Are open world games better with limited storytelling?

I've been burned out on open world games for years. I pine for the old days when you can 100% an open game in under 20 hours, or just mainline it in half that time. Saints Row III and Shadow of Mordor era design. So stuff like Horizon, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and many more are games I just avoid. I always chalked it up to too many icons, too much to do.

But I think I'm wrong. My open world fatigue is related to the story-telling.

I can think of 3 modern examples where open world games have taken over my life and I loved every minute of it. These are Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild, and Hollow Knight. What do these have in common? They have a history to their world, there's a main narrative to pursue, but there's no rush. I'm not sitting there thinking "I should be rushing to find out the fate of this guy that got stabbed in a cutscene, but there's a side quest to chase down first." There isn't a sense of urgency to these games, but there's generally a bunch of lore stuff to find in a wiki or art book (in the case of Breath of the Wild). If I want to go for an upgrade or see the edge of the map, I can, because there's no one waiting for me to help them storm a base.

I've heard players say they're 20 hours into Elden Ring without even beating the first boss. BotW and Hollow Knight reward you for taking completely different paths than your friends. Everyone can play their own way and play the game however they want. There's minimal worry about getting spoiled on a story beat, and conversations tend to be about seeing something cool rather than a character getting stabbed. I feel that this is the place open world games have in the marketplace. And these are the games that seem to have some of the most diehard fans. Even something small like Infernax had a ton of stuff for me to do at my pace, on a smaller scale.

Now thinking back to open world fatigue. Metal Gear Solid will be my example here. I loved the first 4 MGS games due to their storytelling. There'd be 15 minutes of gameplay, then some story, and that's how things would go for 10-15 hours. MGS V came along, and I was there purely to see where the story goes. But now it'd be hours of gameplay between anything happening. I quickly learned to just ignore what was happening and focus purely on the gameplay, which really helped me enjoy the game. The same goes for something like Halo 3 compared to Halo: Infinite. Once I dropped any interest in the next cutscene, I was able to enjoy the game more. Both games had strong narratives in the past, but the transition to open world just felt like they couldn't do everything at the same level. This tendency to be the All Game was jarring for those two, partially because the new stories were stretched thin and partially because they didn't seem like a priority anymore.

What's my point? My point is that designers have been approaching open world games wrong, at least in my eyes. The strength of a giant sandbox to screw around in isn't a well-placed narrative, so let's just put that in the background. Trying to have a good story in a 40 hour action game just doesn't work for someone with limited time. JRPG's are pretty good at that due to ensemble characters and a huge focus on narrative, and the gameplay loop fits that style of storytelling. The Witcher 3 is a standout where you're alone, too, but the game has a ton of great writing in the side quests and main narrative. Even Elder Scrolls and Fallout, games that weren't for me, seem to be more about living in a world rather than getting to the credits. But if I need to spend dozens of hours in a game like Horizon to see a few hours of cutscenes, the pacing is completely broken. And now I have to keep up to have a discussion about this game, since no one wants to hear about me completing checkboxes for 10 hours.

The future of open world games is Elden Ring, it's Breath of the Wild, it's Hollow Knight. That's the solution to open world fatigue. Games you can freely explore and take your time with, where the discussion is the experience and not the cutscenes. The future of narrative games has to bring back some sort of pacing, or at least scale back on endless open world activities (especially when they're required to overcome difficulty blocks). Resident Evil VIII and the recent Tomb Raider games were able to nail a nice mix of story and having space to breathe and explore.

Or does none of this make sense? Is a shorter narrative game that's worth replaying something people don't want anymore? Do we want 50 hour games we play once, that has to do everything, but you need to see the ending so the last third is a slog to finish it? I feel like for many years, it was all about value proposition. But with stuff like Game Pass, we can have shorter games that tell strong stories, and all we need to pay is the monthly subscription. And then we can have gigantic games that let you explore the world however you'd like, without having to balance seeing a propelling story with chasing a shiny thing.

Now that I think about it, Mario's had this figured out for years.

I think From hit the precise balance of cryptic storytelling and ambience that works well for their games and whenever people try to replicate this it fucks up and I’m like hey just tell me a real story.

Hard agree. The thing that makes me bounce off every Assassin's Creed isn't the repetitive tasks or the bloat, it's the ridiculous amount of No Gameplay. Even if you skip cutscenes, you have in-game walk and talk sections that are just fancier cutscenes with no player agency. This is what threw me off Miles Morales recently as well. The ratio of "gameplay" to "unskippable story/production value bloat" is ridiculous. It's why in both AC: Syndicate and Origins I had a blast clearing out their massive maps (about 40 hours each) but stopped the moment I had to play the story quests.

