Console sandbox games are indeed a halfway house. The only sandbox game I can and have played years on end is the World of Warcraft. If I get bored raiding, then I can create another character and learn a new class, grind for reputation, do idiotic things like to trying to solo Ahn'Qiraj for the ultra rare dungeon and Tier 1 and 2 gear from vanilla (original WoW), and on. The reason why I can play this game is because there is no lack of content to it.

Heck, with Cataclysm now you can spend days just building up your guild's level for server bragging rights. I haven't even spoke of the rated battlegrounds and PvP, which is another game inside the World of Warcraft itself.

As for games like Red Dead Redemption, after I get 100% it comes out of my 360. Console sandbox games going back to the very first GTA on through San Andreas and Red Dead have always had their limitation because they are shipped as complete products, the development team disbands, works on another title, and the gameplay stagnates.

For me sandbox games are a mirror for individuals because their loose structure and freedom gives the player the ability to create their own play. As such, when the play becomes unstructured as it will inevitably be at some point, individuals either love it or hate it because it is during this time individuals learn within a video game whether they are a fun, adventurous individual or a boring, need to have their hand guided individual.

As for the wanton violence aspect, it is human nature. If you don't believe me then go out drinking every Friday and Saturday and just watch people. Inevitably you will encounter individuals who are itching for a fight even if they seem fine and happy. You can usually tell by how they walk, how they address the bartender, and what their reaction is when someone bumps into them. Does the alcohol cause this? To a certain extent, but I believe it is more natural aggression just brought out by the alcohol lowering one's inhibitions.

In terms of video games, if you are looking for a real sandbox then I suggest an MMORPG.

First of all I want to appreciate your discussion style. Further I have to say that english is only a foreign language to me, so I hope that I could deliver what I actually would like to say and there is nothing lost in translation.

@ Cartoon violence. I can see how bugs bunny, road runner or tom and jerry are funny. But why? I think it is because they have accidents that normally would kill someone, but they only scream, have a headache, and return to being unhurt with no further traces of the accident. The action seen is not corresponding to the expectation because it is against any logic. And there is no lasting effect or consequence of the injuries.

In GTA you shoot people, they try to run away, scream and die. Nothing unexpected happens. I can see that being chased by police for murder is an absurd situation if you would never do it in real life, but that novelty wears of fast... Mao did make it sound like this is the main reason for playing, not just fooling around for a short time and then return playing. And playing games like GTA4 mainly for those purposes is something that I find wrong...just my own moral opinion.

@ FF XIII. OK, we we are coming to a deadend. I don't mind reading some background information in menus. In Kingdom Hearts you can also read some further details in the chronicles... But I must say that in Oblivion you find Books with the backstory of the game. Did you find it a bad thing to have to read it there in the menu screen too?

@ FF VII. Maybe I couldn't make it clear. Sacred had 500 sidequests, but the main story suffered heavily because there was not put enough work in it and in the end it felt pretty weak. In the end, it made almost no difference if you made 20, 50 or all 500 sidequests. Some of them did give you really strong items, but most of them were just there to lengthen the gametime, giving no real benefits or interesting story. You could have spent the time killing random enemies and could gain comparable rewards regarding xp, money and equipment. In a way they felt totally senseless for me. The Sidequests in FF7 however were mainly accessable at the end of the game and brought major benefits. You felt an enormous impact on the game after you did them (not storywise though). The Knights of the rounds summon and the level 4 limits were among the most powerful items, so those sidequests felt meaningful after doing them. Most of them had a clear impact on the game and you could not substitute the items by any means.

@ Depth. Well, let me explain this with an example. I will use FF X and Oblivion, since both are RPGS. Its difficult to compare different genres and we have GTA, RDR, Infamous, AC as sandbox games, that are more Action games.

In FF X you have the main Story that builds around the fight against Sin. The Main quest has a deep influence on most inhabitants you encounter. They have lost friends or family through attacks, are afraid that he is attacking again, they hate on the Al bhed because they think they are the reasons for Sin being there... So you get the feeling that your quest is really important. The whole story up to that part is centered to prepare the magic moment in the Al Bhed HQ. This Moment is so intense, because there was a linear set of events like A-B-C-D==>E. How can you give more freedom into that. If you alter the Sequence like A-E-C-D-B you will lose intensity because you left out C,D and B.

