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I hope that western devs will be inspired by Elden Ring's success to make their open world games not suck
- Thread starter Drizzlehell
- Start date
64bitmodels
Reverse groomer.
never said it was just japan lol
the vast majority of game developers are in it for the money, true, but it's to a far more extreme extent in the US and parts of Western Europe. You don't hear nearly as much about microtransactions, DLC, live service, worker abuse, acquisitions, or all that other junk when discussing companies like Capcom, Square Enix, Nintendo, Bandai Namco, Sega, Arc System Works, etc. whereas when it comes to western games it practically dominates the conversation and people are far more conscious about western games.
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Beer Baelly
Al Pachinko, Konami President
Oh yeah, Sony will surely adapt From's take on open worlds...
Ogbert
Member
All very valid.
It’s puzzling to me. I’m someone who thinks that BoTW added layers of magic to the Zelda formula and never understood the complaints of Zelda fans who favoured the traditional strict dungeon approach. But with DS and ER, I’m the over way round.
I think the reason I bounced off ER was because I fundamentally don’t like the world, in as much as it’s not somewhere I want to spend time. It’s too oppressive and forlorn. In the linear DS games, you feel like you’re fighting through the game; there’s light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. I never felt that with ER. It’s just a morass of macabre symbolism (although there are moments of real beauty too).
I love DS for the moment to moment gameplay. I think adding a MMO style overworld to it disrupted the series’ typical momentum.
It’s an 8/10 game when I was expecting my Game of the Generation.
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NonPhixion
Member
Reusing animations and assets from all your previous games is the true inspiration western devs should take to make their open world games not suck.
Guilty_AI
Member
The problem with western open worlds are simplistic mechanics and the menu-fication of it all.
Elden ring lets you discover and thread on your own terms, and the challenge inspires you to do so carefully, you don't know what lies ahead or if it'll kill you, which creates tension and expection. Not to mention the world has tons of verticality and layers, something seriously lacking in western open world games.
Majority of western open worlds throw an icon in the map for about every task you need to complete, with almost nothing but pretty space to look at in between (or even more icons to fill), and the game either plays itself or its idea of difficulty are health-sponge enemies, so it all becomes a slog of going from A to B to fill-out a checklist.
And its not just a simple matter of turning off minimap and icons. The game needs to be properly designed in a way to guide players without the use of HUD and magical GPS systems. Elden Ring does so with visual cues, world design as well as in-game mechanics that can auxiliate the player.
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SteelCurtain 59
Member
Wow it seems quite arrogant to act like you're above everybody because nobody else can see "the truth". Game quality is subjective, just because you love a game doesn't make it objectively master class. And people liking or disliking Elden Ring has absolutely 0 to do with having "taste", or being "good enough" to understand why it's good. Your opinion is no more special than anybody else's
nightmare-slain
Member
But Elden Rings open world sucks...
Pretty map to look at but there is too much repeated shit and a lot of empty space.
The next game needs to go back to semi open maps like Bloodborne/Sekiro. They are more linear but there is the sense of exploration and discovery.
Unfortunately they will likely stick to open world. In which case they need to improve it a lot.
Pretty map to look at but there is too much repeated shit and a lot of empty space.
The next game needs to go back to semi open maps like Bloodborne/Sekiro. They are more linear but there is the sense of exploration and discovery.
Unfortunately they will likely stick to open world. In which case they need to improve it a lot.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
Generalizing "western games" as one single homogenous category of open-world games is both disingenuous and categorically incorrect, to the extent that it invalidates any point attempting to be made.
There are many different types of the western-developed open world game and the two cited early in the video, Horizon and AC: Valhalla both play so differently that I'm just going to go ahead and say that this goon who made this video didn't even play these games at all.
Then you have games like Skyrim, Fallout, The Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk.... not to mention fucking juggernauts like RDR2 and GTAV.
I'm sorry, I don't give a fuck how much you jizz yourself over ER and BoTW... RDR2 and GTAV are far faaaar better games in virtually every respect. But they're so different open-world games that it's like trying to compare apples to oranges.
That brings me to the crux of this issue... fucking idiots like the guy in the video in the OP who wholly fail to realize that the "open world" is not a fucking gaming genre. It's a type of level design. You can have "open world" action games, "open world" RPGs, "open world" adventure games, and "open world" puzzle games... heck even open-world hentai dating sims.
