Games

32718 readers

1679 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

Submissions have to be related to games
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No excessive self-promotion
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Shower thought, traversal in open world games have turned from game mechanics to loading screens (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

21 comments fedilink hide all child comments

3 big ones recently, this year was God of War Ragnarok, FF7 Rebirth and Jedi Survivor

Back when 3d games were new, tomb raider, prince of persia etc the traversal was the challenge, the gameplay.

Eventually they got watered down and simplified, now they are cleverly disguised choke points while the open world or boss ahead loads.

You'll notice the squeezing between narrow walls to separate 2 areas or a simple climb against a flat wall just before a boss. I think Uncharted was the first to do this as they moved away from climbing and focused more on combat and puzzles.

There is no reason to actually have the characters climb anything if it's not fun or there are better ways of traversal, GoW being the biggest offender here

Jedi Survivor embraces traversal more but still locks you out with invisible walls and floors that kill you

I think I might prefer the elevator loading screens from Elden Ring, at least you get to stretch out your fingers when waiting

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I think it's a bit of a stretch to describe games with loading screens of that kind (whether disguised as choke points or not) as open worlds. Sure, they might allow more freedom than a game that stays on rails for every step of the journey, but to me, "open world" suggests something more.

Continuity while exploring the landscape, unimpeded by artificial barriers or immersion-breaking interruptions, is a big part of it.

Almost as important is that the world be interesting and diverse enough that I would want to spend my time exploring it. This is one of Skyrim's great strengths: It's full of unique things to discover, most of which aren't marked on the map (except sometimes when you're already there), and some don't even stay in the same place. It ensures that exploring the world and paying attention is rewarding and satisfying. The Witcher 3, on the other hand, is weak in this area: Its world is mostly open, but practically everything in it is a copy/paste instance of a handful of events, and clearly marked on the map. Exploration quickly becomes a tedious exercise in running from dot to dot, doing the same few things over and over again. It doesn't deliver the satisfaction I expect from an open world game. In a world like that, I get bored fast.