Fallout and RPG veteran Josh Sawyer says most players don't want games "6 times bigger than Skyrim or 8 times bigger than The Witcher 3"
Fallout and RPG veteran Josh Sawyer says most players don't want games "6 times bigger than Skyrim or 8 times bigger than The Witcher 3"
Sawyer says most players, including himself, aren't "concerned with finishing games" either
Skyrim is huge. I played it last year, going to all locations and doing main and side quests. That takes 100 hours or so.
Now I'm playing Elden Ring with SOTE, doing the same thing. I'm around 180h in and honestly I kind of want to finish by now.
So yeah, I don't see 600 hours of playtime as a positive goal. Unless they mean expand the map but don't keep up the content ratio. In that case, why the fuck would that be good? More travelling isn't worth anything.
World size, density, and traversal have to be balanced.
I tend to play without fast travel, and skyrim meets these three pretty well, using the carts and horse for faster travel.
GTA can be bigger, with cars and planes for long distances.
Large worlds are great, if they are packed w content, open barren landscapes are terrible.
Ghost recon wildlands for me is the sweet spot for a big, interesting world with good traversal options.
Skyrim size was just about right. I just want a deeper stat sytem that promotes more build diversity than stealth archer (but keeping the skill tree system intact - never want to go back to the Morrowind/Oblivion systems), enemies and items that don't level with me, more monster variety (so sick of draugr), and bring back levitation and modifiable acrobatics!
I want worlds big enough that I can suspend disbelief. True scale is too much (True Crime: Streets of LA was awful to traverse, for example) but too small and it feels like being in one of those play parks for small children. It's a problem I've had with Fallout 3+, where the scale makes no sense. I don't necessarily need the additional space to be dense with content (if it's supposed to be a barren waste, why is it full of stuff?!).
I want to buy into these worlds, but I struggle when things feel ridiculous. Oh are you struggling for supplies? Even though there's supplies 50m away from your settlement? Come on!
The first Red Dead Redemption hit the spot for me, as did the native settlement in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The scale isn't actually realistic, but it's large enough that I feel like it could be. GTA IV wasn't bad either, but GTA V was too compact in many places for my tastes.
I suppose it's much like the theatre. If a scene is well written it feels fine, but if the play calls attention to the limitations of the medium too much then it starts to become a bit silly.
The thing about not finishing games is very true. Simply look at achievement stats. Most games have a huge drop off in achievements earned after the first 25-50% of the game, with any achievement for completing the story of the game having a super small number of players who earned it. Even games that are easy as fuck and practically play themselves!
If it's good it's good. I bought the witcher 3 DLC and would have bought more. I stopped playing Assassins Creed altogether. People just want good, crafted content.
What game developers should do is add more "jump back in" modes. I get busy with work so I might leave for a few months midway through a long game and forget some plot and controls.
Honestly one of the best games I've played recently is the Stanley Parable and that game is a couple of hours of poking around a quirky but literal office. Would happily buy that 60 times over one massively mediocre rpg.
Only if the interesting content scales with size.
I am honestly excited to what GTA6 can bring to the content map. Considering how dense some parts of GTA 5 already are.I feel like how big I want the game to be is a weird quantum unstable value. When I'm interested in the game I want it to keep going. But at some point I lose interest, and I want it to wrap up. But usually I don't want to skip content that's at least okay, especially if it affects endings and other choices.
Like I enjoyed Veilguard, but there were bits near the end where I was losing focus and kind of wanted it to pick up the pace. There have been other games where I finished all the side quests but was like "that's it? I want more"
Not sure how to square this circle. I don't think procedural generated or AI content is quite up to the task yet.
I do think we'll see a game that has AI content in the critical path in the next couple years though. You'll go to camp and talk to Shadowheart, and it'll try to just make up new dialogue. I don't know if it'll be good. There will probably be at some weird ass hallucinations that'll become memes.
The only thing that I hate from open world is emptiness, you can have big or massive world but if it's seems so empty why bother to make it. Like Fallout & Skyrim we always use mods to fill that emptiness to make it feel alive.
