Open world games in the gaming community are considered by many as blockbuster hits where players sink countless hours in a large expansive world, but is the genre worthy of its popularity? In this first iteration of Dual/Opinion, we’ll be discussing two sides in this debate. Tristan, as the open world fan, will be defending the genre. Nick, as anything but, will be attacking it. Both sides will take turns defending or attacking the features before coming to a final rebuttal to the other side’s points.

But before we argue, we need to define exactly what qualifies as Open World, because elements of it exist in games that I would not define as Open World. There are 4 defining features: 

1. The entire map is open at all times. Some areas might not be accessible until story events are completed, but there is never a location you cannot revisit later, or an area that you could not learn of by wandering around enough. 

2. Much of the game’s content is instantly accessible upon finding it, meaning that you are not locked behind story progression outside of related quest chains. 

3. The game world cannot be easily split into separate levels or separated by loading screens.

4. The player has, within the range of their character’s movement options, the capacity to go anywhere at any time, barring perhaps, the time spent in an initial tutorial area.

Ergo, games like Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, and the later Fallouts fit cleanly into this definition, whereas something like the first Mass Effect would not.

In Favor: Free Form Exploration

When one thinks about open world games, the first feature that comes to mind is the hands-off exploration. The ability to travel to anywhere that the player can see. See a mountain you want to climb? You can do that! See an island in a lake? You can get there! Want to travel to another solar system? Depending on the franchise, you can do that! Soon as you leave the tutorial area, the world is open to you to explore. Even though the main story is telling you to go to Hyrule Castle to defeat Ganon or report to Whiterun, the player can choose to venture in the complete opposite direction. Developers design open worlds in a way to motivate players to explore the map with content and loot. Open world games are littered with content in the form of dungeons, towns, random encounters, or bandit/monster camps. If that is not enough motivation to explore every inch of the map, most open world games have missions that send the player to farthest corners of the map; for example, the radiant quests from Fallout 4 or the Witcher Armor sets from Wild Hunt. Other open world games encourage exploration to improve your character’s stats like hunting down shrines in Breath of the Wild or catching exotic Pokemon in Scarlet/Violet. So, the main question that many players will have is this; isn’t this considered busy work instead of gameplay? In a way, yes. Open world’s exploration is a form of grind by design, players gaining levels by completing dungeons or quests they stumble upon. However, this is a preferred version of grind. I’d rather explore two dungeons in an hour, killing numerous enemies and collecting loot in the place of defeating the same monster over and over in random encounters. For those who enjoy playing in an immersive experience when playing video games, open worlds are perfect because nothing is better than imagining yourself as your character looking at a map and deciding how to get to your next destination, interacting with the NPCs and environment along the way. Open worlds engage players right off the bat by allowing them to explore at their own pace, which definitely plays in favor of the genre.

Against: Empty Worlds and Meaningless Advancement

The issue with this is that the system invites lazy game design. The job of the game designer is to plan out the player’s experience and implement the tools (level layout, enemy placement, item functions, etc.) to either cause or encourage that experience. Many games will allow some form of player expression in this design, either by having multiple routes through a level, multiple tools a player can use to tackle an obstacle, multiple solutions to a puzzle, etc. There is a consistent goal of shaping the player’s experience in one way or another, and this often includes such concepts as a difficulty/level curve. Most often, these curves inherently result in a feeling of growth in the player, as they gain tools and face more difficult challenges the further into the game they go. Open World design, as I defined it earlier, often throws all this out the window in favor of allowing players to do literally whatever they want within the world. There is no curve. There is no intended experience. If the player can accomplish anything in the game right from the start (without the use of unintentional tactics/glitches) then there is no feeling of growth, because there is not going to be a heightened experience later, just more of the same things the player has already been doing. These games will often allow you to level up stats on a character or procure new equipment, sure, but if you could already have done anything with your base character, and every challenge in the game is built to allow you to do so, then did that growth matter in any capacity? I would argue that it didn’t.

