Exploring the (Open) World

[Dogg Thang]

I'd be curious to find out definitively if that's the case. I have a suspicion that the majority of GTAV sales were motivated by the single player content, with multiplayer being something buyers then moved on to and it became lucrative for Rockstar. But I'm still not sure online in something like GTA is a driving force for sales anywhere near the numbers the game has shifted historically. They likely don't care because they can milk a smaller number of players for much more money with this model but I think numbers could go down even if revenue goes up if the focus on multiplayer continues.

[Family Fry]

The main thing with GTA V and why it’s stayed SO popular isn’t the single player and that’s apparent from Rockstars lack of ANY single player DLC over the past 4 years, all the support has been multiplayer focused. It’s being propped up by it’s online mode because of youtube and twitch/mixer streams. Most people who are playing are just messing about in sandbox with single stunts, group stunts and hanging around with the community. I mean look at VR Chat at the moment on PC more and more streamers are playing because of scenarios with other players and streamers, it takes interactivity to another level for some people and everyone loves to join in with what’s popular. That’s just my bit on GTA V.

Open world games for me can live and die by lots of different things.

Just Cause on 360 because I could stream my 80’s megamaix whilst parachuting around an island and just aimlessly messing about.
Batman Arkham City is probably the closest I’ll ever get to feeling like batman via a video game, great open world, not too large and populated with amazing characters and scenarios.
Crackdown 1 & 2 you start off as a puny agent and via progression you become faster and stronger to the point you can jump over full buildings in one jump, it’s great fun to play because it lets go of restrictions.
Thief Deadly Shadows, now people hated this game it seems but I loved skulking absolutely everywhere as a thief and having open environments to do that does help, same goes with MGS V Phantom Pain as soon as you opened up some environments the scope for playing differently can be taken up.

I love open world games but at times I do hit hurdles and that can be, for me, a combination of not progressing the plot or story missions, focusing too much on 100% completion and doing all side missions first. Sometimes I get bored ticking things off a checklist and it feels like I’m playing a shopping list rather than a game.

[wakka]

The seemingly everlasting popularity of GTA 5 is pretty frustrating for fans - like myself - of the single player adventures. I played it through to completion on release on PS3, and it seems like a lifetime ago at this point.

You make a good point regarding its popularity with streamers [MENTION=2386]Family Fry[/MENTION].

[Neon Ignition]

I wonder what the % of GTAOnline players to SP focused buyers would be. It's a clearly successful mode for Rockstar and makes enough for them to sit on their SP laurels but it's never been a mode that's felt like it's spoken of in the same breath as other popular mp games.

[BigDeadFreak]

For me it's the sense of wonder and the possibility of discovering something new. I loved every minute of GTAV right up until I completed it. I then had no desire to play it again and I think it's because I'd seen it all before. Not just in V but in all the previous games. I just knew that whatever I did, wherever I went I wouldn't find much that I hadn't seen and done a million times in the past. As a result, I just wan't motivated to play it.

[Dogg Thang]

There are probably a crazy amount of factors in making an open world game work but, for me, when it doesn’t work it is usually either because the sandbox is too big and doesn’t have enough actual sand in it (GTAIV, for example) or there are too many barriers to crazy fun, such as walls everywhere with a clunky driving handling (GTAIV, for example).

GTA 3 and Vice City are two of my faves actually. Because they are smaller, they have loads to discover and play with in that space and you can quickly get to know and master the space. You get to play with it. Sam Andreas was great but it expanded much more in distance than it did in stuff, leaving it feeling like there wasn’t a huge amount of stuff to find or play with - there was, there was loads to find but it was all so spaced out. And I felt the same with GTAIV only worse because the location was awkward. But GTAV had much more to play with in just the locations alone. Lots to discover, loads of places to go. I still could have done with more indoors and so on but it was great.

[JazzFunk]

I finished GTAV at 22.40 yesterday. It plays really badly, it's not fun most of the time, walking or driving. Or shooting.

But the engine has a massive sense of uncanny valleyness to it all, sometimes it feels right, it feels real. It's really impressive seeing the 360 handle the engine so well, it looks lush 99% of the time, and it keeps pushing out those glorious vistas on 13yr old tech. The 360 is Spartacus.

Spent a few hours after the final mission seeing the three movies available, playing darts, just no point anymore, put 61hrs into this game, owned it over 4 years, done n dusted, deleted totally now, big sigh of relief.

7/10

[JazzFunk]

Right back into another open world, bunged Tony Hawk's Proving Ground on 360...from 2007.

It's...very dark but fun so far

[JazzFunk]

I'm gonna reinstall Sleeping Dogs, anyway. It was free on Games With Gold quite a bit back,, still have it on me download list, it's like GTAV set in China but actually fun and exciting to play, plus feels very stable as a videogame experience, it's always a blast to dip into.

Mount Chiliad is overrated. It's a trek up a very tall hill to an unexciting nothing at the top.

[JazzFunk]

So I installed Sleeping Dogs...to be met with about an hour of 'story' before you are actually able to traverse the open world. But I'm bored of their 'stories'. They're nothing compared to the ones I could create in my own head, I don't wanna sit through your 'story' I want thatching ACTION!!!! That and games that set their gamma levels so low you can't actually see the game for all the dark. I'm in a weird spot, I'm disillusioned with open worlds yet want to jump straight into another one just for the sake of comparison, you wanna see how evocative/deep/rich the next one feels yet that sixty hours it might take is a bonarkillar. Sod it, too much lawn to be lawnmowed, bugger it up the bugger-chute with razor blades glued to the shaft.

Deleted it, now installing Vanquish, one more to mark off the list of games I should've played through by now.

[Zen Monkey]

Open world or otherwise, a good game is a good game. Like DataDave said a few pages back, open world games need to be approached differently. They require patience. They need be settled in to, and explored slowly and deliberately. Forget the aim, forget fast travelling everywhere, just do your own thing and have fun.

[Neon Ignition]

A year on and with another 12 months of releases behind us I think the only well designed open world of the last year for me is the one in RDR2, there it's only held back by the limitations of the setting. The game is fixated on making you spend huge amounts of time slowly traversing by horse and you stumble across scenarios and strangers regularly and yet as visually impressive as all this is I never feel any particular pull to simply explore. I think it's because there's no sense of it being a playground in the way GTA is able to deliver.

AC Odysseys looked nice but like Origins it's huge but stripped back from the older games in some ways and gets boring to explore.

[QualityChimp]

The game (RDR2) is fixated on making you spend huge amounts of time slowly traversing by horse and you stumble across scenarios and strangers regularly and yet as visually impressive as all this is I never feel any particular pull to simply explore. I think it's because there's no sense of it being a playground in the way GTA is able to deliver.

For you, maybe.
I've not even learned how to fish yet and I've been playing since last year.

I've done a lot of the hunting challenges, but also spent a lot of time exploring the land.
I've constantly been finding unusual things all over the map and I wanted to uncover all of the map, because you know they nooks and crannies are where they've hidden stuff.

->Open Spoiler<-

A witch with a treasure map, a Frankenstein Minotaur, sasquatch skeleton, Viking burial ground, haunted forest, time traveller, plagued town, a woman chained up in a hut, a house hit by a meteor.

These are some of the fascinating things I can think of off the top of my head.

[Neon Ignition]

Maybe it's because they're more novel an experience for you, finally break the EDF shackles

With RDR2 I think, for me, it's bogged down as an experience a little. Exploration doesn't come as naturally because traversal is often a chore in comparison to GTA where the mechanics make me want to satisfy my curiosity more.