Seeing it that way,given that you get most out of a certain cutscene/storyszene CS if you have seen several events A-Z before and you do not want to put that certain cutscene at the end of the game. How can you ensure that people get all these events A-Z before they see cutscene CS when you give them total freedom? Hmm, some games try to give several questgiver, with each one having a linear sequence of quests. You can choose between the 4 questgiver, but it would still be mostly linear. The problem with this solution is the pacing of the game. If it is totally linear, you can raise the difficulty level according to the progress and you can assure, that you have a certain ability needed in Event E that you got in Event B before. You can adjust the difficulty level and gameplay because you know what people can do.

If you give total freedom of doing the events A-Z in any order you cannot adjust the gameplay. You have to regard that the player could choose any of the Events as first event and has a low level, no key abilities etc. How do you choose how strong the monsters should be in a certain area when there is no set order, when you should be there? If you do not adjust, you wander in a new area and are killed by the first blow. Hmm, Oblivion made it so that the monsters level with you, but that was a bad system in my opinion because it somehow eliminated the sense of leveling up.

Ok, so if there is a sequence of events, that is needed to get a sort of "magic moment" freedom is most likely to hurt the intensity of that magic moment in my opinion. You need a special level system to ensure that every single event/area is beatable as first event and you may not use key items or key abilities in certain areas/eventes because there is no way to ensure that a player got the necessary item/ability in the first run without the need of major backtracking. So gameplay variety may suffer from freedom, too.

Ok, like I said I felt pretty connected to FF X, because the people cared about your main quest. I felt, that it has an impact on the gameworld. In Oblivion I can't really connect to the main quest, because i got almost no feedback. The character was silent and never showed any emotions (like you mentioned that was intentional, so you could feel for yourself). The Ego-perspective is pretty bad for storytelling, because you can not see your characters face. Seeing the facial expression of your character in emotional situations add to the intensity (ok, I could put a mirror besides the TV...). The story was mostly told through dialogues, where you see a closeup of you dialogue partner. But the dialogues are not spoken very emotional (German translation at least), the animations of the characters during the dialogues were bad, they were only standing there. The scene where Seymour was killed and his servant saw his dead body, running out of the room and calling for the guards felt more intense than the dialogue with the guardian after the king was killed.... Ok, you got your main quest, you set out on your journey to save the world, but when I talked with the townsfolk I did not get the feeling that the main quest has a big impact on them. In Fact, after like 30 hours in the game I did not get the feeling that my quest was of any importance to the world. I mean, you are on the way to save the world, but the normal people want you to do some simple sidequests. Do they not fear the threat? Ok, and while the world is on the brink of destruction I settle out to become the head of a guild. Where is the sense? You are head of the thieves guild and the world ends the next day...  those factors were all small parts of why I think that the freedom destroyed the intensity of the world for me.

I love sandbox games... I guess its just your taste

To be honest, I didn't notice any bad English so obviously your English is very good!

@ cartoon violence. You're right, their are no effects, but neither are their any real-world effects on the pedestrians you kill in GTA. They aren't enough like humans for most to associate it (even if they're meant to be) and therefore it comes off as dark humour. If they were more human-like, it starts to become more disturbing.

Part of the reason GTA games become popular is that more casual gamers can pick it up for 30 mins to an hour, have some mindless fun, and then put it down and not touch it for another few days to weeks. I know a few people that never even bothered with the story mode and just used it as a way to kill 30 mins of their time.

@ FFXIII. It depends on how it's done and I don't like having to go to what is effectively an encylopedia of information in a menu for back story. In Oblivion the books are done with minimal menus (pick it up and read) and retain more immersion and the quest log is rarely more than a recap of what you've just learnt anyway. And a lot of back story into the world is revealed through conversations, eavesdropping and exploration so their are more options.

@ FFVII. I think I understand where you're comming from as I have played through the game about 5 times :P. Quantity of side-quests can have an effect, although I think if done well, side-quests can be interesting and rewarding in open world games. In Oblivion and Fallout 3 for instance, a lot of side-quests have a visible effect on the world and reward you with unique items. It's really dependent on the developer. In too many cases side-quests are just reptitive nonesense.

@ Depth. This is quite a nice comparison for me as I've recently started another playthrough of FFX.

I know what your trying to say, but I'm not sure we mean the same thing by depth. If you mean depth of characters, then with this comparison I'd agree. Characters in Oblivion come off as wooden compared to FFX. The poor animation and voice acting doesn't help. Again however, I think the blame has to go more with the developers than the freedom of the world. Had they improved the character animations and voice acting, then the characters would feel more real and you'd be able to relate more with them. Also, I think your issue with not being able to see the main characters emotions is more to do with the first-person nature than freedom. In Mass Effect for instance, which is 3rd-person and offers great freedom, you can see the emotions of each character, and the characterisation and emotions are conveyed much better than most games.

