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[AEREC]

Couldn't disagree more, MGSV was nearly perfect aside from the unfinished story.

Horizon is your standard Ubisoft (I actually dont mind the ubi open world formula) open world game with a good story.

 

[Zakalwe]

That was kinda my point. MGS5's world is that bad.

And Horizon's isn't much better, they both have issues. Horizon is definitely not in a league above MGSV in regards to its open world.

 

[SolidChamp]

MGS5 should have been more like MGS3.

I can also agree with this.

 

[Freeman76]

No thanks, Horizon was massively generic underneath all that eye candy. MGSV did so many original things. Not even in the same ballpark imo.

 

[Tomasoares]

Horizon's open world is not one of its strong points.

It's basically a huge arena for the combat, with very little reward for exploration (aside from a few items, the collectable stuff is very underwhelming in terms of reward), very little interaction aside from the combat and story related areas, it doesn't feel lived in and even if the story supports this fact the actual gameplay feels less compared to RPGs with more alive open worlds like TW3.

Horizon does a lot of things right, but its open world, while very beautiful and impressive from a technical standpoint, is not an example of the best in the business.

It is good actually. They did manage to keep away the bloated stuff out and make the player focus on what is really important. I wish other games had an Open World as tight as Horizon. Normally I would just rush the mainquest and ignore the filler.

 

[Alo0oy]

Horizon's open world is not one of its strong points.

It's basically a huge arena for the combat, with very little reward for exploration (aside from a few items, the collectable stuff is very underwhelming in terms of reward), very little interaction aside from the combat and story related areas, it doesn't feel lived in and even if the story supports this fact the actual gameplay feels less compared to RPGs with more alive open worlds like TW3.

Horizon does a lot of things right, but its open world, while very beautiful and impressive from a technical standpoint, is not an example of the best in the business.

The Witcher's open world is very static compared to Horizon where emergent events happen all over, I once saw an NPC luring a longleg while another NPC was setting up a trap, when the longleg was caught in the trap, a bunch of NPCs jumped from the bushes to attack the longleg. Those type of events are very common in the game.

 

[Always-honest]

I strongly disagree. The Ubisoft-like structure of Horion Zero Dawn would have compromised the profound gameplay of MGSV. It needs open areas, without constant interruptions in the environment. It's bland if you look at it from the perspective of a traditional open-world, but it's not supposed to be that. It's not a world you're supposed to explore, its only purpose is to give you freedom to infiltrate in specific places. And it does that wonderfully.

Aren't there other words for "ubisoft-like" structure?
Getting tired of this nonsense.

Anyway, I thought MGSV was great in gameplay mechanics but it was more repetitive than Horizon and there were very little situations driving you forward in story. Never finished it.

A mix between the best aspects of Horizon, MGSV and Zelda would be great.

 

[Joeku]

Ground Zeroes but five more times is the game MGSV should have been.

 

[SomTervo]

Horizon doesn't have MGS3's level of emergent game and level design either. Even less so than MGSV.

Sorry OP. It's got a better story though for sure.

Ghost Recon Wildlands is the better answer honestly. At least in terms of gameplay and level design. It actually comprises all the "infiltration" settings of the various MGS games, with an absurd amount of seamless interiors and gear/upgrades to find, and 3-4 factions interacting with each other during stealth/warfare which is incredible and emergent af.

Over 2 hours it can go from MGS4 city street battle infiltration to snowy silent military bar infiltration to belly crawling through jungle bases.

 

[Mikey Jr.]

Open world killed mgsv for me.

I can't believe for an mgs game how absent the story was.

 

[Zvonimir Boban]

Are people still trying to push the "Horizon is just an Ubisoft game" narrative?

lol.

What the fuck Ubisoft game plays like Horizon at all? I mean, tell me which ones, because I must have missed them.

If I were to be reductive I'd say it's Rise of the Tomb Raider crossed with Far Cry 3/4.

Just off the top of my head it's got towers you climb to uncover areas on the map (Which is every Ubisoft game from Assassins Creed to Far Cry) and it's got hunting animals to get skins to craft equipment upgrades which is straight out of Far Cry.

