Even if the gameplay is different in both cases, I don't see the problem in comparing both games. MGSV allowed for multiple ways to tackle one mission, and it left the player to use the imagination and skill (and items they would have) to overcome all possibilities if they wanted. BotW adds an extra layer, but in essence the same principle is applied, leaving the players to explore all those possibilities as they seem fit.

So, Great Plateau becomes barren once you're a more powerful Link. Same will happen to those places once you still go progressing Link, unless there's some way the world scales with the player. See the point I'm getting at?

I honestly didn't understand what you tried to say here.

Maybe, but we don't know for sure, maybe you will have quest to return to Great Plateau or maybe later their will stronger enemies, in past Zelda games you return to places to find collectibles for instance or something similar. Also why you would to return at all to Great Plateau at all whitout any reason if world so freaking huge just waiting to be explored. :)

My point is that you assuming that this Zelda will have characters and quests on same level like first 3D Zelda (OoT) and that doesnt make any sense, espasily if last 3D Zelda (Skyward Sword) had much more complex characters and quests than Ocarina of Time, not to mentione Majoras Mask. Also Aonuma is very aware about today value of characters and quest, so they will definitely be more complex and better than Skyward Sword for instance had, not to mention first Zelda.

Being really big is one thing, I just hope it's apropriately dense for its size. I don't like a sandbox that's huge but involves a lot of travel with nothing of interest in the middle.
Skyrim did a good job of dropping little nuggets here and there to spike your curiosity. Zelda has a good heritage of letting you run loose in a mysterious world with caves to go into, but after the first few games it's been revamped as a series in which you just go where you're told when you're told and do what you're told. I'd love to see Zelda return to its roots in this game.
I honestly think Skyrim grabbed people's attention for much the same reason the very first Legend of Zelda did waaaay back in the day. And I think Nintendo have lost sight of that for over a decade now. (maybe not Windwaker.

It's not actually open world that's a misleading comment from the developer themselves. In MGSV you can only stay in the misson area so mapsize becomes irrelevant, you also cannot travel from one map area to another (Afghanistan to Africa for example) seamlessly like you can in open world games and free roaming doesn't mean open world either, MGSV is a segmented game not an open world gae, it's no different to games like Deus Ex or Bioshock where you can roam in specific areas.

MGSV doesn't compare to any openworld game it's essentially MGS3 and the PSP games combined, the's no reason to really explore in it because exploration isn't one of the main goals unlike in a game like Skyrim where I can check out whats in a certain area and stumble upon quest or be rewarded with ultra rare equipment or maybe meet a new companion, it's not a good comparison at all. MGSV is mainly mission objective and that's it.

I dunno, but that's the thing I'm getting at. Maybe Great Plateau becomes something not worth revisiting, or you have to go back later and it didn't scale to the player, which makes it not worth exploring again, making it barren. It's up to Anouma, really.

And sure, interactions might have evolved throughout the games, but to make complex, interwined relations between Link and the rest of the characters in an open-world requires a lot of effort, which I'm not sure was the emphasize of Nintendo when developing it. I'd be cool with something like Dragon Age when it comes to interact with NPCs, but we will see.

whats important about open world games isnt just how big it is, its about density, what can happen in it, the content it has, how fleshed out it is. a massive open world thats empty is a lot worse than a medium sized open world with lots of interesting content.

There's nothing misleading about Metal Gear Solid V being open world, because it's an open world game. You access the mission area through the full map or while at the base, and the only thing that happens is that during the mission itself the map is narrowed, because Kaz will tell you that you're drunk or something if you willingly choose to go and explore full Afghanistan while on a crucial mission (that you yourself willingly activated) that requires you being on a specific spot. I'm not really sure what's to discuss here, using that same rule mapsize in Skyrim is irrelevant because you have to be in specific places in town or dungeons to keep the narrative going, instead of just jumping around in the world while climbing a mountain in horseback. That's because the narrative is tied to mission-based sequences that take place in a specific part of the world, just like Skyrim can only progress when you're at the specific point in its huge world when required. In both games, however, you can explore its world as you see fit, without any constriction other than going into places you can't really endure yet, or blocked areas that will unlock later (Africa in MGSV, several places tied to main quest in Skyrim). Side quests and other events are accessed at any time during free roam and are not limited or narrowed in space at all (save for you wandering too much away from it, which subsequently voids the mission, not unlike triggering an encounter in Skyrim then fast-travelling to the other part of the world).

You can't fast-travel in Fallout 3 from Washington to Maryland. Does that suddenly make Fallout 3 non-open world? Of course not. In fact, it's faster to move between Afghanistan and Africa in MGSV than it is to do so in Fallout 3, because the later requires interaction with a specific NPC everytime you wish to do so. On MGSV, you're picked up by Pequod (or you don't even have to wait for him, since you can teleport directly to the Command Helicopter), then he'll drop you by on the other place.

The developer said its open world. The critics said its open world and almost all of its players, minus you and probably someone else, say it is open world as well.

And as for your second paragraph, you're wrong again. Exploration is encouraged (especially on those first ten-twenty hours); you can find blueprints scattered around that aid your R&D team. You can search for top quality soldiers that can't be found in bases during non-scripted encounters and fulton them back to your base. Cassettes, either musical ones, or story-related ones, follow the same rule as the blueprints. You find your companion, D-Dog, by exploring, not just because the game gives him to you, then fultoning him back to your base when he's a mere cub. (Or you could miss him altogether during the whole playthrough). Finding the correct plants types will allow you to mass produce several other items, and the early players will have themselves looking for diamonds to boost their otherwise lackuster GMP. Let's not forget stumbling upon an enemy's weapon or resources cache, which will outfit your motherbase with more things. Exploring actually triggers a secret story arc that's arguably better than anything else the plot of the game gives to the player. You wouldn't discover this by simply "doing missions".