I think this is also part of why most AAA games are less replayable than ever. Do I want to try Spiderman 2018 again on a higher difficulty level because I really feel like I mastered the combat on Normal difficulty? Yes! Am I willing to sit through the stealth missions and science puzzles and walk and talk sections to get there again? NOPE. Big issue with Max Payne 3 as well. I love that combat so much but the unskippable cutscenes (well yes you can skip them but they hide some massive loads, so being able to skip the last 5 seconds doesn't really make it feel better for me,) just kill any replay potential for most players. It's telling that I liked that game enough to do 3 playthroughs even with that caveat, but without the cutscenes? I would have played even more.

So it's less about doing exactly FromSoft's style of cryptic storytelling, and more about making sure however you tell your story, it respects the player's time.

It honestly depends on how the game is made. The Far Cry games and the Assassins Creed games have been using the same formula for years, though Valhalla did change some things up and made it a better open world game. But the same could be said about scripted campaigns if the same formula is used over and over again. The Call of Duty games are an example of this. This is one of the reasons why Vanguard is considered a failure. Whereas Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart comes close to doing this, but the addition of an alternate universe with it's own version of Ratchet & Clank, called Rivet and Kit, among other things helped make the game still feel fresh and not just another entry. I believe this is why indie games are so important, because many of its developers try to create new and innovative gameplay experiences, where AAA developers are worried about the bottomline and create what they think will give them the biggest profits in return.

@lapsariangiraff: Yeah, replayability is on my mind a lot when I think of huge games and crunch. The last bigger budget game I played a few times was Devil May Cry 5. It was just really fun, with minimal bloat, and the story was good enough the first time to get me through but skippable enough to not be a hindrance. Kind of a throwback to my old gaming habits where a game was so enjoyable that I wanted to experience it again.

I recall Kena: Bridge of Spirits being called a PS2 game, and my reaction was "hell yeah!" And Death's Door was another, where it had places to explore but it didn't overstay its welcome. None of these games are big open worlds, but I just liked the focus they both had. And I'll surely go back to them in the future.

There is no "best practice" as far I'm concerned. I love both Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3. Even within the past few weeks we have great examples of both a story light open world game (Elden Ring) and a highly story driven game (Horizon Forbidden West). I have immensely enjoyed both of these games, each largely for very different reasons.

Homogeneity is not an ideal future for open world game. Every open world game going for the BotW and Elden Ring approach would be very boring. There is a place for open world games with a bunch of great story driven content. I probably prefer the story and quest driven approach a bit, but that doesn't mean I want every game to be that either.

Variety is good.

@ll_exile_ll: I suppose this is more of a personal preference, then. Variety is indeed good.

I've just heard several podcasts mention open world fatigue, but then being engrossed in Elden Ring. So this was the reasoning I could come up with.

Although it makes me wonder if Horizon would be a better game if it was a semi-linear dozen hours with some optional stuff.

@csl316: I think obfuscation is working as a bit of a secret spice with Elden Ring though. Fundamentally the open world isn’t really any different than the ones everyone says they’re tired of but it FEELS different to go explore a shoddy drawing of a house on a map rather than set a waypoint to a ? mark in the same location.

I think letting the story fade into the background isn't a sign that storytelling gets in the way, I think it reveals that the typical storytelling (cutscenes, forced walking moments, etc) doesn't work within more open-world games.

I think about Shadow of Mordor or Horizon: Zero Dawn and how both stories drove me to keep playing and the gameplay design keep me entertained in-between story beats.

It's a balance. A strong world with more passive storytelling fills in the gaps without needing to stop and make you smell the roses. A more sparse game like MGSV has to stop you and remind you about the batshit overlay going on in the background because the world itself was just a map.

And each game will need to approach the problem in its own way. Some games just want you to play the gameplay loop, others want to tell you a story. I think all can be interesting and fun.

@finaldasa: I absolutely agree, and I didn't mean to imply that stories in games are never valuable. It's more, as you said, that cutscenes, and egregiously on-rails scripted sections, and walk-and-talks that permeate most open world games both Do Not Convey Their Story Well and get in the way of what you want to do, which is roam around this beautiful environment the studio crunched 500 people to make!

Someone else mentioned The Witcher 3, and I think that's a great example of a story-driven open world game that does it right. There's a lot of dialogue, but you can button past it as you read it. There's *some* cinematic sequences in-game but they're far outweighed by the dozens of uninterrupted hours exploring the world. You're allowed to have a presence in that game rather than having someone shout at you every 2 minutes, "HEY! HEY! HAVE YOU SEEN THIS THING? ARE YOU BORED? PLEASE DON'T BE BORED OH GOD HAVE ANOTHER PHONE CALL" (see, Spiderman, Cyberpunk)

It also helps that The Witcher 3 is just shockingly well-written, but I think that ties into the "don't waste my time" ethos just as much because good writing and dialogue get to the point, and I think a lot of games meander. That's not to say you can't have a lot of dialogue or story, just that more writers need to make sure that what is there has a point other than, "stuff for the sake of stuff, dialogue for the sake of dialogue."

@lapsariangiraff: I really need to go back and replay The Witcher 3 just to see how well it stacks up so much later.

I think it's just difficult to properly ensure the player will run into your more subtle story points when most stories are in your face. So we're conditioned to just skip over everything unless the game makes us.

