The Failure Of Open World Games

Go Anywhere! and Do Anything! seem to be the cries of every open world game out there. Skyrim has reportedly sold over 30 million copies since being released on 2011, November 11. The player can travel around a huge detailed world map and explore hundreds of dangerous and interesting locations. The game features something like 6000 NPCs, each belonging to several different factions. Now, don't get me wrong. When Skyrim first came out, I loved it. I put over 200 hours into it, and enjoyed almost every hour. The quests were interesting, and even just going out in a random direction to see what you could find to do was satisfying and generated its own little adventure. But as you keep playing and playing and playing and playing...you start to realize that it doesn't really matter. You can be the leader of every faction simultaneously: yes, you can be a warrior, a mage, a thief, and an assassin all at the same time, even though these factions all hate each other and have totally different philosophies. In one large quest chain, the player must choose between fighting for Skyrim's independence, or making it part of the Empire once more. The only thing that changes as a result of a dozen hours of questing and listening to NPCs is that the guards in all the cities will belong whichever faction the player supported. And when you look at the individual quests, many of them do not amount to much more than go here and kill something (and maybe take their stuff), with no choice involved besides whether you want to do it or not.

Far Cry 2 was released in 2008, and although not as big as Skyrim, nor featuring as many NPCs, and no, unfortunately it does not have dragons (although it does have malaria...any takers?), it features similar mechanics. I mean, when you play the game, you travel around going to places and killing people, then taking their stuff. Far Cry 3 in 2012 removed a lot of the unique features from the Far Cry series, such as weapon degradation and jamming, the buddy system where you could become pals with NPCs and do missions together with them. They would even suggest alternative ways of completing the missions, and could die, never to come back for that play through. Far Cry 4 in 2014 was really just more of Far Cry 3 in a different place.

Grand Theft Auto V, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, and Saints Row IV were released in 2013. Instead of having one protagonist who goes from place to place, killing people and taking their stuff, in GTA V you play as three such protagonists. Although the heists provide interesting missions and a lot of fun gameplay, the world itself is much the same as any other open world. Sure, you can ride around in boats, cars, motorcycles, airplanes, even submarines, for crying out loud. And yes, you can play tennis, go hunting, play golf, trade stock on a fake stock market, go skydiving, and many other activities. But none of those activities make much of a difference. For example, if you want to buy a store, the only thing that matters is whether you have enough money to do it. You cannot set up a golf date to convince the store owner that you can do something amazing for the store, or that it would be to his/her benefit to sell to you, or that he/she better sell or you will take the golf club and beat them to death with it. And there will of course be zero consequences to your decision. Even the decisions of how to execute heists has zero story consequences. There are, to be fair, numerous smaller consequences, such as building a relationship with an accomplice, developing their skills, or losing them if they get killed during the heist. Those are ingenious and wonderful, but the main story lacks those consequences based on player choice.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag was widely hailed as a return to greatness for the Assassin's Creed series. Like the games mentioned previously, it features a large open world with many locations, characters and activities, and like the others it similarly lacks in consequences. Oh, there is a mechanic where if you kill an innocent, you will lose "synchronization," which is the series's stand-in for HP. But you cannot interact with most of the NPCs beyond the most basic level, and there are no alternative routes for the player to take in terms of missions.

Saints Row IV suffers from all the same problems as the games above, in addition to being a complete rehash of Saints Row III but with superpowers which make the game less interesting and challenging to play.

Just Cause 3, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and Fallout 4 were all released in 2015, along with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. If you've read my analysis of Fallout 4 earlier, then you already know my feelings about this game. In short it feels like Bethesda set out to make as shallow a game as possible and still call it an RPG.

Just Cause 3 offers a big open world to explore, dozens of enemy bases to destroy, towns to liberate, and absolutely zero choice or consequence. You can kill all the civilians in a town you are liberating with no penalty. You cannot choose between alternative courses of action for toppling the dictator, there is no choice between doing things stealthily or noisily, there are just optional activities like can be found in Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Skyrim, and Saints Row.

MGS V is something of a mixed bag. Although Hideo Kojima has a clear story that he wants the player to experience, he and his team implemented an incredibly thought out set of consequences based on player actions. As just one example, if you stay in the field too long, the player character begins to stink, which makes them easier to detect by enemies. Or as another, the enemy AI reacts to the player's play style over time, adopting more helmets if the player goes for headshots, or sporting more spotlights and headlamps if the player prefers to attack at night. The player's interaction with enemy NPCs is also a little more nuanced than in the other games mentioned so far. The player can recruit them into their private army, leave them knocked out on the ground, or just flat out kill them. If the player recruits them, they will contribute their skills to whatever section they are assigned to at Mother Base.