In Favor: Replayability

Open world video games are often accompanied by a large number of side quests and factions that the player can interact with. Often these relationships will result in the player having to make certain decisions that can affect their playthrough’s outcome. Or the player really enjoyed playing a heavily armored bruiser wielding a massive sword and wouldn’t mind trying a new playstyle. Because of these trends in open world design, games that fall into this genre have a high chance of replayability. Skyrim is notorious for inviting the player back into its world to fight dragons and undead as the Dragonborn once more; mainly for two reasons; the diverse skill tree and faction side quest lines. For immersive players, who flesh out mental backstories of their character and roleplay as them, why would their mage become a member of an underground syndicate? Casual players who play an open world game might return for added content years later or go back to hunt down content they didn’t find on a previous playthrough in order to get that experience. Open world games by design have numerous ways for players to try something new on each playthrough. This way players can get new experiences and sink hours into a game to get as much value from that $60 price tag.

Against: Time Wasters

Naturally, Open World design also lends itself to a different issue that even its fans are aware of: time wasting. When a company puts out a title with a large, Open World without much in it, this artificially pads out the game’s playtime by forcing players to repeatedly walk across empty open spaces, often containing little more than a few generic items to pick up and the same handful of recurrent enemies to stall progress. Many of these titles will implement Fast Travel systems to cut down on repeat walks, but if this is truly necessary, it likely means the world is too big for its own good, and that shrinking the overall gameworld would produce a similar effect (while also improving game performance, since there would be less to load on average). Many, many of these games (and there are exceptions) produce empty worlds that exist for no purpose other than to take up space. There will be large stretches of land that lack any meaningful content. Open World invites developers to design for size, rather than for volume.

What is designing for volume? Simply put, it is placing a meaningful amount of content into a reasonably sized space. Volume is how much is contained within an area. The majority of Open World titles follow the Skyrim formula of scattering the meaningful content across a vast space. This creates an ocean with the depth of a puddle. Compare this to smaller game spaces, such as the small cities of Sly Cooper, the compact Mafia Town of A Hat in Time, any of the kingdoms in Super Mario Odyssey, or the islands of Sonic Frontiers. The thing that makes these areas special is the volume of content enclosed in their smaller spaces. Each has a host of different challenges, collectibles, enemies, and differentiable areas within itself, thus ensuring that the player cannot go more than a short distance without encountering a meaningful gameplay interaction. Granted, all four of the games I just listed are platformers, but this brings me to my next point: how little use the typical Open World space actually gets.

In Favor: Experiencing the Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding and open world games go hand in hand. Rumors from NPCs, books or notes found in dungeons, or different enemy types based on region are all ways open world informs the player of the history and activities of the world. The thrill of encountering a location or finding an artifact that you read about earlier in the game is a part of the open world experience. The world design in towns and dungeons expands upon the atmosphere of the environment where the game takes place. Learning the history of a ruin by combating the monster that caused it. Worldbuilding isn’t a mechanical decision but an immersive one. Where exploration and skill trees enhance the experience through gameplay; worldbuilding improves the story and dialogue as in every game and genre. In open worlds though, the knowledge gathered over your travels can influence decision making.

Against: Misuse of Assets

The standard AAA Open World game experience hands the player their basic walking speed, a jump that is only sometimes helpful, and maybe a dash or some sort of vehicle (the latter of which will often have rigid controls designed to take you in a straight line to your next location). I compare this to the aforementioned platformer games because in those titles, movement is the point. Each of them makes moving about fun in some way, handing the player a variety of movement tools to play with, and allowing them to experience their worlds in the way that they choose, granting player expression through the selection and use of the different tools they are given. When movement options are the point, navigating the world becomes meaningful in itself, it makes each step into a part of the journey, rather than just another bit of drudgery on your way to the next waypoint on the map. Open World games will produce massive areas to trudge through, without giving you a consistent supply of meaningful content, or an interesting way to interact with the world. It always baffles me that this is the direction so many games took, when giving the open spaces to games that build around movement makes so much more logical sense. Perhaps this philosophy is an extension of early RPG design, where players would regularly have to take extended walks to the next town/dungeon. But these games implemented level curves and rising challenges to allow for a meaningful feeling of growth. My issue with the modern Open World design is that it does neither.