Even games like BOTW or Elden Ring won't be combed over except by the more extreme fans.

The design has just evolved quicker than digital storytelling has. I hope if these games continue to be popular we get story elements that begin to catch up.

@finaldasa: I could be seeing it with rose-colored glasses, for sure, but I played the main game in 2019, and then the DLC in 2020 so imo it holds up!

Interesting point and I would agree completely with the caveat that I think a ~good~ and well written story that you're engaged in makes the biggest difference. And while Hollow, Elden and Breath are all fantastic examples games with an emphasis on gameplay, if some well written Witcher 3 narrative was sprinkled in amongst them I'd prefer it.

I'd also just want Witcher 4. Not specifically the Witcher 4. But an open world game that hits all the high notes of that game's narrative.

And better combat.

Decided to try Valhalla again on my Series S. Finally get to the gameplay... remember that to get to the next... anything... I have 2 hours of collecting animal pelts and a bunch of garbage before I can make it to my village. Logged out right there.

I also feel like the progression in the aforementioned 'fatigue' open world games is absolute trash. Its like having a job on an assembly line. Do this task, do it again, and again 20 times and you level up.

Contrasted to Elden Ring I'm just going around exploring, doing things. Often times the gear I find isnt useful because it doesnt match my build, then all of a sudden I turn a corner, find a cave and BOOM Estus Flask just leveled up. Wow what an exciting, unexpected and meaningful reward. A few more interesting but not useful discoveries later I find a temple with a box full of smithing stones and my weapon goes from a +3 to +5 in an instant.

Contrast that to say... Fenix, Gods and Monsters or whatever that game was called. I actually quite liked that game - but what I didnt like was completing exhausting item hunts just to get my next upgrade. Really cheapens the achivement when I go through all of this trouble collecting a lightning bolt or an ambrosia just to have a menu flash by saying "You did it! ...now get 5 more..."

@junkerman: You kind of put into words why I don't find those games appealing. Going around knocking off checklists just isn't fun (it may be at first before becoming tedious, I guess).

Whereas exploring in Elden Ring is inherently a good time. It's all technically optional, and I might find a weapon that isn't even useful for my build, but I don't care because doing the thing is why I'm playing the game. I went to some weird stronghold with hand monsters and ghost soldiers, and I leveled up a couple times and got a thing from the boss, but exploring the place was cool and atmospheric and memorable. That's the part I'll remember and be able to talk about, not the fact that I cleared this "base" to get my galactic readiness up.

I want to push back on the notion that dialogue and story "interrupts" the game. To me, the appeal of existing in an open world is just as much about talking to the people as it is finding the next pretty vista. The idea that dialogue should just "get to the point" is one I can't get behind. Like, being able to go to a random town and talk to random people about things that aren't necessarily important to the main plot is part of making a game world feel alive. You can have side stories and optional conversations that exist solely for their own benefit.

Part of having a presence in the game is interacting with people, not just exploring the wilderness. A game world feels much more alive when it doesn't just look nice, but also has people and groups whose place in the world you can understand. You mention The Witcher 3, and honestly your points about it being great at facilitating uninterrupted exploration just do not resonate with me at all. It's one of my favorite games of all time, but when I think about what I remember from exploring the world, it's not being uninterrupted while I discover bandit camps and sunken caches. The memorable parts of that game are coming across a town cursed be a Leshen and speaking with the townsfolk to find a solution. It's accompanying a group of Skelligers into a cave of hallucinations. It's hunting down a serial killer in Novigrad.

The Witcher 3 isn't great because the story and dialogue "get out of your way," it's great because story and dialogue are everywhere (and the writing is great).

Oh, and P.S.

It also needs to have a good world to disappear into, which means variety and it feels good to play and it's fun to exist in. i.e. BEST WORLD

I feel exactly the opposite. If I'm going to spend 40 or more hours in a game world, it better have a story and characters that I care about, or I'm going to get bored real fast. No gameplay loop can possibly be so engrossing as to keep me interested for that length of time without some good dialogue and cool setpieces to break it up.

I'm also not the type of person who plays games to create their own fun and pursue their own goals. Getting to the next story beat is the goal, and of course the gameplay along the way needs to be engaging as well.

You can't have one without the other and come out with a compelling experience. Most open world games don't give you anything rewarding for poking around at the corners and doing sidequests beyond some items or gear, so the rare exceptions like the Witcher that reward you for exploration with character interactions are vastly superior to your standard checklist affairs.

I'm playing the first Horizon right now, and I've decided to skip every quest that involves collectibles or 'go to this area and kill all the corrupted machines' type filler, and only focus on the side stuff that characters in the world have asked me to do. I don't care about ticking a box or getting some resources, but I do care if this random guy I met gets reunited with his sister or not.

That's the difference between Horizon and the Witcher for me vs. the newer Ass Creed and Far Cry. The former makes me care about the world and the characters in it, while the latter utterly fails to do so.

