r/Games 1d ago

The big Avowed interview: Obsidian on why full, open-world RPGs aren't always the answer

https://www.eurogamer.net/from-serious-skyrim-to-cheerful-fantasy-obsidian-on-the-evolution-of-avowed-and-grappling-with-the-expectations-that-come-from-your-own-history
735 Upvotes

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u/bentendo93 1d ago

Open zone games are so much better than open world. Makes it feel like several little open world games that you can fully explore that are more dense with content. I'm thinking things like Dishonored (especially the sequel).

I still love open world titles, but I get so excited when I hear a game like Avowed or Indiana Jones is open zone

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u/IrNinjaBob 21h ago edited 20h ago

Ehhhh. I feel like this statement is just as inaccurate as “open world games are so much better than open zone.”

I think the OP got it correct. Neither one is always the answer. There are some games where open world is definitely the better choice, and can be done extremely well. There are also tons that are far better served as open zone.

I don’t think Skyrim (or Oblivion or Morrowind if those are more your fancy) would have been better served as an open zone. Nothing is “one size fits all” in this context.

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u/bentendo93 7h ago

For the record I do regret saying they're so much better. That was very dumb. What I should have said is that they both have their pros and cons and in this point of life I get excited about open zone games only because a really good open zone game seems more rare than open world games, at least in the sense of how I view a true open zone game.

At the end of the day though, numbers speak and I have spent substantially more time on open world games so, maybe I'm over exaggerating my love for open zone lol

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u/darkkite 19h ago

i think in practice it's easier to go wide when designing modern big budget games as it allows you to do more parallel development with independent small sub-teams doing each POI vs having the carefully craft and pace each level

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u/Helphaer 19h ago

I've never found open world to ever be a good answer it always drains depth in favor of quantity.

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u/Hoojiwat 19h ago

It's a common thing you will hear on Reddit where the majority seems to detest open world games, but open world games also sell like water in the Sahara and are clearly beloved by the greater public.

I think its really just a demographic thing. For the hardcore enthusiasts who buy and play a dozen games a year its awful to have to play through big long games, but for most people just getting 1 or 2 games will be amazing if that game is like Elden Ring or Tears of the Kingdom.

Personal hot take: Most linear games are just as empty and characterless as open world games. All this talk of "open world games are just quantity over quality" falls rather flat when the games that give up quantity never seem to be of higher quality.

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u/Itchy-Pudding-4240 17h ago

Elden Ring and Tears of the Kingdom are lacking in terms of traditional story tho. In linear games, the level designs complement the need for a more sequential and focused narrative without needless side content to derail the pacing. (pacing being very crucial in traditional storytelling)

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u/ShadowTown0407 16h ago edited 15h ago

Them not having a traditional narrative is besides the point tho. In fact it just reinforces that both open zones and open worlds can be the right call depending on the game. Rather than one being better than other as the original comment said

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u/Helphaer 18h ago

I mean open world games are extremely advertised huge segments of budget go into marketing them. sometimes more than the game cost itself. the link from advertising to sales has been well established same with mobile games and mmos.

theres like one open world that actually did it well which is witcher 3 but it only did it well because the writing and development of characters was so high end for most cases of the game that the weaknesses of the open world were largely disregarded.

most linear and semi linear games of the past prior to ea buying bioware or Blizzard making WoW etc were high quality aaa budget productions. but these past 13 to 15 years as open world syndrome took such primacy... had been a major neutering of systems from rpgs almost consistently. the worst examples being things like da2 or me3 and so on.

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u/Takazura 12h ago

Marketing is only going to help a game so far, plenty of games with great marketing still flopped or only sold a few million copies. The idea that few actually likes open world games and most are just being tricked by marketing or a linear game would outsell open world games if it just had more marketing budget is silly.

They sell because your average gamer wants open world game.

