Spitballing: We need a new term.

Uses open world though and since they aren't open world games, kind of inaccurate. 

Sure they are. They are only segmented. 

So segmented open world? 

Semi open legs with hub locations.

There's no need for a new term because open world is apt. You get dropped into a zone and can go in any which location you choose when you choose; that's open world. Andromeda and Inquisition just have more than one location in comparison. Not a bad thing or a good thing.

What people get confused with is when conflating open world games with sandbox games, like GTA, Saints Row, and in some cases, Skyrim, where things are instanced beyond random enemy spawns.

You can run off and play tennis in GTA and you can stand back and watch guards randomly fight enemy goons in Skyrim without any sort of intervention on your part. This is on top of whatever sidequests and fetch quests these games have, all of which serve to make the big open areas far more engaging.

Ditching open world design would just mean you'd have small linear or branching zones with the same exact issues, or you could come up with a branching sandbox, which is how Hitman games are traditionally designed.

Open worlds won't benefit RPGs until more of them adopt sandbox gameplay like GTA and Saints Row. There's no reason why Kett and Resistance couldn't randomly spawn on any given planet and fight each other, or why there couldn't have been random outpost defense, colonist rescuing to ease the repetition in the fetch quests.

Not to mention, more mini-games in general. Quasar should've come back, along with those arcade games from the Citadel DLC.

BioWare refers to them as "zones", a far more accurate term than "open world". These aren't open worlds. They're not meant to be. They're meant to be free ranging zones with a border.

Excellent, thank you. So, small zones that are linked to the big zone, is considered open-world with borders (big and small). 

I think open world works for both DA:I and Andromeda, since for the most part the majority of the gameplay takes place in open world environments. The difference between Bioware's attempts at open world and the game that kicked off Bioware's open world trend (Skyrim), is that the latter is a sandbox game. Mass Effect and Dragon Age games have thankfully never been sand boxes.

Those calling ME:A an Open World game, and then saying that it's a bad open world game, are either being disingenuous, or are missing the point of what ME:A actually is.

It's not open world/sandbox. To me, those terms are interchangeable. You're plonked down in an area with only the one big border, and except for DLC or whatnot, everything in the game happens in that one large zone. There are generally day/night cycles, and other elements that attempt to create a more living world. Bethesda is generally regarded as the "best" developer in this genre.

ME:A is NOT an open world/sandbox. It skips the day/night cycle 'cause this type of game doesn't need it, really. If given the choice, would you explore a radioactive wasteland at night? For me, the answer is hell no. The areas aren't large enough for this to be a necessity. Given the nomad, there'd always be time to get to some sort of shelter or whatnot before night fell, and we'd be off again in the morning.

ME:A is a large zone/hub game. Instead of having 10-20 planets we could land on and do side content with, and have a main quest on one of 'em (with some side content there too) we have fewer, larger areas to explore and have side content on. The set piece fights (the Kett bases on Voeld and Eos, rescuing the Moshae on Voeld, etc) are fairly linear shooting gallery areas much like the OT. GETTING to those areas requires the Nomad instead of flying to a new planet and landing, then BOOM you're in a corridor shooter.  Both approaches lead  you to the same set-piece, linear shooting gallery, but the journey is different.

People are going into this thinking ME:A is supposed to be like Skyrim or Fallout 4, as open world/sandbox games. It's not. It's just an expanded version of ME1, but with fewer, larger planets to explore.

Single player MMO?



I'll let myself out.

Why do we need an alternative? It's an open-world game just like Inquisition was before it. And it's all semantics anyway; deciding to change the words you use to describe the game isn't going to change people's perception of it.

Or, to put it more eloquently, "same shit, different pile"

It is.

And the day/night cycle is a graet evidence of that. Ask how many people think MEA should have one. How many people thought the planets were static and how many people want a day/night cycle for the possible next game. It was an classic element from open world games that was missing in Andromeda, and so it hurted the game.

A hub oriented game is something like Rise of the Tomb Rider, or KoTOR. In short, the size of MEA areas is what make it open world, regardless if they are one huge area or 4 or 5 big ones.

But that's really just a detail, whatever one calls MEA it won't change its nature. And more importantly, it won't change that does it badly.