I can't imagine doing the Rorie thing and playing a billion hours in an open world while skipping the cutscenes. That's no longer a cohesive experience, at that point you're just messing around with a toy - which is fine for a smaller experience, but I'd rather clean my apartment than spend 4 hours drop kicking dudes over and over.

I am intrigued by Elden Ring precisely because it seems to reward you in ways that other games of the type do not, i.e., there are tangible incentives beyond either story or compulsive box-ticking for exploring. The random stuff you stumble upon is anything but cookie-cutter, and the uncertainty of never knowing what you mind find around the corner sounds pretty cool. Just not sure I have the patience to lean forward in my seat and be really on my shit and focused for that long of a game.

@stealydan: You play most open world games like I do, then. Case in point, Ghost of Tsushima. Loved the game, but I skipped a ton of side stuff because I was into the story. The only ones I focused on in the journal were related to side character stories. Although that's the rare game where I cleared every base because it was fun as hell and they all felt a bit different.

You specifically say open world games but then talk about Hollow Knight and the new Tomb Raider's, which i would just toss in the metroidvania/action-adventure genre, and Mario which is a platformer, not open world. So i would probably say you just don't like bad or bland games, open world or otherwise, which is obviously a very subjective thing. Ubisoft and EA games are some of the most shallow, by the numbers, designed by committee games out there. And i always approach them knowing there games are going to be the "Law and Order" of video games. Something to keep me entertained, but ultimately shallow and something to keep my mind busy for a few hours until the actual good games come out. And Ubisoft specifically with there open worlds are filled with busy work quest with no good story reason for what you are doing.

I still have not finished Breath of the Wild, stopped playing for some reason and intend to go back at some point. But the story was one of the major things about that game that i was hating, and driving me away from it. If im remembering the story i got from that game after beating three of the four weapons, it was like that section in Destiny 1 where the speaker says he could tell you a story... then just moves on not explaining anything. The lack of building up the characters felt very shallow. But i kept on doing the temples and snatching up those seeds because they where fun puzzles, and the overall gameplay was fun.

But the thing that drove me in Zero Dawn absolutely was the story. The gameplay is a little clunky here and there, but overall enjoyable. From the start you ask "why are there robot dinosaurs? what is with these old crumbling buildings?", and you can make some assumptions that would be correct, but its the details and characters that where interesting. Even the side quest i remember liking the story and characters in them, which is why i did them all. And all the different tribes and there religions. There has been something missing in the start of Forbidden West, because you get your answers in Zero Dawn and the only thing motivating you is plants are over fertilized or something, and one of the bad guys from the last game is still out there, and you need to wrap up a few loose ends from the last game. And its kinda just more Horizon without any major advancement with adding new mechanics. But as soon as i hit that moment where you meet those four people i was hooked back in. And that also when the game opens up and you see more of the new tribes, which i have also found interesting.

A good developer can make an open world and "lock you in" for a half hour or more, then "let you out" after the quest is done. If they give you a story beat of "hey so and so is dangling from a rope, you should probably go save him" while letting you spend ten hours doing side quests, then yeah there can be some massive disconnect from the story that feels clunky. And that is something they should not have brought up, or forced you to do that quest right then and there. But if the game is actually fun to play, im not going to care that the story was good or bad, just that i had fun, but i would prefer a well written story and characters.

@csl316: Ah OK, seems like we mostly on the same page then. Story stuff in big, long games is great when done well (and I would argue essential to motivating one to move forward), but really brings down the experience when it's done poorly.

I never came close to finishing Skyrim, because I didn't care about why I was doing things or who I was doing them for, but I did just about everything in Fallout 3 because I enjoyed being in the world and talking to everyone.

Just Cause games are fun to mess around in for a few hours at a time, but they quickly outstay their welcome because the world is so devoid of life and personality.

The older Ass Creed games drew me in with all the modern-day intrigue stuff and how it related back to the characters in the past. Setting up shop with the Animus in Ezio's palace was so cool. Even the puzzles in Brotherhood for example had cool little nods to things like Henry Ford working for the Templars. Once all that stuff went away, the only thing left is a bunch of generic NPCs in giant worlds that feel like copy-paste jobs.

I enjoyed the heck out of Far Cry Primal despite its reputation as being the most repetitive iteration, partially because the setting was right up my alley, but also because I liked interacting with the people you meet and bring into your tribe. The custom designed language was a really cool detail that made those characters feel more real than the dinguses you talk to in most of the other ones.

Not necessarily.

