In 2017, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild released and is generally considered one of the greatest games of all time. The game had a surprisingly big impact on the industry by introducing a new genre: true open world games.
In short, a true open world game is where you’re dropped into a world and can go in any direction you want. The game is more minimalist than most, there are no quest markers or level scaling and you’re not forced to go in a specific direction. You’re free to explore the world without having a sense of direction, tackling its challenges and discovering new things at your own pace and in any order.
And now a new challenger comes in: Elden Ring. This game takes BotW as its inspiration and (imo) really excels where the other one lacks. There are so many unique events and interesting places in the world, with interesting rewards and an awesome sense of scale. I looooove finding caves and catacombs and having no idea what rewards are inside, whether it’s a cool set of armor, new spells, spirits, or maybe some talismans. Not all the rewards are useful obviously, but they usually find a way to be interesting (like a talisman that makes you stronger around poison). It just genuinely feels like you’re exploring a world for the first time, something I never felt in other open world games.
Dark souls is also my favorite series of all time so I might be a bit biased lmao
What do you think of this new genre/trend? Are you a fan of these new types of open world games or do you prefer the older ones like Far Cry 3? Do you prefer more linear games? I wonder which company is going to try this next.
I love both of those games. And I really dislike developers/publishers wanting to churn out a new Far Cry every other year.
Here’s a take from James Stephanie Sterling on this: The Open World Is Not Enough (The Jimquisition)
Elden Ring has demonstrated that open worlds don’t have to be the sprawling, vapid, alleged sandboxes that have dominated “AAA” games. After playing something so rich, the average open world just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Far Cry 3 felt like a chore to me. It went on and on and on without having new content – it just had grind. Recent installments got even worse, so I didn’t even finish those. J.S. Sterling makes a good argument about this in the aforementioned video aswell.