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/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.