I think the Ubisoft open world formula needs to die for sure. Assassin's Creed, Horizon, Far Cry, any game where you open a map and see repetitive icon vomit needs to just fucking go. I think that story in open world games can be done well. Fallout New Vegas is a bad game (stop there, that world is a fucking slog and the gunplay sucks) but it did story beats well. So did The Witcher 3. I actually think that CRPGs are a good place to look towards, not for complex gameplay but for their focus on expanding their worlds through side quests that mean something. Every quest you do in Divinity: Original Sin 2 has characters, motivations, and multiple resolutions, some of which you might be surprised you can even do. I don't think we need side quests that expansive, necessarily, but side quests with bare-minimum stories that tell you to go do something trivial or, worse, open world activities that involve clearing out bandit camps and participating in weird mini games (like Far Cry 5's driving cars through rings of fire or whatever) aren't fun anymore. That feels like a checklist. Talking to an old, sad man in the middle of the street in Pillars of Eternity and finding yourself killing a lich to retrieve a locket belonging to that old man's late wife, that's a story, that's way more interesting. Adapt that to your open world game, include interesting and unique things I can stumble upon, and make the world itself fun and captivating and you have a good open world story-driven experience.

Oh, and linear games like Tomb Raider 2013, Dead Space, and Resident Evil VIII really should make a comeback. I think they have, to some extent, but I like playing and replaying those kinds of games. They're satisfying, fun, short enough that I can finish them in a reasonable amount of time but long enough to be meaty, open enough to invite exploration but linear enough to maintain pacing, and story-driven enough to have an interesting narrative without feeling like I never get to actually play the game for long periods of time.

@justin258: Yeah, reading over some of these replies, I'm starting to lean on narrative-heavy open world games just need to be done well. Since I really have enjoyed a bunch over the years. It's just that BotW and Elden Ring feel a bit refreshing, after so much of the last generation deciding that every big game series needed to try their hand at being bigger without a clear reason why (well, Skyrim blew up expectations on hour counts, probably).

@lego_my_eggo: I brought up Tomb Raider as a good way to merge open exploration and telling a compelling story. It is more of a metroidvania, I suppose, but it had enough stuff off the beaten path that it didn't feel strictly linear (especially the later ones with optional tombs). Though the later games started going more open and they started to lose me a little. Same with the Arkham Asylum to City jump. There's a reason I replayed the first in the series a bunch of times and only finished the sequels once.

As for Hollow Knight, in my view a metroidvania in 2D is basically an open world game. Hollow Knight is so vast with so many ways to go about completing it that it felt way more exploratory than a tight 5-10 hour game in that style. Luckily, it was done well and played like a dream. With a ton of fun bosses, just like its bigger cousin ER.

I do agree that dialogue and story are important to the game. However, I read @finaldasa's post as suggesting that dialog with NPCs should be initiated by the player and forced dialog, like a character calling you out of the blue and giving you a side mission, should never happen. I understand that if you're working in the Cyberpunk underground, having some guys call you and set up a job for you feels like it should work on paper... but that only served to make me want as much distance between myself and that game as possible. For me, it largely boils down to the same thing I hated about The Outer Wilds. I don't care what your reason is or how justified it is in-universe, don't interrupt me while I'm trying to do stuff! Whether that's to point me to other things or blow up the universe to start again doesn't matter. I'll talk to people when I want to and hang out in the middle of an empty forest enjoying the music when I want and forcing me to participate in one when I'm only interested in the other just makes me want to play something else.

I'd say if you're playing an open world game you're not looking for a story. Developers probably think the same during the development process. The best kind of open world story is something like AC: Black Flag where you're a pirate. That's all the story you need. A pirate in the east indies.. you know his struggle, desire, and enemies.The best open world stories crib from well known series like Arkham Knight or are satirizing contemporary stuff like Sunset Overdrive. A game like GTAV doesnt work for me because you're just seeing a real world representation on almost a 1:1 scale... who cares. I used to think that was an accomplishment in computer design. When it was.

All the other stuff kind of doesn't work. The AC series is kind of the pinnacle of storytelling in open world when they don't take too much artistic license in historical facts. I think Unity, Black Flag, and Syndicate were kind of the best for that. I can mentally check out of an open world story and then read some text about Jack the Ripper or the french revolution. Once AC:Origins started going a bit fanciful (also treading into waters that i don't already have a grasp on in Egyptian history.. or the newer titles with Greek History, and Brittish history) I lost interest. I think this is part of the reason i and the ac community were clamoring for a AC: Japan because that history tends to be intersting for fans of videogames and anime. I'd really like a 1950s post-ww2 japan just so i can connect the dots to between the end of the war and more modern times. Don't get me wrong, i didnt comprehend much of the assassins creed stories i like. I just liked running into historical figures so that compelled me forward.

Nintendo games do well with story in their Mario and Zelda open world series because there isn't much of a story to begin with or it's tacked on to facts that you already know. This might be why they are struggling with their next metroid. How are they going to propel me in a 3D-space in the same way they can compel you in a 2D space.

TLDR: Limited storytelling is best for open worlds, so think the Nintendo you already know the story. Or something with a historical context that you already know.