I rather have game with small world but filled with many NPC like old Dragon AgeHonestly, I feel like games have been getting too big. The ends of RPGs always feel like a slog these days.
Maybe it’s because every game thinks it needs a 3 act denouement. Maybe it’s because there’s 100x the games coming out now compared to when I was young and the feeling of wanting to get to the next one is rushing me. Or maybe I’m just plain getting old.
In any case, I’m ok with shorter games.
The biggness doesn't matter as much as how much there is to do in a meaningful and rewarding way.
Yeah, I guess, but as long as the challenge is still achievable I can dig a large field.
It's easier to place and organize finished assets than to create new ones, though, so after a while a lot of it starts to feel copy-pasted. I'm sure that noticeable lack of effort will only be exasperated by modern automation.
I quite like sandbox games so in those cases I would like it bigger, but at the same time I have no need for some main storyline to be in the game either. I want to be able to live in the world and either challenge comes just from surviving or things you find while exploring.
I think the disconnect has to do with old gamers vs new. Old gamers were used to getting one game every 6mo to a year. New gamers are looking for a variety of that or short bangers. Idk I somehow fall between. I can play a long game as long as it comes in digestible amounts where I can easily drop it and pick it back up. All I know is 'AAA' type studios are out of touch as fuck. Only game I can think of in recent memory that was long and checked all the boxes would be God Of War. Horizon Zero Dawn as well. Coincidentally both ports from PS but I'm PC.
I actually might like a game that big... If it were actually a game that big. Starfield is a perfect example of pointlessly big but full of nothing. A game with the depth and complexity of some of the best cities in Bethesda games but EVERYWHERE instead of just a few select cities with barren wastes in between like a real world has might be incredible and be the last game I play for the rest of my life.
But that's not currently possible and all we can do right now is the fake BS where everything is empty but the map is BIG.
I think it really depends on the game.
An MMO or a sandbox game I can sink hours and hours into. I don't know how many hours I've lost to games like Minecraft, Rimworld, etc. Even if those types of games might have "objectives", I'm more likely to just kind of do my own thing.
And I had something like 500 days logged in with my Final Fantasy XI character. It was my default game and I kept playing because I always felt I had something to do and people to meet.
Narrative focused games? Nope. While I might enjoy playing, the narrative can feel more like a chore in a game that has too much stuff to do, especially if mechanics or areas are locked behind it. I will end up ADHD because I hit a block or feel like the game is forcing me to do the main story when I don't want to.
I had that happen in Fallout 3 where I was just wondering around, having fun exploring and stumbling on things, and I end up finding someone I didn't even know I needed to look for connected to my dad and suddenly I felt I was being pulled away from what I found fun.
Might be why I really liked 76 despite the hate it got/gets.
Huge game worlds were awesome back when it was challeng to make them. People have proved they can be done. Now it needs balance.
Counterpoint. Mordor II.
I'll take it if it's well done. I'm fine with it also not being done all at once (think expansions in MMOs). However, I'd rather the game be smaller (and priced appropriately) if quality will suffer.
Honestly, I love open worlds that are meaningful, rather than just big for the sake of being big. Yakuza games have very small world, but they dense as hell. They are filled with wacky side quests and many distractions.
I can’t get into fully open world games anymore. I am more of a fan of open ended levels like you see in the original Crysis. I am a lazy bastard and simply like a decent linear game with good gameplay and story. I will admit I do prefer more open spaces in multiplayer games like what you see in the Battlefield series though. However, the RockStar games are the exception to this for me because they all have really tightly, well-made linear stories, but the world is so well crafted that I don’t mind it being open world.
I would like that if it's like Skyrim. Actually it would have to be better. A big world and everytime I play it would be a completely different experience.
Prey 2017 is one of my favorite games. Fantastic replay value. 5 hour long runs with each play through rewarding with a different experience for doings differently or out of order. Wish more games were like that.