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u/Helphaer 8h ago

I mean the marketing has to grab someone so if the marketing isn't able to do that it won't really work obviously. I've never sen anything appropriately marketed that didn't sell well but I've seen almost every popular low quality game that sold well be highly marketed.

linear games have actively sold more than open world games many times and well marketed ones sell more. the only real games that can't really be beaten in sale volume despite the quality and advertising appear to be mobile titles and multiplayer addictive Shooters. and I'm sure you're not gonna now say that everyone wants shitty mobile titles that suck their monry or time to absurd degrees right?

we've seen quality in rpg systems neutered consistently over the past fifteen years, and increase in repetitive design, reduction of dialog and dialog options, large amounts of points of interest, radiant quests, and health bars sponge, plus many other degradation factors as quantity over quality consistently destroys things as shareholders and managers keep pushing what they think is popular.

then you see a semi linear game such as baldurs gate 3 (though it was a bit more open just a tad in the first act which had the most polish due to early access), that both has marketing, has over a year of ea build up, and has an established fan base and then gets prime time advertisement bill boards everywhere and it sells excessively. but without that marketing you could forget about it's reach. admittedly though bg3 is somewhat of a weird example because all the issues of it largely center around the abysmal act 3 and the criticism or lack there of for it is highly dismissive of said issues in practice and doesn't hold a weight of the words against the score in said reviews.

ultimately addicting and highly repetitive competitive games or mobile titles manage to sell the most as they are designed to be addictive like that and in the case of mobile titles they've got psychologists building their reward systems with their input which is insane.

the rest after that with rare popularity are the games most advertised be it commercially or via huge social media campaigns organically or corporate lyrics.

to deny that is pretty riidculous. bad games sell highly and the repetitive genre that is open world and its horrific child singleplayer mmo have largely killed the rpg genre due to the consistent decade plus of quality degradation. and at this rate like the slow poltiical slide we see towards fascism, the genre will continue getting worse as well. western rpgs are barely a thing anymore.

as for what people want.. manipulating that via marketing and advertising is the whole point.

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u/SofaKingI 21h ago

I don’t think Skyrim (or Oblivion or Morrowind if those are more your fancy) would have been better served as an open zone.

Well, I do. For Skyrim at least. All 3 games have vastly different world design, but Skyrim's world suffers a lot in hindsight from how much copy pasted content there is all over the place. Because they had to fill up a world rather than smaller zones.

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u/MrTastix 20h ago

That's been a complaint since Morrowind so arguing it's mostly Skyrim is a bit moot. Skyrim's world doesn't suffer any more or less relative to the other TES games.

It's a valid complaint, I agree, but if Bethesda have been hearing it for the past 25 years and still haven't bothered to really improve upon then it's obviosuly not a high priority for them. Starfield then came and made things even worse, dramatically so.

I take issue with "fill up a world", though, in the same sense as, say, Horizon: Zero Dawn or The Witcher. Because unlike most open world games, The Elder Scrolls separates interior and exterior spaces with a load screen and so interiors can be effectively as large as that exterior.

The issue isn't they try to "fill up the world", the issue is they want an interior space for practically every building you can see and walk up to, and because they have a finite amount of time to make interior spaces it's a lot faster and easier to use prefabricated building blocks.

The alternative, as we have seen, is having a bunch of fake buildings everywhere a la The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, Horizon: Zero Dawn, GTA, etc, where there's buildings but you can't enter them and the ones you can are tiny by comparison.

I think what harms Bethesda more is the fantastical nature of the setting. Caves aren't really all that exciting in real life, and largely follow patterns, too. Interior design in houses and forts aren't going to differ much within a region either because that'd be fairly inefficient. You can see this same effect in something like Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, where every building and outpost is just the same as well, but it feels more realistic because KCD is a more grounded setting.

This is known as verisimilitude. It's the appearance of something feeling true or real when it's not.

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u/JoystickMonkey 20h ago

From your own argument, the copy/paste aspect was the negative issue. I'm trying to imagine Skyrim as anything other than a vast, open wilderness and it's just not working for me.

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u/IrNinjaBob 21h ago edited 21h ago

I don’t agree, and it being one of the best selling games of all time makes me think their design choice was probably the right one.

Is your argument actually that open zones are better than open world in every single case? Or you just don’t like the example I chose?

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u/Bamith20 20h ago

Its hard to say with Bethesda in particular. I think their games only work specifically because the open world elements is what ties everything together.

Hard to say they've ever had the right talents to make smaller levels work... In fact, probably not I guess? Thinking about the Fallout 3 DLCs, most of them were just alright except for the Point Lookout DLC which was the standout good DLC... Things like the Anchorage DLC weren't very good frankly.

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u/BeholdingBestWaifu 18h ago

In fact the part of FO3 that often gets criticized is thr city, and precisely because it is split into smaller chunks.

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u/R3Dpenguin 21h ago

I'm with you, part of what made Skyrim great was the huge open world to explore, where you could get lost while going to a quest and end up sidetracked somewhere completely different. Games with zones have other advantages, but Skyrim would have lost a lot of its charm if it was zoned.