If you're seriously saying Horizon doesn't resemble any Ubisoft games then either you're being deliberately obtuse or Horizon is the first open world game you've ever played.

Horizon has got some stunning high points but that doesn't change the fact that it's extremely derivative. It might be the best looking game I've ever played and it has awesome robot enemies but apart from that, everything in the game has been done many times over in the last 5-10 years.

It's basically a checklist of features that every open world game has nowadays.

EDIT: Bandit camps are lazy versions of Far Cry outposts

 

[Zakalwe]

It is good actually. They did manage to keep away the bloated stuff out and make the player focus on what is really important. I wish other games had an Open World as tight as Horizon. Normally I would just rush the mainquest and ignore the filler.

Horizon's open world is a shallow combat arena, there's very little else to it if you go off-track.

It's good in that it supports the action gameplay and looks stunning, but it's not great at producing a strong open world that stands on its own like TW3's.

The Witcher's open world is very static compared to Horizon where emergent events happen all over, I once saw an NPC luring a longleg while another NPC was setting up a trap, when the longleg was caught in the trap, a bunch of NPCs jumped from the bushes to attack the longleg. Those type of events are very common in the game.

That just means the combat has some slight emergent properties, not that the actual open world itself is a well developed part of the game. I mean, it's weel developed for what it is, ie: a beautiful but shallow combat arena, but it's absolutely not a well developed open world in its own right.

The open world is incredibly shallow if you compare it to the best open worlds in the business.

 

[Always-honest]

If I were to be reductive I'd say it's Rise of the Tomb Raider crossed with Far Cry 3/4.

Just off the top of my head it's got towers you climb to uncover areas on the map (Which is every Ubisoft game from Assassins Creed to Far Cry) .

Nonsense.

 

[THEaaron]

I wish mgs V Atleast had that quantity of good story content and cut scenes like horizon and Witcher 3. These games were huge but didn't lack story content at all. MGS5 was so bland and dull and was an insult to fans who loved mgs story and lore. How big boss turned to the dark side. Instead we got Kojima poor imitation of a protagonist inspired by mad max silent protagonist type. This sucked

Well Big Boss actually turned completely dark - but it was presented in a very unique way. I really liked the perspective of the story and how it is represented to the player. But...

yes, he teased his fanbase quite a bit and created expectations that should remain unfulfilled
yes, he may have crossed the border with his meta stuff
yes, one can complain about that stuff

I really love MGS and it's story content and MGSV is not an insult to me. For me, it was an experiment that worked pretty well. I can adapt to different narrative perspectives and I would like to see more experiments like that. Even if they fail.

 

[Mikey Jr.]

As someone mentioned before, the new hitman game was the PERFECT blueprint for how mgsv should have been. These really big, self contained levels that tell a story. Not linear like mgs1, but not this massive open world like mgsv.

Story always suffers in open world games.

 

[Zakalwe]

Nonsense.

It's /very/ comparable to Far Cry, especially 3.

There are a lot of similar designs in the games, from the UI ro collectables to the way the open world is set out.

For all Horizon's technical beauty and mechanical polish, it has a lot of generic elements.

 

[SilentRob]

Yeah, sounds like you missed it. There's a shitload of freeform emergent scenarios all over MGSV in every mission. I've done missions in totally different ways depending on how I approach, and the way the game reacts to your actions is on a whole other level compared to MGS3. MGSV has some of my most memorable unscripted moments in the entire series, especially when I fuck up and the game adjusts to the fuck up, allowing me to find other alternative solutions to clean up my own mess.

I find it amazing how people just tend to ignore this aspect of MGS V. The amount of choices and possibilities that change how the mission plays how and what you do in it in incredibly profound ways is second to none.

Also, and I will repeat this in every single one of these threads: MGS V is not an open world game. It's a mission based game. You choose your missions (and levels) in a menu and then play that level. Yes, the levels are, for the most part, way bigger and less scripted than in previous MGS games. But it is not an open world game, at least on in the sense the term "Open World" is being used in gaming, see Horizon, Zelda: Breath of the Wild etc. You have various hub worlds you can explore on the side, yes, but traversing, exploring and unlocking new areas of the map is not part of the core gameplay loop. I know that Kojima himself kept using the term "Open World" in marketing but I think that was incredibly misleading.