If you want to make an argument about open-world game design, you have to qualify it within a certain actual fucking game genre. As "open world" games as a terminology is so broad and diverse as to be wholly and entirely fucking meaningless. You have to make arguments about the actual level design in the context of the particular genre being discussed, as a good open-world level design for an RPG =/= a good open-world game design for an action game or puzzler.
ER and BoTW aren't some magical one-size fits all solution that every game should copy. And even if they did, then wouldn't all open-world games now really play the same, which would actualize the complaint about homogeneity in game world design?
So... the very things you're advocating for will effectuate the very thing you're bitching about.... funny that.
There are many different types of the western-developed open world game and the two cited early in the video, Horizon and AC: Valhalla both play so differently that I'm just going to go ahead and say that this goon who made this video didn't even play these games at all.
Then you have games like Skyrim, Fallout, The Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk.... not to mention fucking juggernauts like RDR2 and GTAV.
I'm sorry, I don't give a fuck how much you jizz yourself over ER and BoTW... RDR2 and GTAV are far faaaar better games in virtually every respect. But they're so different open-world games that it's like trying to compare apples to oranges.
That brings me to the crux of this issue... fucking idiots like the guy in the video in the OP who wholly fail to realize that the "open world" is not a fucking gaming genre. It's a type of level design. You can have "open world" action games, "open world" RPGs, "open world" adventure games, and "open world" puzzle games... heck even open-world hentai dating sims.
If you want to make an argument about open-world game design, you have to qualify it within a certain actual fucking game genre. As "open world" games as a terminology is so broad and diverse as to be wholly and entirely fucking meaningless. You have to make arguments about the actual level design in the context of the particular genre being discussed, as a good open-world level design for an RPG =/= a good open-world game design for an action game or puzzler.
ER and BoTW aren't some magical one-size fits all solution that every game should copy. And even if they did, then wouldn't all open-world games now really play the same, which would actualize the complaint about homogeneity in game world design?
So... the very things you're advocating for will effectuate the very thing you're bitching about.... funny that.
simpatico
Member
I think you need to have individuals with more creative control to pull off something that like. What you see with these western games is the product of any game by committee. Rockstar with Housers was just about the only exception. To spend that much money on something so foreign to the market requires one crazy ambitious guy pushing it. You saw it with West and Zampella on PS360. You see it with Kojima too. Any artistic medium works best when it comes from a single mind.
64bitmodels
Reverse groomer.
this but unironically. don't give a shit about all the graphics obsessed casuals and reuse what works. remaking your engine from the ground up especially when it isn't even next gen yet is just wasting precious resources.
God of War Ragnarok and Spider Man Miles Morales reused assets from their 2018 entries but that didnt stop people from fawning all over them and championing their visual fidelity.
gothmog
Gold Member
What are examples of games that have that depth? I find open world an unnecessary distraction. I enjoy the concept of a giant living world that my character exists in, but most implementations suck.
The Cockatrice
Gold Member
No, you just make dumb topics. Also, no, I'm not.
The Cockatrice
Gold Member
Padding. Waste of time in-between areas.
StueyDuck
Member
Elden ring does what botw did so poorly which is having plenty of variety and lots of content reminiscent to their legacy titles.
But as an actual open world Rockstar are still leaps and bounds ahead of anyone in the industry. People are still finding things in rdr2 till this day. And it's all unique, hand crafted and authored to perfection.
I'd argue that Bethesda come a close second with world interactions but they do have their faults. Primarily being the engine.
But eldin ring Is still < bloodborne & sekiro in terms of souls games
But as an actual open world Rockstar are still leaps and bounds ahead of anyone in the industry. People are still finding things in rdr2 till this day. And it's all unique, hand crafted and authored to perfection.
I'd argue that Bethesda come a close second with world interactions but they do have their faults. Primarily being the engine.
But eldin ring Is still < bloodborne & sekiro in terms of souls games
Aenima
Member
If thers an open world section that needs to serve as inpiration to more open worlds, then its "The Crater" area from GoW Ragnarok. That area was a showcase of what great level design means. Bugthesda games have been doing great worlds to explore too with the way you interact with every object and NPC. As mentioned above, Tchia is doing pretty cool stuff with its open world too, also with great level of interation with every object and a cool take tranfering ur soul to any animal changing the way you traverse the map, by being a bird to reach high points of the map faster, a dolphin to swim at high speeds, etc.
