There will be less linear games next gen, that's for sure. Maybe not true open world or "sandbox" type games like GTA per say, but you'll have a lot less "go from point A to point B via completely linear path, watch a cutscene, beat a boss or mission objective or whatever, and rinse and repeat".

Not every game needs to be completely open world though, but if you want to make a 3D games that's as engrossing and immersive as possible, the lest restrictions you put on the gameplay, the better.

Seems like that for now but am sure they'll have some close world games.

I always imagined as a kid in the 8bit/16bit era that the best games in the future would be open world, do anything, go anywhere games which were incredibly realistic. Realism was something I really wanted in games.

We kind of have that now and the cruel irony is, today I actually way prefer games which are more linear, but full of creativity. Realism is quite a low priority in my view. In fact if I hear a game is open world it even puts me off a bit - you know you're going to have to deal with a lot of the same bloody headwork that you do in real life. If I want to run through endless cold, dark streets in the rain looking for "that place" I can do that for real by stepping out of my front door. Video games = Escapism.

So I hope open world doesn't become the main genre of the future, but I suspect it may well be. The mainstream gets what the mainstream wants but, sadly "open world" often looks a lot better on paper than it is in reality. It would be different if they called it "tedious slog" or "getting lost sim".

It would seem so...I hope that we finally get true open world games with no load times