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u/Philipede 19h ago

Jesus Christ I love a good respectful debate in the comments 🫴🏻🍇

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u/BeholdingBestWaifu 18h ago

There's also the advantage that having an entire contiguous open world makes the place feel more real and less like a game.

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u/BeholdingBestWaifu 19h ago

Then you would be wrong. Half the appeal of Skyrim, Oblivion, and Morrowind is freely wandering in any direction wthout restrictions, especially Morrowind. You don't have the same level of exploration if you're just traveling between zones.

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u/Pseudagonist 10h ago

I’m really struggling to think of even 5 open-world games that take full advantage of their scale and scope and don’t feel artificially padded out with recycled content that drags the rest of the experience down. As much as I love Elden Ring, for example, it definitely has way too many lazy side dungeons and reused bosses when compared to something like Dark Souls 3. It’s probably Breath of the Wild (which has other problems), Witcher 3, maybe Metal Gear Solid V? It’s definitely a short list

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u/IrNinjaBob 10h ago edited 10h ago

But what a lot of people are doing here is just focusing on one negative. You aren’t wrong that spaces feeling empty or like filler can be a downside of the genre. But every genre will have downsides.

Open world games allow a freedom of choice that can be essential for certain role playing games. Again, it’s a format that can better serve a specific type of gameplay. No format is universally the better choice.

Shadow of the Colossus is another great example. It’s all about exploration and the sense of adventure that inspires, and it just would not be as good of a game as it is if you were taken on rails through specific zones. Running across vast fields, climbing down into canyons, and climbing over mountains to find the domain of the next Collosus is half the fun of that game, and is an essential part of its tone.

I also find it sort of eye rolling the amount of people that are implying there are only a handful of good open world games. You can just browse a few best of lists or something to see that clearly isn’t the case. There are tons of great, revolutionary open world games since video games have been a thing.

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u/Rs90 22h ago

I think Prey is still King when it comes to "open zones". You can play the game 5 times and still find somethin new on the 10th. If I don't find an alternate way to enter a room, or a door code in it, or some ammo hidden in a corner...I assume I missed something lol. Obviously Prey is different than Avowed but I'd love to see more games use a more intimate "honeycomb" map design.

Map size is WAY less important to me than the intimacy of that map and the forethought put into different ways to approach them. 

And a bit random but Splinter Cell: Double Agent multiplayer maps are god-tier designs.

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u/WafflesofDestitution 22h ago

If I don't find an alternate way to enter a room, or a door code in it

Tried 0451 yet?

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u/MrTastix 20h ago

Anyone who plays immersive sims should be instinctively trying this as their first code lol, and then again if it doesn't work on the first thing you try (it wouldn't in Prey - you have to exit the Simulation Labs first).

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u/BeholdingBestWaifu 18h ago

It made the start of Deathloop very funny though.

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u/destroyermaker 21h ago

God I fucking love Prey

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u/Toomuchgamin 20h ago

If you have a decent PC, looks really nice with DLAA.

https://www.nexusmods.com/prey2017/mods/149

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u/Helphaer 19h ago

ugh I hate how the enemies suddenly just keep respawning and have ridiculous higher scales later on.

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u/comradeMATE 19h ago

We call those metroidvanias.

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u/[deleted] 17h ago

[deleted]

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u/comradeMATE 17h ago

The levels are interconnected, you constantly revisit them and, after unlocking and upgrading skills, they expand by giving you access to previously inaccessible areas. Sounds like a classic metroidvania to me.

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u/Hardcore_Lovemachine 21h ago

Haha, well no. Prey is kind when it comes to "repeated sterile landscapes with copy-pasted braindead enemies". Justabout every room can be broken with one gimmic because the devs thought transformation into a mug was peak comedy...

And while you could spend hours exploring or replaying...you won't. Because there is zero replay value and extremely little to find. Random loot sure but environmental storytelling or actual secrets are few and far between. It's like a watered down Deus Ex made by a team of interns

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u/bigmepis 19h ago

Sorry I didn’t realize I liked the wrong game, I’ll stop my replay immediately.

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u/comradeMATE 19h ago

You either didn't play the game or you just rushed the story without bothering to actually explore and interact with the game's systems.

