Hey, Let’s Talk About Open Worlds Some More!
We talked a lot about open-world games this week, starting with Clayton Purdom’s look at how Nintendo’s two big 2017 hits—Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and Super Mario Odyssey—make some smart alterations to that all-too-prevalent structure. In the comments, SingingBrakeman ran with the topic:
I had been very skeptical of both due to the pre-release coverage emphasizing their size, but I was pleasantly surprised by the discovery that they used their space not for the checking off of boxes in pursuit of some goal—though you can play them this way—but rather to bring joy through the very act of exploration.
By removing most of the long-term incentives for completion of goals, both games switched the focus onto the tasks being engaging in their own right. A player could collect all of the Korok seeds in Hyrule, but he or she would not end up with any narrative development or bauble beyond a humorous joke item. A player could collect all of the moons in Odyssey’s various kingdoms, but the major rewards stop being doled out after collecting only 50 percent of them. With no progression system, narrative development, or material reward, a player loses that Skinner-box mentality designed to keep him or her pushing onward due to a tight input/output loop; instead, the player will just seek out and complete goals that are, themselves, interesting. A Korok seed puzzle is effectively just a little brain-engaging reward for paying attention to the environment in Breath Of The Wild, and a Moon in Odyssey tends to be a reward for creatively ascending some peak or outrunning a Koopa Troopa, so they are being collected in pursuit of fun, rather than as a goal in their own right.
It’s a fascinating design principle, and reminds me of 2016's The Witness, where a player could seek assistance on puzzles, but no rewards were available other than more complex puzzles; the puzzles, and the accompanying sense of mastery, were their own reward, so a player would only stay invested as long as he or she was enjoying the act of playing.
Clayton contrasted Mario and Zelda with the likes of Horizon Zero Dawn (more on that later) and Assassin’s Creed, the latest entry in which Patrick Lee reviewed for us this week. Building off a comment where WolfmanJew likened the lavish environments of Assassin’s Creed to little more than set dressing, Once I Was ImpromptuJ told us why the series has continually let them down:
That’s it exactly. My favorite open-world games feature maps with distinct pockets of civilization, each with their own unique local flavor and variety of citizens. Whether we’re talking about the holds of Skyrim, the villages of Witcher 3, the towns of Red Dead Redemption, or even the neighborhoods of GTA V, these games are all about the thrill of discovery—even (or especially) when you’re not fighting bandits or monsters out in the wilderness somewhere.
And the AC games, which are usually entirely set in urban environments, never really provide that thrill. Aside from the famous historic landmarks and a few surface details, one part of the city always pretty much looks like the next, especially when you’re skulking around the rooftops. And the people teaming around below are so uniform and uninteresting they may as well be slow-moving gray blobs with the word “obstacle” stamped on their foreheads.