Should this game have been open world
Apr 28, 2017 11:18:11 GMT
fraggle, Terminator Force, and 3 more like this
Post by henkiedepost on Apr 28, 2017 11:18:11 GMT
Nope. Open World is something very few developers can actually pull off and is also, like someone here said before, very difficult in a Sci-Fi setting because we're talking about planets here, not regions. This leaves us with MMO-tier fetchquests and 'tasks' which aren't fun or engaging to complete at all. (And yes, this is an opinion, but I'd rather have quality side-content than tasks like 'scan colonist bodies'.) I also have the feeling that by aiming for an Open World a developer has to spend too many resources on creating the world alone. This means that there there simply isn't enough time left for them to polish everything properly and to make sure that everything adheres to a certain quality standard. I created a list of things which I felt suffered under the fact that Bioware went for the grand 'exploration' approach in another thread which I will post here in a spoiler tag.
Long story short: I'm not against Open World per se because it can be done right and has been done right by other developers in the past, but it should not be the main focus of a Mass Effect game, this should always be Story and Characters in my opinion. Therefore I believe the side content is just as important as the main story. It keeps you immersed in the world when done right and is useful for understanding the underlying lore. When done bad however, it can also be a reason not to pick up a game again. I have zero interest in a replay of ME:A right now because I'm kinda an completionist and I do definitely NOT want to go through all these lame sidequests again.
The list of things which could maybe have been done better without the focus on Open World:
Long story short: I'm not against Open World per se because it can be done right and has been done right by other developers in the past, but it should not be the main focus of a Mass Effect game, this should always be Story and Characters in my opinion. Therefore I believe the side content is just as important as the main story. It keeps you immersed in the world when done right and is useful for understanding the underlying lore. When done bad however, it can also be a reason not to pick up a game again. I have zero interest in a replay of ME:A right now because I'm kinda an completionist and I do definitely NOT want to go through all these lame sidequests again.
The list of things which could maybe have been done better without the focus on Open World:
- Writing a strong and compelling main plot
- Polishing the game so that it isn't a bug ridden mess on release
- Polishing side content the game still does have so that even here the story and choices are good. Less content does not equal a bad or worse game. It is all about quality, not quantity.
- Getting rid of the awful zoom-in conversations. Seriously, those buggy, lazy and immersion-breaking conversations are the bane of my existence. Even though it takes a lot more time, I believe everything should be cinematic and as much handcrafted as possible. Without open-world you have less conversations to animate and you have a bigger budget to spend on animations. win-win I say.
- designing a better UI (especially for PC. The copy-paste console UI's are annoying me lately.)
- Adding more choices which actually mean something. Open worlds quickly become too big for all these little things to be meaningful which makes the world feel bland and static. Compacter worlds do tend to make up for this. An example of this is the following personal experience. After making a difficult decision I tend to look up on the internet what possible consequences would be. Whilst playing Andromeda I almost always see 'this choice doesn't do anything except for defining what kind of a pathfinder you want to be' when looking things up. This just sucks. It feels othing has any impact. Not even Main Story decisions like the choice of your first outpost. Like the new voiceline of the character Mercy in Overwatch perfectly describes: 'Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.'
- Polishing the game so that it isn't a bug ridden mess on release
- Polishing side content the game still does have so that even here the story and choices are good. Less content does not equal a bad or worse game. It is all about quality, not quantity.
- Getting rid of the awful zoom-in conversations. Seriously, those buggy, lazy and immersion-breaking conversations are the bane of my existence. Even though it takes a lot more time, I believe everything should be cinematic and as much handcrafted as possible. Without open-world you have less conversations to animate and you have a bigger budget to spend on animations. win-win I say.
- designing a better UI (especially for PC. The copy-paste console UI's are annoying me lately.)
- Adding more choices which actually mean something. Open worlds quickly become too big for all these little things to be meaningful which makes the world feel bland and static. Compacter worlds do tend to make up for this. An example of this is the following personal experience. After making a difficult decision I tend to look up on the internet what possible consequences would be. Whilst playing Andromeda I almost always see 'this choice doesn't do anything except for defining what kind of a pathfinder you want to be' when looking things up. This just sucks. It feels othing has any impact. Not even Main Story decisions like the choice of your first outpost. Like the new voiceline of the character Mercy in Overwatch perfectly describes: 'Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.'