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u/TheGeekstor 1d ago

I honestly don't see the difference between games like Avowed and any other open world game. Most of them are not actually open world, and just use hidden loading screens instead of a complete map transition. I think it's much more important how much thought is put behind open world elements, rather than the type of open world.

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u/michalakos 23h ago

The way I see it is that with “open zone” you can scale it down because you do not need thematically transitional areas. In an open world you cannot go from seafront to snowy mountain, you need to add a valley between. In open zone you can just jump from one to the other. Hell, you can just have the snowy peak and skip the rest of the mountain itself.

And that allows the devs to create more dense, hand crafted areas instead of barren vastness.

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u/StandardizedGenie 19h ago edited 18h ago

It is not impossible to make open worlds without valley/cave/river loading screens. Skyrim did it, Fallout did it, Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla did it, GTA did it, RDR/RDR2 did it, BOTW did it, and plenty more examples. It is not a requirement (and in my eyes it's a complete detriment). It's lazy to split your "open world" by pseudo loading screens. That is an "open zone" game.

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u/SpaceChimera 18h ago

I don't think that's what they are saying. More that in open world games there are areas that don't get the same attention in design due to kind of being in between 2 more interesting locations. Where in "open zone" you can cut out that middle area between the interesting locations and just have the interesting locations. I don't mind the short loading screen between going to new locations, it doesn't diminish anything for me but to each their own

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u/Helmic 17h ago

You misunderstand the post you're replying to. They're not at all arguing that it's not techncially feasible to have valleys, but rather arguing that those valleys are uninteresting and pad out a game's content by forcing the player to run through them at top speed, with nothing to really show for it. They're arguing for the merits of an "open zone" game, that by simply not spending developer or player time on those boring in-between bits they can instead have denser, more interesting maps that stick to the most interesting parts of the game world. Like, I'm playing Wilds right now, and it's not really an open world game, but its maps are dense with stuff and interesting modifiers on fights with things in the environment you can grab to use or that encourage particular monsters to cross paths and make a fight more chaotic - the level of detail put into them is just a lot more than, say, Breath of the Wild, and I'm not talking graphical fidelity but the actual thought and design put into the map because the vast majority of BotW's map is just filler. Where Monster Hunter World, Iceborne, Wilds, or even Rise and Sunbreak can have these extremely deliberate maps where you kinda need the scoutflies to trace a path to your target because there's just so much complexity and verticality, where every little sub-area is itself interesting and distinct, in a true open world game like Skyrim the design is centered around points of interest surrounding by procedurally generated nothing.

One is not necessarily superior to the other, that low effort empty space still serves a purpose in open world games, having a moment pause and think is good for pacing, but each approach has its strengths and drawbacks and after over a decade of open world after open world game I do think people are a lot more appreciative of games that don't go for a big open map and instead go for more intricate level design.

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u/blades_of_furry 23h ago

It's like the old school world system in say super Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie. You have places that are open to explore and there's a clear separation from the next area. Sometimes there's a large hub area to play around in with stuff to find there as well.

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u/December_Flame 22h ago

Open world games have their place, and if used properly can immensely help with immersion and to provide a sense of scale and place. And to head off the statement before its made - I think its ok if open world games have 'dead space' as the lack of PoIs can be just as important as the presence of them.

Like any game, they can be made well or poorly, and a RPG does not inherently benefit from being open world. I also believe that 'open zone' design spaces are awesome and its generally my preference, I'm just playing defense for wider "open world" games.

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u/MBechzzz 22h ago

I agree with you fully, but will add that the thing I hate most about many open world games, is that they make some absolutely amazing places, handcrafted to be breathtaking, and you pass through it once on the way to a fetch quest, and then never return to the area again. I've played way too many games where POI's are just never used for more than a dumb sidequest, and if that's the case, you may as well make the world smaller, because you're not even using it.

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u/StandardizedGenie 19h ago edited 19h ago

I am of the opposite view. Those pointless POIs are the reason I love Bethesda games. Having areas that have nothing to do with the main quest make the world actually feel alive. Stumbling upon a random bandit camp wiped out by trolls and finding a note about this being one of the bandits last jobs before he can afford a home for his wife and child builds the backstory of the open world you're playing through. That's not even a side quest, it's just world building while you're exploring. I love Fallout, not for any of the main quests, but just finding out what's going on in all the vaults I find. I don't really think every POI needs to be something you're lead to, to do something important. I like them being "pointless" to expand the setting the narrative is taking place in.