MGS V's missions are incredibly open and allow you to tackle them in an incredibly number of ways, which is probably the game's biggest strength. But in my opinion it's not an open-world game comparable to Horizon, not at all.

Nonsense.

Horizon is incredibly similiar to Far Cry 3/4/Primal, from the way you explore and uncover the open world to the way crafting works. I'd argue Horizon is better at it, but I absolutely got the feeling I'm playing a Third-Person-Far-Cry, too.

 

[Hindl]

Nonsense.

Wait what? Every open world Ubisoft game has tower climbing and has for 10 years now

 

[SomTervo]

Wait what? Every open world Ubisoft game has tower climbing and has for 10 years now

Watch Dogs 2 didn't, Division didn't, Wildlands doesn't.

 

[Zakalwe]

I find it amazing how people just tend to ignore this aspect of MGS V. The amount of choices and possibilities that change how the mission plays how and what you do in it in incredibly profound ways is second to none.

Also, and I will repeat this in every single one of these threads: MGS V is not an open world game. It's a mission based game. You choose your missions (and levels) in a menu and then play that level. Yes, the levels are, for the most part, way bigger and less scripted than in previous MGS games. But it is not an open world game, at least on in the sense the term "Open World" is being used in gaming, see Horizon, Zelda: Breath of the Wild etc. You have various hub worlds you can explore on the side, yes, but traversing, exploring and unlocking new areas of the map is not part of the core gameplay loop. I know that Kojima himself kept using the term "Open World" in marketing but I think that was incredibly misleading.

MGS V's missions are incredibly open and allow you to tackle them in an incredibly number of ways, which is probably the game's biggest strength. But it's not an open-world game comparable to Horizon, not at all.

It is an open world game because every mission is set within the same open map space.

It may not be a classic open world game, but the definition is true because of the way the gameplay areas are presented.

 

[Zvonimir Boban]

Nonsense.

Assassins Creed, Far Cry, Watch Dogs, The Crew (!!!!!), Ubisoft loves them some towers.

Oh fuck, Just Dance doesn't have towers so I guess my entire opinion of Horizon is rendered completely worthless.

You compared it to The Witcher, where the world is very static and unchanging, I was just responding to that.

And the combat arena is anything but shallow, if Horizon's combat arena is shallow then every other open world game has putrid combat (which isn't far off from the truth tbh), with the exception of MGSV (which actually has the best open world combat ever IMO).

Yup.

Horizon's combat can look bad if you try and cheese it (Machines not wanting to leave a certain area is one example) but that's if the player deliberately tries to go down that route. If you make the effort to engage with different weapons at your disposal it's got better combat than pretty much any open world game I can think of. Fighting a Stormbird in the air while you've got other machines trying to fuck you up on the ground gets pretty intense real quick.

 

[Neptonic]

That is the exact opposite of what MGSV should have been. MGSV should have ditched the open world and had large hub levels like Ground zeroes.

 

[Alo0oy]

That just means the combat has some slight emergent properties, not that the actual open world itself is a well developed part of the game. I mean, it's weel developed for what it is, ie: a beautiful but shallow combat arena, but it's absolutely not a well developed open world in its own right.

You compared it to The Witcher, where the world is very static and unchanging, I was just responding to that.

And the combat arena is anything but shallow, if Horizon's combat arena is shallow then every other open world game has putrid combat (which isn't far off from the truth tbh), with the exception of MGSV (which actually has the best open world combat ever IMO).

 

[SilentRob]

It is an open world game because every mission is set within the same open map space.

It may not be a classic open world game, but the definition is true because of the way the gameplay areas are presented.

That's a weird argument o0 Then MGS3 would be an open world game, too, since every mission is set within the same open map space? In fact, it's even more of an open world game since you can go back at various points and never actually chose levels and missions in a menu. What about Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider?