If you mean depth of world and storyline, I think the world of Oblivion and the overarching story of the Elder Scrolls is one of the most fleshed out in video games today. The turmoil between different races and cultures (the issues of slavery being legal in certain provinces and the inherent racism of Argonians vs Khajit), the politics and in fighting of different guilds and rich history of the Daedra and extinct races like the Ayleids. I don't think there is any less depth in the world or story of the Elder Scrolls series than the Final Fantasy series.  

With Oblivion, I think your issue about people not responding to the events is somewhat false, it's just a lot more subtle than in FFX. In FFX you visibly see it through cut-scenes and story segments. In Oblivion you hear people talking about the Oblivion crisis, the fall of Kvatch and they proclaim you the "hero of Kvatch". NPCs care, but the Oblivion crisis has only really started, so people are still going about their daily business. They probably should have had more link between the guild quests and the crisis, but I think it made a lot of sense that the commoners of Cyrodill still felt somewhat protected by the guards and their leaders. Very few would have travelled and seen the fall of Kvatch even if they heard it second-hand and very few are told all the details of the world. Maybe I can relate to this attitude more because I live in London, where we're constantly being told of terrorist attacks, but everyone still goes about their daily business, even the day after the 7/7 bombings.

I think the intensity and pacing is more what you have an issue with as it's very difficult to get right in an open world game. If people stuck to the main quest in Oblivion I think it'd be easier to retain intensity, but it's incredibly easy to get side-tracked and some main quests do actually need you to level up a little before completion. On the levelling issue, I think this is very much down to personal preference. I know a lot of people complained about the way Oblivion did it, but not just because they want tiered enemies and areas but because they want to face high level creatures early on and be forced to flee as they find that makes the world more immersive.

And with FFX, there are ways to distract you from your main quest, they're just fewer of them. Blitz-ball would be the most obvious one (which I loved). The same complaints can be levelled at the Blitz-ball mini-game as with side-quests in Oblivion. Sin is destroying towns, Yuna is on a pilgramige to kill Sin, Tidus is Yuna's guardian yet every so often he finds time to play Blitzball in a league and in tournaments. Maybe you didn't play as much Blitzball as I did, but I thought it was great!

Finally, I'll again point you to Planescape Torment, an old PC title but the character's inner turmoil has a huge impact and shows a level of depth not seen in nearly all computer games.

Thanks again for your insights. Since you are European too, it makes some things easier (EU release etc).

Lets quit talking about GTA 4. I played it long enough to come to the Conclusion, that it was my last Rockstar Game. It was somehow funny, but in the end it was getting repetitive and I totally lost interest. Those friends calling for doing something together were getting a nuisance. My brother asked me to buy RDR, so that we could get the online trophies together, but after some discussion we both found, that it is just not worth the time to play it. We are no big fans of Western (we only like the Bud Spencer and Terence Hill ones^^) and the Sandbox style is not appealing to us. We would probably buy it, if it had almost no sidequests and concentrated on story instead, but that is ok. We are simply not the target group of the game.

@ Planescape. I do not know that game and stopped playing PC games over ten years ago. The only exception was FF 11, but it was not worth it in the end. MMORPG suffer from the same issues as sandbox games. I think I was the only one who just wanted to do all missions and was not interested in fighting Notorious monsters, getting the best gear or do any other non-story related stuff. I have played it almost for a year on and off in 2007 but then the PS3 software started to pick up and I lost interest in it.

That might also be a reason, why I feel WRPGs lacking. You probably grew up with PC RPGs and are already used to PC style RPGs. You know what to expect from them and know how to play them efficiently. I grew up with console style RPGs, know what to expect (japanese storytelling, deep characters and intense storytelling) and how to play efficiently. I have beaten FFX in less than 200 hours and have seen everything (I only failed at getting Jecht Shot Mark I although I played Blitzball very much. Learning all those abilities necessary is quite luck based, unfortunately).

Well, I have to go further into Detail. Time used to be not the problem for me. Since I went to Commercial Collegue and later to university I had enough time left for playing games and money was the constraint. Now that I work 40 hours money is no longer the problem, but leisure time turned out to be a major problem. So I try to play the most time-efficient way, so that I still get to play a wide variety of games per year.

So as you already analyzed correctly, pacing and intensity are a big issue for me, since I want to keep the game intense in the first place. I also dislike Ego-Perspective, you are right again. It is almost a dealbreaker for me. The only game/franchise with Ego-Perspective I have enjoyed so far was Resistance. (I know that you could play Oblivion in 3rd Person view).