Taking bits and pieces from all these games, and some others like BOTW, and u get an open world game, much superior than anything Elden Ring had to offer.
Taking bits and pieces from all these games, and some others like BOTW, and u get an open world game, much superior than anything Elden Ring had to offer.
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Honey Bunny
Member
Thinking about the western devs on twitter who were bitter about it winning GOTY when it 'doesnt even have intuitive ui design!!!'
SlimeGooGoo
Party Gooper
Other than Elden Ring which you already mentioned, here are some other games developers could take cues from:
Honey Bunny
Member
Not my fault that little Island makes so many amazing hardcore games.
DrFigs
Member
definitely agree there. I hope next gow game is just more of the crater area.
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fatmarco
Member
It's always hilarious seeing Japanophiles talk about "Japan" as if the Japanese gaming industry is, essentially, comprised entirely of FromSoftware, and "The West", as if its entirely comprised by the worst games from Ubisoft.
There's being disingenuous, and then there's some of the utter bullshit in this thread lol.
There's being disingenuous, and then there's some of the utter bullshit in this thread lol.
Johnny Concrete
Member
The map is incredibly well designed. Almost from every spot you can see where there’s something for the player to discover and where the focus point of that area is.
While western open worlds don’t even have that in mind, because they have the dreaded floating waypoint icons in front of you. Telling you every step of the way where to go.
You could probably play them even without graphics and just UI on.
I’m playing Horizon FW without any guiding UI and I’m struggling to even find the simplest stuff.
cireza
Member
I didn't see anything special in BotW or Elden Ring's open-world. They were both composed of a ton of copy-pasted, repetitive to death content, exactly like all other open-worlds too large for their own good.
Only open-world that kinda succeeded for me is FF XV, mainly because it accepted being largely empty in places and gave you the car with automatic driving. So it never felt like work. Only time modern developers actually understood that an open-world cannot be full of things to do.
Only open-world that kinda succeeded for me is FF XV, mainly because it accepted being largely empty in places and gave you the car with automatic driving. So it never felt like work. Only time modern developers actually understood that an open-world cannot be full of things to do.
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LostDonkey
Member
Good lord I hope not.
Sygma
Member
i mean structurally speaking yeah, it was a bit too consistent lol, but it makes the vision of it all cohesive so its not exactly a con
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Drizzlehell
Banned
It just sounds like you prefer to be led through narrower, more compact levels rather than exploring a big open map. But that doesn't mean that it's "bloated" or that there's nothing going on outside of castles or dungeons. Because there's plenty of stuff to discover in the open areas that wouldn't even be possible to include in more confined spaces, and adventuring in this huge land full of mysteries feels so much more epic than dragging your feet through yet another sewer or ruined castle.
It's okay if you prefer a more compact design of the earlier games but what you're saying about the open world in Elden Ring is complete bullshit.
The Cockatrice
Gold Member
So just like any other open world? Lol
Uhm yes they do? You can also disable most UI in most western open worlds. If you cant then again, its a gameplay decision because noones going to spend 300 hours doing everything on the map without proper UI. Elden Ring's open world serves no purpose compared to other open-world games. Moreover Elden Ring did not need to be open-world at all and you can clearly see it suffers a lot for it, with so many copy pasted dungeons, reused and repated bosses over and over and other open-world problematic gimmicks.
Thats why you're struggling with Horizon. Elden Ring open world is not better, it's just different and its gameplay does not rely on it unlike all the other open world games. Jesus you people talk as if you never played games before. Cmon.
Level design in Dark Souls is also different and unique compared to God of War for example even if both have a linear pathing with shortcuts and whatnot or shortly put, metroidvania design. Souls games are designed from scratch to give player little to no information while western games are designed around the UI. That does not make God of Wars level design shit, now does it?
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Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
You just run around a lifeless open world (doesn't feel alive, or like a simulation) and knock over animatronic NPCs as they stand perfectly still for eternity.
You can put a rubber band around the duel thumbsticks, put some books on the X button, and the game doesn't care.