 

[N7.Angel]

ah ah ah ah ah ah ah.... NOOOOOOOO

 

[Nesther]

No thanks, Horizon was massively generic underneath all that eye candy. MGSV did so many original things. Not even in the same ballpark imo.

Strongly agree with this. Horizon followed the themepark approach of open world games (similar to Ubisoft and co.). MGSV was more of a sandbox that allowed for far more complex gameplay possibilities.

Even at its "deepest", weapons such as the ropecaster served as nothing more than a temporary enemy debuff.

I liked Horizon, but MGSV is in a entirely different league. Maybe Horizon 2? We'll see. I just hope they move away from the Far Cry approach to open world by then. It's getting tiring imo.

 

[SolidChamp]

I find it amazing how people just tend to ignore this aspect of MGS V. The amount of choices and possibilities that change how the mission plays how and what you do in it in incredibly profound ways is second to none.

And I find it amazing how I haven't come across a single example to rival the moments I've highlighted from MGS3.

There is nothing like the sniper fight with The End, to use one example.

Nobody has detailed these "profound" moments in MGSV that gave me the same "wow" factor that MGS3 did. I'm still waiting for that one thing that rivals The End or destroying the enemy's food supply.

There's nothing really all that mind blowing in MGSV. I went through a LOT of repetition during my time with the game.

I'd like to be proven wrong, though.

 

[firelogic]

MGSV had amazing gameplay and visuals. The only thing lacking vs previous games in the series was story.

However, I did enjoy Horizon more.

 

[Alo0oy]

Assassins Creed, Far Cry, Watch Dogs, The Crew (!!!!!), Ubisoft loves them some towers.

Oh fuck, Just Dance doesn't have towers so I guess my entire opinion of Horizon is rendered completely worthless.

Every other non-Ubisoft open world does too. That makes it an open world trope, not a Ubisoft one.

 

[Hindl]

Watch Dogs 2 didn't, Division didn't, Wildlands doesn't.

Alright sorry, their games from the past year have expanded beyond the tower thing. Still, the Ubisoft tower thing is definitely a trope, it's nonsense to dismiss it

Every other non-Ubisoft open world does too. That makes it an open world trope, not a Ubisoft one.

And every game that does it gets compared to a Ubisoft game, since it's so prominent in their games and they were the ones to popularize the idea

 

[Angst]

If I were to be reductive I'd say it's Rise of the Tomb Raider crossed with Far Cry 3/4.

Just off the top of my head it's got towers you climb to uncover areas on the map (Which is every Ubisoft game from Assassins Creed to Far Cry) and it's got hunting animals to get skins to craft equipment upgrades which is straight out of Far Cry.

If you're seriously saying Horizon doesn't resemble any Ubisoft games then either you're being deliberately obtuse or Horizon is the first open world game you've ever played.

Horizon has got some stunning high points but that doesn't change the fact that it's extremely derivative. It might be the best looking game I've ever played and it has awesome robot enemies but apart from that, everything in the game has been done many times over in the last 5-10 years.

It's basically a checklist of features that every open world game has nowadays.

EDIT: Bandit camps are lazy versions of Far Cry outposts

Horizon doesn't feel like playing a ubisoft game at all. There's a semblance, absolutely, but;
1. Towers. In assassin's creed there's maybe 20 - 25 towers, making the climbing to unlock very tedious. Whereas HZD has five Tallnecks.
2. Hunting animals. Sure, but HZD avoids the 5 seconds unskippable cutscene of skinning animals. By the end of a ubisoft game I hate that cutscene with a vengeance.

Ubisoft games tend to feel like crossing things off a checklist really fast. The amount of collectables in Black Flag is insane for example.

 

[Always-honest]

Assassins Creed, Far Cry, Watch Dogs, The Crew (!!!!!), Ubisoft loves them some towers.

Oh fuck, Just Dance doesn't have towers so I guess my entire opinion of Horizon is rendered completely worthless.

It's fine if you want to live in your own fantasy.
There are certainly Ubisoft open world games using it.
So do other open world games (non Ubi)

Not all Ubisoft games and not all Ubisoft open world games use it.

