If we have open levels again what do you want to see?

My concern is any benefit you get from them should be minimal otherwise one might feel cheated.

Fair enough.  In defence of the idea; the GTA one I mentioned is the first one in either game I've found that lead to an ongoing, meaningful benefit (new heist member).  The others, across both games had all been just loot or honour (in RDR2).

NOT Fetch Quests

I get it, but Jesus fetch quests were out the ass in Inquisition. If there were any more you could have circled around the world 10 times with them as stepping stones.

To answer the question though, a lot more cut scenes when dealing with people starting quests. Well they don't necessarily need be cut scenes, but at least talking face to face with a NPC, which they did do in Origins and DA2. It always made doing the quests in Inquisition a lot more impersonal and made me care less for them because of that.

The praise TW3 sidequests received was - in my opinion - due to two main things; one was presentation.  There was a "cinematic" conversation (or two, or three) with each one and that - like it or not - imparts a sense of importance to the task, no matter how menial (like herding someone's goat with a bell).  The other was that many of the "fetch quest" level ones fell in to one of two categories; things that greatly benefited Geralt (new armour or weapons) and/or ones that are exactly something a professional monster hunter would do.  Some of them also provided entries into extended quest chains (though those were significantly more rare).

Yes, I think a good balance of cinematic scenes and voiced dialogue would be great if resources allowed. It could be a matter of personal preference, because I'd be happy if, in the absence of cinematic scenes (edit: not total absence, of course. We definitely need them.), the stories were just well-written and interesting. Cinematics can go a long way to set a scene and create an atmosphere, but I don't know if it's always essential. Chateau d'Onterre in DAI managed to be a great side quest without any cinematics.

And you're right about having quests befitting their position/role. In DAI I enjoyed the fetch quests that involved recruiting agents; they came voiced, with unique stories and introduced minor characters of interest.

       I'll bite, though I'm more of the camp that actually enjoyed the open setting (I don't call it open world for reasons of my own). First, if you don't mind me checking some of your requests be cause I'm always curious.

1: Climbing - I'm assuming you don't mean ladders and fallen logs that you could climb in DA:I. There's the rub for any RPG designer: what does being able to climb surfaces that the designers/level builders didn't intend to be climbed add to the experience? Is that worth all the time testing climbing in those places to be sure it doesn't break the game? I don't personally see any advantage to storytelling over appropriately placed transitions that mimic that ability, but I'm open to examples.


2: Swimming - Pretty much the same as above; what do you get from a storytelling/game perspective simulating an activity that has to be closely regulated and heavily tested that you don't get from simpler implementations, like getting on a boat transition in Jaws of Hakkon? You can't really engage in combat or other activities while swimming in a game like DA. To me, it's just walking/running with a far trickier animation and implementation. Again, my experience is not broad so if there are games this has really added to, please give me some examples. I would love to hear about them.

3: Day/Night Cycle. This is an oldie and maybe notso goodie. I remember day/night cycles and what they basically did in BG2, but, in my memory, that largely had only two effects of any impact (vampires only came out at night and there were a few merchants who only appeared at night while most others were unavailable). That offers some realism but it's still a little lightweight in terms of punch to implementation issues. Again, what would be the big storytelling opportunities this would open up?

4: Music toggle: I'll reiterate what DragonKing asked: how is this different from just turning music off in the sound settings?

5: I thought there were plenty of NPCs to interact with in the Hinterlands (which I think is what Bioware was shooting for as an adventure area before the time crunch came down). We'd all like more NPCs, but that can be expensive in models and VA. Maybe its better to have somewhat deeper NPCs that actually have more function then dispense quest, accept quest end and give reward, generic praise of conquering hero? I know I got a kick out of the groups of refugees that would spawn in the Hinterlands that would comment on various things as well. As for more towns, again, I would prefer quality over quantity. I'm pretty sure we can all agree Val Royeux was just a mistake. Haven had more life and things going on than the jewel of the Orleasean Empire. Maybe I'm rambling a bit here.


    Now, for my own suggestion: have solid themes through each adventure area that link to each other and to either the Main Quest or another theme in another area. By link , I mean having a real impact on the related theme or the Main Quest. For example: in my Alternate Reality DA:I, you could pick to side with the templars, the mages, or quash them both. Siding with one side or the other would lead into Hushed Whispers or Champions or a third quest centered on bringing them both back under the Chantry. The second theme then would be the line from the east Road Bandits through the Smugglers Fortress to Valamarr with that completion weakening the Red Templars in some way for later. (Side note: how many dang Red Lyrium mines/sources did they have? Even if they were eating the stuff, there's so many quests that strike at Red Lyrium sources that have zero impact on the plot. But I digress ). Weaving a good story is like a web: it only works when the strands are linked together to support each other.


     thanks for the thoughts and the time.   

Better mounts.

IMHO Oblivion still has the best horses of any video game. Some were slow and some were fast. Some had high HP and others had low HP. Some were scared of their own shadow, others were basically a companion. Also they were fun to ride.

In Skyrim the horses all looked the same and ran at the same speed (and I'm sure there is a mod out there that fixes that but I'm talking base vanilla game here).

Hey hey now, Skyrim horses were the goat. How else could you climb vertical cliff faces and defy the laws of physics? I skipped entire quest sections with those horses I'll have you know!

But I agree with you on the DAI mounts. Despite thier variety I can't say I ever really used them just due to how slow they were. But the biggest issue wasn't even their speed, it was the fact they made our companions become virtually nonexistent. Which meant they somehow made traveling on a mount more boring than traveling on foot. If mounts come back in the next game, they better be allowed to continue party banter (preferably while on a mount of their own).

When we say open world, what kind are we talking about?

- Contiguous open worlds like Skyrim, GTA, or BotW?
- Large, hub worlds like Inquisition
- Or intertwined regions with non-linear level design similar to the modern Deus Ex games

I think what is "ideal" is largely dependent on how they intend to do open world design.

I think actually... there might be a reason why the mounts didnt go faster: Streaming speed on the old consoles was not enough for the content. Not sure if this was the case but ... it could be. On Anthem the walking speed was originally slow in the fortress, and I seem to remember them saying this is the reason and they did some stuff to get it a bit faster though.
Of course Anthem is on newer hardware etc. but they have their limits too especially how slow the HDD's are in those..