Former EA producer - a $100 million game needs to sell about 6 million just to break even

[Shadow1980]

SvennoJ said:

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. 

Exactly. Sometimes the best thing to fill up space on a map is "nothing." Just the player and some scenery.

I spent so much time in Halo CE back in the day just goofing around, seeing if I could do things like get to the bottom of the map room or security room shafts in The Silent Cartographer, or jumping the Warthog over hills in the second level, or just enjoying the scenery. Speaking of that second level, it was a marvel for its time and still holds up well. You play the first level and it's just another FPS corridor crawl. But you step outside of the escape pod in Level 2, and you see this open field in front of you. And the game lets you explore it. There's no collectibles (at least not in the original release). It's just scenery. Enemies eventually show up, and there's consistent fighting until you get the Warthog for the first time, but there's also large chunks of the level that are empty. The whole rest of the first half of the level after you fight off the enemies at that tower is just space to tool around with your new ride. Once you clear out the first half of the interior area that connects the two main outdoor areas and activate the light bridge to progress, there's no more enemies until you get to one of the three areas where you have to rescue more Marines. Sometimes that central area that joins them will have a pair of Banshees or some troops spawn in, but otherwise there's nothing. Again, just scenery.

Other levels in the game have a higher population density of enemies, but still have moments of total downtime, some of which let you appreciate just how big the world is. Honestly, just playing a level like Assault on the Control Room on foot made it feel bigger and more grand that any open-world game I've played despite being a small fraction of the size. The grandeur of those giant frozen canyons was enough to engage me without constantly pushing me to do a bunch of busy work. Also, The Silent Cartographer's interior areas have those chasms that serve no gameplay purpose, but still let players ask "Can I get down there?" And many of us spent hours trying to do just that. The game gives you downtime that exists to take a breather and soak in the world around you or to just screw around and make your own fun.

As I said, Halo Infinite could have easily told its main narrative, did its environmental storytelling and showed off its grand Forerunner buildings, given players neat little places off the beaten path to explore, and offered solid encounters with a traditional linear Halo campaign consisting of eight to ten self-contained levels. It didn't need a single gigantic overworld dotted with the same copy-and-paste busywork objectives.

As always, depth > breadth.