I didn't like it and I didn't like Madagascar in Uncharted 4 either.
The problem I have is that it grinds my momentum to an absolute halt. Tight, linear, story-based progress just ceases completely in favor of a sandbox with very little forward movement. Chapter 4 (or is it chapter 6?) in Lost Legacy was easily over half my play time because I'm running around aimlessly trying to not miss anything.
But in exploring so many nooks and crannies trying not to miss something, I don't end up finding very much either. Lets say the map looks like this:
Obviously this is just conceptual and not based on any actual map in the game. But in this case, the p is the player, the x is the confirmed destination, and all the o are possible points of interest.
The issue I have is that I can clearly see where I need to go and could easily reach that point quickly. But all around me there is robust environment that
could be hiding something. Maybe a treasure, maybe a dialog sequence, maybe a new quest marker. So I will delay going to my actual objective in favor of meticulously combing over all the possible points of interest and will find.... nothing.
And this happens on both a micro and a macro level. I can't leave any area without exploring everything I can plainly see, which means I spend an extremely long time weaving in and out of structures looking for lockboxes and stuff. But there's not enough of it, so most of the time, I've broken the cinematic suspension of disbelief. The story goes on hold so I can waste time looking for things that aren't there. But if I don't do this at all, who knows what I might miss. Maybe I'll miss a joke, or a conversation, or a collectible, but the point is that I'm missing content I want to see.
I'll never forget spending, like, four hours in Madagascar in UC4 and still not being done and having virtually nothing to show for it. And when I finally proceeded out to the next chapter, my friend asked me if I heard the "well, well, well" joke. I spent all that time excruciatingly combing over purely aesthetic structures and paths and
still missed content.
And that's how I feel when I play these big open chapters: like I'm looking in the wrong place. I
always feel like I'm looking in the wrong place. And even if I only spend five seconds or ten seconds going the wrong way for no reason, that time adds up. Because my first reaction when I finish an encounter or reach a new area is to explore it to its edges. In linear Uncharted levels, this means you see everything. You find all the treasures. You catch all the dialog prompts. In these open chapters, it probably means I just wasted time. And instead of feeling like a badass rogue on a high-energy adventure, I'm a wandering and meandering moron with nothing to show for it.
I love Uncharted and I don't fault them for trying something different, but I hate these levels. For me, they don't fit in the game at all. They break the story, they break the pacing, and they give me no reward for using the skill set the rest of the series and its level design requires.