After playing around 30 hours of Oblivion i felt that I did not get any satisfaction out of the game. In Fact I was bored like 29.5 hours and I lost hope that it was getting better. It felt like a big waste of time for me. If time was not the matter for me, and I had put more than 200 hours into the game, maybe than I were able to put all these little pieces together and could see the "immersive world" you are talking about. But after 30 hours, the game felt only lacking, had boring characters, the main quest was nothing special and I did not like the overall game mechanics (level system, fighting, etc).  For my it still stands for being the worst RPG that I have ever played. Its maybe a matter of expectations, since it got so many "game of the year awards" and was often called "best Rpg".

After Oblivion I played FF 13 and after this disappointment I liked it even more, because I came back to my own style of play. Today I can't say what is my favourite RPG. It used to be FF X, but maybe next year, when I play through FF XIII again, it may take this place over in my heart.

@ Freedom. I thought about what you said about freedom in games. I do not feel that JRPGs lack freedom or Sandbox games offer more freedom. Let me explain further. Most JRPGs are built to have an intense story. They do not want to distract you too much from the story, since that is the main point of the game. Sidequest are often offered really close to the end of the game, when the Story is (almost) finished and oyu can't be distracted. You could play through the game first, see the ending sequence and then reload and do the sidequests, after you have seen all of the story. Remember FF7, where all miniquests where on CD 3? Final Fantasy X with the monsterfarm and Dark Aeons? Dragon Quest with the optional Dungeon. Or the whole Concept of New Game ? So you can say story first, then freedom in doing what you want.

The battle system give you very much freedom too? Ok, you may not create your own character and often there are no development trees. But the main character is not exactly built to be "yourself in the game". Thats why there are party members that enable you to customize your play style. So you get a good mixture of personalities. You can often choose whether you want to maximize Attack , Defence or Magic. Systems like in FF7, FF 8, FF 10-2 or FF 12 enable you to make any character everything you like. Systems like FF 9, FF 10 or FF 13 give you similar freedom through proper party selection. I still can play like I want and I am no way "taken by the hand and guided through the game". Those systems are easy to use but hard to be mastered.

I can also decide to stay in an area as long as I want. Ok, exp will get stale after some time but for example AP gain is not getting stale. FF 13 did not want you to overlevel so progress was capped for every chapter. It was just a stricter form of story first/freedom later after you finished it.

So I can claim now, that Sandbox games do not offer more freedom to the gamer, they only offer it far earlier, maybe even from the beginning. So they are more like freedom first, then story whereas japanese games are story first/freedom later. And the moral system and choices in the game are only a different form of storytelling, where you are given the feeling that you have control over the game (in fact you have only limited choices, since the main story is still scripted and can be altered in only a few clearly defined elements). You still can't play like you want, you can only choose which branch of the defined story you can go down.

So while I lost interest in Oblivion because i felt bored before I could enjoy the whole depth of the game (I simply believe you that it is actually there and I only haven't found it) I think that many people are quitting games like FF 13 before finishing the story where the game opens up. It is just a matter of how important the pacing of the story is, like you can wait for getting more freedom or you can wait for the story to go on.

GTA:

Agreed, especially as when I mention GTA I think of the PS2 era games. The recent GTAIV for me was too realistic and I found it wasn't anywhere near as fun. That, and a lot of the features were seemingly removed vs San Andreas which is my personal fave. This is what I meant by the cartoon violence. The more realistic they become, the less mass appeal they have IMO.

Planescape:

It's one of those games that didn't sell particularly well for its time, but looking back the story is probably one of the deepest and most involving in video games. It is a Western PC RPG though so I'm not sure you'd neccessarily like the slower pace. It's also one of the few RPG where combat skills are less important than more subtle skills like conversation. Instead of cutscenes it relies heavily on dialogue and player decisions, and due to its age means a lot of text to read. Its also a more personal story rather than the epics of Final Fantasy. It's heavily focused around the main character.

RPGs:

I actually started with JRPGs (FFVII), but I also game on PC and discovered Bioware and Bethesda made some fantastic RPGs. Took me a while to understand the differences and it can feel like a completely different genre, but the roots are still the same.

And with Oblivion, it is difficult to discover all the details of the immersive world and not just because the game itself is large, but their are also references to other events in the Elder Scrolls saga which are easy enough to miss. I found some of conversations about events in Morrowind which of course was the previous game. You wouldn't have had that extra level of immersion. It's a very different style to JRPGs but your criticisms are valid and areas I think and hope Bethesda will look to improve in the future (especially the animation!). This is the first Elder Scrolls where animation was important as previous iterations relied on text based conversations. Also, I played for 400 hours, so I got pretty immersed into the game world!

