Open World Games: my Love/Hate Relationship

Looking at the games on my shelf, a certain genre sticks out: Open world games. These games give you seemingly unlimited scope and ability. Want to go over to that shack and attack those guards? Go for it. Don’t? That’s fine too. I like them because I have the choice. Games like Far Cry 2, Assassin’s Creed, GTA IV and most recently Red Dead Redemption all offer this style of gameplay.

But I have a problem.

Like a sad, lonely lover I jump in feet first, become awash in the excitement, the freshness, the ability for me to do anything. “OMG I can jump around like fucking Spider Man” I scream as I play Assassin’s Creed, “watch me attack this train” I tell my girlfriend who looks at me with utter disdain while I play Red Dead Redemption. These titles let me loose in large areas with the tools to do whatever I fancy. Often this sense of freedom makes me give them my almost undivided attention because, for that moment in time, they are perfect to me. But this honeymoon period doesn’t last.

After a couple of weeks of play I start to notice those little things. The way the game reacts when I try to do something it hadn’t quite anticipated and the way that in all its apparent openness, I feel restricted. That shack, I now realise isn’t a random outpost for me to attack or not, it’s been put there just for me. The world which I’m in isn’t a world that exists beyond my comprehension of it. Like The Truman Show, I hit the endless blue wall. Open world games, by their nature have to have limits. These limits are what I hate because I’ve been told to explore, to find treasure, delve into the environment and become part of the world. Except you simply become the world.

Red Dead Redemption often feels like this; instead of random things happening, you simply feel like you’re triggering events. A woman by a carriage waves her hanky at you, you trot over and bam! It was all a ruse and you were attacked by bandits. Once you’ve experienced this once its surprise is no longer effective. In the game’s terms you are just triggering an event, but I don’t want to feel that. The world they’ve created is so big, so open that instead of finely crafted moments, almost cinematic in their precision, you’re offered an out of place, stale repeat of an event you’ve seen ten times before.

In some ways linear titles like Bioshock (a game which rates very high on my personal list) give you more freedom. Instead of vast wastelands of nothingness (ever play Test Drive Unlimited? Yeah the map was big, but 90% of it was inaccessible mountains), you’re given corridors filled with exceptional detail. Small remnants of a former Rapture, such as plaques demanding that people be let go, luggage and children’s teddy bears. Yes these aren’t the physical freedoms of Far Cry 2’s gazillion mile desert, but they give you an insight further into the universe that’s been created. How is it that I feel more part of the universe in Bioshock than I do in Assassin’s Creed? It’s because I’m the only one with a huge sword and white cape jumping around the rooftops and nobody seems to care. That makes me stick out, when I want to be enveloped.

There are exceptions to this disappointment of course. Fallout 3 is a game that balanced the detail and the scale almost perfectly. As soon as your leave the vault –a moment of amazing beauty in its self– you’re shown the sheer size of the Fallout universe. You can see Tenpenny Tower in the distance, but just look around and you’ll see hints, whispers, of the world before the apocalypse. Fallout is a game where I feel insignificant. I am but a lowly Vault Dweller, trying to find my dad and capture as many slaves as possible (yes, I’m evil). If you so pleased, you could get a house and then never play another story mission again; instead opting to be a trader or a mercenary, just making your way around the Wastelands being part of the universe.

GTA IV, with its real main character being the city, also achieves some of this. You feel, again, insignificant compared to loud streets and towering buildings. Your actions don’t get ignored and you’d bet that the police would be on your tail if you were dressed in a white gown, jumping around the buildings with knifes in your sleeves.

Not every game manages this, in fact most don’t. Sandbox games like Mercenaries 2, Just Cause, Infamous, Fable II, Red Faction, both Assassin’s Creeds and even Skate 2 have tried to drag me into a world which, ultimately, feels incomplete. Open world games should make you feel insignificant. They should make you feel that the universe moves, churns and exists with, and crucially, without you.