It's time some of you guys and girls become a bit more rational and reasonable.
Sure, they killed your first born baby and all and they downgraded Watch_Dogs1 from the presentation vid. But that's some time ago now.

 

[ElyrionX]

TIL that Far Cry 2 is considered the pinnacle (or close to, at least) of gameplay in the open world genre.

I like open world games a lot and Far Cry 2 is nowhere near that.

Speaking of which, I am about 25 hours into Horizon. Just reached Meridien and cleared a bunch of side quests and am already quite bored. Maybe it's time I tackle MGS5 which I stopped playing after getting bored taking out the first security outpost because it reminded me too much of Far Cry 3's formula which I was so tired of.

 

[Zakalwe]

You compared it to The Witcher, where the world is very static and unchanging, I was just responding to that.

And the combat arena is anything but shallow, if Horizon's combat arena is shallow then every other open world game has putrid combat (which isn't far off from the truth tbh), with the exception of MGSV (which actually has the best open world combat ever IMO).

TW3 world is not static and unchanging. There are many, many ways in which it changes in subtle ways. For example, the quest with the old lady who's chickens are being stolen. She lives alone, and when it turns out

Spoiler

the children living in the woods are stealing the chickens if you suggest she take care of them

she dismisses you but seems unconvinced...

Later, if you return,

Spoiler

you see the children playing happily in her garden while she watches over them.

TW3's world feels alive, Horizon's is literally just a beautiful but shallow combat arena. just because it has slightly emergent elements to its combat doesn't mean the world itself is well realised.

That's a weird argument o0 Then MGS3 would be an open world game, too, since every mission is set within the same open map space? In fact, it's even more of an open world game since you can go back at various points and never actually chose levels and missions in a menu. What about Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider?

No, because those games don't present their maps all at once in a larger map that you're free to explore fully.

MGSV is open world, even if its open world is not as expansive as others this remains true.

 

[Fbh]

I somewhat agree with you, though not on everything.

Would definitely have liked MGSV to have a compeling story and characters like Horizon. I also like how during main mission Horizon manages to have a good mix of open and linear segments, the game does a great job of feeling like an open world RPG one moment and then like a cool linear game with great setpieces the next one..


Though personally I just didn't really like MGSV so that's might just be it. Story is boring, characters are boring and just a shadow of what they used to be, bosses are boring, gameplay is held back by an annoying currency system built around gameplay from a 2008 Facebook game and the open world is a bunch of well designed bases connected by large segments of nothing.

 

[Zvonimir Boban]

Every other non-Ubisoft open world does too. That makes it an open world trope, not a Ubisoft one.

This is true but it's something that Ubisoft popularised and leaned into really heavily for quite a while. They didn't become associated with Ubisoft for no reason.

 

[Alo0oy]

Strongly agree with this. Horizon followed the themepark approach of open world games (similar to Ubisoft and co.). MGSV was more of a sandbox that allowed for far more complex gameplay possibilities.

Even at its "deepest", weapons such as the ropecaster served as nothing more than a temporary enemy debuff.

I liked Horizon, but MGSV is in a entirely different league. Maybe Horizon 2? We'll see. I just hope they move away from the Far Cry approach to open world by then. It's getting tiring imo.

Only if you ignore the other applications of the ropecaster, or every other weapon for that matter.

How each disabled part from a robot deletes that move from the robot's moveset pool is a very innovative idea unlike any open world out there.

 

[Hindl]

TIL that Far Cry 2 is considered the pinnacle (or close to, at least) of gameplay in the open world genre.

I like open world games a lot and Far Cry 2 is nowhere near that.

Speaking of which, I am about 25 hours into Horizon. Just reached Meridien and cleared a bunch of side quests and am already quite bored. Maybe it's time I tackle MGS5 which I stopped playing after getting bored taking out the first security outpost because it reminded me too much of Far Cry 3's formula which I was so tired of.

Far Cry 2 has it's severe problems and isn't a great game overall, but it has long been held up as the pinnacle of emergent systems for open world games. The way you can interact with the world is incredible, even if the actual game leaves a lot to be desired

 

[LiquidSolid]

If I were to be reductive I'd say it's Rise of the Tomb Raider crossed with Far Cry 3/4.

