The comment in this thread you were responding to with it wasn't talking about whether the game inspired BoTW at all though. It was talking about whether it has a complete ecosystem, which the article you linked does not adress.
It's not just "do game objects despawn" it's, "does the game world actually have even a vague,rough memory of what you did and respond to it over time. IT's fine for it to be smoke and mirrors but if you are making the claim that it has a "complete ecosystem" then the game better have atleast some attempt at making what you do have some lasting effects.
No, just thought that there was something more than what you claimed which amounts to some semi randomized spawn locations and npcs that have unique interactions with each other...
Again, no I'm not saying that it needs to keep track of if you cut or burned every single blade of grass. just something like "if you kill tons of bears, the game will spawn less bears", "if there are less bears, the trees will have more fruit" etc etc.
it's never going to remember everything or even a rough memory and no game does, and if they do you can just argue it's smoke and mirrors as well. i never claimed it was a full on ecosystem that lives and dies, we are all gamers right? we all play video games, so obviously discussion on this forum needs to be around the knowledge of all of us seeing the matrix and seeing whats going on behind the scenes, so when i say complete ecosystem, it means that Rockstar did more than just spawn location x randomly, and if you see the video there is slight memory for animals will decompose over time.
but that's not the argument, the fact is if i sit and let the world exist around me, the game puts up a facade that it really exists and will react to my actions as a gamer, as i have said before you can kill an deer, wait for scavengers and randomly get lucky enough to see one of the hunting NPCs hunt the scavenger and take it to town, that's just one example, the NPCs/AI in RDR2 is goal oriented, and again it is all smoke and mirrors of course, but unlike static standing wolf so when i come into it's circle of attack radius runs right at me and play wolf_attk_anim loop, rdr2 creatures react in a believable way. Another example i have mentioned before that if you walk through trees and hearing birdsong as ambiance and you pull out a gun and shoot, actual birds in the game will fly away (not just 2d billboards) and then the ambiance in that area is gone, you wont hear those exact birds chirping anymore.
I mean what you are suggesting just things peter molyneaux would say and we all know videogames don't do that, at least not big AAA openworld games. but you seem to be really focusing in on a very singular aspect of ecosystem as if to say see gotcha RDR2 is terrible now, my point of interactivity still stands, it's just not suiting the one tiny aspect you are honing in on.
i mean even the "evil bad no no missions that nakey jakey hates" have different ways to interact with them with unique individual lines of dialog, honestly RDR2 is mental, all this talk makes me wanna play it again.
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