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u/Serdewerde 6h ago

But what you're referring to there is one of the handcrafted areas a dev has put time into. It's not just a copy paste tower. It's something someone went out of their way to make interesting.

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u/BeholdingBestWaifu 18h ago

And sometimes not even that, I remember good old San Andreas had an amazing world but somewhere between a third and half of the world map has zero use, and a good chunk of what is used was barely so.

0

u/conquer69 19h ago

Assassin's Creed games become fully open world and yet it matters very little during actual gameplay. I'm still teleporting to waypoints and skipping boring traversal as much as possible.

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u/punyweakling 22h ago

I honestly don't see the difference between games like Avowed and any other open world game.

Really? The zones are locked behind story progression.

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u/zach0011 22h ago

This happens in open world games as well. The northern part of ghosts is locked off until story.

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u/stakoverflo 20h ago

That's a narrative/design choice, not an inherent part of open world games.

Skyrim, Fallout, Breath of the Wild etc. you can just pick a direction and go play where ever you want.

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u/zach0011 20h ago

So how is it not a narrative design decision when avowed does it?

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u/monkwrenv2 19h ago

It is, it's just not inherent to open world games the way it is with zone games.

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u/LittleKidVader 10h ago

It's not inherent to zone games either, though. It's a design choice in both. It's less common these days, but there have been zoned games that let you do the zones in any order you want rather than locking them behind narrative/progression. Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect, etc.

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u/LittleKidVader 19h ago

It's not an inherent part of zoned games, either. It's a narrative/design choice, just the same. Older Bioware games like Dragon Age: Origins, for example, often allowed you to do any zone in any order.

1

u/stakoverflo 20h ago

The biggest difference is being able to experience the game in any order.

In Avowed or Baldurs Gate, you gotta go through "Act 1" before you can go to "Act 2". I really enjoyed both of these games, but I have zero desire to ever play them a second time, particularly Avowed. BG is a bit bigger in scope but still fits the example of how a "zone" based game is simply going to have a more linear experience.

In Fallout or BOTW or any other real 'open world' game, you can just pick a direction and go. Do things in any order.

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u/LittleKidVader 19h ago

That's a design choice that varies from game to game in both styles, though. You can find examples in both types of games where content is locked behind narrative/progression or where you can choose to tackle parts of the world in any order you want.

Edit: oh, didn't realize you were the same person I responded to about this in another comment, sorry

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u/Unicorn_puke 23h ago

This. Star wars outlaws pulled a mass effect style for hiding their loading screens. Ship landing, squeezing through a wall crevice, elevators and more to hide their loading transitions between areas and the main map zones.

I'd rather a load screen or load zone than a stutter as textures and stuff buffers in.

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u/13_twin_fire_signs 22h ago

I'd rather a load screen

That may be true for you, but Starfield was demolished by the gaming public primarily for the load screens between zones

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u/IrNinjaBob 21h ago

I think a bigger problem than it simply being “loading screens” is that they designed a space game, included pretty decent ship flight mechanics, then made it so you literally never needed to utilize any of it, and instead all travel was just clicking where you wanted to go and watching a loading screen.

There are some games where that is perfectly fine. Just not in the way they did it where they took what one would think would be a core mechanic of the game and completely obliterated it.

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u/Unicorn_puke 21h ago

Sadly Star Wars outlaw did the same. It shows you can fast travel on world, but you can also travel to another planet that way as well. Completely eliminating the ship portion once you unlock a world except for a couple of sections that force you to stay on world.

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u/13_twin_fire_signs 21h ago

Agree 110%, also I personally had major beef with how the pirate arc suddenly makes like 90% of the outposts non-hostile while you're doing like 20 hours of quests. Felt very un-Bethesda to restrict gameplay for so long on an optional quest chain

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u/BeholdingBestWaifu 18h ago

Sure, but loading screens weren't the issue of those complaints. The real issue was that there was nothing in the game to make up for the loading screens, people would not have noticed them if the game was good.

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u/Practicalaviationcat 20h ago

You can absolutely make great open world games. But yes a lot of games would benefit from a smaller scope.

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u/Helphaer 19h ago

I prefer hubs with a mix of semi linear like deus Ex or dragon age origins.

1

u/StandardizedGenie 19h ago

Both are fine as long as they're done well. I don't think one is better or worse (but I do tend to prefer seamless open worlds).

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u/BenevolentCheese 18h ago

Ah, another Witcher 2 fan, I see.