Just off the top of my head it's got towers you climb to uncover areas on the map (Which is every Ubisoft game from Assassins Creed to Far Cry) and it's got hunting animals to get skins to craft equipment upgrades which is straight out of Far Cry.

If you're seriously saying Horizon doesn't resemble any Ubisoft games then either you're being deliberately obtuse or Horizon is the first open world game you've ever played.

Horizon has got some stunning high points but that doesn't change the fact that it's extremely derivative. It might be the best looking game I've ever played and it has awesome robot enemies but apart from that, everything in the game has been done many times over in the last 5-10 years.

It's basically a checklist of features that every open world game has nowadays.

EDIT: Bandit camps are lazy versions of Far Cry outposts

SMH. The towers, hunting animals and crafting equipment upgrades are tiny parts of the game, nowhere near as prominent as they are in a typical Ubisoft open world game. You're looking at the surface level and making comparisons when in reality, the actual structure of the game is far closer to Witcher 3 than any of the games you mentioned.

 

[Exploratory]

I disagree with your opinion. And MGSV is a sandbox game not an open world really.

 

[Zakalwe]

Only if you ignore the other applications of the ropecaster, or every other weapon for that matter.

How each disabled part from a robot deletes that move from the robot's moveset pool is a very innovative idea unlike any open world out there.

That's not an element of the open world, that's an element of the combat.

Horizon has some of the greatest combat in an open world game, that's undeniable, but its actual open world is really nothing more than a beautiful but shallow arena for that combat.

SMH. The towers, hunting animals and crafting equipment upgrades are tiny parts of the game, nowhere near as prominent as they are in a typical Ubisoft open world game. You're looking at the surface level and making comparisons when in reality, the actual structure of the game is far closer to Witcher 3 than any of the games you mentioned.

No it's not, it's much closer to Far Cry 3 than anything else. This is a very common opinion, too, and one that has a lot of merit when you make in depth comparisons.

It's miles away from TW3, the idea it's similar to TW3 in terms of open world design is ridiculous.

 

[Zvonimir Boban]

smh at ropecaster hate.

It's fine if you want to live in your own fantasy.
There are certainly Ubisoft open world games using it.
So do other open world games (non Ubi)

Not all Ubisoft games and not all Ubisoft open world games use it.

It's time some of you guys and girls become a bit more rational and reasonable.
Sure, they killed your first born baby and all and they downgraded Watch_Dogs1 from the presentation vid. But that's some time ago now.

Every big Assassins Creed game, which must be up to 7 or 8 games by now right? Far Cry 3 and 4 (Haven't played Primal). Watch Dogs. The Crew.

That's like a dozen games and Assassin's Creed came out 10 years ago. That's more than one open world game a year with towers but yeah, keep clutching those pearls at the idea that people associate towers with Ubisoft.

 

[Nesther]

Only if you ignore the other applications of the ropecaster, or every other weapon for that matter.

How each disabled part from a robot deletes that move from the robot's moveset pool is a very innovative idea unlike any open world out there.

What applications were there? It always just seemed like a way to stun larger enemies, like electrifying smaller ones.

 

[Zakalwe]

Every big Assassins Creed game, which must be up to 7 or 8 games by now right? Far Cry 3 and 4 (Haven't played Primal). Watch Dogs. The Crew.

That's like a dozen games and Assassin's Creed came out 10 years ago. That's more than one open world game a year with towers but yeah, keep clutching those pearls at the idea that people associate towers with Ubisoft.

People /do/ associate towers with Ubisoft.

This is apparent to anyone who's browsed gaf a lot over the last 10 years, this is a very common opinion.

Yes, more games have copied the Ubi formula, but the Ubi formula is still very much attributed to Ubi themselves.

I have no idea why anyone would be arguing this doesn't happen.

 

[Aselith]

Yikes, what an opinion. MGS has much tighter and varied gameplay than Horizon and truly allows you to approach every situation in multiple ways and the stealth isn't awful garbage.