@ll_exile_ll: As Justin258 brought up, it’s not whether there is story or not, it is how intrusive it is and whether you can still engage with the game how you want to. We’re talking about design and story*telling* not “X amount of story.” I agree that the Witcher 3 is made special by how good the story is, as I said in an earlier post. However, you’ll notice the game lets you engage with that story in meaningful ways, and when you want it, from the dialogue choices (that are demonstrated to be meaningful again and again in the different outcomes they provide, as opposed to an AC Odyssey where it feels like just flavor,) to the skippable lines, cutscenes, and journal entries. There are walk and talk scenes, but they’re a minority compared to the rest of the time you’re allowed to, yknow, play the game, and they at least have the decency to write them well or use them to introduce a new area instead of as the Default Storytelling Method (coughcoughAssassin’sCreedCyberpunkcough).

The point is this — if you are the player, like me, who wants to soak in as much of the world as you can, in Both meanings of the phrase (sometimes you want to progress the story and sometimes you want to chill in the woods for a while) it lets you. Without ever stamping its foot.

Dialogue and story do not, by default, interrupt a game. I never said anything like that, though I understand how it could be implied. But the way it’s Implemented in most games *absolutely* interrupts the player’s flow.

For an example, in Spiderman, they literally cordon off “fun time” by having a blissful 5 minutes where no one can call you, (usually just time enough for A side activity) and then the barrage of information resumes and you get calls insisting “wow you should really check out this main quest,” and Spiderman sometimes says “wow I REALLY need to go there” and I hate that style of design, honestly. I’m having fun on my own, getting in a flow state of clearing side activities, stopping random crime, Feeling Like Spiderman (to apply an overused phrase) and then that bubble is popped by all the other intrusions and the game not trusting me to do stuff on my own time.

Hopefully I’m not coming across like a lunatic, I’m just trying to get at a very specific difference between the content of the story itself and how the player is presented it, and how much their agency or willingness to engage with it is valued.

I don't like open world games in general personally, there is nothing about elden ring for me that takes supremacy over the tight linear experience of say DS1. The main path is great but then i am running through a lot of superfluous travel, exploration and patrols etc to get to it, and even then its side content feels a lot like the chalice dungeons from BB, no real rythym.

As someone who heavily favours story over gameplay too i would agree that a narrative and open world conflicts but its not the narrative that gets in the way of the open world from my point of view but the open world gets in the way of the narrative. You only need to look at what its done to franchises like Dragon age, Metal Gear Solid, Mass effect, Assassins creed etc.

Would getting rid of the narrative alltogether improve those games from a franchise standpoint or is the design approach limited by its open world? Forced to focus on the combat and quantity over quality? I know which i would go with anyway.

We know developers can do it right it just takes extreme dedication and skill, Witcher 3, New vegas or RDR2 worked in tandem with the story to provide a narrative experience with meaty well written side content and they are rightfully spoken about as some of the best games of all time.

I think the game world has to support the intent of the narrative.

THE MEANING OF EXISTENCE (WARNING: CONTROVERSY!!)

Story should be everywhere and embedded in the world you're existing in. The world needs to incorporate pressure to ensure that the player is never just doing whatever they want in the game just because they can.

In everyday life, we're accustomed to having limits placed on what we can do. However, we're not used to the idea that pressure is a fundamental component of play. Pressure is part of what games do that nothing else does.

That's partly why Grand Theft Auto 1 is my favourite Grand Theft Auto. You finish a mission, and then there's pressure to start the next mission. What happens if you fail? I don't remember. It's just an interesting design thingy.

Even open world games have to enforce some degree of pressure to prevent the game from becoming static and boring. In play, the ultimate freedom is the freedom to quit (escape the pressure / obligation of the situation).

When it's your turn in the game M.U.L.E., the player isn't given total freedom to do whatever they want. There's always pressure driving you towards the end. And the game has very lofty narrative goals, even though the game might not be fun enough / good enough to sustain the fascination in achieving them:

• Multiplayer Goal: Cooperating with others to build the most successful colony you can, where every player gets what they feel they are entitled to.
• Singleplayer Goal: Making the highest profits and causing the least harm to the other colonists.

Pressure is essential. Pressure gives rise to interesting decisions and doesn't leave as much room for doubt. I feel it's important to engage the player in this way. A open-ended goal like "beating Bowser" isn't bad, but games should be incorporate pressure more as a core component of gameplay.

Are open world games better with limited storytelling?

I've been burned out on open world games for years. I pine for the old days when you can 100% an open game in under 20 hours, or just mainline it in half that time.

No, If every open-world game aped Breath of the Wild & Elden Ring your just trading fatigue with a different format.

We have many different open worlds that appeal to all kinds of people which helps break fatigue. Having shorter games less than 20 hours nothing to do with the format, people stopped buying them.

@thepanzini: So you're saying that limited storytelling and shorter games aren't a good thing and that, in the long run, players aren't interested in shorter games—correct?

Personally, I believe that games are better without storytelling. I care a lot about story and narrative in games, but of a different sort.

This is what I advocate for games:

@ravey: I didn't say that, the OP question was are they better.

No limited storytelling is not better, if every open world had limited storytelling doing xyz your just creating another blueprint and that'll get tiresome as well.