It's dead. It's dull. It's lazy design. It's akin to making love to a sex doll and realizing she can never love you back.
It should be ridiculed because the open world is such a big part of that game.
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Johnny Concrete
Member
Did you even read my comment? If so, you didn’t understand it.
Ogbert
Member
Perhaps I am talking bullshit, but having played video games for the best part of four decades, I have a good sense of video game design and the difficult art of what makes a compelling game.
Elements of ER’s overworld are crap. Descending into another cave or dungeon, to be greeted by broadly the same layout and, most egregiously, the same boss, is lazy and gets fucking tedious. If Ubisoft did that it would be a meme by now. You’re excusing it because of all the great stuff around it (which I already said was where the game shines). It was as if they wanted to mimic BoTW shrines, but couldn’t be arsed to develop them so just went through the numbers.
And the second half of the game is an awful slog. Obviously, as you love the game, that likely wasn’t the case.
I have absolutely zero issue with people saying the game is a 10/10. But anyone claiming the open world does something unique or interesting is borderline trolling.
Drizzlehell
Banned
Once again, a post that misses the point of what's being discussed here.
It's not about how the specific features are designed such as combat or traversal. It's not even about the contents of the open world map, which people often criticize about ER because it repeats certain dungeons or whatever. It is primarily about how western-developed OW games have a tendency to completely cover the map screen with icons that serve as a laundry list of things to do in order to get the 100% completion, even though it rarely serves any particular purpose other than giving the player an illusion that there's "CONTENT" in the game and they somehow get value out of their purchase by having to spend 250 hours plowing through it.
It's also about complete lack of faith in player's ability to figure out what to do next, and constantly dragging us along with omnipresent quest markers, quest trackers, compass widgets, and other shit like that. I can still remember having to figure out where I need to go in Morrowind by checking the name of the town in my journal and then following a road by reading literal road signs. The only other western game that actually had something like that in recent memory was Kingdom Come: Deliverance, while almost every other game simply pointed me in the right direction with a map marker and a big glowing compass arrow.
There's just no sense of discovery in modern open world games, and Elden Ring, even though it's not a perfect game by any stretch, at least shows enough restraint and trust in the player to allow us to discover stuff on our own without being blatantly told where to go all the time. That's what this thread, and the video, is about.
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Drizzlehell
Banned
I've been eating pizza for almot 3 decades, doesn't mean I know what it takes to make one that's good, or that my opinion on certain pizza types is somehow more valid than other people's.
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Ogbert
Member
If this is your soul point (pun intended), then I’m not sure why you needed the antagonistic tone in the OP.
Sure, the checklist formula is annoying. Agreed. I’d humbly suggest though that where ER stutters is that it veers in the opposite direction and replaces hand holding with randomness. Both are frustrating and I think there’s a better balance to be had.
If we’re honest, everyone harps on about this sense of
magic discovery but most people end up on YouTube following a guide for the Moonveil Katana build or some such.
Ogbert
Member
You’d know when the pizza was burned though.
And if someone came along and said ‘no, the charcoal crisp is actually how they cook it in Napoli’, you’d tell them to take it back and bring you a new one.
And one that wasn’t burned, regardless of what the good people of Napoli think.
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Mr Wonderstuff
Member
You mean traversing an environment from one boss battle to the next? Is that really the peak of gaming interaction and enjoyment?
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Mr Branding
Member
Overrated game. It’s not even on par with the first Rdr which is a 2010 game, let that sink in for a bit. That world is so reactive to the player. Hell, even Gta4 is on a whole different level.
Drizzlehell
Banned
Mozzarella
Member
I love Elden Ring, but its not the first open world games to do the no handholding thing, i would argue Morrowind open world is better too.
Drizzlehell
Banned
Well, yeah, no one's arguing that it was the first one to do it. The problem is that it's a rare exception rather than rule nowadays.
Varteras
Gold Member
Well OP, you might get your wish.
www.shacknews.com
Though as others have pointed out, there are plenty of Western games that do it well already.
Neil Druckmann is intrigued by Elden Ring's storytelling & may try something similar
The Naughty Dog and The Last of Us director teased that there were several projects at Naughty Dog that may try a less 'hand-holding' narrative design.
www.shacknews.com
Though as others have pointed out, there are plenty of Western games that do it well already.