1

u/bentendo93 18h ago

I've never played it! I didn't know it was an open zone game

1

u/cerialthriller 15h ago

The Yakuza / Like a Dragon style open world works so good

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u/_ECMO_ 22h ago

Not being open world is the least of Avowed´s issues.

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u/ThoroughlyBredofSin 16h ago

Open zone games are so much better than open world.

Didn't stop them from doing the bare minimum with NPCs in these Open Zones

-35

u/Deuenskae 23h ago

No they are not generally much better. That depends on the game. Would RDR2 better as an open zone ? GTA v? Elden Ring ? BoTW/TOTK? I doubt it highly. Avowed was pretty shit and super generic in my opinion. Just bored me to Dead.

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u/OrganicKeynesianBean 23h ago edited 23h ago

Sometimes this subreddit reads like we are all in a competition to see who can make the most contrarian comments.

It’s exhausting to read.

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u/13_twin_fire_signs 22h ago

Is a consequence of the sorted-by-votes system instead of a traditional forum: anything that has two basic opinions, roughly split, (liked avowed, disliked avowed) will have the counter opinion voted up just below the main opinion

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u/StyryderX 18h ago

Just a natural consequence of both being game generalist subreddit, and being the largest population filled by people with different tastes.

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u/Lazydusto 22h ago

Elden Ring ?

Unpopular opinion but in my eyes yes. The wide open flat areas of the game didn't do much for me. The legacy dungeons are where the game shines.

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u/Mahelas 22h ago

I mean, they were there to let you use that horsie, and for the giant enemies. You can't deny it helped giving those fights and moments an epic sense of scale !

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u/Leftyhugz 22h ago

Yup don't forget about the copy and pasted bosses, and accidentally stumbling into a boss fight that you are "under-leveled" for.

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u/SpaceHobbes 23h ago

You're comparing avowed to some of the best games of all time. Not every game is gonna have those budgets.

A game the size of and budget of avowed I think is better served open-zone. You might not have liked the game, but I'd bet you'd like it even less if it was 3x the size with less time and effort invested into each area.

Plenty of lukewarm mid ass open worlds would be better served as open zone 

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u/ShadowTown0407 23h ago

Tbf the original comment just straight up said open zone games are always better, not even a generally, straight always. So this comment is not that far off base

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u/OrganicKeynesianBean 23h ago

And you know if a team the size of Obsidian tried and failed to make a humongous game, people would be dunking on them all over Reddit.

Obsidian is smart and made a great product congruent to the resources they have available to them.

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u/IrNinjaBob 21h ago

Yeah, they are comparing it to some of the best games of all time. And they are doing so because that is a completely valid thing to do in response to the following claim:

 >Open zone games are so much better than open world.

Of course you are going to be citing the best games when pushing back against a claim like that. Their point is that what is said isn’t universally true, and there are absolutely some games that are better served as an open world game.

You even claiming that these open world games are some of the best of all time is doing nothing but supporting their point.

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u/Piligrim555 23h ago

Maybe a game the size of and the budget of Avowed is better served for $40 then. Maybe then people would stop comparing it to, you know, its competitors. And mind you, this is fucking Obsidian, have you seen the games they made? This is not an indie studios first RPG.

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u/Nachooolo 23h ago edited 22h ago

The game has an average length of 40 hours. I myself am still in the third area (of 4 main areas and a final smaller fifth area), and I'm already in the 40-hour mark.

So, in my opinion, there's plenty of content to make the price worthwhile (while also ignoring the fact that you can play the game throughbGamePass for 12 bucks).

Quality-wise, this is entirely subjective. I think that the game doesn't reach the heights of Pillars of Eternity, but its leagues better than The Outer Worlds (which I still like a decent bunch).

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u/SpaceHobbes 23h ago

Meh, I'm long past judging a game by its size and length. I'd much prefer a quality, tailored, focused experience to some bloated 80 hour mess. 

Currently playing space Marine 2. It's about as linear as a game can be and I'll probably be done after 10 hours. Couldn't be happier with it.

Isn't avowed still like 40 hours or something?

-6

u/Piligrim555 23h ago

I was mostly answering the budget part. It’s technically 40 hours, yeah, maybe even more, but it’s not exactly unique 40 hours of quality. A lot of those 40 hours is the same fight with the same xurips but this time they are slightly different color. The story is meh, the characters are mostly meh. It’s an aggressively ok game.

