with so many franchises going open world, and enthusiast gamers insisting on stuff like "If I'm gonna pay full price I want at least x hours of content".

Every big publishers tried to outdo each other with bigger and bigger games with better and better graphics, and budgets exploded.

One of the biggest problems devs face with building a huge game world is "What do we fill it with?" Sadly, Ubisoft template is what caught on. Divide the map up into sectors. Give the player a bunch of repetitive checklist objectives in each sector. Have them climb towers to unlock the map. Have them beat up criminals/liberate bases/rescue hostages over and over and over. Et cetera. The game is a mile wide and a foot deep.

....

Why does it need to be filled? One of my favourite games of all time is SotC, and partly why I like it so much (next to the awesome colossus of course) is the empty world.

Most open world games I just get annoyed at all the stuff popping up. Can't walk 2 steps without something trying to get your attention. There is enough of that in real life. If I set out to do something like in SotC, then don't bother me with your missing cat.

I've played the biggest open world games possible NMS and Elite Dangerous. Of the two Elite Dangerous is my favorite since I can roam around the galaxy without meeting anyone :) It doesn't feel like 'discovery' when someone already lives there.

Of course Elite Dangerous is also full of repetitive tasks, but you can at least escape that and just go wander around the galaxy. Which I also loved to do in FS2020, land somewhere without quests popping up :) 

Anyway all the open world games I remember are for the geography, art style, world building (The little stuff you find everywhere). Not for the quests and repetitive tasks. Like in RDR2, the best was setting out on my own in a Kayak, or wandering around hunting big game and coming up on little structures with their own story to tell. 

Open world games should focus more on world building rather than todo lists, and empty space is fine. Give the player some time to reflect, plan, prepare while running around.

But it's easier to fill it with repetitive tasks and then sell it as a 100+ hour rpg, worth your money :/ Players did that to themselves. Just today someone replied to Hotel Infinity with, it's only 90 minutes, $20 is a bit steep for that. 90 minutes of mind bending ideas is worth more than any 100 hour repetathon.