Freedom:

I pretty much agree with your assesment. There's different focus in sandbox vs JRPG and good pacing is much easier to acheive with the latter. However, I'd also like to point out a difference is also where the freedom tends to be. In JRPGs they have a lot of freedom in the areas you highlighted, but tend to be limited in character creation and "story details". In a good number (mainly WRPG based) of sandbox titles give freedom in the details of the story (e.g. letting someone live or die, who to have a relationship with etc.), but this in turn can lead to problems because whilst the story is personal to the player, it also means the devs have to prepare each outcome which can sometimes have an adverse effect to pacing.

FFXIII & Oblivion:

I think I'm the polar opposite to you! FFXIII is my biggest dissappointment this gen as I found it lacked the extra elements of previous Final Fantasy games and it didn't have the sense that I was discovering the details of the story through the world like in previous FF convos, towns & shops (e.g. the first time you enter Besaid, or exploring Midgar). That's what I think some of the appeals of Oblivion is (to me at least), the details of the story and lore is told through exploration of the game world.

I can live with people being not satisfied with FF 13. It is just a subjective matter of taste... What I have difficulties in is understanding why FF13 got so much hate reviews although it was just a continuation of the direction Square took with FF12. There are very much common elements...

Summons are not as important as they were in FF 7-9

No random encounters and the monsters dropped no Gil...you had to sell loot for gil.

You control only one character and the rest is controlled via macros, but you can choose which character you play

There is no real "main protagonist" and the characters are not portrayed as "heroes", but they continually show their weaknesses, they do not always know what to do next and are sometimes unsure,...

The story is rather dark and mature and the situation often seems to be not winnable (and the characters are realizing this and question themselves what to do next).  I liked this approach because the characters felt more human and natural... Not everyone likes characters like Kratos in god of war...I didn't like him very much when I played through GoW last month because he just doesn't care for the world around him and I somehow felt it was his own fault what happened to his family. Maybe it is because of such character portraits why so many peoply felt Hope was "whiny"... but I am pretty sure most of us would have cried a river at that age after we had seen our mother dying...

Character development not by a level systems (license bord, krystarium instead)

I fail to understand how FF 12 got great reviews in the West (at least here in Austria/Germany) and was widely praised and FF 13 continued to go in that direction and was heavily critizised without being a radical change.... (not like Devil may Cry or Front Mission Evolved). It seems to me that it were the expectations of the reviewers/community that shifted and not the quality of the game... In the Famitsu it was still voted best game of all time 2009 and rank 3rd in 2010

http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/32228/t1476328-famitsu-readers-vote-ffxiii-best-game-of-all-time/

http://gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=138232

Dissappointment is a function of our own expectations. And since my expectations were formed by japanese RPGs and Oblivion got "game of the year" awards I was heavily dissapointed. It felt more than an action adventure with some roleplay elements than a true (console) rpg. The same with Borderlands or Sacred 2...

The latter 2 reminded me somehow of Diablo, that I had played on the PS1 (is it really that long ago....). I had fun with it because of the coop mode, but after 2-3 playthroughs it was getting boring. I didn't like the story and characters (you can see the pattern...) and the weapon/armor system. Diablo, Sacred and Borderlands have a similar system, where there are no unique weapons. You have basic weapons with various status bonuses and variuos weapon levels. I can remember playing the woman in diablo with a friend and I just couldn't find a stronger bow, because you only have random drops and random items at the shops. I coudldn't get a really strong bow for hours... I never had that problem in a jrpg before... And while playing Sacred or Borderlands, I also had the same problem. You can have millions of different weapons but it is also possible that you are level 36 and still have a lvl 25 smg because you just had bad luck and couldn't find a better one. My wife and I ended up with no longer bother to look what we pick up. Kill enemies, pick up loot and at the next vendor you can see that 99 % of the items are just useless and only there for selling.

So Borderland managed to make me lose interest in what the enemies drop, what you can buy at the stores, what the sidequests are about and what the whole game is actually about. The only thing left is the gameplay... running around killing the same few enemies over and over and running from landmark to landmark until the game is finally over. If it hadn't the coop mode the whole game would have nothing at all and could be replaced by every other random shooter and I will probably not think about the game in the future. (Well, every time I look in my gaming diary aka trophy list I will think why I wasted like 50 hours with that game). Last week I read that FF 4 will head to the PSP and I am really happy about it. I have never played the after years so far and although I already played FF 4 advance and FF 4 for the DS I am happy to get a slightly better Version of that game. That is the true strength of a good story. You can play the game a second or third time and it still has the good story to come back to.