I_D
Member
I went and checked this game out because of your post and wanted to say thanks, from what I've seen so far it looks like you are correct! I am blown away by the depth and variety of gameplay.
Prepare to die, quite a lot. I'll be happy to lose some roubles with you, should you ever need a partner.
And here I am, disappointed with how tiny Halo's map is.I think the problem is the exact opposite. The worlds are usually way too big. The best open world in functionality that I've seen last gen was Dying Light. Specifically because it wasn't some gargantuan world that takes 10 minutes to traverse to each location. It's a map that you can actually learn in its entirety, instead of just passing by each POI one time, just to check it off your map.
There's way too many games that have big worlds that serve no purpose. Case in point, Halo Infinite. The open world is mostly barren, with a few uninteresting enemy encounters, and the typical "clear the map" Ubisoft feel to it. There's no good environmental storytelling going on. It's just an open world for the sake of itself. It serves no narrative or functional purpose.
Maps need to be smaller and more dense, not massive and empty.
I think we're essentially agreeing with each other, just for different purposes.
I agree that most open-world games are full of lame filler and fetch-quests and whatnot. That's why I tend to avoid open-world games, in general.
My solution is to create larger, more realistic worlds, which would allow for genuine points of interest to be earned after less in-your-face gameplay.
Your solution seems to be to create more genuine points of interest, regardless of the map's size.
We seem to agree that the primary problem is a lack of interesting things to do.
My hope is that we will, one day, have an open world game with an actual working Radiant-AI system from ES:Oblivion. I want to travel from town to town, and each town features a Majora's Mask-esque system in which each NPC actually goes and lives his/her actual life.
A few games have done this in the past, but it's exceptionally rare.
I suggested a larger map, because this would, theoretically, allow developers to create isolated pockets of genuinely interesting encounters. The same thing could be done with a smaller map, and might even be easier with a smaller map; but I don't know if the payoff would be quite as rewarding for the player.