Game On: Open world games prove that bigger isn’t always better

The other day, I was watching a video review by prominent YouTuber Jason “videogamedunkey” Gastrow, and I found myself shutting it off in annoyance after he kept hyping up just how “big, big, so big” Elden Ring was. Is that really the only quality that matters?

I know for a fact that the game has more to offer than the vastness of its fully explorable world, but that hasn’t stopped Gastrow and many, many others from fixating on that aspect of Elden Ring. It all comes down to taste, but I’ll take the small, focused experience over the big “open world” one any day.

I didn’t always feel this way – I was once excited by the idea of larger games, free exploration and how more and more powerful computers could one day allow developers to simulate entire worlds.

Open world games have been around for a long time – in many ways, Shenmue pioneered the modern formula in 1999. That title quickly became antiquated when Grand Theft Auto III and the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind hit shelves in 2001 and 2002, respectively.

Then the processing power of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 released in the mid-00s allowed far larger and even more ambitious titles to be produced – Assassin’s Creed made its debut, Fallout made a big comeback, Far Cry found its footing, and the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim made its predecessors look quaint and tiny.

But after the next generation of hardware dropped in 2013, I slowly noticed something was wrong – the open world titles didn’t change in any meaningful way. Instead, it became the generation of remasters and rereleases – games like Skyrim, Saints Row: the Third and Grand Theft Auto V were ported to the new hardware with slightly better graphics and little else.

New games did come, but they proved to be unoriginal. Watch Dogs promised to be a game changer and simply wasn’t. Destiny ended up being much smaller than advertised. Borderlands 3’s core gameplay was virtually identical to its precursors. The Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed series released game after game with a new setting and story but few notable improvements.

This woke me up to the sobering reality that for now at least, a video game is still just a video game. Developers can design massive worlds and fill them to the brim with missions and side objectives, but they rarely amount to much more than a chore list of repetitive activities to pad out the run time.

The meat of any game is found in the primary objective. When I think of titles with meaningful side content, one of the few that comes to mind is Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn because most side quests contained entire storylines of their own that were sometimes even more gratifying than the main course.

But even that game wasn’t above the occasional “enter a new building and murder everyone inside” diversion, which is just as gratuitous and unimaginative as it sounds. There’s also a delicate balance in making side quests tell a compelling story without feeling disconnected from the primary plot.

I’m not convinced that balance is attainable for all games – it feels silly to explore every nook and cranny when characters are warning the player of dire, world-ending events soon to come. The intended sense of urgency becomes nonexistent, the player’s suspension of disbelief is lost, and soon enough boredom sets in.

In recent years, some have accused Half-Life 2 of being little more than a long series of winding corridors. From a level design standpoint, that’s correct – but I would argue those hallways are better-crafted than most open playing fields.

The world you actually explore may be small, but what’s there is meticulously crafted, immersive and leaves gamers wondering what’s around the corner just out of reach. While that’s limiting, I’d argue it’s less dissatisfying than exploring around said corner and finding nothing noteworthy.

Open world games certainly have their place, but there’s currently an overabundance of them. When even the likes of Halo and Sonic the Hedgehog are going open world, you know it’s trendy. Thankfully, trends come and go – frankly, I’d like to see this one go to rest soon.

Riordan Zentler can be reached at riordanzentler@gmail.com.