Horizon, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry and Witcher 3 can coexist with Breath of the Wild & Elden Ring and gaming is better for it.

If your going to advocate for something then it should be for everything, as much variety as possible.

As for shorter games how many AAA titles in recent years have been shorter experiences never mind linear, weather I agree or not the market has spoken.

@thepanzini: Did people stop buying them? Or did Skyrim do so well that people started chasing that trend?

I feel like there was still a market for shorter games but the AAA expectation became long ass games as ambitions grew. So companies started chasing that format, people started to expect more content, and it took years to start making shorter games feel viable again (Ratchet and Clank and Psychonauts are big budget, fairly linear games). When "open world fatigue" became a talking point, maybe that gave companies the go ahead to scale back.

It reminds me of when multiplayer was shoved into each game, even when people weren't asking for it. And it took awhile but games stepped back from that requirement. I continue to hope that Game Pass leads to games being more about quality, rather than more content.

@ravey: Why 100+ hours? That seems arbitrary, and very unsustainable.

A 3 hour game like Portal made such a huge impact in such a small amount of time. There's value in those experiences.

@csl316: Psychonauts had a tiny budget and in Tim Schafer's own words it was a modest hit, the sequel being a decade later and a kickstarter title pretty much tells you everything.

Remedy called Control a focus AAA which is essentially a more polished AA title with a slighty bigger budget, Control cost 20m to devlop which is pretty small on the AAA scale and sold 2m copies.

Skyrim cost $85m to develop back in 2011.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is pretty much the same vain, Sony announced it sold 1m copies shortly after release but Rift Apart was built more as a showcase for PS5. Not forgetting Sony being a first part dev means they have bigger margins.

@csl316: Smaller experimental games can be interesting. The constraints are intended to get me to think differently. Let's put aside what we already know. If we wanted to make a fascinating 100-hour game in six months, what choices would we make? If designers aren't being asked to answer this kind of question, are they being asked to design systems that are self-sustaining and interesting?

When we're playing a game, are we getting our hands dirty and wrestling with the system that's pushing us towards interesting decisions, or just making our way through a bunch of expensive content? Is that good or bad?

@thepanzini: Thanks, I think I understand now: "It isn't necessarily better to have a focused story path, or to give the player a high-level goal that they don't necessarily have to care much about (e.g. "beat Bowser" in Mario). Those are just a few of the options available."

My short answer: I'm an idealist. I don't believe in storytelling in games. I think games should be built around a loose narrative structure, which belongs more to the player. I'm interested in fun games with interesting worlds and characters. I think meaningful goals can be interesting. Games—including open world games—don't have enough pressure.

The issue I have with "advocating for everything": what if we're falling into a trap of political correctness? What if we're making fundamental attribution errors? For instance, what if games don't have enough pressure to nudge unmotivated players into taking meaningful action? That could be a bad thing.

And if there were no story path to string you along and games had enough pressure to keep the game interesting, would questions like, "How do I know when I'm done?" and "Can I not just enjoy the storyline?" look any different?

There are games that are plot heavy and dialogue heavy and people do like them. I'm getting the impression you think this is the incorrect way to make a game.You seem to have a gripe with these sorts of games not being structured the way you would like them to be.

What in the world does political correctness have to do with this discussion at all?

Look, you are free to prefer any type of game you want, but when you get into to the territory of saying games that offer something other what you're looking for shouldn't be made, that is when things get ridiculous. No one is saying you have to play story driven games, but tons of people like those; you not "believing in storytelling in games" doesn't change the fact that many people enjoy it. Just because they aren't to your taste doesn't mean they have less merit to exist.

It's pretty arrogant to insist that the types of games you like are somehow the ideal form of the medium. A great thing about modern video games is that there are all different types of experiences available that can appeal to all different kinds of tastes. It's totally for something to not be for you, play what you what you enjoy and let others play what they enjoy.

@ll_exile_ll: Sorry, when I said politically correct, my issue is probably more to do with mediocrity and design by committee. I think gameplay works better with some form of pressure, thus I don't like having too much freedom.

And since this thread is about storytelling, I was wrong to imply that games with storytelling is bad. I'm just not particularly interested in using games to tell stories. Also, I didn't mean to imply that what others think games should or shouldn't be were incorrect.

Personally, I don't have an issue with heavy dialogue or cutscenes, but I think writing for games is different than writing for stories. However, your feelings about not wanting to rush a game and wanting characters in the world whom you interact with are valid.

a bit late to this thread but i agree OP i miss the days open world games were around 20 hours . i think 10-40 hours is probably a sweet spot if your doing something with a story .

i've been playing horizon and while i loved the first even tho it took me 63 hours to 100% i'm over 40 into this sequel n its frankly just not doing it for me as much with the pacing. heck i still have at least 1/3 the map left to uncover and just got a piece is gear that'll let me do a handful of side stuff i was forced to walk away from cause i didn't have it ..still don't have whatever that other item is for some other stuff and to me thats just bad design honestly. i don't really want to have to go back to the starting zone to do some random side stuff vs that 1st game just compelled me in a way this doesn't. like the AC games of now theres just way too much stuff on a bit too large of a map. the side quests aren't horrible , even well done at times but i already find myself skipping them cause i just couldn't care anymore.