Horizon technically allows you to stealth but if you try to stealth attack a base and headshot a guard, it's very much a toss up if you will kill the person or just alert the whole base to the fact you are there. Melee options are better and actually work well. The level based system that was adopted for the game REALLY fucks with this part of the game and causes it to just not work like it should.

Shooting feels good and tight in MGS in a way that Horizon just doesn't. The only real lesson I could maybe see MGS taking from Horizon is to give vehicles destructible armor plating maybe? That might be cool if you could disable individual pieces.

Horizon is a fine open world game but it's light years behind MGS in terms of action and stealth. MGS has great gameplay in every aspect. Stealth is great, shooting is great, climbing is great, traversal is great.

I'll give Horizon the nod on story and that's the best I can do. I can maybe see your point on the questing but I kinda prefer the side ops approach tbh. Feels more military.

 

[SomTervo]

Every big Assassins Creed game, which must be up to 7 or 8 games by now right? Far Cry 3 and 4 (Haven't played Primal). Watch Dogs. The Crew.

That's like a dozen games and Assassin's Creed came out 10 years ago. That's more than one open world game a year with towers but yeah, keep clutching those pearls at the idea that people associate towers with Ubisoft.

Read more.

Ubisoft have begun a concerted effort to move away from this. We literally know that due to statements on their financial reports.

Watch Dogs 2, Wildlands and The Division do not have towers.

 

[SolidChamp]

I'm also just enjoying Horizon a helluva lot more. Like, infinitely more.

 

[mike6467]

Horizon doesn't feel like playing a ubisoft game at all. There's a semblance, absolutely, but;
1. Towers. In assassin's creed there's maybe 20 - 25 towers, making the climbing to unlock very tedious. Whereas HZD has five Tallnecks.
2. Hunting animals. Sure, but HZD avoids the 5 seconds unskippable cutscene of skinning animals. By the end of a ubisoft game I hate that cutscene with a vengeance.

Ubisoft games tend to feel like crossing things off a checklist really fast. The amount of collectables in Black Flag is insane for example.

I mean, you still have a map with a bunch of collectables on it. Hunting is still obnoxious, and the upgrading system for carrying capacity is very, very Farcry-ish. I agree it did towers better though. I think H:ZD did an amazing job at what it did. It's just that what it did was very similar in formula to previous games out there (Ubi and otherwise).

Honestly I think crafting/upgrading in open world games is getting to me more then the other generic stuff being discussed here. I've gotten so sick of zig zagging across maps pressing and holding buttons to pick up plants/resources/items.

 

[Zakalwe]

Read more.

Ubisoft have begun a concerted effort to move away from this. We literally know that due to statements on their financial reports.

Watch Dogs 2, Wildlands and The Division do not have towers.

Doesn't matter, they're still associated with the "Ubi open world formula" heavily because they designed it and championed it for so long.

 

[Raonak]

I'm near the end of horizon, so I can't say fully, but so far, I think I agree.

Horizon handled openworld way better than MGSV.

They both have great moment to moment gameplay, i'm not gonna compare them, because they do different things. MGS excells at stealth, while horizon at action.

But, I thought Horizon had a way more engaging story, both in the main story, and in the side missions. MGSV's was filled with so many missions that had no narrative payoff whatsoever. And the story itself was hugely dissapointing. This is coming from a MGS fanboy. (MGS4 is my #1 favourite game)

The game structure was also in Horizons side. MGSV being level based really hurt it's openworld design, traversing it's world doesn't feel interesting, the outposts give you good gameplay possibilities, but it starts getting repetitive fast because it doesn't really mix it up. both in terms of encounters, and in terms of environment. Horizon made use of the benefits of the openworld, it actually painted a very interesting world, while MGSV's was grim, but also dull...

Multiple smaller(GZ sized?) levels would've worked a lot better, or even like how previous MGS games handled it.



Horizon's biggest strength is that it doesn't feel like it's been padded or recycled. It offers a very impressive selection of enemies to encounter and a wide variety of locales. Sure you have 5 towers, but each of them pose a different challenge in terms of enemies and how to climb.