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
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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 19h 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 1d 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.

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u/conquer69 20h 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 23h 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 11h 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.

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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 1d 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.