Ah, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the girl next door of open world games. Made by a once small company in Poland, this game (and its non-open world predecessors) opened gamers' eyes to what they had been missing. I won't claim that the The Witcher 3 is a perfect game, but in terms of giving the players choice and then forcing the player to live with the consequences of that choice, few games come close. Although many NPCs are just stand-ins like in the other games, Geralt must periodically make choices, the outcomes of which are not always predictable. As a small example, on wandering around, Geralt might encounter some villagers arguing. If you decide to talk to them, Geralt will learn that a group of bandits is threatening to attack them unless they hand over one of their number, call him Grandpa for now. If Geralt decides to intervene, he can ask the bandits, led by Little Red, for more information about why they have it in for Grandpa, or he could just attack them on principle. On my playthrough, I decided to hear them out. It seems that Grandpa had an arrangement with Little Red: he would give them info about which villagers had some merchandise worth stealing, and he would take a cut. Seems Grandpa got greedy, but Little Red refused to up his cut, and that is when he told some witch hunters about the location of the bandits. I decided that even if Grandpa was a double asshole and deserved to be punished, Little Red and her bandits had no justification for preying on the villagers in the first place, so I killed them. The player receives money and XP either way, or they could just refuse to help the villagers at the first chance, or just never talk to them or encounter them.
As one other example, Geralt is tasked early on with killing a griffin. After investigating different people and locations, he comes across a healer with a victim of the griffin. Geralt can leave them there or decide to help. However, the only medicine powerful enough to help is his witcher potions, and these are often fatal to non-witchers. If the player decides to help her, you do not learn the result until much much later. In a totally different area, you may encounter an army where a soldier will confront you. The griffin's victim was meeting the soldier for a late night tryst when the griffin attacked. The soldier informs you that although the victim lives, she is now a vegetable who does not recognize him or remember anything, and he finishes by saying he doesn't know whether to curse the player or not. I hope you can see that in these little throwaway quests, there is more interesting choice making than in most of MSG V, and all of Saints Row IV, Assassin's Creed IV, Skyrim, and all the Far Crys. And as has been quoted to death, "A game is a series of interesting choices."

Watchdogs 2 was released just last year, in 2016. Set in San Francisco, the player takes control of a hacker called Marcus. He and his hacker friends must take down ctOS, Blume, and Haum, which are several organisations which are using the ubiquity of smartphones, tablets, and other smart devices to gain access to their consumers' private information. There is no conflict. None. ctOS, Blume, and Haum are the bad guys and they must be destroyed or discredited. Period. Every mission allows the player to try to sneak or go in guns blazing, but besides difficulty, there appears to be no consequences either way. The extra activities rival GTA V for their abundance and variety, but whether the player chooses to engage in them or not makes little difference to the game, its course of action, or to how the Marcus develops. In my opinion, as a hacker, Marcus makes as much use of people's smart devices to exploit them as the supposed enemies. You will never be berated for killing a doctor or child in the street, or lose credit among your friends for hacking into ordinary people's bank accounts to transfer funds to yourself. Even death has less meaning than in GTA V, where at least you lost money and where sent to the hospital.

Contrast most of the games above with games like Fallout: New Vegas (2010), Mount and Blade: Warband (2010), State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition (2015), or Total War: Warhammer (2016), (or the above mentioned MSG V and The Witcher 3) to name a few. These games react differently depending on how the player plays. Mount and Blade: Warband can be played as a medieval trading simulator, with the player travelling from town to town, buying and selling goods, and setting up businesses which effect the in-game economy. Or you could become a loyal vassal to a faction, remain a mercenary and hire yourself out to everyone, or start your own faction and become king or queen of that. How you treat NPCs in the game effects how much they like or dislike you, which in turns makes them more likely to take appropriate actions towards you, and thus makes pleasing them or angering them have meaning. Total War: Warhammer allows the player to focus on military might and conquering one's neighbors, on the economy and bribing them into liking you, or one diplomatic relationships, or some combination of those. Even playing as the same race, the player's game could take radically different courses depending one one's choices.

GTA V is widely regarded as one of the most expensive games ever, with a development cost estimated at over $150 million but it offers less in terms of exploration and choice than many less expensive games. Why are developers spending so much money on worlds with large, complicated maps which are filled with meaningless activities, activities which literally change nothing about the game, have no consequences, and make the players learn nothing except how much time the devs spent simulating darts? Why are these large open worlds which continuously promise freedom, choice, and adventure constantly falling short of even being engaging? Where is the open world game that lets you develop relationships dynamically, where your choices have an effect on what happens?