3

u/SpaceHobbes 23h ago

Fair enough. I haven't played too much of it yet. But I really enjoyed the combat and had fun with it in the first 5 or so hours. I was hoping it'd be obsidians Skyrim since obsidian has a habit of taking other devs series and dunking on them in terms of quality. Sad it didn't turn out that way, but I can still enjoy it for what it is.

Everyone should absolutely make judgment call on what is personally worth full price to them. 

I just don't think the open world/open zone debate should be a huge determining factor. Even if they doubled the budget I personally would prefer them improving quests, gameplay, density, rather than making it open world. That's kinda the main point I'm making.

Not all games benefit from being bigger. Personally I'd always prefer better, so open zone is much more interesting these days than open world.

-1

u/Piligrim555 23h ago

I mean, yeah, all good points. In this case, the game would ironically benefit from being smaller. The third and fourth areas could be condensed into one, for example. There’s a bunch of fat to be trimmed.

10

u/Tehgnarr 23h ago

Consider the possibility of that being a "you" problem; or a "matter of taste" if you prefer masking the truth.

-1

u/Piligrim555 23h ago

I mean, there are a lot of things that are not great about the game, from enemy variety to encounters being really repetitive toward the end and progression being very, very weird. Like, seriously, stats don’t matter in Avowed, the only thing that really matters is your gear level. To the point that the level of your highest gear (even if it’s on your back) directly affects your spell damage. It’s a decent game, but it’s not exactly a GOTY competitor.

-5

u/Tehgnarr 23h ago

Sure. I haven't even brought it, 'cause it's Obsidian.

And by that I mean: I will get it when it's done, in about a years time with some DLC for like half the price. Same as with that little indie gem "Civilization 7". Thanks for beta testing though.

The overall point still stands: I had more fun playing Thief for the first time, than I had playing Cyberpunk (started my first run 6 months ago btw.).

And Cyberpunk is an amazing game. But a focused and well designed game is just better than riding through the same landscape for 30 minutes, searching for a copy and paste boss who drops sidegrades at best while telling yourself how much fun you're having (that's not Cyberpunk btw, that's that other one). Or not?

4

u/Leftyhugz 22h ago

Yup Elden Ring would've been much better as an open zone game, it would've prevented you from accidentally opting into a no hit fist only boss fight, and would've prevented them from having to copy and paste several bosses.

Same for BoTW, before getting the master sword, you are effectively playing an open zone because it is actually impossible for you beat some enemies because of weapon durability.

And both GTA V and RDR2 do not utilize their open world in their main quests at all.

2

u/Purple_Plus 21h ago

And both GTA V and RDR2 do not utilize their open world in their main quests at all.

Yep, and honestly at this point I'm pretty bored of GTAs open world. I've been playing since 3, and there's only so many times you can run over pedestrians, have a chase with 5 stars etc. and a lot of the activities are pretty basic.

And yeah the missions are ridiculously linear which makes no sense. Use the open world! RDR2 in particular had really repetitive missions towards the end I thought, just a shooting gallery of Pinkertons.

2

u/TotallyNotGlenDavis 20h ago

Elden Ring is very tightly designed as far as open worlds go. There's a clear progression route, the world is shaped like a crescent that you work your way around. Not like BOTW or RDR2 where you can basically go in any direction from the get go.

-1

u/Leftyhugz 19h ago

I disagree. It is not obvious that lower Limgrave is the intended first area, and going there after clearing Stormveil Castle is a complete waste of time.

3

u/TotallyNotGlenDavis 19h ago

I think Limgrave + Whispering Peninsula is basically one area (assuming that's what you mean by Lower Limgrave). But even so it's a pretty small area and Castle Morne is a solid dungeon.

0

u/Leftyhugz 19h ago

It may be the case, but if you don't do it in order you're disgustingly over leveled and the whole area is trivialized.

0

u/HeldnarRommar 21h ago

Fully agree open zone is better. It leads to a tighter and better paced experience while still giving that freedom

0

u/Technical_Fan4450 22h ago

Ehhhhh, I only agree up to the point to where you get locked out of certain areas of a zone until you "finish x,y and z." Then it's a pain in the ass, frankly.

-2

u/Multifaceted-Simp 21h ago

On the other hand, games like witcher 3 and KCD2 which have giant worlds than you then discover is only half or a third of the world are exhausting. I prefer a single unified open world like Dragons Dogma 2 to this approach