that said its not to say i dislike open world stuff . witcher 3 i clocked over 100 hours into n loved every min of it cause it had an interesting world. kingdom come :deliverance a rather flawed game probably would've been my goty over MH:W that yr cause i just loved being in it, the only reason it wasn't was cause gamebreaking bugs on my ps4 copy but i ended up thinking about it enough that i double dipped when a steam copy was on sale a yr later and it was great.

i think BotW was great if your looking for something less focus cause the really did a great just making you Want to see whats over in X direction. to my understanding thats how elden ring is as well ( i haven't dipped in yet). but just cause those games do it great doesn't mean i don't think a story matters in an open world game. i think it really just depends on the design. i think that when you have a bigger map n a bunch of meaningless bloat you loose track of a story or it causes bad pacing making it a bit piss-poor. i played AC:valhalla at release and was ready to be done at 40 hours , and it dragged on for another 60 while mainlining it , the game is just too big and the story imo suffers for it cause at 1 point if you do things in X order you feel complled to do X thing next and push it forward but if you do that the game tells you well you already did this but you still need to go do this other stuff you should have don first after it to get more mainline story and well...its just badly designed and disjointed. early AC games while still open world didn't feel like they had that issue , were there a crapload of chests on a map? sure but they didn't really impact much and you didn't feel like you needed to do them the same way outside of it being a compulsion same with mini objective things like the rooftop races, it hinder your progress or anything and it didn't help or hurt your leveling really.


i'm gonna stop my ranting here tho cause well ... thats what its turning into ... either way i think you can have both but i think dev really should be more careful when it comes to pacing if they're trying for a narrative.

I’ve owned all of the open world games of note of the last 10 years including breath of the wild, the Witcher three, spiderman, and cyberpunk 2077. The one that is the most compelling is assassin‘s creed black flag. I think overall games need some sort of context something more than Spider-Man or any comic book franchise can deliver. The emptiness of games like Immortal or something like Grandtheft auto is a combination of nothingness and bloat. No, I don’t think I will ever buy another open world game again. I own them all in there various iterations. Everybody is falling in love with Elden Ring but the RR Martin writing and worlds have never been something i like, with the closest thing being harry potter which is tempered with modernity. Historical context is everything. Send me down some wikipedia rabbit holes between play sessions. Superhero games are so very one note that a 3 hour batman doesnt even delve into the nuance of a protagonist obsessed with justice, because there really is non. Taking an established franchise or creating a whole body of work to support an open world still feels like im required to care when sometimes 100 encounters deep im going to drift and enjoy the gameplay. Whoops.

The only possible open world for me to care about is Assassin‘s Creed Black flag remake now they did something like the musical Hamilton were they really kind of take a little artistic license and really threw a lot of historical characters in your face that you didn’t really know about and maybe redo the story and use assassin‘s creed origins combat for that game would absolutely be the best remake ever made I can see myself just having the game on a PS five just idling in the background with my boat floating in the water with some rayraced water while i read about John Paul Jones. Ubisoft should have a campaign to write a sea shanties. Asassins Creed Black flag is essentially a 360 game anyway, and it's do for a remake. So if they remade that with maybe additional islands and if they want to do the DLC thing then you know add Mexico or liberation assassin’s creed New orleans. Then a little bit of rogue and you really have a great remix with updated combat. But they want to do an assassin’s creed universe whatever they try to do it just sounds dumb. Maybe a Mafia game that has all the intrigue of the Linburg baby and the A-bomb plans could move the needle for me.

@lapsariangiraff: The last few years I've come to realize - almost every game (99%+) is better with limited storytelling.

Maybe that's just getting older and experiencing lots of stories through television and books, but man, video game storytelling is usually pretty terrible and detracts from my enjoyment of them. Everything is so slow.

I don't want to start new games because I don't want to sit through a lengthy set of story sequences and cutscenes.

I don't want to read fluff dialogue.

I want to play your game. Make it easy.

Legit - I can only think of a few games where the story sequences were some of my favorite parts from them. Xenogears, Final Fantasy VI, Persona 4, God of War II...This not including visual novels like Phoenix Wright or 428: Shibuya and the like. It's been a staggering realization for me.

Open world games are better with world-building. It's not the amount of story you have. It's the detail and depth of the world-building you have. Most AAA games lack this so they feel all the same. BOTW or Xenoblade X or Elden Ring and such say a lot without saying a lot in the world itself.

As a dog I like to let the world tell the story with visuals and ambiance/sounds (maybe smells one day?!), not giant unskippable cutscenes of people blabbering ceaselessly. I'm sure there's a happy medium, but I can't think of one. For my own sensibilities tho; BotW, Silent Hill 2 and Elden Ring are closer to what I want more than anything else I can think of right now.