EmptySpace
Banned
I believe the point here is that for a next-gen "open-world" game - it is lacking in many of the features that pretty much define it since way back in GTA3. It's not about having driving cars that is the issue just like it's being inconvenient to ride a train on GTA3 doesn't nullify the world the developers created it.
An open-world game by next-gen standards is not having the density and fidelity to support it making it just another stage back-drop than an actual interactive world. If the excuse of budget is the main issue, than the developer has set themselves up to scrutiny for not living up to the standards of what a next gen open-world should be. It's bad enough that most, if not all open-world titles, rely on copy/paste missions to pad length and now it can't even meet the base requirement that should've been expected from a new generation title.
that's just a stupid analogy. being open-world does not mean doing everything that's physically possible.
do things that make sense within the context of the game. i don't want to be able to buy ice cream or go buy a ticket to ride the monorail in a game about a guy with superpowers.
and who said the standard of an open-world game is to have everything interactive? in case you didn't know, being open-world isn't a genre. do you categorize linear games as a genre? you don't. therefore, open-world games shouldn't conform to a universal rule of "interactivity". it depends upon the genre of the game. infamous is a different game than skyrim, yet both are open-world games. same thing with pokemon and saint's row.
not to mention, reviewers complaining about "not next gen enough" don't even know what they want from a next-gen game. they just see a game improving upon its formula and they see that as a negative, which is ridiculous. they want a sequel to change up the formula and play differently? then that isn't a sequel. not since the transition from 2d to 3d have we seen radically different elements that changed the way we play games. every game since then was a reiteration of a previously-explored element, and improved upon in magnitudes.
what i hate the most are people asking for a "next gen experience" when even indie games can give players a radically new way of playing or interacting with the games. therefore, new gameplay ideas should not be based upon new hardware, or a new generation. new gameplay can emerge from the simplest of titles with the most rudimentary graphics. so this notion that "new gen brings about new-gen gameplay" is just flat-out stupid. if you are jaded and sick that a sequel plays overwhelmingly like its predecessors, then don't use the excuse that a new hardware should somehow automatically mean a new type of gameplay. the crux here is that the base thinking is flawed, so it leads to irrational conclusions. you associate a new piece of hardware with a new gameplay design for a sequel, on top of a design that we have not seen before. they don't want a "next-gen gameplay", they just want infamous to not play like infamous and change up the formula all while being a sequel.