Summary
- Open worlds often lack meaningful storytelling and consequences, leaving the player disconnected from the plot and characters. This is evident in games like Tears of the Kingdom and Fallout 4.
- Lack of important items and incentives to explore can make an open world feel empty and repetitive, as seen in Shin Megami Tensei V and Tears of the Kingdom's excessive korok seeds.
- Switching to open-world gameplay can lead to a decline in other aspects of the game, such as combat mechanics or performance issues. Developers may prioritize the size of the world over other crucial elements.
Open worlds are often large but barren, giving a player a vast space to explore with nothing of consequence in it. Exploration starts to feel cheap as players uncover the same items over and over again or watch as their actions do little to change the game world. Sometimes, what a player wants is a large world, not an open one. Open-world games are interesting to examine because a lot of games are popular due to being open-world. Would Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have done as well if they had stuck to the original Zelda formula? Is the series better for having switched to an open-world format? It's a question with many different opinions backing it.
Even games like Skyrim have moments where the player finds themselves between two waypoints, looking at the same environment stretching out forever and wondering if anything populates it. There's a loneliness that can come with the open-world experience, as storytelling can suffer from the open-world format, leaving characters to come off as inexpressive. This isn't to say that the open-world format is bad—just that there are a lot of problems it can suffer from that are never addressed because open-world games almost always sell well. From a company's perspective, there's little merit in spending time and money changing something that's already making them money.
Lack of Meaningful Story
A common problem with open worlds is that, in the pursuit of giving the player the option to do any task in any order, none of the story beats can connect to each other, lest a player see them "out of order." Tears of the Kingdom—a brilliant game in many respects—suffers from this. Players may learn the truth about the Light Dragon early on, leaving them to watch as other characters ask questions they already know the answer to. For a story to feel impactful, the plot needs to have consequences, and a narrative too disconnected from itself can't provide that. Sometimes the solution to this problem is by creating story-driven side content, though this does create the issue of making side content more interesting than the main plot. Games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 fall into this category, as faction quests are often far more compelling than, say, finding Shaun or meeting the Graybeards.
One franchise that excels in its story content is the Xenoblade series, which consistently brings high-stakes narratives and interesting character development. Xenoblade's worlds feel more alive because the story affects the environment, such as how the first Xenoblade's world changes after the Mechonis Core. Xenoblade is an open-world series, but it often locks story content behind meeting prerequisites. Sometimes the enemies are too strong in certain areas, or sometimes certain quest conditions must be met. Either way, the game keeps its story relevant by maintaining these boundaries, proving that the best open-world experience is not always the one that lets the player tackle anything at any time.
Lack of Important Items
Shin Megami Tensei V is a good example of a franchise that, like Zelda, took an old formula and switched it for an open world in its latest entry. It's arguable that SMTV made this transition less successfully than Tears of the Kingdom, as its maps seemed barren compared to past titles. There are platforms to jump to, miman to collect, demons to fight, and very little else. Each new area feels like the last because nothing impactful happens at any one location. It's a divisive entry in its own franchise.
An open world must be filled with some incentive to explore, whether that be to see landmarks or dungeons or items or characters. A lot of times, the answer for exploration is collectibles, like korok seeds or even the Stones of Barenziah. Collectibles with a sufficient reward can be worth the player's time, but usually they tend to feel like busy work. There are 1,000 korok seeds in Tears of the Kingdom, and that is, no matter how a player looks at it, far too many. Unlocking inventory space is well and good, but once those spaces are unlocked, the hunt for korok seeds should be over. Collectibles are an easy solution to giving the player something to look for. The expectation of a larger reward is enough to keep most players searching and picking up items, and this gives the illusion that a game world is more complex than it actually is.
Other Aspects of the Game Can Suffer
Sometimes—especially when a franchise known for something else switches to open-world gameplay—the content of the game suffers in order to prop up such a large game world. Combat is much simpler in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, Shin Megami Tensei V's story pales in comparison to its predecessors, and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have a myriad of performance issues. People can still enjoy the game despite these issues, but it is worth pointing out that the more development time is sunk into making a world larger, the less time those developers have for other aspects of the experience.
This is less common with developers who are used to making open world games, but the fact that developers of non-open-world franchises continue to switch over to open worlds is a symptom of a larger problem: open-world games are in high demand, and some companies see that as an easy way to increase sales for their intellectual properties. Would Scarlet and Violet have sold as well as they did if they hadn't promised a new style of gameplay? And, on the other side of that coin, would they have been as buggy if they hadn't been open-world?
Open worlds continue to be a prevalent genre in the gaming industry, but sometimes an open world should simply be an expansive or detailed world. Games can have interesting environments to explore without being open worlds, and some games seem like they only have open worlds as cash grabs. This isn't to say that there are no good open-world games—only that open worlds can sometimes take over the identity of franchises, leaving original fans struggling to adapt. Sometimes a franchise is revitalized, like with Breath of the Wild, but even a game as well-received as it was loses something of itself. Whether it be in the storytelling, the fetch questing, the collectibles, or the performance, sometimes a game doesn't need to be open world; it just needs to have things to do.