You may misinterpret my points as meaning I want the experience to be completely on rails. This is not the case. Offering the player tools to do as they will is integral to a fun, creative experience. But the tools only matter if there is a well-built world the player can use those tools to interact with. To provide one of my favorite examples, we’ll look at the Death Wish mode from a Hat in Time, which remixes past levels with additional challenges. The first one that tripped me up was a challenge that asked me to complete the level in only two jumps, which seemed impossible in a segment that was built around vertical platforming. After getting to experiment for a while, I discovered the Ice Hat, an incredibly situational weapon, had a function that popped the player character into the air for a split second, allowing for full use of her air dash if the player reacted quickly. This realization not only solved the level in question, but resulted in my reexperiencing different levels in a no-jumping challenge, and learning the entire game had been carefully crafted to be winnable without ever pressing the seemingly necessary jump button. That’s clever design that allows the player to play the way they want to, even if playing through a linear level. 

In Favor: Understanding the Genre’s Flaws

Even though in my opinion, I find open world RPGs as a fun and enjoyable experience, there are several faults that might deter players from dipping their toes in the water. Open worlds might be expansive and encourage exploration, however a common criticism with the genre is that the world is expansive as an ocean, but as deep as a puddle. Building an environment design can be seen as repetitive. The same designs appear in different cities across the map or dungeons with similar layouts. Vast distances between locations with little to nothing in between to entertain the player, with travel being nothing more than a walking or riding simulator. These are valid concerns with the genre as designers do struggle at times to fill in the gaps, which bring up the question why open worlds are even necessary. Other concerns include poor character models/design in favor of environmental graphics and a gameplay plateau where skills are merely stat boosts after mastery. Most open world games do have these faults and become stale over time as the open world formula has seen little innovation. But with games like Breath of the Wild and Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the formula may have a new and improved future.

Against: Understanding the Genre’s Pros

Can Open World design be good? In spite of my points, yes, it can be. There are a small handful of games that have gotten the right idea, or at least taken steps towards them. InFamous: Second Son suffered from low depth, implementing repetitive challenges in different city blocks, but supplemented it with a variety of movement options that took advantage of the city’s geometry, so that the process of finding these repetitive challenges could be fun. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet spreads its hundreds of Pokemon species throughout the region so that you can consistently discover something new everywhere you go, which becomes meaningful because discovering and catching new Pokemon is the entire point of the series. Dragon Quest 11 switches from Linear Design to Open World in its second half, with the focus being on seeing how each location you used to know has changed since your first visit, effectively remixing old areas with injections of new content, rather than deciding that you completed that area’s quest and are done there. We are getting there, but I want games to provide a memorable experience, rather than just hitting me with repetitive quests to pad out the Open World. I loved scaling a mountain to learn that the Pokemon Gogoat could be found in ridiculously steep areas where nothing can live, or returning to Octagonia to see what has become of a place I once held dear. But if a game asks me to find 1500 Korok Seeds or slowly jog five miles to collect another 20 Bear Pelts to complete a quest for an item I’m probably not going to use again, simply because the devs failed to come up with something interesting to fill their world with, I think my time can be better spent elsewhere. 

Conclusion:

The genre, like virtually every other genre, has its pros and cons. None are perfect, but it is important that we can critically examine the strengths and weaknesses of different game genres. What do you think about Open World games? Are they worth the effort that goes into them or would it be better for the industry to shy away from it as a standard? Are there any games that better demonstrate some of our points? Games that refute them?