The thing is, all of that stop mattering when Diamond Dogs are OP and so is Snake. Why waste your time exploring when you can basically destroy any foe in your path from afar, without blinking? And that's the thing I'm getting at: suddenly an open world worth exploring becomes a barren, boring exercise that gets in the way of the player and finishing the game. That's the thing to fear with Breath of the Wild, that its fun to play on world becomes redundant when Link grews too powerful for it, unless Anouma finds a balance of some sort (or a world scaling).

For those that are claiming to have concerns, just go back and rewatch what was played at e3! The sheer level of Ai character interactions and physics based mechanics let's me know that Nintendo isn't going to skimp on this game. If they put this much detail just into how Link behaves in this world and deals with enemies. How much further will they go for everything else?

Nope sorry I stand by my view it's misleading as a whole, the's a difference between segmented and open world and MGS is the former, read the post properly as well I'm not talking about fast travel in fact fast travelling was not even mentioned I'm talking about the connectiveity between areas and MGSV has non of that, not even in the same ballpark, comparing entering a town or dungeon for a narrative is an argument that holds no ground in this regard as well. A number of reviews even said what I'm telling you now in that it's not open world but segmented plus the developer also said the game would tie up the full story guess what it didn't, under the logic you're employing here games like FFXII are open world because you roam around in some of the segments and funny enough FFXII is the perfect example of what MGSV actually is.

Exploration is far from encouraged because the is little reward other than kidnapping soldiers and the one off blueprint, DD is also placed right in the pth of where you're meant to go with in the first few missions, I've got the game as well as many other open world games and MGSV is not even close to them in the aspects you're trying to argue, the game's whole structure is more anti open world than anything which is why many MGS fans don't hold the game up in as high regard as it adds nothing to the series and is essentially MGS3 lite with the portable games' structure. Most of what else you're saying doesn't even need to be addressed because they're mission specific and not happening out in the world unlike in actual open world games.

Well, likewise, my other argument of Maryland and Washington still stands: you can't move between them both seamlessly, because they're not connected. That doesn't stop Fallout 3 from being open-world, just like MGSV doesn't stop being open-world because the same applies to Afghanistan and Africa. And what exactly doesn't compare about being in a narrowed area doing a story-related mission (MGSV) while being on a closed, small dungeon doing a story-related quest (Skyrim)? If you're going to disregard the argument like that at least explain why, otherwise accept it like it is. The narrative progression of both games work in that regard, so why is that wrong that MGSV narrows their story-related mission to a specific area? Especially when then all side content isn't barried behind any narrow space, just specific places you have to be on the world map.

Could you source that number of reviews that didn't say it is not open world?

Broken promises from the developer isn't nothing new. Almost every company does it; you don't disregard what's already in the game (i.e.: the open world aspect) for something that wasn't but was supposed to be there (i.e.: Big Boss evil story arc). Heck, you're the one that disregarded my previous comment because it tied with the narrative of the games and you said it holds no ground, but now you're saying we gotta disregard what content the game has (again, the open world aspect) because the designers didn't fullfill their narrative promise.c

Here's Wikipedia's sourced resume of what constitutes Open World, which will allow us to give some kind of criteria when discussing this thing. Feel free to disagree with it giving your own criteria or another sourced definition:

"Open world, free roam, or free play is an alternative term for video games where a player can move freely through a virtual world and is given considerable freedom in regards to how or when to approach particular objectives, as opposed to other computer games that have a more linear structure to its gameplay.^[1][2] Open world and free-roaming suggest the absence of invisible walls, and loading screens that are common in linear level designs. Generally, open world games still enforce many restrictions in the game environment, either because of absolute technical limitations (such as graphics) or in-game limitations (such as locked areas) imposed by a game's linearity"

Then there's this paragraph on Design:

"A major design challenge is to balance the freedom of an open world with the structure of a dramatic storyline.^[9] Since players may perform actions that the game designer did not expect,^[10] the game's writers must find creative ways to impose a storyline on the player without interfering with their freedom.^[11] As such, games with open worlds will sometimes break the game's story into a series of missions, or have a much simpler storyline altogether."

Metal Gear Solid V definitively fits this criteria. I haven't played FF XII, but if its gameplay structure in concordance with the world it inhabits fits this criteria, then it's open world as well, why not?

Fans don't hold MGSV in high regard because of what you pointed out earlier, the broken narrative promises, not because the open-world aspect in itself. There were plenty of room to create an engaging narrative structure, but players find themselves forced to listen to cassettes or enjoy ten-second cutscenes that clearly didn't add anything at all. Codec was absent. Then all confluents to the fact that you just want to be done with it, and the world is nothing but an annoyance at that point. Besides, you keep mentioning MGS3 but the gameplay system is stripped-off MGS4, not MGS3. There's the Peace Walker structure system all over it as well, but unlike Peace Walker, The Phantom Pain does possess a world of its own, open-ended (Peace Walker was stuck strung with connected areas, but there was never a specific or static world to visit). People fell in love with the gameplay and the oportunities the open-world gave, and while you insist on disregarding exploration, when it clearly did wonders for a lot of people throughout those first twenty hours. Especially when you wanted to take Snake on missions with powerful gear, but you had to take cautious in how many resources would it take to bring good equipment with you, as your GMP could cross the red line sooner than one could think. There's also the animal hunting which I didn't mention, although it could have been far more deep than it was.

I mean, I support the idea that MGSV's open-world is lackuster, but you only realize it when you've invested time into it and your team becomes powerful. Which is what I'm saying Anouma will have to take into consideration, otherwise Breath of the Wild's landscape will be nothing more than something you want to get across to get to the point.